I would hit it with a compression guage in first to see whats going on, then maybe cyl leakage test if the comp was low, also it could be fouling due to bad plug wire. Is it oily or carbon black? Pop a new plug in run it a while and check it again.
you can have one of two issues. Oil passing your oil control rings on your pistons or oil passing your valves stems on your valves. Eventually you will have to fix, but those old sa200 will run a long time like that.
Thanks. I will check the compression first then go from there. This machine had been sitting up for quite some time, around 8 years i'm thinking. Cleaned the tank, rebiult the carb, replaced the plugs and wires, changed oil and filter and it fired up but i'm not sure if i'm running a 1550 rpm's either. Maybe it will hold up long enough for me to make a little money with it. Thanks again
Hello philgood, after reading this reply, you may have stuck rings. You could remove the plugs and squirt a little bit of marvel mystery oil into each of the cylinders and let them set for a day or so, then spin the engine over without the plugs in it to squirt any excess oil out of the cylinders and then try installing the plugs and running the engine after that. Just a little bit of additional food for thought. Best regards, aevald
philgood: If Yours is a flathead engine, oil in the cylinder is most likely getting past the rings, as the valve configuration doesn't lend itself to oil running up the valve steyms to get into the combustion chamber. The comments about valve seals pretain to overhead valve engines.
Hello philgood, as Sberry suggested, you could give yourself some piece of mind if you can do a compression test on it. First try testing the compression "dry", meaning just hook the gauge up and spin it over to see what you have for compression. Next, squirt a little bit of oil into the cylinder (this is considered a wet test) and then hook the compression tester back up and test the compression again. If the compression goes up when you add the oil you may have issues with the rings, this could mean stuck rings or it could mean a broken ring possibly, or it could mean that you have wear on the rings and in the bore. At the same time that you check the suspect cylinder check the others too, they should all be fairly close to one another concerning the compression readings that you get. If your suspect cylinder is fairly close to the others as far as the compression reading goes, your oil issue could very well be a bad valve seals. If you decide to change the valve seal, do so on all of the valves, they aren't very difficult to change. There are fittings available that will screw into the sparkplug holes that will allow you to pressurize the cylinder with compressed air and allow you to remove the valve springs and change them out without having to remove the head. Keep us posted. Best regards, aevald
All good advice above, but is the oil still there after running?
I know that I put a teaspoon of oil into my cylinders (and give the engine a few turns) before long term storage.
This doesn't sound like your problem, but I just have to ask.