Efish,
I just realized that you hail from Singapore. In fact, after my first article came out, I was swamped with requests for work on throttling small engines. My best client was Raj Massilamoni from your fair city/state. Raj was big on diesels, I was not much interested. He sent me some to convert with throttles and this forced me to learn to run them to make sure he was satisfied with the throttling performance we were hoping for. As it turned out, even old, Indian made Mills replicas, responded to a good throttle just like any other engine.
Raj had me convert a Wasp and this is what I needed to do to make it go. At the time, I believed the old taboo about NEVER using an electric starter. His converted Wasp would not start, even with a relaitvely high ether content fuel. I reasoned correctly that traditional diesels have very efficient compression seal compared to modern glows. So I tried to achieve this and did so by installing an EXTREMELY tight fitting piston by mixing and matching various parts. I had to use a heat gun to allow the engine to turn over to start and to break it in. Once that was done, this engine would start without having to adjust the compression screw. Most diesels require you to overcompress to start and then you back off the compression as the engine warms up. Not this little guy. As it had a muffler, I had to prime at the intake. But with just three drops into the carb and two or three agressive flips, the engine would run out the prime. Another or a third go would have it running with a pronounced burrp, burrp. This means that the prime runs got the cylinder up to temperature to allow a start. As the engine ran, it warmed up to the point where it transitioned into a beautiful run.
Since then, I've discovered that starters are not to be feared as long as you take care and have lots of ether in your fuel.
Say hello to Raj for me, if you know him.
