So my power trowel is acting berkeleying weird but the symptoms shown aren't adding up in my mind. It could be that I work too hard, I'm sleep deprived and missing something stupid. I'll just list what happened and see what you guys think without a bias on what the others people in the jobsite thought.
So, I started my finishing machine and for roughly 3 minutes it ran fine. Then it started smoking heavily but not consistently. It was a ridiculous amount of blue smoke and very obviously burning oil. During this time it ran perfectly.
After awhile it was literally belching flames thru the muffler, like a never flickering lightsaber of fire emerging from the exhaust. It didn't cycle, change or flicker. It was a solid flame for roughly 3 more minutes.
At this point since concrete was going off I decided berkeley it, viking funeral it is and revved it up to try to use it for as long as I could. It ran at higher rpm for a few minutes afterwards and died without coughing. I pulled it to the edge of the slab and attempted to restart it. It wouldn't restart but had compression and wasn't seized I literally had a few moments to spare so I popped off the oil cap to see if I had just used up a bunch of oil. The oil was heavily pressurized and there wasnt significantly more than there should be. No one added oil and the oil didn't seem to have anything added to it, it didn't smell of gas, or show that it was anything different than just plain oil.
Afterwards I got it home and it started on the first pull but it doesn't like to run with the choke all the way off. It's been cold blooded in the past so it's not necessarily untoward.
I pulled the plug and it was fairly obviously oil fouled. I cleaned it up and there is no change in how it's running.
2 other guys on the jobsite are mechanics and have varied theories on WTF was happening but I want to hear more theories because as it stands it runs fine with the choke half on and I have no real reason why it failed. It's a Honda Gx160 motor
What does GRM think?
