removing fluid from cylinders(3B.)

[Brett Dikeman]

On Fri, 29 Dec 2000, Huw Powell wrote:

> try using a baster type thing.  any kind of squeeze bulb or drawn vac in
> a cylinder with a hose on it to go into the cylinder.

Tried it, and what I found was...hey...them piston heads aren't flat!  I
came to this realization when I was poking(gently :) around with a
screwdriver.

So, the big lake turned out to only be a narrow little puddle in the
middle of the piston; I was completely faked out.  List consensus was "ah,
just crank the sucker."

Anyway, the super nice clean spark plug holes took the plugs nicely with
some anti-seize applied, crossed the fingers, damned the torpedoes, and
turned it over.  Perfectly normal cranking.  Yay.  Did that a little bit,
then plugged the ignition in.  Won't start.  Hmm, helps if the fuel pump
relay's back in, yes? :-)  Took a second or two for the completely
depresurized system to feel it wheaties.

Just as the instructions say, you should expect for it to take a long time
to catch; slowly, it started firing, then catching, barely running, then
running.  -Lots- of white smoke, which the instructions also predicted.]

I really should snap a picture of the rag that was on top of the plug
holes when I cranked the engine; the amount, and size, of the carbon
particles was absolutely amazing; I had carbon grapenuts!(well, not quite
:-)  This was only after maybe 3-4 hours of soaking, not overnight.

I've only done short-term driving since then(and I didn't pull the ECU
fuse to reset any learned values), so the jury is still out on what
this has improved, if anything, and the Buttometer isn't very
reliable.  But I can't imagine that all that carbon crap was really doing
any good in there!

The current theory is that the oil comes from the crankcase breather
system; a company makes a oil mist filtration device that might be worth
looking into.  Each enough to see that if oil still comes along down the
path, it's the turbo.

Brett