Wing tips #11

Tips and Recommendations from Guru Mike Nixon

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mikenixon
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Wing tips #11

#1

Post by mikenixon »

Fire and wind

Heat. So utterly simple yet effective. Such a wonderful, powerful and too often overlooked tool. Whether by flame, hotplate, heat gun, soldering gun, oven, or ultrasonic bath, it's often the exact thing needed. Heat followed by complete air cooling works a wonder in getting a jet needle set screw to come out of a stubborn slide. Heat applied carefully frees up a float pivot pin without snapping its post, and many a pilot screw similarly comes unstuck. Gentle heat softens rubber collars, making intake manifolds easier to remove while also lessening their tendancy to tear. Woodruff keys rusted to their shafts, bolts 40-plus years in their place. Heat loosens the super glue from pilot screw limiting flags and is virtually the only way to remove large diameter type float bowl drain screws that have gone untouched for decades, their sealing o-rings petrified, the screws seized hard to their bowls. Heat is akin to alchemy when removing Loctited throttle and choke plate screws. Heat is the go-to technique for removing idle air bleed jets. Where would we be without heat? Criticism has come my way for simply having heat in my arsenal of carburetor rebuilding skills, as if the picture is of a foot-long acetylene flame starkly reflected in the smoky glass of a welder's faceshield, sparks aflying -- instead of the carefully trained tiny pinpoint flame or radiated or inducted source, excruciatingly carefully monitored, resulting in just the right result. Heat. Nothing is as effective as thoughtfully applied temperature, substituting grandly as it does in so many instances for the brute force and ill-advised techniques that almost every time damage parts. Give me intelligently administered heat every time.

Compressed air. Compressed air is over-represented in many people's ideas of what carburetor rebuilding looks like. Professional carb rebuilders rely on it only tentatively, kind of as a double-check and not as a primary indicator or technique. The problems with compressed air are two-fold. First, it's invisible. If using it to clear or confirm a jet or passage, how do you tell the difference between a partly cleared one and a completely cleared one? Not by using compressed air, that's for sure, The correct way is to use compressed fluid, i.e. aerosol, whose pressure and flow is easily and intuitively gauged. Second, compressed air carries with it too much force. The force can be misleading, its presence giving a confidence falsely earned. Many a DIY-er has said to me, "...but I blew out all the passages!" Just what does that mean, anyway? What good can come from it? Compressed air can also be destructive. A hundred to a hundred and twenty psi is a considerable amount of energy, and energy unwilling to simply dissipate harmlessly. More than one rookie career mechanic has discovered this when shooting air into an assembled carburetor and getting broken parts as a result.
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desertrefugee
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Re: Wing tips #11

#2

Post by desertrefugee »

Another really good installment, Mike. But I can tell that you wrote these two sections at separate times. The passage on heat was so poetic, it dang near brought a tear to my eye. Then you got back to business with compressed air and brought us back to earth.

Seriously, these wingtips should be in everyone's library, close at hand – or better yet studied, learned and part of our DNA.

Thank you.
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mikenixon
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Re: Wing tips #11

#3

Post by mikenixon »

:-D

Yeah. The prosaic momentum got lost...
kenai
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Re: Wing tips #11

#4

Post by kenai »

Hi - " Woodruff keys rusted to shafts"...have an old swather ( JD800) with lots of pulleys with keys and they are ornery. What works? Where do you heat and then cool?...the key and then cool? Also is acetone with diesel a good rust breaker before heat? Would acetone with atf be as good..thxs kenai
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Re: Wing tips #11

#5

Post by mikenixon »

Hi, kenai. On Keihin carbs on SOHC fours, two woodruff keys are found on the throttle shaft. They tend to rust to the shaft, making them difficult to remove. Careful heat breaks the rust bond. I don't put much stock in solvents for freeing up this kind of part, though they might be effective elsewhere.
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Re: Wing tips #11

#6

Post by chewy999 »

Thank you once more Mike, I particularly found your views on compressed air interesting.

anim-cheers1 anim-cheers1 anim-cheers1
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mikenixon
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Re: Wing tips #11

#7

Post by mikenixon »

chewy999 wrote:Thank you once more Mike, I particularly found your views on compressed air interesting.

anim-cheers1 anim-cheers1 anim-cheers1
Thanks!
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