Yesterday, I lashed my valves as I had that nice loud audible clacking from under the hood that says 'hey...spend the $8 for the gasket and tighten me up...'

I lashed everything and it ran really good for a trip then it got really salty and lean....

I thought 'OK, must've gotten the exhaust a bit too tight...', pulled the cover and rechecked it... everything OK

This morning it was just a dog and the idle was 'choppy'....but it drove....

Decided I better just give it a full tune up and find out WTF....

After pulling my spark plugs...they all were a bit rich, but still had tan electrodes except 2....#1 was black and sooty (rich).....and #3 just fell into 2 peices when I dropped it out of the socket (busted across the porcelin neck 1/4" above the metal base...)

New set of plugs, recurved the dist. for better highway vacc. advance (I think), more initial, and am trying out Dan's Mo-3000 rotor and the Bluestreak cap (the test run indicated, better fire to all plugs, even coloring , and my idle is much smoother....)

I'm suprised I ran to the store on 5 cylinders.... jeeez...

-D.Idiot

One time I drove around for a whole weekend on 5 cylinders. When I finally checked the plugs to see what was up, I saw that one of the plugs had its ground terminal pressed into the center electrode. I don't know what caused that...I never found debris or anything. I regapped the plug, and it was good as new! How few cylinders have you seen a slant run on? Anbody have a story about running on 3?

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'68 Dodge Dart 4dr Sedan

I once had a slant run with the distributor cap on backwards but the plug wires in the right order (firing 180 degrees off so firing on the exhaust stroke)

When I first got my Duster it ran on 4 cylinders because of toasted valves. PO tried to advance the timing a wee bit too much.

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82 D150-225/727
02 Dakota-3.9/5 speed
87 GMC C7000-8.2 Detroit Diesel/5+2

[quote="Patrick Devlin" How few cylinders have you seen a slant run on? Anbody have a story about running on 3?[/quote]

Not a slant, but I used to run my Plymouth 217 Flathead six on 3 just for grins and to prove to people that it would run. If you grounded either the front 3 or the rear 3 plugs, it would run *smoothly* on three. No power and dumping raw fuel down the tailpipe like mad, but it would run and move the car around.... slowly

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I have driven down the highway on 4, and even started from dead cold at -15F on 4 and driven off(two plug wires off - oops!). Have run on 3 no problem, but not driven around like that.

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

Mine ran on 3 (sometimes 4) for about a month many years ago when it was still bone stock and badly in need of a rebuild. 5 & 6 had next to nothing for compression, and #4 was about half of 1, 2, and 3 (90 psi at the time).

It would blow so much oil into the air filter I rigged up a 2-liter 7 up bottle to the breather tube to catch the blowby and save my air filter from needing to be replaced every day.

Upon tear down at the shop that did the rebuild (I was 16 and knew squat about engines other than what my father told me to do, i.e. compression check, general tuneup, etc) the rings on 4, 5 and 6 were basically gone. Nice scored cylinder walls. Required .060 over to clean it up. The mechanic was amazed it ran at all.

It was a government vehicle with only 36k miles when I bought it, but it must have sat outside and idled all its life, because it died (to its state described above) at 45k miles.

She's much happier now.

Last year my duster evidently got some crud in the valves. I drove it 15 mi. a day for a week running on 4 cyls. The next week it picked up #5, on Friday of that week , on the way home, much to my joy, it found its way back to 6. I was quite happy after beginning to think that somehow I had killed it prematurely,(it only has 203,000?) miles on it. Just a baby. Still I am not as easy on it as I should be.

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