September 7th, 2000 Progress Report

The Final assembly...

Here's what Jeff, Shane, Bob, Gary, Shelley and I did since the August 2nd pictures up until completion:

The Startup

We tried our darndest to get the motor to run 9/3/00, but it looked like the Hilborn fuel pump I bought used was "used up". We could get some fuel to come out by spinning it up with an electric drill, but cranking the motor very quickly and holding the hose into a container yielded nothing. When gas was squirted into the injector, the motor would fire, but when the gas was used up, it would quit. The digital tachometer reports that we did get 1400RPM. A few pops and a couple of fireballs in my face was all we got.

The folks at Hilborn rebuilt my pump and shipped it back in 2 days! Amazing...

Jeff, Shane, Cathy, Shelley and I witnessed the ceremonial "first firing". Wow, is it loud, even with the collector mufflers! We ran it for about 10 minutes total. It didn't quite get up to temperature, but we ran low on fuel and had an injector hose squirting a fine spray (good eye Jeff!). It took a bit of experimenting to get the timing right so it would fire. Some head studs were leaking water into the crankcase, and we had to pull each one and put gorilla goo on them to make sure the water stays out. I put it back together with new oil and filter and it's ready for a second round.

Photos by: Bill Dare