The other day i see an ad on facebook for a guy selling a layout boat trailer. Attached to the trailer was a longtail. I took a chance and scored a home made longtail for $200. Here is what i know so far:

2005 Lifan 6.5 engine - checked serial #
Home made longtail frame:
Bearings
multiple grese zerks with reservoir
built sturdy
HMW bearing plates on mount
Ron Hill 7 x 4 prop (etched on prop, will measure to verify)

Here are some pics.
What do you all think deal or hosed?

I'd say its a pretty good deal. Frame looks pretty solid for being a homemade rig. Does it turn over or is it locked up?

Gas tank needs cleaned out and carb gone thru before i turn it over. It hold compression not sure how much yet. Worse case i tear off the Lifan and throw on a Predator.

Frame is solid, ill pry clean it up and give it a fresh coat.

Good find for sure


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Well the $200 find is turning into more.... go figure.

Cleaned it up this weekend. Oil looks terrible a mix of milky sludge and maybe water....
Cleaned up the gas tank, and had it looking pretty good when done.
Cleaned up the carb and was surprised it look as well as it did.

Installed new plug, and oil.

Finally managed to get it to fire up and MAN WAS SHE ROUGH. That sucker damn near jumped across my shop. Would not rev up at all and wanted to die at idle. Was running rich as hell and had oil coming out of exhaust. Pulled valve cover and found pieces of hard material in there i assume was rings??? but didnt look like an fail rings ive seen before. Ran a comp test after this and was only seeing mid 50's psi. These have a comp release built into them so this test wont tell me much. Need to do a LDT test to see if rings are shot. from what i have read those initial numbers are what most see on these engines. I took off the rocker arms and rods and ran the comp test again and saw the same numbers. Im no expert on the comp release mechanism but i assume it keeps the valves off their seat long enough for easy starting? IF that is the case when i bypass the cam by remove the rods then that would rule out the comp release mechanism for piss poor comp numbers? aside from valve leakage. I did tap on each valve to attempt to seat them if there was carbon buildup. As shitty as this thing ran i would not be surprised at all if there was a lot more problems

Also need to run back through the carb and make sure my air bleeder lines are clear. The blow by thru the exhaust though has me thinking this will get a new engine soon, but who knows could have just been from sitting around outside for so long.

These carbs have no air/fuel screw so aside from going over the carb again, the lack of throttle response has me baffled. I bypassed the air filter for this test to eliminate one thing at least. Plug was fouled pretty good in a short time.

So what do you all think? lack of power, wont rev up, oil from exhaust, engine knock and jumping (hard to tell this thing was bouncing so bad) and 50 psi on comp test. IM thinking $119 predator engine