1450 engine
 

Still in the process of cleaning up my 1450 for next spring, decided to pull the head off the engine and see what's going on in there. Looks like quite a bit of carbon buildup. I know some of you who have taken apart tens and hundreds of engines can spot engine trouble just by looking at the piston and valves, anything out of the norm here? The engine runs well (at least it used to, who knows now that I've taken in apart :biggrin2:).

Looks good here. Clean it up, plane the head, new gasket and you should be good! :beerchug:

I'm on it, thank you!:beerchug:

Actually it looks really good without the typical head gasket blow by. Someone must have gone back and retorqued the head bolts?

Not me!:biggrin2:

I actually noticed something else that I need some advice on. I cleaned everything up nice and started turning the crankshaft just to kind of observe the valve action.I noticed something that seems odd, on the compression stroke the exhaust valve moves up ever so slightly right about half way through the stroke. It then drops back down around 3 quarters of the way through the stroke. I pulled the cover off on the side that allows you to look at the valve and what is happening is the rod that pushes the valve up (sorry don't know the technical name of it) twists about 45 degrees and moves slightly upwards , pushing the valve up. Now, I don't have very much practical experience, but from the theory I wouldn't expect the exhaust valve to lift not even slightly during the compression stroke. I pulled up a picture of a camshaft as well and I really don't see any reason for that rod that rides on the camshaft lobes to be twisting either, unless there's an irregularity on the camshaft. But again, with zero experience, I can't tell is this normal behavior. If not, what could be causing it? Should I increase the gap between the valve and that lift rod to cancel out the slight upward motion?

That ever so puzzling phenomenon is known in the mechanical world as a compression release. It is perfectly normal. But, since you already took the side cover off, go ahead and adjust the valves, properly.

OK, that makes sense. How does that not allow the air/gas mixture being compressed to escape out the exhaust when the engine is running?

there's flyweights on the cam that swing out of the way as the engine starts to run

Got it, thank you. You learn something new every day.

Sorry, got another one that popped up in my head. If there's a compression release mechanism, how does one do a compression test?