Spun the rod bearing, CRANKSHAFT is FUBAR

[dieselspanner]

Hi All

Bob,

My bitza CS had been sabotaged with a slack handful of sand in the sump when I got it, obviously the grit had played the cat and banjo with the white metal mains so I changed them for a set of Dev TRB's and carriers and used half a tube of Loctite -610 I think - to stiffen things up, it's not done a lot of hours so far, but it's looking like a respectable job, so far!

When I was in Kazakhstan a few years back one of the expats imported a Jaguar, XJ6 I think, anyway,
when the front wheel bearings collapsed a local machinist, Starry (Old, he was bloody old!) Sasha re machined the hubs to take local bearings. Off a UAZ369 4x4 I think.

Hugh,

I had the same flywheel problem with my CS, I blocked up a 10 ton bottle jack horizontally with the base away from the big end and a piece of 2" id tube over the shaft then lashed it together with the heaviest chain I had in a 'figure of eight' around the spokes and gave it the beans, with a bit of 2lb hammer and the ATF / acetone it shifted both flywheels.

Cheers
Stef




 

[ajaffa1]

When I had to dismantle my CS, to have it shipped to Tasmania, the flywheels had also welded themselves to the crank, despite my having used an anti seize lubricant during assembly. Pullers and sledge hammer wouldn`t budge them. Eventually I gave up trying to pull them off and instead tried to get them to spin on the crankshaft. I took off the crankcase door, removed the piston and fed a piece of 4x2 between the big end and the crankcase. I then gently rocked the flywheels against the timber, once they started to move it allowed the ATF to get in and they came off easily.
Hope this helps,

Bob

[Hugh Conway]

The wheels came off.......not a bad thing in this case.
It took a combination of everything. The first one was the most difficult.
  I had to use a bit of chain and a jackscrew......No bottle jack was readily available (thanks Stef), a friend has one, but the continuing snow has made it not possible to get to his place on the mountain. The jackscrew was from parts of a large gear puller. A 3 foot pipe over a large wrench provided the torque, and it didn't come off easily.....either one of them. They had to be wound off nearly all the way to the end of the crank. I didn't mind that a bit, just so long as they did come off.

I had tried the 2X4 + rocking method previously without success but it worked to loosen up the 2nd wheel, then the chain and screw took it the rest of the way. Yesterday I did try heat and ATF without success. This morning I gave it another try. The overnight soak with ATF probably helped a lot. When the first wheel moved just a tiny bit, I knew we would have success.....just a matter of time.

For the 2nd wheel I tried Bob's rocking method again. It didn't help on the first wheel, but did on the 2nd one, I could see that the keyways went out of alignment after several back and forths. Inertia can do wonders. Thanks for that one Bob. Anyway, its drinks all around this afternoon. I will eventually get this damaged crank to a machine shop. Maybe it can be reground. If so, a few sets of the proper bearings for the undersized are apparently available, so I will have a spare!

Now, it's just clean up, prep, and wait for the parts to arrive, hopefully next week!

As for parts, I've collected a pretty good stock of most items. DEV supplied some, and is a good source, but it takes a long time to get from India to here, then there is the additional delay while brokerage, customs fees and taxes are determined. I have usually had to use the tracking number to find out where the shipment gets stuck, light a fire and finally get them to forward it on. No fault of DEV, its the Canada bureaucracy. Here in Canada, my go to guy for parts is Jim Caldwell justliveoffgrid.com he's in Ontario, a long way, but at least no international borders to cross. I also use stationaryengineparts.com in U.K for those small or hard to find parts.

Thanks again for all of your suggestions and assistance.
I will be back to either ask more, or report on progress.
Shovelling snow tomorrow!

Cheers
Hugh

[dieselspanner]

Well done, Hugh!

Don't know if it will help but when I had the bitza crank out Dev was offering big end bearings down t - 100 tho, from memory.

At the time I couldn't find a machine shop down here to deal with directly (I've got a grip of the language and far more contacts now, only taken ten years...) so I had the local agricultural engineers send off the crank and bearing for machining as a pair. No idea what size they are now, it's irrelevant until the next time...

