Hyster Forklift engine rebuild

An engine rebuild on an ancient Hyster forklift, suffering from years of neglect- and running without an air cleaner. She wouldn’t go without most of a can of easy start and even then she smoked non-stop and stalled all the time. After taking it all to bits it’s fairly obvious why- every nook and cranny is packed full of the strange, choking dust that seems to be a memorable feature of several parts of Chatham Historic Dockyard. After about 3 hours worth of pressure washing, we managed to find the engine, then we stripped it all down, fitted new liners and pistons, recut the valve seats and rebuilt the head (after I chiselled about a bucketful of solidified dust out of it). As soon as she hit the ground, she was back to work. A marvellous machine with many years of life left.