4 Lk Rocker Gear

[MtB]

 

What about the elephant in the room option

 

Could Charlotte get something else fitted, and what is her 4LK worth?

 

Maybe that needs answering by PM to Charlotte

 

Richard

 

 

Fitting a different engine is probably more grief and more expense than fixing the 4LK, given there is no soft patch in the roof.

 

I would guess the 4LK is worth a £1k or so, given it has problems. The hard part is finding someone who has £1k lying about, but need a 4LK!

 

 

MtB

[Timleech]

4LKs are worth a lot less than other Gardners, IMO. they're really too big for most narrowboats (as the OP is aware) and spares are much harder to find than for other models.

They also suffer from corrosion of the Elektron sumps, which are tricky to repair.

 

Tim

[Charlotte Burnett]

I was feeling really happy having solved the immediate issue until Tim posted something about Elektron - a substance of which I am unaware. Did I mention that the sump plug is held in with hylomar and luck? I was hoping I could get someone to weld and helicoil it having assumed it to be aluminium.

 

In other news, whilst washing engine off me, the shower pump stopped working. It's not the fuse. So I'm not going to get to put my feet up tomorrow either

[Timleech]

Elektron is a magnesium-aluminium alloy, the LK crankcases and sumps were made from it. It can be welded, but it's a specialist job.

 

Tim

[Split Pin]

Elektron is a magnesium-aluminium alloy, the LK crankcases and sumps were made from it. It can be welded, but it's a specialist job.

 

Tim

 

Tim

 

It is my understanding that LW (Alloy) sumps at least were made of the same material, having tried to repair a cracked one it certainly was not aluminum.

 

Making a replacement sump from steel is a relatively straight forward job, Assuming access to suitable engineering equipment.

 

Charlotte there are epoxy materials available which may be suitable to patch up your sump, I have used this type (http://www.jb-weld.co.uk/j-b-weld-epoxy-adhesive/) it was not on something going through heat cycles though

 

If it is only the thread pulled out .it should be possible to go to a different size assuming there is enough material left in the boss

 

Steve

Edited August 3, 2013 by Split Pin

[Timleech]

 

Tim

 

It is my understanding that LW (Alloy) sumps at least were made of the same material, having tried to repair a cracked one it certainly was not aluminum.

 

Steve

 

May well be so. The LW crankcases certainly weren't, though!

I can easily pick up a 4LK crankcase, a 4LW alloy crankcase (admittedly rather bigger) is a different beast altogether. The Elektron is much more prone to corrosion than straightforward aluminium alloy, I had an LK crankcase which was completely wrecked by corrosion. Luckily Horbick diesels (used to be Gardner main agents in Manchester) found me a brand new crankcase for little more than beer money. That was about 30 years ago, nobody really wanted LK stuff then, apart from a few car nuts.

 

Tim

Edited August 3, 2013 by Timleech

[Charlotte Burnett]

Steve - most of the boss is missing, god bless Gardner for tapping it about 4 miles into the sump. I chose not to JB weld until the sump is off because the gear linkage is neither long enough nor strong enough for me to cling to with my toes in order to do a half decent job. Hylomar, meanwhile, has a track record for me of gluing spark plugs mainly into place until I could get the cylinder head to a machine shop for helicoiling several weeks later.

 

Now, fabricating a steel sump....I'm going to guess that a 2 lb hammer and a bit of 6mm are not the tools you had in mind. Fancy explaining/PMing me with a quote?