surprisingly satisfying

More than a little tedious, but the emotion on the outside periphery is “Thats Good, but not good enough. Keep goin’ “

What’s the Dio blabberin’bout?

Hand fitting a Four bolt Main cap. (for the short attention span theater types, you can click off now,,, This is likely to be quite boring to some.)

Yup, they came in today. Yup, they require ‘final machining’ and yes, I REALLY SHOULDA pulled the motor and found a machine shop to line bore the crankshaft mains.

BUT, My intent was to replace the one I broke, not embark on a longevity build that would be even more months of angst and turmoil on my wallet

not to mention, Da would stroke out if I started pulling that motor in his basement.

Apologies,,, I Haven’t taken picture one at this point, but y’all know me: ADHD, OCD, Aspergers,,,

I did set it up in the mill, and took my loving’ time about it. I only needed to cut about 3 thou off the inner face and that got me close enough that I chose not to make another pass. I’ve been working with scraper, file and hone since. Literal HAND FITTING. Still have everything in the jig held tight, working one face, comparing, work a little more, hone, compare,,,, wash rinse repeat,, Only a couple of small areas where the difference can be felt by fingernail, and those areas are the ones I am working on. The Bearing does fit the new unit, but I can still see ‘daylight’ between the bearing and the face in places,,, those are what I am working on. engineers blue is showing me the hightlights. ( I cheat here. A blue sharpie does just as well, not as expensive, and easily applied without making a frellin’ mess.) Push bearing through, see where the blue is removed, work that area slowly.

This is the sort of stuff where I have no issues with patience, or a lack of patience. I am making an effort and that alleviates the “git-r-dun” pushiness inside. And hand scraping is no fast process. Tedious, though I don’t find it boring,,, Theres something about watching little peices of steel curl up like I were carving on wood (careful, those things splinter up and dig deeper than any wood splinter could.) I’m literally carving my Maincap out of a chunk of steel. Thats strikes me as “Cool as F!”,,, but I’m wyrd,,,

I did press the old busted cap ‘closed’ and drilled a couple holes in the cracks (to get some meat for the welder to bite into.) Then welded the cracks as closed as I could get them (small blindhole welds, not much bigger than a tack weld.) I can still see the larger crack on the outer arm, but the one on the inner face, can only be seen by machinist blue, not felt with finger or nail. That is the model I am carving my blank to match. If I truly mess up, I have two more lined up waiting, but so far, things are REALLY looking good.

And I have all day tomorrow while doing domestics to keep at it. I have ZERO intention of trying to put all this back together until I have that new part cut to my satisfaction. And I have all the Christmas break ahead of me. NO RUSH,,, DO NOT RUSH,,,

Two full days of J.O.B. ahead, possibly 2 1/2 if we pull a partial on Christmas eve,,, sometimes do, sometimes don’t. I don’t believe we have the work lined up this year: though I could be wrong. THEN, I have 4 full days to do my thing and get this DONE. And even there, If I am not satisfied that this cap and bearing are right, I don’t move forward. I think Da ‘gets it’,,, he was sorta shocked to see me patiently, painstakingly, scraping small splinters fo steel off this face. He even asked why I didn’t just use the mill. I explained I had, UP TO A POINT, but that I didn’t want to risk pushing past a limit. And he knows that machine is something of a Rube Goldberg device; jerry-rigged holding clamps, the main tool bearer is 5 inches above the ways and even locked tight can show ‘play’ when under load. (I don’t make heavy cuts because of this.) At least the Mill side of it is solid enough. Z axis is robust, X and Y are sketchy. (I really miss the Southbend right now,,,, and I do mean REALLY miss it,,, You can use a lathe as a mill and those beds and ways on the Bend were IMMACULATE.)

NOw, before y’all start ripping me that I should do this right, I agree with you. But the means just ain’t there, not with all the other stuff I threw at Bloo first. This isn’t money I had: this is debt I incurred.

and that tap is near maxed. NOT Maxxed, just near and I still need to leave some ’emergency’ room.

And of course I need to pay it all back,,,

SO, that being said, I am doing things as right as I can, in ways that I KNOW, and, maybe, this thing is a doomed motor, but I don’t think she is so doomed as you might think. I have hand fitted parts before, and one of those engines is still running strong. (I lost track of the others). Granted, its the 2cylinder in my Da’s riding mower, but I re-built that engine back 7 or 8 years agone. and it still fires up, runs like a scalded dawg, and every year he wears something else on it OUT, and, and

I will say this though,,, It’s not “financially feasible” to do this very often. I have several hours in already and MAYBE moved 0.0002″ of material off that face. Note: Tens of thousandths, not thousandths. Slow and steady at this point,,, Turtle racing with the turtles dosed on phenolbarbitol. (Thats since I milled off the original 3thou to get ‘close’. and it was QUITE close to begin with.)

And for those that don’t know, the younger crowd here (is there one?) hand fitting what how they built the old Steam Locomotives. Hand fitted valve bodies to the double acting cylinders, many parts, cast or forged, that needed final fitting to each machine for proper fit. That sort of production doesn’t fly well in this modern world, but believe me, IT STILL WORKS. And there are steam loco’s out there that CONTINUE to be used and there are some krazzeess like me that still remake and hand fit the parts for them: just to keep them alive and running, even if as museum peices.

And I give credit for learning that to my metal arts Shop teacher, whom insisted that our first month in shop was using a scraper and a file to fit two parts together PERFECTLY. No power tools, no lathes, no mills, Scraper, mill file and Machinists blue, and LOTS of elbow grease,,, The parts had to be dead flat, and a thin film of light oil would hold the two together by atmospheric pressure,, they had to be that close to perfect.

Never forgot that lesson. Just don’t always need it.

So, nothing really much to talk about. Same old fake and gay BS in the ‘real world’. Lots of tremors in the Matrix going on, but seems like its all intended distraction from the real issue boiling below the surface. At least my efforts will bear fruit on the front I am working, even if things go “strange” here shortly. Just another arrow in my quiver of

“LOAD!”

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