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difficult to hand crank pinto engine
kp - 5/10/12 at 01:20 PM

My 1.6l pinto engine was running fine-ish (it would cut out when ildeing cold).

But now when I went to start it after two weeks, the starter struggled to turn the engine over. I couldn't even complete one rev.

Even a spanner on the crank pulley was really hard to turn it over (I had to use breaker bar as the spanner was hurting my hand). As each piston reached (I think) approached tdc, the force required increased considerably. There was even a 'springyness', in that the crank wanted to reverse a little as the pressure increased. I could hear a slight hissing sound of escaping air from somewhere.

I was worried it was a valve problem, but when I took out the plugs it turned over by hand easy as you like.

Putting only one plug back in the pressure to hand crank increase noticeably.

Any ideas?

adithorp - 5/10/12 at 01:27 PM

First is a flat battery and the rest is cylinder compression. You need to worry if it DOESN'T have those symptoms.

Daddylonglegs - 5/10/12 at 01:45 PM

Or if not the battery, I would be looking at checking earths to the engine/battery and if OK possibly replacing the starter motor. I had to replace mine recently as it was getting very slow at turning the engine over.

Slimy38 - 5/10/12 at 01:48 PM

Bad earth would be my guess as well, leading to a flat battery and an inability to turn the engine.

kp - 5/10/12 at 02:42 PM

I forgot to mention that I took a good battery from another car and used jump leads, still barely able to turn the engine.

It seems much harder to turn than before.

snapper - 5/10/12 at 02:55 PM

I had same problem
Earth leads
Also check ignition advance

kp - 5/10/12 at 03:00 PM

Earth leads?

you mean the lead from battery neutral to the engine head?

Daddylonglegs - 5/10/12 at 03:03 PM

Same as me again, starter motor change sorted it for me chap

chillis - 5/10/12 at 03:29 PM

Take the plugs out then try turning it

ReMan - 5/10/12 at 06:00 PM

quote:
Originally posted by chillis
Take the plugs out then try turning it

He did

As above sounds like you have perfect compression/engine, but a starter motor, battery,connector problem

snapper - 5/10/12 at 06:35 PM

There should be a serious earth from the battery to the engine block
I always use a starter motor bolt for this

kp - 5/10/12 at 08:17 PM

i've had no problems with the earth before so I guess it must be the starter.

Any easy way to check this? diagnose starter?

[Edited on 5/10/12 by kp]

Peteff - 6/10/12 at 08:24 AM

Check your timing as well. When I first built mine up the symptoms were the same when I was trying to get it running and the timing was way out but it would still run once fired up.

Autosri - 6/10/12 at 03:52 PM

Turn the timing back a bit and retry

Also another thing to check is the cca on the battery as we bought our Westfield pinto and it always struggled to start as it turned over slow so went to buy a battery and found the one fitted was half the size of the original sierra got the correct size and it's good

SCAR - 6/10/12 at 04:06 PM

Not sure if it can happen on a pinto but i know some bike engines left standing can suffer hydraulic lock when faulty carbs allow excess fuel to leak into the bores. Not nice.