1964 Crosby / 28hp Speeditwin Rescue

[kdiddle]

I apologize in advance if this isn't a true 'restoration', but I figured this might be the place to put it and though some of you might like to see the before / after pics.

I recently acquired my grandfather's Crosby (after his passing) that needed rescuing from a barn. As best the family can tell, it hadn't been moved/ran in over 30 years but it had been kept inside and I thought I'd give the old girl a shot at finding new life...I realize I've likely spent more on the boat than its even worth, but I love the idea of keeping my grandads boat alive.

I spent a great deal of time cleaning it out and trying to determine what kind of shape the engine was in. I ended up tearing the engine down due to some rust in the cylinders and ended up doing what I view as a full restore on the engine top to bottom.

On the bottom end - I didn't get good pictures of the entire process, but I ended up resealing the foot / replaced bearings / impeller. Can I take a moment and describe how unbelievable difficult it is to get that pressed gear shift seal out of the foot? I ended up going down the route of threading it and using a threaded rod to pull it out. I don't think they planned on a lot of folks replacing those...

On the top end, I did the obligatory carb rebuild (though it was completely spotless - it looked like it had never had gas in it), replaced all the ignition components, fuel pump and what not. Once I got the engine apart, I ended up seeing rust in the bore of one of the cylinders and ended up having it bored .40 over and was able to find original OMC rings/pistons. I put it back together with all new gaskets/seals as the bearings and such seemed solid.

I'm still chasing a bottom cylinder issue that I can't get to the cause of. It seems to pull ok at idle, but anything much above that it only runs on the top cylinder (or at least mostly so). The bottom cylinder stays cool as ice cream and pulling the spark plug yields no difference in power. Anyway, not going to dive into that here, I'll open a thread over in the Evinrude forum and hope someone can help me figure out what's going on.

Here's some of the before pics:

 

[kdiddle]

Doing some thorough cleaning of the hull and the trailer while I had the engine off

 

[kdiddle]

[No message]

 

[kdiddle]

On her maiden voyage - still with a little engine work to do...

 

[ssdale]

Nice Job! Great to see her back on the water. The guys over at the Evinrude forum are great and just be patient and you will get the kinks out of the motor. Looks Super and worth saving, especially with the family history!
Dale

 

[Grub54891]

Have you replaced the points and coils? I have the same motor, and had the same issue. Runs like a champ now.

 

[kdiddle]

Hey Grub, I sure did. I replaced coils/condensers/points with Sierra brand and it seems that the ignition comes and goes on that one cylinder. I bought an extra set to replace the bottom set again as I'm hoping I just got a dud somehow. There's obviously not a lot of complexity on this motor so I'm not sure what else it could be. I even disconnected the cut out switch thinking it was the cause of the issue but it didn't change it...

Do you frequent the Evinrude forum? Hope to see you over there, I'll get the lower ignition parts swapped and will post something if its still acting up...

 

[Ned L]

Great job on the restoration! It’s always nice to see a family boat brought back nicely and continue to bring enjoyment.


As a side note, … Nothing wrong with boring the bottom cylinder that had that bit of surface rust and pitting and dropping in a new piston, however that may well not have been necessary. Slight pitting in a cylinder often doesn’t affect compression, so the engine will run fine. -- This is where one of the big differences between four cycle and two cycle engines comes into play. -- The big problem with pitting in a four cycle engine is that there is crank case oil on the bottom side of the piston. All those little pits will fill with oil on each stroke of the piston and bring the oil to the top side of the piston. So a four cycle engine with pitting in the cylinder will burn oil like crazy (if the pitting is below the oil control rings). On a two cycle engine, the only thing below the piston is the fuel air mixture (which will go to the compression chamber anyway) so it really doesn’t make a difference. This is why two cycle engines don’t even have oil control rings, only compression rings.

 

[Grub54891]

Good to hear you replaced the coils and points. I personally don't care for sierra electrical parts, but have used them with success. Sometimes it's the only thing available. I assume you set the dwell, timing, synk and link so it should be good there. Still scratching my head on what your issue is.

 

[kdiddle]

Hey Grub, thanks for the reply. Yeah, I set the point gap (not sure how I'd set dwell - is that not the same thing). It seems to be cutting in/out, so I feel like it has to be ignition related, as compression and or fuel/carb would be all or nothing, I'd suppose. Here is a video of it running at high idle from the last time we took it to the lake (before replacing the lower coil again). https://youtu.be/q3Md7REdlWU

I was trying to dial in the carb, but it wasn't cooperating. It didn't matter how rich/lean I adjusted it, it would act up, cutting in/out erratically and after checking the cylinder temps after running it a while, that's when I noticed the lower cylinder was room temp and the upper was warm. It had one quick moment where I felt the lower cylinder kick in for a brief moment and it about threw me out of the boat. It was a glorious 2 seconds...

 

[Grub54891]

Dwell measures how long the points are open. You can get it close with a feeler gauge, but minor adjustments require a dwell meter. I you should be fine as long as the points are set close. How do the reed plates look?

 

[kdiddle]

I set them at .020, so they should be pretty close (and they're both new) along with condensers and coils. I'm going to pull the flywheel tomorrow and replace coil/condenser/coil on the lower cylinder again and see if that makes a difference. The reed plate looked good, I didn't touch it (as I understand you're not supposed to) but it was 100% flat when I took the fly plate off the engine.

 

[Grub54891]

I'm beginning to wonder if ya got a bad seal, pulling air through the lower seal. I'm sure you checked for good spark already.

 

[kdiddle]

Hey Grub, I replaced the ignition components on the bottom cylinder today and it made no difference. I created a new thread on the Evinrude forum if you want to go check it out and see if you have any input into my mystery: https://forums.iboats.com/forum/eng...nrude-speeditwin-mystery-all-theories-welcome

 

[kdiddle]

Just wanted to circle back and provide an update on my issue. I ended up taking it to a local shadetree-type outboard mechanic and he went over it, finding that one of the coil wires wasn't seated properly into the bottom of the coil. I had replaced the wires, but apparently its a total pain in the neck to get the wires properly through the mag plate and into the coil. Anyway, the old girl lives and runs quite well - although I still have some breaking in to do on the new rings...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n45NMpRagU