Tonight I took a VHT member's advice from a few days ago and drained the oil as best I could. He had advised that the clean oil I found on the dipstick was just an illusion, and there was a ton of crud that had sunk to the bottom in there, worse it could be floating on a layer of water, yuck I hope not.
Again with the engine out of the frame I had to get creative.
I set up my aluminum ladder but couldn't find any ratchet straps and had to improvise. I found two coiled cables I used to use for locking up my old bike and decided to give those a try.
A picture would be worth a thousand words right now. Suffice it to say that I draped one cable over a 2x4 on the top step and stuck the end loops on the left and right of the top motor mount. Same with the rear mount but one step lower. The engine was sitting perfectly upright, hovering about one foot (30cm) above the ground. I was able to twist the 2x4 90 degrees to raise the front of the engine before removing the rear drain plug. I let the cold oil run until it was a slow drip then levelled the engine again and more oil ran out, rear drain plug back in I repeated the process with the front drain plug until empty the put the drain plug back in. I'll have to find some new sealing washers for these drain plugs.
While I had the engine suspended I cranked the kickstarter many times with the plugs removed. I noticed that it was getting very easy to turn with the kicker now, much less notchy than it was the other day. I also noticed some light brown muddy Seafoam Deep Creep beginning to ooze out of the #1 left side exhaust port, there was some wetness at #2 also but it was just clear. So #1 was the stuck side, and now I've gotten some Deep Creep past the exhaust valve. I didn't even look at the intake, that would remain dry right?
Next time I'll shoot some Deep Creep on the valvetrain and both cylinders before giving it a few minutes of turning with the kicker. I was surprised at how far around that kickstarter turns, it's active from about 11 o'clock counterclockwise until about 5 o'clock.
And just as my advisor had said, this wasn't clean oil although what was on the dipstick was. All of the crud had sunk to the bottom. And I only removed about 3/4 of a liter of dirty oil. Happily I found no water in there.
The manual says this engine only holds 1 liter of oil, and some will remain in there after draining, likely more stayed than normal with a cold engine and all of that crud in there. At least there'll never be much waste oil to get rid of.
My 21" water heater pan arrived while I was out, I think I'll Krazy glue something over the drain hole and clamp it with some blocks before beginning.
It just might be deep enough to submerge one of these rims in but I haven't put the two together yet.
I think it's probably too cold in storage for the Evaporust to do its thing, I may have to do this part at home. Stay tuned!
