Cooling fans are easy to troubleshoot. Some automobiles use two smaller fans or one larger fan. The twin electric fan set up will use one fan for cooling the engine. The other fan will be used for cooling the air conditioning and radiator but only works with the ac on. Never continue to run the vehicle up in the red temp zone or you can cause severe damage to the engine. First do you have a temperature gauge in the dash? Is it working correctly? Lift the hood and verify visually that the fan is not working. Does the car cool down once you drive up the highway at 40+ mph? If not, you may have a thermostat sticking or low coolant. The thermostat can cause the engine to stay hot. This can also be the problem if the gauge stays low and the car never heats up. If the temp gauge is reading low yet the two radiator hoses are warm, the temp sensor may not be working. There may also be two temp sensors or senders, one that controls the gauge and one to switch the fan on. If the temperature is getting high and the fan still won’t come on you may have a fan problem.
Backup generators are very useful in the event of power loss. Purchasing a generator is the best way for large amounts of power. A home built generator can generate smaller amounts of power, enough for the freezer and a few lights. This is definitely a project for someone with mechanical background and maybe a little electrical know how. You could go the route of purchasing all the same components that a regular generator uses, but then the cost would no longer be effective. Also the speed regulation can be very tricky and require alot of tuning. A popular alternative is to use parts much more common, thus cheaper. Many of the parts can be purchased used for VERY cheap. A push lawnmower is a good mounting platform that already has an engine on it. Building a homemade generator will require some fabrication skills. A car alternator is used as the source for converting power into electricity. The mower blade will need to be removed. Then you will need to find a good flat spot to mount the alternator.
A rotary valve engine is always a two stroke engine. Most rotary valve engines are rotax engines. Although other rotary engines such as suzuki and kawasaki have been made. Rotax engines are used in snowmobiles, jet-skis and motorcycles and aircraft engines. A rotary valve refers to the intake of a two stroke engine. There are three types of intake designs for two stroke engines. Simplistic two strokes are piston port, meaning that the piston movement past the port controls the incoming air timing. The piston port engine doesn’t do a very good job of keeping the airflow to stay in the engine. The air can simply travel back out of the engine. The most popular intake air induction is the reed port engine. It uses reed petals to allow the intake air in the engine and traps it there. The tension of the reed petals can change with the use of different petals and can provide some power improvement at certain rpm ranges. A rotary valve engine has the best intake air control.
A car’s engine can surge for many reasons. Generally the ignition, wires, spark plugs, or the distributor rotor and cap will cause this problem. Another possibility is that your fuel filter is clogged. Injectors could also possibly be clogged on a high mileage vehicle. This is where a tune up can help your car. A vacuum leak can also cause surging problems. First inspect all hoses and fittings then around the carb or throttle body. Run the engine and spray carb cleaner on areas that could be leaking, the engine will die or speed up when you spray if there is a leak. A vacuum leak may or may not make your check engine light come on. Surging could come from a sensor problem or a leak causing the sensor to not operate correctly. It is always good to check your computer codes first if the light is on. This will help you to identify the problem area.
Snowmobile engines are generally two strokes except for a few new four strokes. Repair and troubleshooting is similar to any other vehicle. First you want to identify if it is a fuel or ignition problem. Remove the spark plugs and look to see if they are wet or dry. Do they both look the same or are they different? If different then one cylinder’s carb or ignition may have a problem. A wet spark plug could be many things. Take the spark plugs, dry them off with a clean rag and place them back into the plug wire. Lay the spark plugs on a metal part of the engine and spin the engine(try to start) Look at the plug gap as you spin the engine over, do they all spark descent? If some of the sparks look weak you could have an ignition problem. Hopefully the plug is fouled out and just needs to be replaced, try that first. If weak spark remains, check that the ground wire for the ignition coil or system is good. Worst case you could have a bad charging coil or bad wires shorting out somewhere.
Piston rings are a very crucial part of a two stroke engine. If the rings stick they can be freed up, assuming there was no cylinder damage involved. If the cylinder is smeared vertically with aluminum it is damaged. The cylinder will need to be cleaned up with muriatic acid then honed out until the lines are gone. If too much honing is required the piston may not be large enough anymore and may need to be replaced. If the rings are only stuck then they need to be removed. If they are stuck hard you can try to soak the piston in diesel fuel or pb blaster. The ring may need to be pryed out carefully.
