1010 With no compression

[Ed1010c]

I have a 1010 Crawler, was running it the other day when the engine started running real rough and then quit and would not start. I checked further and found no compression in any of the cylinders. The cylinder head just came back reconditioned from the machine shop 30 hours ago, I pulled the head off and the gasket and valves were fine, I replaced the head gasket and put it back together and still no compression. I'm thinking the next thing to look at is the camshaft gears, does anyone know if they can be replaced without removing the camshaft and if the gears are still available. The machine was tilted sideways on a hill and I had just idled it down when the trouble started so I'm thinking the governer might have gotten in the way of the camshaft gears, is that possible?

[jdemaris]

I checked further and found no compression in any of the cylinders.

I pulled the head off and the gasket and valves were fine, I replaced the head gasket and put it back together and still no compression.

It would be very unusual to break something in the cam-drive unless a piece of metal got dropped in there -or - if the entire engine was apart recently and something wasn't tightened properly - or - if the valves were way too tight and they hit the pistons.

You said you pulled the head back off . . . did you turn the engine over to verify the the lifters are going up and down? Did you eye-ball the pistons and cylinder-walls?

Seems the first thing to do - then and now - is pull the valve-cover off. Make sure the rockers are going up and down and are adjusted properly.

I don't want to sound like I'm being silly here - but did you adjust the valve-clearance after the first warm-up? I've seen a few engines, that after a valve job - got the valve-lash adjusted too tight when cold - and then after the first warm-up, and head-bolt retorque and head-gasket compressing a bit - valve-lash went to zero and all compression was lost.
Seems doubtful - but - I don't know exactly what you did - or didn't do.

I also just had to fix a guy's Ford tractor - where he sort of did the opposite. He put a new head gasket on - and figured no valve adjustment would be necessary. Ends up the new head gasket is substantially thicker than the original and that puts the head further away from the camshaft making the valve-lash extremely loose. He tried to use his 75 horse tractor and it only had around half its power. I went up and looked at it and the entire problem was the valves were hardly opening at all.

Simply put - pull the valve-cover, make sure the rockers go up and down, and make sure there is proper valve-clearance on all. If they move and have clearance enough to close, you must have some compression unless you've got big holes in all four pistons.

[Ed1010c]

The first thing I did when I took the valve cover off before removing the head was confirm the pushrods were opening and closing the valves, also the valve clearance was adjusted when the new head was put on and again when the headbolts were re-torqued. Three of the cylinders make the needle jump a little (15-20psi) on the compression guage (tried two different guages) the number on cylinder does nothing.

[Ed1010c]

The cylinder walls look great., Also, when the head was remanufactured 30 hrs ago, the piston walls were honed, and new rings, wrist pins and rod bearings were installed. This was done without removing the engine block from the tractor and the camshaft gear cover was not removed.

[jdemaris]

The cylinder walls look great., Also, when the head was remanufactured 30 hrs ago, the piston walls were honed, and new rings, wrist pins and rod bearings were installed. This was done without removing the engine block from the tractor and the camshaft gear cover was not removed.

When you say the head was "rebuilt" - did somebody bore out the old cast-in seats and install inserts? If so, any chance it was done wrong and they popped out?

It is close to impossible to get zero compression with a piston/cylinder problem. A zero situation is just about always valve related - unless you've got some severe catastrophic damage. Easy way to pinpoint the problem is - put an air-chuck fittting into a spark-plug hole and hook an air line to it - just as you would when installing vavle-seals. If there is no compression, then that compressed air you hook to it will immediately leak out somewhere - you'll hear it. If it comes rushing out your exhaust and intake ports - then you know you've got a head/valve problem. If it comes rushing out the crankcase/vent pipe -then you've got piston/cylinder problems.

When you honed and rerung- I assume you either shimmed the top rings in the pistons - are they were still tight? If they were excessive (as they usually are) the rings will eventually shatter to pieces - but that's not something that happens fast as you describe.

[Ed1010c]

Well, I went out this morning and hooked up the air hose to the sparkplug holes and you were right, I could hear and feel air coming out of the intake manifold. So I took the head off again and this time I removed all of the valves. Every intake valve had these little pieces of metal stuck to valve seat surface. Something metal in one of the intake components must have self destructed and got sucked into the cylinders getting lodged under the valves in the process. I cleaned the metal off all the valves and seats, blew out the intake manifold and then reassembled everything and it started right up. So I drove it up out of the drainage ditch it was in over to my shop where I can take it apart again and grind the valves ., clean it up, and replace the head gasket, and try and figure out where that metal came from before I hook the air intake back up to the carb.. Thanks for the help, I was all ready to pull the timing cover off when I read your post and decided to try the air thing first....