Recently, one of our lifts has been experiencing many issues. It has a damaged head gasket, stalls when turning, stalls even with the throttle being pressed. When it experiences these stalls, we are unable to get the lift to restart without pressing the gas pedal repeatedly when trying to start. Even if it manages to start, it sometimes immediately stalls again repeating the process. The plugs also keep fouling every few months and excessive carbon build up, as well as a needed valve adjustment. The temperature gauge also will only read up to half way and will not go past that point even if the engine is clearly running hot. In summary, would most of these problems be stemming from the head gasket issue or is there a greater problem with the lift overall?
No, it wouldnt..... How do you know the head is leaking? Your carb needs cleaned or rebuilt, you definitaly need to check the timing. Does it burn oil or loose coolant? Are all the plugs going bad at the same time or ? It sounds like nobody is maintanencing this machine. A good p.m. on this machine would do wonders.
We've had maintenance done in it previously and they found the head gasket issue and the valve adjustment issue that time around. The lift varies at the rate of coolant loss in the motor, some days it is half empty after a 12 hour run time and some days it hardly loses any. With the lift being with the company nearly 30 years they feel they got their money out of it hence the non-urgent maintenance done. The plugs are generally all going back at the same time in the matter of a few months. In June maintenance got new plugs and in October they had to be replaced again.
You are correct. 30 years of use and now reduced maintenance, so now is the time to add coolant, pump the accelerator to crank, and keep going a long as it will. Just past its useful life.
If it's losing water that will cause the propane converter to freeze up and the engine will stall. The hot water going through the converter causes the propane to vaporize before going to the carburetor. The converter may be old and needs replaced as well. But with the company not really interested in spending the money on the machine it's all a moot point anyway.
We got maintenance out to take a look, they did not look into the other issues since when they performed a compression test, cylinder 2 had no compression. Decision was finally made to run it until the lift gives out as the new motor would be 4500$.
It's a done deal then. Cost to repair will exceed the value of the lift.
And a few dollars in maintenance would have been worth $4500 nn cure now; Sad situation.
Exactly, the lift most likely is out of commission for the last time hopefully. On top of these issues it started producing a knocking sound in the motor and proceeded to blow blue/white smoke out of the block. Fun times.