Thread: New shiny bit for my Lucas

So those of you who have been around for a little while will remember my flash shiny custom exhaust from late last year. At the time I also wanted to cool down the engine in attempt to reduce the possibility of 'melting' another muffler, so the good word was to ream out the main jet on the carby to allow a bit more fuel in and help the engine run cooler.

Well with that in mind, I expected to use a bit more fuel while milling and it seemed like I had lost about half an hour of runtime for the same amount of fuel - which I wasn't too fussed about, especially if it meant no new mufflers needed.

Ok so that brings everyone up to date on the muffler. Next if you recall the recent Amamoor slabs job I found I filled the fuel tank in the morning before starting and found I had to re-fill the DanG thing before midday - bone dry the fuel tank was!!! I was a bit surprised at the time, but it wasn't until I got home and thought about it a bit more; In a days milling, with moving everything by hand on my own, I've never had to re-fill the fuel tank. I was getting 4 hours of full speed run time on the one tank and after the main jet mods, was getting 3.5 hours. So in a work day of rolling logs in by hand, tailing and stacking timber myself, the engine runs a bit less than 3.5 hours, so hence no fuel top-ups.

So when I had to re-fuel before midday, I did the math and realised CR@P that's a heap of fuel!!! I felt, the main reason for the problem was the slower carriage movement, when slabbing for hours, versus the carriage speed when milling boards; the carriage tends to move much quicker over and over when cutting boards and therefore the extra airflow aids in heat exchange, thus keeping the fuel tank cooler. When slabbing, the carriage moves much slower so doesn't get extra airflow and thus the fuel was getting much hotter before getting into the chamber - much more fuel used.

So, recalling Warren Lucas' advice from last year (you gotta hand it to that Lucas mob, they know what they are talking about!!) I got a heat shield put on





The original Briggs mufflers have a heat shield on the tank side and as I mentioned when Warren Lucas saw my new muffler, he rang me to chat about it and told me he thought it needed a shield for the tank. I wanted to see how it performed before putting one on and generally it has been fine, but after doing a couple of full days slabbing, on a couple of warmer days, it really showed up.

So wanted to show off the new shiny bit on my mill, (although I don't think this one will stay shiny for long) and also give a mention for how much those Lucas folkes know.




You know it's coming....

I love my Lucas!!!