motor stuck while in storage

[strap]

71 280 SE straight 6 with auto trans and fuel injected. The car has been in storage for a few years. Have tried to turn it over by hand but it feels froze. Took out plugs poured thin oil in all cylinders but the back two are up so not much can get in let it soak for a couple days but still froze.
what should i do next before I have to pull the motor out.

[Mark DiSilvestro]

Originally Posted by strap

71 280 SE straight 6 with auto trans and fuel injected. The car has been in storage for a few years. Have tried to turn it over by hand but it feels froze. Took out plugs poured thin oil in all cylinders but the back two are up so not much can get in let it soak for a couple days but still froze.
what should i do next before I have to pull the motor out.

Check cooant level, as well as the engine oil for possible coolant contamination. If oil is way too high and looks like it's polluted with coolant, the engine is probably scrap. If the oil level and appearance seems normal, allow a few more days of soaking, then try to turn engine back & forth slightly with socket on crank pulley bolt to see if it will work free.

Happy Motoring, Mark

[Skippy]

Not sure what sort of oil you're using, but WD40 and PB Blaster are good for this. I read about a guy who unfroze a seized (from sitting) engine by squirting some WD into the spark plug holes every day for a week until he finally could turn it over with a socket on the crank.

[ja17]

Hello,

Yes, soak those cylinders. Take a light and view the insides of them if you can. Large deposites of crud, can indicate leakage of coolant and destruction of the aluminum cylinder head. Howeve if you have just some surface rust on the cylinder walls you may be able to free it up. Careful prying of the torque converter underneath with a large screwdriver will generate a lot more force than the usual breaker bar on the crankshaft bolt. Try moving it back and fourth. Initial movements of the engine will cause the rings to scrape any corrosion off the cylinder walls, however this corrosion may pack into the ring groove causing the rings to be stuck. Sometime rings will free-up after some engine heat cycles. Freeing a stuck engine is always a risky ordeal. Hopefully it is not too bad and you will not have complications.

[Todd Miller]

"Kroil," "Mouse Milk," "PB Blaster," and "Liquid Wrench" top the list (in that order) for penetrants. Continue using them, and not engine oil. You want something very thin with a lot of solvent in it so that it gets down the bores and around the rings.

Too bad it's an automatic. If it were a manual trans, you could put it in gear, let off the parking brake and start rocking it back and forth in gear, against the engine. The weight of the car will usually start the crankshaft turning.

Here are a couple methods for getting this engine spinning again.
1) Keep using Kroil(sold in most NAPA's) or Mouse Milk (www.mousemilk.com)
2) Mix ATF with gasoline and pour that it. The fuel will thin the ATF and help wick it down into bores where the fuel then evaporates, leaving behind the ATF which is very high detergent
3) Remove the valve cover and locate the cylinder that has the camshaft lobe facing as equally upward (left and right) as possible. Crank the ball pin valve adjusters downward and remove the rocker arms so the intake and exhaust valve for this cylinder will close. Take an old spark plug and break out porcelain center. Braze a fitting to the spark plug with a zerk fitting in the end of the fitting you braze in. Now pour straight ATF into the cylinder until it's full and thread in the spark plug tool you've made. Hook your grease gun up to the zerk and begin pumping grease into the cylinder (remember, you've just filled the cylinder with ATF). As you pump, the grease will hydraulically, and safely start to move the piston. The grease will also shove the ATF down the sides of the piston.

Once you get things moving with the grease gun, stop, remove the gun and your spark plug tool and try rotating the crankshaft with a breaker bar. You can apply the grease gun trick to more than one cylinder.

When it's all freed up, spin the engine over on the starter in 10-15 second bursts, with the spark plugs removed, until you have oil pressure on the gauge in the car. Once you have oil pressure, continue cranking the engine over until you have oil coming out of every oiling hole on the oil rail next to the cam. Confirm every oiling hole has oil coming out otherwise, you'll destroy the cam or rocker gear in a matter of minutes.

After confirming oil pressure and cam rail oiling, put the spark plugs back in and you're ready to safely start the engine for the first time.

After you get it to run and get it hot, change the oil and filter. Do that again in 500mi.

[t walgamuth]

I have gotten a couple of motors which were not hard stuck but simply from sitting by bumping the starter after letting it sit with tranny fluid or marvel mystery oil.....soak a day, bump it twenty times, soak another day and so forth until it cranks over or you get sick of it.

I have never been brave enough to do much pulling on the crank bolt.

This is simple and painless, you just need a good battery and a trickle charger.

Tom W

[kwb210]

i recently got a car that had been sitting for 7 years. frozen. everyday i sprayed in a wd30 or some thin penetrating oil into the cylinders, then i would put the wrench on the crank bolt and...nothing, believe it or not on the 7th day i did the same thing and it turned just a bit. I almost fainted i was so surprised. so i sprayed some more in and that evening it turned over. i did not use oil as i figured it was to thick. find the thinest penetrating oil and use it. when i opened up the drain plug on the oil pan the fluid that dripped out was an ugly red/brown water type yuck. i decided to remove the oil pan, was surprised at how much of this weird fluid was in the pan. SO GLAD i drained and cleaned it. After i got the engine freed i still squirted somemore penetrating oil in the cylinders, then started squirted 30 weight oil in and rotated the engine. all said and done i cleaned the oil pan, then reinstalled and filled w/ 30 weight and manually rotated engine, than pulled distributor and used a shaped rod to run the oil pump to force oil everywhere before the engine was started. when i finally started engine it ran fine after an amazing amount of smoking. this was a toyota land cruiser not a MB. should not be any different. just be patient. famous last words...
good luck!

[Tony H]

I did the same thing with a generator I bought that had been sitting outside for 10 years without being run.(4 cyl) I put a good battery in it and just kept bumping the starter until it started turning. Ran it for a few min to warm it up, changed the oil and it's been good for 12 years.

Originally Posted by t walgamuth

I have gotten a couple of motors which were not hard stuck but simply from sitting by bumping the starter after letting it sit with tranny fluid or marvel mystery oil.....soak a day, bump it twenty times, soak another day and so forth until it cranks over or you get sick of it.

I have never been brave enough to do much pulling on the crank bolt.

This is simple and painless, you just need a good battery and a trickle charger.

Tom W