After a month of frequent Marvel Mystery Oil squirts into the cylinders via the open spark plug holes, I figured that the piston rings would've been unstuck from the cylinder walls by this point, or they wouldn't. Either way, I'd have a resolution to the question of why the engine wouldn't turn. However, the dilemma remained that I only had 1/2 of the crankshaft timing roll pin upon which to leverage my homemade socket/breaker bar set up and rotate the engine by hand. It was my last hope before things got expensive. I felt like Dennis Quaid in the movie remake
Flight of the Phoenix when he's trying to start the engine of the wrecked-and-rebuilt C-119 airplane in the Gobi desert with his last remaining shotgun shell before the charging tribe of horseback-riding bandits overruns the crew and certain death results. With a firm yet gentle grip of the oversized breaker bar, I oh-so-carefully started pulling, hoping for the engine to give up its stubborness in reluctant submission and rotate. And....Bam! As you can probably guess, the breaker bar broke free of the crankshaft with a tremendous "clank!" and I went flying across the salon while somehow managing not to impale myself on the breaker bar itself or slam my head through one of my leaky portlights. I rushed back to the flywheel, inspected the front of the crankshaft to discover my fears had been realized. I had just sheared off the other 1/2 of the roll pin and in so doing, eliminated any hope of getting the engine to turn without a complete teardown...or did I?
Maybe it's my Polish ancestry or my unwillingness to accept defeat but I knew there had to be something else I could do to get this motor to rotate without spending money. I had a 3' galvanized steel pipe, an 8 lb sledge hammer, and a 6-pack of beer onboard. Shouldn't that be enough? As it turns out, yes it was. All the sudden it dawned on me to remove the starter, place one end of my breaker bar pipe through the starter cutout hole in the flywheel cover and onto the teeth of the flywheel to gain more rotational leverage, then hammer on the other end of the pipe with the sledge hammer (it works especially well when you're hammering out of frustration). You'd think this would be a terrific way to destroy a perfectly good flywheel by chipping off some teeth but surprisingly the galvanized steel pipe was no match for the seemingly hardened steel teeth of the Atomic flywheel. I could hardly believe it but with every successive bang of the hammer, I felt the flywheel turn a few degrees. Victory!
After a few more squirts of MMO in the cylinders for good measure, I was able to re-install the starter, attach a cheap trigger-style remote starter up to the starter solenoid's terminals (bypassing the keyed ignition switch and infamous failure-prone rubber Catalina "trailer plugs" in the engine wiring harness) and get the engine to crank. So I had just improved my situation from a no-crank, no-start problem to a crank, no-start problem, and I couldn't have been happier. I sat out in the cockpit that night with a beer in hand, basking in the glory of a small victory and patting myself on the back for the stroke of Polish ingenuity when my well-intentioned dock neighbor came walking down the dock. Remember that guy? That guy from post #12? Yeah, that guy. As I enthusiastically recounted the story of the day's success he listened patiently and replied, "Good job! Well, I guess you'll be removing the head tomorrow to take a look at the valves. At least head gaskets for that thing are probably cheap. I think there's a website called Mayer's or Moyer's or something where you can get parts for it. Just Google search 'Atomic 4' and you'll find 'em."
"Why the hell would I do that!" I thought to myself. I just went through all that effort for the exact purpose of
not removing the cylinder head. He could probably see the indignant look on my face, when he immediately followed with "You've gotta at least take a look at those valves. If you don't, you're just wasting your time." That night I got online, came to this forum, and started reading through every thread I could find that sounded remotely like it applied to my situation. Of course I'd soon find out there were many threads that applied to many different problems I'd inherited with this neglected motor. I just didn't know it yet. By the end of the night I came to the conclusion that my neighbor was probably right and I needed to take a look at the valves to ensure everything was in working order. Next order of business:
Off with the head!
What I learned- If for any reason you were to shear off the crankshaft timing roll pin like I did, because of interference with the flywheel studs, it's very difficult if not impossible to replace the pin in place. More importantly, the pin is used for visually setting the engine timing to Top-Dead-Center so when it's broken/missing, it's a PITA to get the timing right. (More on that later)
- A trigger-style remote starter is a very useful piece of equipment on a boat, especially when the ignition switch is up in the cockpit and you're trying to diagnose/fix ignition related issues by yourself down in the engine compartment.
What I'd do differently- Avoid shearing a fastener that doesn't want to move and thereby making the situation exponentially worse (Unfortunately I'll learn this lesson the hard way in an upcoming post)