Hatz e79 diesel.

[Lee W]

I just got this used diesel for $150. I could not pass it up. The only downfall is I have no idea how to operate one.:roll:
It turns over and I think the fuel system is bled to the injector. I turned it over for a while and some white smoke (diesel mist?) puffed out of the exhaust.
The compression seems low. I hope I didn't mess up the decompression system.
I am in contact with a distributor and I hope to get a few manuals soon. If anyone has experience with this model, any advice would be great.

[grumpy one]

Hopefully you'll get a response from someone who knows this particular engine, which will be more useful. Meanwhile there are some issues with starting diesels, depending on the type. In particular, if you have an indirect injection engine you are likely to get just what you got if you haven't heated up the glow plug before you turn it over. If it's direct injection it won't have a glow plug unless it is for a cold climate.

Because it is your summer, (assuming you are in North America) I doubt you are having the usual cold-weather starting problems. So obvious possibilities are that you have not heated, or not sufficiently heated, the glow plug in an indirect injection engine; or that you are not turning it over fast enough; or that it has lost compression for some reason; or that you have not primed it sufficiently; or that you have not set the governor into the start position.

My experience is that multicylinder direct injection diesel engines with big batteries and big starter motors are so easy to start it is inconsequential. I had a three cylinder Perkins (in a Massey Ferguson 40 industrial front loader/back hoe) that could be left standing for three months, then start in one revolution just by hitting the starter - and it had run over 10,000 hours without overhaul. At the other extreme I had a four cylinder IH (McCormick, just after they'd changed the name) tractor that had the misfortune to be indirect injection. Despite having only run 1,300 hours, in cold weather it was a long slow project to start that thing up, and along the way there was an awful lot of white smoke and the battery took a beating. In between those extremes I had a nice little two cylinder Lister stationary engine (direct coupled to an 8.5 kVA generator) that was a delight in warm weather if you'd read the manual, but in cold weather it was beyond me to hand-start the thing from cold, I always ended up using the starter motor. However if I hadn't read the manual I doubt I could have started it in any weather, because unless you released the smoke stop on the injection pump (thus allowing it to inject maybe 25% more fuel than the full-load smoke limit) it just wasn't going to cold-start. Even with the smoke-stop released, it was unlikely to hand-start from cold unless you had decompressed it and spun it over for ten turns or so, to get some fuel laying around in the combustion chambers. Hot or cold, of course, it was impossible for a normal-sized human being to hand-start it without decompressing both cylinders. I found I had to build a time delay device to recompress one cylinder while I was giving my full attention to spinning it as fast as possible. It would start on one cylinder, and then I'd flip the decompression lever on the other cylinder.

I guess the short summary is unless you have prior experience with diesels, you need to talk to somebody who knows the particular engine, or look at the manual for starting procedure. For what it's worth, they're generally extremely easy to start once they're warm. Meanwhile as a first step, check whether it has a glow plug.

Geoff

[Lee W]

Great reply. I am not sure if it is direct or indirect injection. The injector bolts to the top of the head and has a small runner into the cylinder.
I was trying it again and the wife said I was not going fast enough. (women)
I cranked it as fast as I could go and as soon as the decompression thing timed out I was stopped dead in my tracks...
Now that is compression...:holysheep
How do I get it past TDC when it stops me like that?

[grumpy one]

First, you can't tell whether it is direct or indirect injection by looking at the position of the injector. The difference between the types is that indirect injection engines have a "pre-combustion" chamber connected to the main chamber (where the valves are) by a narrow passage. The injector is connected to the prechamber, not the main chamber. To figure out whether it is indirect injection, look for a device with an electrical connection to it, screwed to the cylinder head and facing into the chamber, kind of like a spark plug without the porcelain insulator. If it doesn't have one, it will almost certainly be direct injection. The glow plug is connected to 12 volts for about half a minute before you try to start the engine - the part of it inside the chamber gets hot, and ignites the fuel as it is injected. The extra heat is only needed for starting.

If it has a built-in time delay on the decompressor, it is obviously designed for hand-starting. The trick on those engines is to have it spinning fast when it recompresses, so the momentum of the flywheel will bump it over a couple of compressions, and it has to be running by then or you're out of luck. Don't expect to be able to keep it turning, it isn't going to happen. This is about speed, not strength.

Try to find whether it has a smoke stop on the injection pump that you can release for starting. On the Lister it was combined with the engine-stop device: you pushed down on the lever to stop all fuelling, so the engine would stop. You pulled the lever out axially to let it jump past the normal stop, for starting. Then when it was running you pushed the lever down toward the stop position until it clicked over the intermediate stop, leaving it set in the run position.

Geoff

[AkMike]

Have the wife give it w slight whiff of either as you drop the compression release.
I believe the little Hatz are direct injection. They are a simple small engine.
( Think of the health benifits caused by spinning that engine! Tell the wife you'll be looking like Swartzenegger soon!)

