Re: 1930 Lockwood Cheif Revival

[PM T2]

Drip trays are every bit as fragile as Bill suggested. Take car of the one you have, there aren’t many unbroken replacements available.

Blow compressed air through the cooling system in both directions. You will want to make sure there are no obstructions. The Chief cooling normally is pretty effective as long as the passageways area all clear and there isn’t a bunch of scale or rust flakes clogging up the water jackets. I’d recommend dropping the lower unit and disconnecting the water pipes at all of the various junctions, including the "spider".

The check ball Bill mentioned on the plumbing fitting is actually not for checking water flow, but is a bleeder. It can bleed air out of the cooling system, but its real purpose is to let air in for drainage purposes when storing the motor away for long periods of time. If you don’t relieve the vacuum in the system, it will retain water in the cylinder cooling passages and two things can happen, neither one of them good;

1) The water helps create rust buildup in the water passages, and/or
2) IT will freeze in cold weather, causing possible fractures of the outer or inner walls

So, after running, you crack the nut open where the ball is, let air go in so the water will all drain out, then you’re good to retighten the compression nut.

Powerhead – verify that the rod clearance isn’t excessive. If you have a pronounced loud clanking or knocking when rocking the flywheel back and forth, you may want to tighten the rod clearance up some…. or at least measure to see what it actually is.

Make sure the flywheel nut is tight. Too many Chiefs have suffered crankshaft keyway damage due to the flywheel nut coming loose and not being noticed.

Be careful with the drain plug at the left-rear corner of the tank. Those aluminum threads usually perish just by looking at them the wrong way. I’ve had to make several replacement plugs that are about 0.005" oversize in order for the plug to tighten in the port properly. I make them out of brass instead of aluminum.

Your motor has two fuel shut-off valves… one at the tank, and the other at the carburetor. I know the needle at the carb inlet looks like a mixture screw….. but it isn’t.

Don’t worry about a fuel sight glass tube until you have the right end pieces to mount it with. George Emmanuel knows how to make a sight glass out of modern materials (something acrylic, I think) but if you don’t have the end caps……

Carb – just verify that the jet passage is clean. Don’t coat the float. If its good, use it as is. If its rotted or crumbling, replace it.

Ignition – if your coil fails the resistance test… pretend you didn’t test it and just run the thing. I haven’t had a Chief pass a resistance test yet, but they always run. What a miraculous motor she is eh. Clean and dress the points, set gap to 0.020".

Starting – these old gals like it rich to start with, then you have to lean her out to get her to purr. 2 3/4 turn out to start isn’t unusual, but then once she fires, you have to reduce it to about 3/4 of a turn out to get her to wind out. 4000 RPM is about right for these at WOT. and they don’t like a lot of advance either, anything CCW past the 5 o’clock position is a waste of time. Fuel mix 8:1.

Lower unit – check for presence of water, refill with grease as necessary.

Hope this helps.

Best,
PM T2

He's livin' in his own private Idaho..... I hope to go out quietly in my sleep, like my grand-dad did..... and not screaming, like the passengers in his car...