Powerline 10/1 inspection

[Doug]

Conclusions....

It's hammer time.
Thanks guys.....

Doug

[Doug]

decided to pull all the final bits out.....

Rear main bearing apears to have been installed backwards. There are two holes in the bearing housing one to feed presurized oil to the bearing and the other is return oil line to the by pass filter opposite the presure feed. I need to knock out the bearing to be sure but it looks like the oil inet line was blocked by the back of the bearing. The bearing is heavily scored and the journal is grooved to the point you can feel it with your finger tip.

The front main is lined up properly and is almost serivceable.

This explains why the bypass filter looked so clean, and yet there was all kind of silty material on the floor of crank case. I'm going to knock out the seal and bearing to double check this theory. It is possible there is a chanel connecting the by pass port to the main oil feed port behind the bearing, but all I can see is a return chanel from the space between the seal and bearing facing down to gravity drain.

There's no way this part was installed wrong or the seal chanle would have filled with oil and held it ( probably causing a leak.

The crank is finnished, to be used it will need a regrind and under size bearing or spray weld and regrind, no matter this is not in the budget and I do have a spare crank.

Doug

[hotater]

THIS is where great bargains are made in the DIY business.   

I'm not sure what you expected, Doug.  These are INDIAN engines!  Take a look at the MT-I pictures...your's sounds like a peach in comparison and I ran MT-I for 19 months straight.

You say the crank is trashed because you can feel the marks?  You can on a brand new GM, too.  Polish it with strips of 400 wet or dry silicon carbide paper shoeshined at an angle to the rotation.  You'll be amazed at how small those scars are.

Check to see if it's ROUND, first.  MT-I wasn't.

The 'budget' is TIME.  If you want perfection you have to pay for it.   Otherwise spend your time to make it so.  There ain't no free lunch..........no matter what the unions tell you.

[dkwflight]

Hi

Clean it up and put it together clean. Put in magnets. Run it an hour, drain the oil and clean the sump. Filter the oil and put it back in and run it some more.
The engine is plenty good and will run a long time.
Dennis

[Doug]

You realy think I can polish out groves I can feel Jack?

Hmm.....

I didn't expect much Jack at not perfection I should say. I expect things to be mostly right possibly too tight in places too loose in others dirtier than I like and a little crudely machined. Strangly I expected the castings with the exception of the fly wheel to be worse and the assembly to be better. Its obvious this engine was apart or at least looked at before shipping. Somebody screwed up the threads in disassembly and reassembly and used teflon tape to stop some oil leaks.

Jack what is crocus cloth equivilant too I have several sheets of it but no 400 here at the house.

Its obvious I expected too much, but I honestly believed they knew what they were doing.

I'm not angery, or upset about this but I am dispointed.
The things I expected to give me trouble were not what I planned for. I see some attention to detail, I 'm suprised a stupid mistake like a reversed bearing would happen or someone would fail to clean parts like your piston or my crank.

[sid]

Doug// looks like everyone has the same advice // like I told you ..put it together run the thing// if it is broke now the worse it can do is break again//save the good crank. put the old one and run it till it lets you know and then put in the new one and run it again/ by the time  it breaks again, you should be close to 75 years old/// good luck //sid

[Doug]

Ok....

I guess we're back on.

I was never a watch maker back when I worked in the electric motor shops but I was expect to hold a tollerence on bearing and bushing fits. Putting this back together would have got me fired if I were caught lol.

The old German up the road do my machine work would have chest pains if he knew what I was doing....

I'm kind of tempted to get him to cut the rear crank journal to match a 63 series ball bearing and make new engine cover to house it.

Have some 4 inch liner plate at work to make fly wheel but this would leave with out a ring gear....

Hmm...

more thinking...

