Some time back, I spotted an ad for a 3hp Sunshine engine. I rang the number listed and after more detail from the seller, I decided to have a look.
I arrived with the intent to start it up and get the low-down before I committed my hard earned cash. I feel it is important to be up front and inform readers that I was very new to the engine collectors/restorers game at this point, and didn’t truly understand what the seller meant when he said it was a 2 stroke. For me, that simply meant “chuck some oil in the petrol tin, give it a shake and away she goes” - what’s hard about that?
Well, unfortunately we couldn’t start it due to a faulty fuel pump diaphragm. I thought, “This is an easy fix - just a bit of rubber cut to size and it would be all good”. So, as I was keen anyway, I did the deal.
I returned a week later to pick up my Sunshine engine, and once home, I rolled it into the shed with a commitment to myself to get her up and running in the next week or so. Not sure why, but the weeks turned into a few months before something triggered me to get started.
The big day came and I fuelled her up - straight unleaded, as I had read the manual by this point, and Googled some information as well. I went through the basics - spark good (as it bit me more than once), and good compression. So, in my mind the only guesswork was where to set the fuel tap!
I cranked and cranked and cranked ‘til I was really cranky. I don’t mind saying that I was on my last crank when she fired up and away she went. The only downside was, it was spewing fuel out of the fuel pump, as I actually hadn’t bothered to do anything regarding the faulty diaphragm. This brought everything to a quick stop and I pushed it back into the dark corner of the shed for another day.
I soon learned why they say these Sunshines are tricky. For a newbie to the engine scene, tricky is a gross understatement. Over the next few weeks, I regularly contacted Google, rang a few blokes, got heaps of advice, and some new diaphragm material, and then one day, the pump was sorted.
From that point on, progress was fairly rapid as was my learning curve. It was at a well-known ‘engine guru’s’ property, near Serpentine, that we got her going - very fast in fact, and with a nice flywheel wobble. We quickly went to stop it but the engine beat us to it, and stopped of its own accord. Plans were rapidly put into place to dismantle the engine, and the guru agreed to straighten the bent crankshaft.
Over the next few weeks, I decided to make a new trolley, replace the water tank, and paint the engine - all of this with an engine that I bought as a ‘runner’. As well, I inserted the mesh that goes in the port between the crankcase and the fuel inlet. There wasn’t any in it, so hopefully that was the main problem sorted.
The big day came, and we reassembled everything whilst being very careful not to damage my wonderful paint job. Well, ‘the tricky Sunshine’ wouldn’t go again. It gave the odd fire but just wouldn’t get going properly. Back to the drawing board.
More Google, and more ringing around, when out of nowhere, a complete stranger contacted me via email and offered to come around and give me a hand, as he had recently restored one. He came out a week later and within an hour had it going, all but flat out. Checks found that the steel mesh had been sucked up from the port and into the top of the fuel mixing area, fouling the poppet valve that governs the speed. I literally just pulled it out and got it running without it.
So, it was now going but not very well. We pulled things apart again, and messed with its timing and the governor, and soon had it running fairly well. Hey, we could even stop and start it! There was only one downside - all my beautiful paint started peeling off.
We now made the decision to dismantle it again and refit the mesh. During this part of the restoration, I stripped all the paint off, and re-painted it. It turned out to be a good idea to use an etch primer - not sure why I didn’t use it the first time. I made a note not to believe everything I read on the paint tins.
Finally, the engine was back together and looked as shiny as a new pin - so much so, that I couldn’t bring myself to start her in case I ruined her shiny paint. So there she sat for three months.
It was now July and I thought that I’d better start it up. It only took 10 to 15 minutes of cranking before it finally started...this time at a million miles an hour. What now? I know, it’s the mesh that’s been sucked up again.
A quick check revealed this to not be the case. I didn’t have a quick fix, so I pushed the damm thing back into the dark corner, got the Tangye running, and had a couple of beers.
*Max Leggett (a soon-to-be ex-Sunshine lover)
