Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Best Way to Pickle a Motor?

On my Mercruiser engines I have used the fogging method with good results, in your case I would fill the entire engine with a 50/50 mixture of diesel and non-detergent motor oil so as to cover the lifters and valve inserts,especially if you have hydraulic lifters. In lieu of using wire mesh use cheese cloth for intake/exhaust openings.

Fair Winds And Following Seas.

Oh man I need a ride out to the blind in that thing some day! I'll gladly pay the 50 bones in fuel it takes to get the mile or two out to the spot.

Hell, this is easy.....

The best way is to have it up on blocks while the oil is a draining. Have your braindead sister come out and close the hood while you are enjoying a cold one while it is draining. Have your mental midget sister drive it off the blocks and down the road a mile or two.... with no oil in it.

Crap.... You wanted pickle an engine, not trash an engine. My bad.

Just de-pickled my 1968 Jeep to sell after being in storage for about 12 years. I had treated the motor, gas tank and axles with the same fogging oil treatment that Dresser Waukasha sells to preserve thier engines and compressors. After draining and replacing the oil, putting some fresh gas in it, it fired right up! It smoked about 3 minutes then smoothed right out.

Sea-Foam

Fogging the engine is the way to go.Might want to turn it over periodically by hand. The valve springs will thank you.

If it's going to be stored for a long period of time, and especially if it's a high-performance engine w/ a high-lift valve train (rollers especially), it's best to back off the nuts on the rockers completely and re-set the valve lash when you're ready to place the engine back into service. When I was into go-fast offshore performance boats, I backed off the rockers every fall; it saved a lot of wear on the springs, prevented compressed springs from taking a 'set', and also helped prevent moisture from invading the cylinders by allowing the springs to hold the valves closed. Although it adds an extra step to the servicing process, it's a rather simple thing to do.

You just hang around the planet a year or so.... give me the time to get through this big remodel here and stuff on the farm that we couldn't catch up on as folks around here got sick and died on us.... and then I'll upgrade the boat and we'll go kill pinnies. It has motor now, but it can get tricky... I almost got us stuck going redfishing a few months back...... trying to cross a bar of dry ground instead of following water way around.....

Actually fuel wise its not so bad, 1.5 mpg more or less depending on the wind and the load. I can live with that. Not normally going more than 10 miles one way.

Good advice on the valve springs.... I think I'll do that too. Thats easy to reset and would have to be with a new cam anyway. And seeing I need to add a dominator carb and few other things, it won't be much extra work wise.

If I'm ever in Texas again, can I get a ride? I love going fast on the water, but have never in an airboat. That one sounds like a helluva lot of fun. Most guys around here have silly little air-cooled opposed Lycomings or Continentals.....

You come down and we'll ride. I"ll say this though, I don't like speed on the water, especially with an airboat. No prop or anything in the water to kinda keep you stable. But I do like to crawl out of the water, climb up on land drive around, cut donuts on gravel bars and such and then slip back in the water and find some more shallow water.

Lycomings are bad azzed little boats,but they have to be on a little boat to work as the HP isn't up there for a large boat and we dont' have FL type skinny water, a lot of ours is deeper and more dangerous so we run deeper, longer, heavier boats, hence the need for HP to get places. Add 4-5 guys, a dog, 12 dozen decoys and a cooler...