ICQ>

George ---

Why is the last guess always the right one? And why am I not surprised you got it?

We measured the compression -- it was around 75 psi. "Cranked like crazy." I said that enough times!!!

We added oil to all four cylinders -- compression jumped to 160 -- it started immediately. Smoked like hell for a coupla minutes, but ran and sounded fine. And it started immediately this morning, too.

After all that -- it's amazing how these simple problems seem so obvious, and EMBARRASSING in hindsight. And how much time we wasted by misleading ourselves.

Like I said, education costs.

Several others should be credited (Dick and John) for mentioning compression also. But they didn't get to the oil.

We figured the previous mechanic washed the oil off the cylinders with the gasoline, kept trying, and made it worse. When we fixed the broken wire, we proceeded to flood (and wash) the rings even more. All the time we ignored the freewheeling cranking, and kept studying the schematics, making measurements, and trying various fuel injection and electronics solutions.

Apparently, there was so much clearance between the rings and the bore that the gasoline going into the cylinder ran down the walls without wetting the plugs.

Oh, yeah -- we changed the oil and filter, too. There musta been several quarts of gas in with the oil.

Well, this was interesting. Let's try some more brainteasers! Who's next?