Brodhead Pietenpol Association

Original Posted By: Doug413(at)aol.com
Subject: Pietenpol-List: Continental valvesHello List,This one is for the Continental guys out there. I have a Continental A-65 on my unfinished Piet. It has about one hour of ground running time since major. This time was run on it about 4 or 5 months ago. I didn't run it for a couple of months. I pulled it out and decided to run it some. It started right up but I wasn't getting good oil pressure. After about 30 seconds or so I shut it down. I took the oil screen out and pumped a little oil down to the pump to kind of 'prime' it. I then restarted it and it ran for about 10 seconds and promptly quit. I then pulled the prop through and one cylinder was completely soft, like the valve was stuck open. It hadn't been before. After it sat for about 30 minutes, it once again felt like it had good compression. So I started it. Once again it ran for 8 or 10 seconds and quit, leaving a soft cylinder. Again after about 30 minutes it had compression again. Again I started it and it did the same thing. This time I pulled the rocker covers off and found that I could push all of the valves open by hand and a couple of them stayed open. Then I had no compression until I waited about 30 minutes and once again had compression. Is it possible the guides are tight, although I didn't have this problem in the previous hour of running time? Is it possible the colder oil (it is winter here in Ohio!) is pumping into the tappets quicker than it can pump out? Therefore not letting the valves close. If anyone has ever experienced anything like this let me know what you think. Any ideas would be a great help!!Don Emch Hoping spring isn't too far away!________________________________________________________________________________

Original Posted By:
Don,Hopefully Cy Galley will respond to you on this because he knows a lot aboutthese sorts of problems. I would use some carb cleaner spray to try toclean out the valve guides of thick oil and then relube them with some lightmachine oil like three and one and see if the valves stay open the 30seconds. Hopefully they won't and you can chalk it up to high shearingstrength of your oil (a good thing sometimes). This would mean a throroughpreheat before you do this again.Usually, when it is cold, the cold viscous oil does not make it very wellinto the lifters and the lifters don't "pump up". Then they will be noiseyjust like in your car on a cold winter morning. This is exactly opposite ofwhat you think is occuring so I do not think it is the problem.How cold is it outside when you are doing these runs? Is the enginepreheated before a run? What weight oil are you using?As an aside, a design feature of the Continental engine makes priming theoil pump a snap with out doing anything but lifting the tail up high for afew moments. It seems that when the ship is in a three point stance, oil inthe tail end of the oil screen chamber is unable to drain down through theoil pump gears back into the oil sump. To prime the oil pump, lift the tailhigh, as high as you can without it nosing over, and this oil will slideforward into the passage that goes down to the pump gears, priming the pump.Of course it is good only once.Chris BobkaTech Counselor----- Original Message -----

Original Posted By: "D.Dale Johnson"
Subject: Re: Pietenpol-List: Continental valves

Original Posted By: "D.Dale Johnson"
It would be more unusual that your A-65 didn't have hydraulic lifters.----- Original Message -----