Blue_Sky

The bearing feels great, nothing abnormal. Interesting though you should mention something not sounding right. The person I was flying with, and going through this "ordeal" with, is a gentleman of great achievement in our hobby - he was more perplexed than I was :-) but at one point he said, "It sounds like a valve is stuck." We flooded the engine and cranked it over. It still blew plugs.

This engine ran on Omega/castor for most of it's life. Three years ago I switched over to Cool because even though I'm a fan of castor, if you don't run a castor fed engine every once in awhile it gets gummed up big time if the engine sits. I've noticed a greenish discoloration around the valve covers... I'm not bashing Cool Power, I just bought a gallon this morning, but I wonder if the Cool sitting in the engine was not behaving nicely with the former Omega as it sat for two years.

I'm now thinking more in line of a stuck valve, and it was a coincidence using the Kwik-Start and it freed itself up.

I won't know until I put this engine into a new plane, a few minutes after all this happened the airplane unfortunately went in for the last time.