[mobile_bob]

Doug: i commonly use 400 grit wet or dry, the black oxide paper.
then follow up with 600 grit, and use diesel fuel , wd40 or whatever as a lubricant

it is amazing how fast it will clean up, and if you have some grooves, oh well, they just hold a bit more oil

talk to one of you mine mechanic's and see if he can dig up an old detroit engine service manual, the older ones are good for showing how
to polish up stuff, what to worry about and what to not worry about, and most of the info holds true and is applicable to most all engines.

i wanna see a clip of that thing running

because of how lubrication works in plain brgs (wedge forming) tolerances can be pretty sloppy compared to what you are used to on electric motors.

if you make up a flywheel from steel plate, why not knock off the ring gear from your cast iron wheel and have a step cut to mount it on the steel wheel?

bob g
ps. put it together, and like Sid said, it will likely outlive both of us.  i don't know about you, but it seems it is the engine that you don't care much about that keeps on
going, and the one you get anal about the seems to never be perfect. also the engine you don't care about, when it does fail it is no surprise, no upset. the one you spend hours, dollars and all sorts of attention to, is the one that sours your stomach when it has problems.

moral of the story, clean it up and run it.

bob g

[sid]

Doug/ it amazing what will run// an engine is not a swiss watch and does not have to be that accurate// unless we are talking about 10000 rpm race engine.. I saw an antique engine run one time that you could not tell the compression stroke.it was gas but it still ran pretty good // would not do a lot of work but it was impressive/I need to send you a picture of the rings that i took out of a 8 stover/they are the oddest shaped rings that you could think of..it is hard to call them round// they are 1/8 in on on one side and 1/4 in on the other side/when they warm up they expand enough to close the gap/ they are original and made that way/ they are 1/2 in wide and 7 3/4 in diameter/ I replaced then with 2 -1/4 in ring per grove/ so it now had 8 rings instead 4/ but run great///sid

[hotater]

Doug--

The first thing to do before major machine work is to establish a base-line.    Run it original first then make improvements as they're  needed.  As long as the  important things like sand removal and several oil changes are done it'll be fine.

Here's the deal on polishing--  It's not enough to make it 'shiny'.  It also has to be flat.  Visualize the ground surface of the crank pin to be magnified 100X.  It's like an otherwise flat concrete floor with light brush marks in the surface.  A  bad crank has an unlevel 'floor' with gouges in it.  Polish everything equally as possible with a slightly angled shoeshine motion.   #1 diesel is the polishing lubrication of choice, but #2 works, just stinks some.   

400 grit while standing in the hardware store, feels like crushed gravel.  Don't worry, it's what you want. You'll need two sheets of 400, two sheets of 600 and then finish off with a around the bias polish with crocus cloth, which is 1/0 or about 1200 grit.

CLEAN the journal with solvent and then motor oil...SCRUB it with a white paper towel and 30W.  If it's no longer leaving a gray mark on the towel, it's  clean.  Until then it's an abrasive lap.

Ask yourself what the tolorences were on the African Queen....

[Doug]

Thanks Jack, Bob and others good advice as always...

I need to borrow a micrometer and see what I have to work wth first....

Just one question...

"then finish off with a around the bias polish with crocus cloth"
Dumb that down a bit please, you mean? straight on with the crocus at the end right not a diagonal like with the corser grits

[hotater]

Doug---

See if you can borrow a micrometer standard with the mic.  Unless you read large mics often it helps to have a reference handy for the 'feel' of it.

......and after SO much polishing you wont believe you can't read the difference so most folks screw it down a little tighter to make it so.   

[Doug]

It's been a lot of years since I used one on a regular basis ( or even just used one). I used to read to the .0001 on some jobs. Most motor shops don't bother with fine tollerences now and the work shows. Guys can't read a mic even if they try and the fits on the bearings are too tight or too loose.

Doug

[Doug]

Atul is disapointed I decided to pull the pin.

I made promisses about helping with the development of the type and helping with new parts and upgrading
the engines.



****I request you please do not let down your hopes. For building this engines as per your specifications we are ready to support you in each & every aspect. Please send/email us list of spares you required for this engine.
 
As you told us "'ROME CAN NOT BUILD IN A DAY".*****

I like Atul, I remeber in one email he told me about a problem he faced and the delay it had caused. My reply was not to worry, Rome wasn't built in a day so don't worry take your time and we will work this out....

Game on, gonna fix it, gonna find the bugs and iron them out, gonna order a second or third and get this right.

Doug
 

[rmchambers]

I'm glad to hear it too.  A listeroid doesn't fit with what I intend to do but a petteroid will.  Hopefully you will help them make decent stuff which won't require quite so an intensive teardown and rebuild.

It strikes me that Atul is genuinely interested in improving his stuff, he stands to sell more if they gain a reputation of being dependable and well made.  It's not often you see that kind of attention these days.

If he can get them EPA tested and approved he's sitting on a gold mine.

Robert