blowed up, sir!, lesson learned Options

[lapuwali]

One of the sillier ways to do in an engine. I have dual IDFs, and one of the wing nuts on the air filter housing came off. This allowed the long stud (which I'd neglected to use Loctite on) to back out and fall into the slot between the jets. This jammed the float open.

What I felt was a loss of power on the freeway about 4 miles from my house. The bulk of the remaining trip was downhill, so I backed off and coasted most of the way. It was still running (just on two cylinders), and started smoking after a couple of miles. Mind, all I knew was I'd had a power loss and there were no bad noises. It quit at the bottom of an off-ramp. Hazard flashers on, hood up. Takes me about 10 minutes to figure out what happened.

Oh, and about every 10th car coming down the ramp stops behind me and honks impatiently, rather than just going around (2 car widths beside me). I guess everyone's forgotten what hazard flashers mean, and that if a guy is standing next to the thing with his hands inside the engine bay, that maybe there's something wrong.

After pulling out the stud and draining the carb, hoping I won't hydro-lock, I try to start it. Fires up, runs great. Still smokes though, so I'm sure I did some lasting damage to that pair of rings and cylinder.

Lesson learned? Pull over RIGHT NOW at the first sign of trouble, even if it's only a couple more miles, and even if there aren't any bad noises. Had I fixed the fuel problem right away, I may not be rebuilding the top end of my engine now.

[Scott S]

I can relate to this 100%. I was headed up a pretty steep hill fairly late at night. When I pushed in the clutch to shift the engine rev'd like I didn't let off the gas. I was already at a pretty high RPM and I know I over rev'd the thing. I killed the ignition and pulled over. I finally noticed that the carb linkage was not returning to closed - yet there was slack in the cable. I pulled an aircleaner and found that the internal "teepee" that the top bolt goes through had broken off at the welds and fallen inside the carb. I was pretty relieved, but then pissed at how cheap the air cleaner assembly was. I have since repaired this piece at least 4-5 times with failures on both air cleaner assemblies. it was just last year that I replaced them with the burley aluminum units (shows you how dumb I am.... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/huh.gif) )

Glad it worked out ok. I agree with the others, I doubt you did any real damage.