Obviously you'd still be stuck with the delivery issues but I would think Dev could get you bearings made to almost any practical size, at reasonable cost.

Cheers
Stef

[Hugh Conway]

Moving along......the wheels are off, the crank removed, crankcase flushed out several times. Removed parts are well cleaned and wrapped up awaiting assembly. That bit is completed.

I fitted the new cylinder liner and found .018" liner protrusion. My hand operated milling machine and about an hour and a half of work brought it down to .003" all around even when rotating the sleeve and measuring in various positions. It's amazing that some careful draw filing can give an adequate polish and workable result. The cylinder itself is quite flat according to my straight edge.

Now then, to fit the main rod bearing....I don't have the new crank as yet, but want to be ready when it comes.  I have a new con rod and bearing shells. How does one find the correct rod bearing to crank journal clearance without using plastigage? Keeping in mind my limited tools (no micrometer, for instance) what did the old timers do?

I've been reading over 38AC's most excellent 60 + pages of listeroid tear down and rebuild instructions. There's a fantastic amount of good information provided, what a pleasure it would be to have the knowledge, experience and machinery. You can guess that my tool availability working conditions are on the "shade tree" side: My abilities are not much better, but his detailed descriptions of the work sure do help.

Oh, and it has warmed up considerably, snow is melting away and the Pacific Coast rain has returned.

Cheers
Hugh

[BruceM]

Bravo on the careful file work to remove excess liner protrusion.  i did mine that way also, but had to flatten both head and top of cylinder via the sandpaper glued to plate glass on non-slip shelf liner material  on cast iron saw top method.  Hard work. Both head and top of cylinder were concave from operating with the excess liner protrusion for a year, its another reason to correct it immediately, or at least loosen the head if you can't get to it quickly. 

if you have no micrometer with inside dimension telescoping tool and no Plastiguage, you might try test fitting with foil.
Stack strips of 0.001 inch (heavy) aluminum foil to see how many it takes to have it interfere instead of plastigauge.  Standard typing paper is about 0.006.  If that doesn't bind, you're over spec.  You want 3 mils, I think.

Best

[Hugh Conway]

Thanks for that tip Bruce, we do have Al foil and a 1" micrometer to substitute for plastigauge.

The new crank arrived yesterday afternoon. It was well packaged and greased up for corrosion proofing.
cleaning it up, I saw that the crank throw parts were painted black and a bit rough. A curious go with a scraper revealed.......guess what.......
Casting sand beneath the paint!!!!!
A bit of work with a wire wheel and a dremel to get into the hard to reach parts has it down to bare metal now.
They like their sand!
Cheers
Hugh

[keith71]

Probably still pretty darn cold there.. Any progress ? Just wondering.. Thanks.

[Hugh Conway]

@ keith71
Thanks for asking.  As for the weather.......it's warmed up considerably: 8*C this afternoon and full sun. Solar panels have given us a full charge. That part is good.
As for progress, Well it went quite well......for a while.
Since I had it all apart, I decided to try balancing the wheels using the 38AC method. That worked quite well.
The new TRBs were a very light drive fit onto the crank. Got the crank installed with the proper end play by adjusting the shimming.
I was able to get some plastigauge to fit the rod bearing. Some of the wrist pins that I've seen are a bit sloppy, but in this case, i used a new piston, wrist pin, and a new rod too. The wrist pin was a nice tight fit in both small end bush. Set up the bump to .075".
Reinstalled the wheels using new Gib keys. Spent a lot of time fitting them. The new crank actually had the keyways cut so the keys were a snug fit rather than the bit of slop with the old crankshaft.
Hoisted the engine back onto it's bed and bolted it down. squirted a lot of oil onto the bearings, rod, cylinder sleeve and cranked it over with the starter for a while before adding fuel. It started right up and ran very smoothly..........the proverbial glass of water actually stayed on the valve cover at full RPM !!!!
I was a happy camper. Ran it for about 8 hours over the next few days.
Then the trouble.......
See my next post: Bag of hammers,

Cheers
Hugh