As mentioned in my other current project thread, yesterday was sort of a dissatisfying day in the shop. Everything was going along seemingly quite well right up until the end, when something popped up to thwart the satisfying conclusion.
As far as the spark plug wire swap went, I think that went well. I cut the epoxy holding the existing wire in, then pulled and twisted. More epoxy in the hole was still holding the outer large of insulation. Through tension and torsion, though, it was not difficult at all to remove the wire. It did, however, tear off the outer black layer of insulation which remained in the hole.
First, I tried whittling off the black layer of insulation on the new wire, to hopefully just slip the narrowed end of the new wire into the old sleeve of insulation. Nope. Not happening. The old wire tore neatly between the layers of black and white insulation. I could not replicate that even surface with the new wire. My attempts to peel it off just kept gouging the white insulation below. I cut off the mangled end of the new wire to get a fresh end. That old insulation would have to come out of the hole.
The rubbery insulation fought me at first, but ended up not being too bad. I used a large drill bit as close as I could get to the wire size for the first part of the hole, then switched to a much smaller one for the deepest recesses. Yes, there is a wire protruding from the back of the hole that sticks into the end of the plug wire. Somehow, I managed not to mess that up while getting almost all the insulation out. I test fit the wire, then swabbed a small amount of JB weld around the wire and stuck it in. Turned out looking good. :{_}:
The plug wire end that grabs the plug was a bit mangled inside the boot, so I couldn’t get it out without cutting the boot. Shouldn’t be an issue as long as I don’t touch it when running. It’s far from any metal objects in the short term, and I know the guy I bought the wire from has the same boots available.
I was surprised how small the actual conductor is in a spark plug wire. It’s only about the size of a pencil lead.
As an added bonus, under the accumulated grime, I found some numbers in black ink over a dark brown surface. Numbers I can use to source a replacement, unlike the numbers I found in the diagrams. It is still fairly readily available, and for not much money. So even if this repair, which ended up easier than I was expecting, fails, I would be able to do a magneto swap without much trouble after all. Not sure why I couldn’t find any useful cross references out of the parts diagrams, but this works, too. :{_}:
For the recoil starter, I got the axle pin drilled/pressed out, got the rope swapped and got everything reassembled with a new pin. I’m positive I have it back together the way it came apart, but it’s not behaving right. There’s a wire spring that functions like a very small band brake. At affects how the gear engages and disengages from the flywheel. In the position I am positive is correct, the end of the wire hangs up and won’t let the gear disengage from the flywheel. In a slightly altered wire position, the gear will disengage, but instead is dicey about engaging in the first place. I’m not sure what’s going on there. I think I must have broken a little piece out of the body of the starter on disassembly that now lets the wire shift to where it can get hung up. :evil:
For now, I will leave the wire in the wrong position so it disengages properly. I will just manually engage the gear by hand each time before pulling the cord, and that should let me run this until I figure a fix or get a new starter (which thankfully is available). Assuming I’ve fixed the no-start part of this episode.
I had previously fixed the broken casting, so everything is back together. Now, in the daylight, let’s see if it will run again! If I can find a dry patch between outer bands of Debby coming through. Impact here should be minimal, but still, 6” of rain and blustery squalls does put a damper on outside activities.
