Cooper Shearing Stand, Restoration running story

On the 20th February 1997 I acquired a Cooper Shearing Stand from a guy in Packenham Victoria who had not got around to restoring it. He had obtained it from a farmer in Warburton Victoria who used it from new.

The stand comprises of transporter (wheels removed at the moment for cleaning up). A sharpener stand (I do not have the sharpener unfortunately) for sharpening the shearing shears. A copper water hopper (which will look great polished and lacquered). A 2hp Cooper Engineering Type N vertical single cylinder engine. Probably the last and most important part is the stand itself, which holds the transmission, clutch and drive for the shearing shears. The shears are Cooper type EB (re-badged Sunbeam brand).

The engine is in excellent condition and will require only minimal work to clean it up for show. Most of the original paint is intact. This engine has spent most of its life under cover. I have not done any work at this time, but will post progress reports as they happen. I'll post the next progress installment in the near future.

March 11th 1997 I've had a little time to work on the Cooper I mentioned I had bought a couple of weeks ago. The engine now runs happily. I did not have to do anything drastic, the adventure follows...

The engine only had a little compression and seemed to alternately suck and blow through the intake valve (more on this later).

Firstly I steam cleaned the engine at the local car cleaning place (next time I'll do this BEFORE removing it from the transporter - this sucker is HEAVY!). Next up I removed the carby and fuel tank. The tank is sound although covered with rust and residue of old fuel on the bottom of the tank - this is ok as fuel is sucked up a tube inserted through the top of the tank.

The hoses to the cooling tank were totally shot - no surprise there, they seem to be the original canvas hoses. The pipes in and out of the cooling tank were blocked with rust, as was the water gallery in the head and block. I cleaned these out with a high pressure hose, this seems to have done a pretty good job.

I removed the head and cleaned out all the carbon deposits (I'm surprised the piston could actually get to tdc there was so much crap. I inspected the piston, rings, and cylinder barrel - all seem pretty good - no work required. I also inspected the valves, the intake is clean with a tight fit, the exhaust seems to have had something hard pass through it at some stage as there is a dent in the block. I ground the valve and block a little by hand and this now seems ok.

I adjusted both intake and exhaust valves to .006" (this is just a guess, I do not have a book yet). The exhaust valve was not even operating before I adjusted it which explained why the engine would alternately such and blow through the intake valve.

I reassembled everything and tried a a few cranks without fuel turned on to see how it felt, it seemed ok and there was a marked improvement in engine compression. I turned on the fuel and tried again - no go, no fuel intake. I took apart the carby again and inspected it, the one way valve in the pipe to the tank was stuck solid with old fuel resin. I tapped it gently with a blunt probe and small hammer until it dislodged the poured fuel through it to clean it up.

Time for the second try, still no go, even though the one way valve was ok, no fuel - there was a substantial air leak around the governor linkage and butterfly valve. As an experiment I removed the valve and linkage and plug the holes with screws wrapped in PTFE (Teflon) plumbers tape. I cranked and got fuel ok.

I ripped out the spark plug to check the spark and noticed it was sporadic and weak. Suspecting the easy things first, I tried a different lead - same problem, I then tried the lead without the spark plug (use plastic tongs to hold it if you try this) - a good regular strong hot spark would jump from the lead to the block whilst cranking. I obtained a new plug (Champion D-16 - for a change it was easy to find, my local auto parts store had one - I got a lecture from a fifteen year old girl as to why I should replace all the plugs in my engine not just one - after she finished her monologue I explained it I was replacing all the plugs in a single cylinder engine - she did not believe me :-)... anyway, the new plug would carry a good strong spark.

After inserting the new plug I cranked and it erupted into life, I shut it down immediately as it would have run ungoverned. I rebuilt the governor linkages and butterfly valve and reassembled the carby and tried again. It fired up first crank and worked up to a reasonably steady 980 RPM (pretty close to the 1000 it is rated at) according to my "Record" RPM counter. I shut down after a few minutes as I do not have the cooling tank on yet (can't find hoses of a small enough diameter...).

I'll keep you guys posted as I progress with this one. Still to go are to investigate the major oil throwing (I suspect a blocked breather and too much oil in the crank case) and rebuild the transporter. After that, I'll clean it up properly and paint the engine and transporter. Then I'll have a go at the shearing stand and hand piece.