Successful bandaid fixes for compression loss on small engines

[Soundguy]

by hitting the msds for things like seafoam and mmo you can recreate decent home brews with similar/same ingredients.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

Picked up two QTS of MMO today. Plan to test it by shining Polaris cooling fins like on YouTube

 

[Gale Hawkins]

Sea Foam when bye bye since yesterday.

Got to the house right before and we coated most all external aluminum parts wet with Marvel Mystery Oil. Then we pulled the plug and did not see any Sea Foam like yesterday in the spark plug hole. Had the son pull the starter rope slowly and finally I thought some Sea Foam was going to flow out but it went back down the hole so clearly most of it flowed past the rings today. It was 90+ today so that may have helped since it has been rainy and cooler the last few days. I had him pulling the rope fast then realized we were pumping out of the high pressure line from the oil filter base since the oil cooler and lines have all been pulled.

I pulled the valve inspection port covers and made sure the piston was at the bottom of a stroke and we refilled with MMO. The fact it is red made it easier to see in the spark plug hole. Now that we have Sea Foam flowing past the rings into the crank case the MMO may go down fast.

If it does then I think trying to soak the piston ring grooves hoping to remove hard carbon is not something that is a one time over night kind of task in some cases.

Having worked with MMO of a few minutes for the first time this evening so far I am impressed with it. Some assume Sea Foam is more aggressive cleaner perhaps because you about 5x more MMO than Sea Foam.

It is easy to see the potential of increasing the compression of an engine by doing through the plug hole soaks with MMO, Sea Foam, etc if rings are binding in the grooves due to carbon build up. Wish we had the equipment to do PSI check before starting this project. May buy a kit for future use.

I can say Sea Foam without heat will dissolve hard carbon buildup over time. Before this project I did not know that was the case. Sounds like MMO will do the same.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

Marvel Mystery Oil - Moyer Marine Atomic 4 Community - Home of the Afourians

The post by Don Moyer on Marvel Mystery Oil was helpful in my case since yesterday was my first ever purchase of MMO but have bought/used gallons of Sea Foam.

This morning I checked the Polaris engine and there was little to no over night drop of the MMO level that we filled through the spark plug opening last night. It turned out the Exhaust stroke was coming up so when I slowly pulled the rope it dumped a lot of the MMO out the exhaust port since we only have on the short 90 degree elbow exhaust pipe. Since the oil cooler and hoses are removed currently I need to put a short hose between the exit and return line on the oil filter base plate because even a very slow rope pull causes motor oil to come out of the nipple to the oil cooler.

At this point I am considering draining the crankcase and replacing the oil filter and pump straight MMO through the engine with the spark plug removed by the rope starter and or electric starter. The above article refers to MMO as being like SAE 3 weight oil so it should pump well into the ring grooves (landings per some people's term). If the engine is turn for 1 minute by the started a few times a day for a week it should do all it can do to recover any compression loss that might be due to carbon in the piston ring grooves. It would be expensive to do this with Sea Foam and it may be more 'dry' than MMO.

The cycle had some smoking at idle but the carb was loading up a bit but it was more blue than black. Anyway like with other projects we will take this to the over kill level.

 

[Egon]

Add a little ATF to the fuel and put a load on the engine.

 

[BigMike50]

Add a little ATF to the fuel and put a load on the engine.

what does that do? that sounds fun! explain yourself and I may try this on something

 

[Egon]

It may help clean up

 

[Egon]

It may help remove carbon deposits.

 

[BleedingOrange]

Add a little ATF to the fuel and put a load on the engine.

What ratio ?

 

[Gale Hawkins]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ-uf4YyeHI

While ATF is a high detergent oil I am not too big on off label use in an running engine.

The above video was my main reason for picking up some Marvel Mystery Oil to see if it would brighten up the engine outside and other aluminum parts. After getting it and reading the label I remembered I do not like having my hands in pesticides.

It is the chlorinated hydrocarbons in it that concerns me. Well not me so much as the kids because chemial is there when you pour it in AND drain it out. While a metal etching chemical is sure to clean I am not totally excited about having it in my engine so I am going to stick with regular Sea Foam or TransTune Sea Foam (less alcohol I was told) going forward.

May still do the straight MMO flush as noted above since I have it and put it back into the bottles for future clean up needs.

Again I think Marvel Mystery Oil does clean up things like a dirty engine it is the chlorinated solvent part that concerns me plus it is not labeled for automatic transmission usage.