[David R]

Is the fuel fresh?

The sniff of starting fluid may work but it can also make it kick back and possibly break something.....On you. If you can't crank it when it hits comprssion, the starting fluid may fire and send the peeston back down driving the hand crank backwards. It will at least hurt.

Try to find a big fella that can crank it through compression once the release lets go. It seems it has enough compression to start, just not enough cranking power. Like trying to start an electric start with a low battery. It aint gonna work.

Nuttin personal

David

[Lee W]

The fuel is new. I am thinking about adding some weight to the flywheel.
I will wait until this weather breaks before I start cranking on that thing again.

[grumpy one]

In my limited experience ether is not especially effective on direct injection engines - it may not have a high enough cetane number to work without a high temperature object (like a glow plug) handy. It does work on indirect injection diesels if the glow plugs are hot - it is almost essential equipment to start the old Massey Ferguson diesels with the modified four cylinder car engine.

I certainly agree that it is dangerous to use ether in combination with hand-cranking a diesel. When you crank an engine you want ignition to occur at the right moment, or you can get badly hurt - believe it or not people have been killed that way, usually by the crank-handle being pulled out of their hand then hitting them in the head as it rotated backwards. (Hence you should try to start engines on the upstroke of the crank, not the downstroke, so your head is moving out of the way of the crank handle). A modern gasoline engine normally has its ignition event at starting speed just barely before top dead centre. (Of course antique gasoline engines with manual spark advance are very dangerous - if you forget to retard the ignition, you will as likely as not break your arm - and it could be a lot worse than that.) A diesel's ignition event is normally the injection of the fuel, which again is timed to occur at just the right point. Squirting a fuel into the intake air of a compression ignition engine will result in ignition occuring whenever that fuel reaches its ignition temperature during the adiabatic compression, and that is not under the control either of the engine's designer or its operator. That is an OK thing to do if the worst possible outcome is a small hernia to the starter motor, but not if you are hand cranking.

Geoff

[grumpy one]

I am thinking about adding some weight to the flywheel.
I.

This is probably too obvious to state, but there are some issues with that. First, don't attach anything to the outside of the flywheel - it will become an extremely dangerous projectile if the attaching bolts fail due to centrifugal force. Second, quite accurate balancing is required or you will cause damage to the crankshaft, main bearings or engine mounts. Third, use a full disk of a strong material (the same as the original flywheel). All flywheels have a bursting speed, and burst tests are done underground in a pit for very good reasons. One of the standard ways for truck drivers to get killed is to accidentally leave the truck in a low gear, coast down a hill, forget what gear they are in, and take their foot off the clutch when they get close to the bottom of the hill. Unless the back wheels lock it's curtains for sure.

Geoff

[David R]

Ever watch some one kick start a harley and forget to retard the timing?

David

[grumpy one]

Ever watch some one kick start a harley and forget to retard the timing?

David

I didn't even know they'd made them with manual timing in many years. However my first bike was a BSA M20 (WW II British despatch rider's bike, 500cc side valve). That had manual advance, and once or twice I made the mistake. It was only about 5 or 6 to one compression, but it wasn't good for my ankle, and the kickstart mechanism didn't like it either.

Geoff

[Jumptrap]

Ever watch some one kick start a harley and forget to retard the timing?

David

I don't know about retarding the spark....but I do vividly recall many years ago...I was about 12...a neighbor had 61 Harley....about like a sportster. I kept bugging him to let me ride it. One day I was told if I could start it, I could ride it. I proceeded to mount the starter...only to be launched over the handlebars and into the yard! The cycle remained upright on it's stand. Undaunted, I climbed back on and the bastard fired that time. Unleashing a kid on a Harley is like handing a Muslim exteremist an A bomb. I got my ride and felt what raw power was like, and have never been the same since.

[grumpy one]

There are many mysteries for the uninitiated in starting bikes. I've seen a guy who only weighed about 115 pounds try to start a 1956 Triumph Tiger 110, and after he bounced off the kickstart lever a few times without moving anything, he rolled it down a hill in second gear. Showing remarkable athletic ability, he jumped high in the air and dropped the clutch simultaneously. Of course the back wheel locked, but his backside landed on the pillion seat and it turned over, allowing him to grab the clutch and run along side until he could straddle the beast. However I've also seen a small teenage girl - wouldn't have weighed a hundred pounds - standing on the right side of another Triumph twin, talking to her boyfriend who apparently owned it. Boyfriend said something like he bet she couldn't start it. She didn't even move, just grabbed the throttle in her left hand, lifted her left foot, and started it without shifting her weight. Looked impossible until I came a bit closer. It was a Speedtwin, the low compression 500cc model. I'm pretty sure she knew something about bikes, though. It was kind of nice to see her win that one.

Geoff.