Protecting your engine from corrosion

By ROGER CHANEY
PCA National Technical Committee Chairman

If you travel without your Porsche and the car will not be run for more than a month, it will be worth your while to “pickle” or preserve your engine. This is relatively easy to do and is well worth the effort. The Armed Services have developed and used similar procedures for many years with complete success.

Preservation is performed as follows:

1. Fill the gas tank.
2. Run the car until the engine is at normal temperature.
3. Drain the oil and change the oil filter.
4. Refill the crankcase with a preservative oil. (See listing at end of article.)
5. Run the engine until normal oil temperature is reached.
6. Disconnect fuel line under car and attach a short length of flex hose.
7. Place hose in a can of kerosene and start the engine.
8. Run 1500 to 2000 rpm until the engine quits or runs about 30 seconds.
9. Reconnect the fuel line.
10. Plug the exhaust pipes.
11. Remove wire mesh air cleaners and seal off carburetors leave paper air cleaners alone.

Any machine should be operated once in a while even during short storage periods. Every machine ever built deteriorates faster when not used than when continuously used. This is why fleet (company) automobiles can, and do, often run 100,000 miles easily with no major repairs. If not preserved, a car should be run at least once a week long enough to reach operating temperature and held for 20 to 30 minutes.

If your car should ever be stored for 90 days or more, you should perform the following steps in addition to those listed above:

12. Remove spark plugs.
13. Spray preservative oil into cylinders with pistons at bottom center.
14. Spray a short burst into each cylinder without turning the engine.
15.   Install spark plugs.
16. Spray oil into exhaust pipes and then plug them.
17. Spray (or brush) oil on the under side of the engine.

Most of you will never have occasion to perform long-term storage so you won’t need to worry about steps 12-17, and where to get a spray nozzle for the cylinder bores.

Restore a preseved engine to normal service by draining carburetors and fuel line of kerosene, unplug exhaust and intake, drain crankcase and excess oil from the filter, replace filter element, fill engine with correct amount of standard lubricating oil, turn engine slowly by hand to check for liquid lock, lightly prime the carburetors with gas, start and run until warm.

Currently available engine preservative oil (SAE 30 or grade 2) are listed below. Preservative oils are also available upon request in grade 1 (SAE 10) and grade 3 (SAE 50).

TRADE NAME AND/OR TYPE
Texaco Preservative Oil 30
Castrol Type M-4211
Kendall 7031
Ashland Type M-4139
Valvoline Code 823
Tectyl 823

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