Progress on the friend's '50 Super A

[Dale Finch]

OK, I have been working on this '50 SA for a friend's BIL's widow for a couple weeks, on & off. After carb disassembly, I saw it was incredibly clean inside, in spite of the fact that the tank and sediment bowl were really sludgy! Next is the mag, and that gasket kit should arrive next week.

But the reason for this post is about the oil filter. Since the NAPA oil filters were only about $5, I bought one for this SA. This morning I removed the filter housing, and Saw this, which looked like a piece of linen fabric. Note, there had been no apparent oil leak from this area.

Seemed a rather strange material for an oil gasket!

OK, that was interesting enough, but I then went to dig out the old rubber gasket normally in the base groove, and this is what I found:

The string went at least twice around, and wasn't even saturated with oil:

It was almost 3' long!

Anyone seen this before?

[Don McCombs]

Field expedient. It worked, though.

[Dale Finch]

Yes! Probably as well as a lot of the real gaskets, especially when they are not seated correctly. Not real sure how the fabric worked, though. Guess it is similar to using the classic Wheaties boxes for gaskets!

[Lt.Mike]

Candle wick???

[Dale Finch]

Not sure, but at first glance it seemed like just nylon string, maybe 1-2 mm thick. I'll look at it more closely next time I'm over there.

[Stanton]

Field expedient. It worked, though.

Looks like it worked very well. Will have to remember that one...