Marmalade the IIa

This engine is a 1950s design using largely 1930s technology (Ricardo Comet system), one of the first mass produced small diesels, and the first diesel in a small four wheel drive.

I wonder if you are simply expecting it to have smoke emissions in line with current designs?

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Originally Posted by JDNSW

I wonder if you are simply expecting it to have smoke emissions in line with current designs?

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Hi John,


Yes and no... I am aware that old diesels smoke, and am expecting some - but since owning this I've been around 7 or 8 2.25 diesels that have been in various states of running. Mine is by far the worst!
if it was just a bit of smoke for the first few minutes on start, or on hard acceleration I wouldn't be too worried, it's more that after it's been running for a while you can quite literally see the smog settling along the river flat!!! we live on a fair size property, and it's still embarrassing to run [bigwhistle]


Thanks
Luca

There are lots of engines that smoke and still have good compression. Still run sweet but use oil. My take on this would be that the oil rings are worn or not doing their job properly. I’ve rebuilt engines that used oil very quickly and for some reason the rings didn’t bed in. I’ve had engines (Sigma springs to mind) that have very good compression but use oil and blow smoke. Valve seals tend to puff smoke on start up and you can get them to also puff smoke if you hold the revs up for thirty seconds or so then drop the revs and then rev it up again. Not always but they will do it if they are bad. Some engines run badly but use no oil as well but it can be the camshaft worn enough to make it uneven (falcons) this of course is oil smoke I’m talking about not unburnt fuel diesel smoke. That is a different story…

Valve stem seals tend not to be an issue in diesels, because you rarely have a vacuum in the inlet manifold to suck oil down the valve stems.

It's not using oil in any noticeable way... maybe a very small amount, but definitely not enough to have dropped the oil level at all.

I've got a spare distribution pump that I'm going to drop in and see if it changes anything.

Cheers
Luca