TINKERER’S CURSE

MORLEY’S WORLD

DAVE MORLEY GIVES YOU THE CAR ADVICE YOU NEED – AND MAYBE A BIT ABOUT LIFE AS WELL

I’ve had cause recently to tinker on an old Japanese four-cylinder engine which, according to the owner, refused to be tuned and had a chronic flat-spot that even two (brand-new) replacement carbies couldn’t fix. And worse, since he had been messing with it, it was now running on just two cylinders. Just what a real mechanic must hear every single day.

Now, this was one of those old-school four-bangers with pushrods, two valves per cylinder and cast-iron everything else. Not much to go wrong, right? Yet the owner had been tearing his hair out for months, trying to get it running sweetly. Which, with about three moving parts in the whole thing, was not an unreasonable expectation. So I took a slice of my own advice and dug into first principles one by one.

“BASICALLY, IF IT HAS FUEL, SPARK AND COMPRESSION, THE BASTARD IS OBLIGED TO RUN”

Provided the head gasket is intact and there’s nothing whacky going on like a cracked head or a major vacuum leak courtesy of a warped inlet manifold, an engine like this presents a fairly simple equation. Basically, if it has fuel, spark and compression, the bastard is obliged to run.