Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike McKown
Since leaded gasoline went away, I haven't seen the need to de-carbon ANY engine that was in good mechanical condition.
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You've not been into many engines then.....
Quote:
Originally Posted by ol'George
I feel the improvement in lubricating oils has helped also.
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Yeah, I would agree with this... to a point. But it really has more to do with the latter of your statement. Better and much tighter tolerances. (Ring design) And also different building materials, coatings and the like. Older motors had wide ring gaps and skirt clearances. Not out of the ordinary for an older motor to have a .005" - .007" skirt clearance. Now anything over .004" is rare. Has more to do with materials they are made of expanding less under heat. Better metallurgy in how blocks are constructed.... and so on. Sure, the oil helped, in that better oil also let them run tighter tolerances.... but you can also put that to better filters and filtration systems. The old Hercules motors in Jeeps only filtered some oil on a 1/4" line bypassed off the lube circuit. Not much oil actually went through the circuit to the filter. The better oils really show up in these little Kohlers in that with NO filtration system I think we are seeing longer life on overhauls than we ever have. How many machines do we buy that had engines put in them when they were with the first owner? Several. But we overhaul them and they run for years and years. My family bought a brand new model 71 Cub Cadet. I have it now, and I took out the 3rd motor that it had in it. The one I install will be engine 4, and I bet the last. No doubt, we have come a long way in a lot of things... but it doesn't seem that one of our advancements was in fuel. The fuel we have now truly sucks.
