IH's are so tough they can heal themselves!

[Joe_Costanzo@domain.elided]

Greetings Binders,

An experience from this morning I'd like to share.  For the past few days
my 345 in my '79 Scout II has been running a little on the rough side, but
not enough to make me worry too much.  So, this morning, I fire it up &
head out for work.  Well, sitting at traffic lights in neutral (4-speed),
the idling engine was shaking really bad.  I noticed a slight reduction of
power, mostly uphill, and noticed more smoke than usual that *may* have had
a blue-ish tint to it.  Uh-oh...  I started adding things up -  perhaps a
bit too quickly - to arrive at a scare of ring failure & dragging a dead
cylinder.  Oh yeah - the other indication was that between shifts, the
engine rpm dropped off much more quickly than it usually does.  So after a
lumpy 30 seconds at a red light, green comes & I start to roll.  At about
5mph, in first gear, I heard a pop, the truck lurched, but then kept going.
I noticed then that my shifts were normal again, and found that at the next
red light, my idle was back to normal!  I'd like to say that I had a bad
cylinder, and it healed itself, but somehow I doubt that.  I'm thinking
carb/choke sticking, or something like that.  Last night was probably the
coldest we've had this fall, so maybe that's a contributor.  Oh, the carb
is a Thermoquad, and this is the second time in just a few weeks it's given
me grief.  Damn that south Jersey mud!  (Sand, anyway.)  (I think the blue
tint in the smoke was a figment of my imagination - I sure hope it turns
out to be, anyway.)  We'll see what happens on the 3-hour run to S. Jersey
tonight.

Joe Costanzo
'79 Scout II