I need to buy a lottery ticket.

[35 Whelen]

My luck lately is almost making me feel guilty for such good furtune
Local FB buy and sell forum was good to me today. A local fellow just bought a house from an elderly gentleman who took his tools from the garage and said to the new owner " everything else in the garage you can have" The ad in the buy and sell showed the melting pot and one chunk of lead. I called the guy and he said "come on over, you won't be disappointed". I went to his house and he kept pulling out chunks of lead. I ended up with a Michigan Knife Company Babbit melting pot that will hold 50 lbs of molten lead. I ended up with 280 lbs of pure lead and 24 1.25lb bars of 35/65 solder bars for a grand total of 310+ lbs of lead and solder. $80 total. He was glad to get rid of it all, smiled and waved as the rear end of my car sagged and I drove off down the road.

 

[Brad]

Dude, that is the score of the month for sure.

 

[KeithB]

^^What he said^^

 

[Pistolero]

Good deal. Now if you run across an old car or a locomotive with bad bearings you have the pot so
rebabbit them and I can teach you to scrape them to fit.

I wonder how much of a lost art pouring and scraping babbit bearings is these days? I learned it
out of necessity as a poverty stricken teen, and still value the education. But, it is a fairly useless
skill these days, somwhat like making a proper buggy whip, or properly caulking a ship with oakum.

Bill

 

[Cherokee]

Good deal !!

 

[RicinYakima]

"I wonder how much of a lost art pouring and scraping babbit bearings is these days? I learned it
out of necessity as a poverty stricken teen, and still value the education. But, it is a fairly useless
skill these days, somwhat like making a proper buggy whip, or properly caulking a ship with oakum."

I was taught by an old Packard mechanic when I was restoring Hudson's and Terraplanes.

 

[Pistolero]

HAH! Those are WAY, WAY upmarked from my $75 English Ford with a miniature, mirror image copy of
the Ford Model A engne, still used until 1959. With poured rod bearings.....

I doubt any US cars had them after WW2, probably even before that. Hey, poor folks have
poor ways. It took me forever to earn $75 at $0.75 per hour at the chicken farm.

But, I'll bet a Babbit pot is a really, really quality, durable unit.

Bil

 

[RicinYakima]

The 1946 thru 1950 Hudson straight 8's still had poured bearings. The new 6's had insert bearings, as did the Jet's 202 CID six banger. All still had pined piston rings, like airplane engines.

 

[Pistolero]

"Pinned piston rings...like aircraft engines", hmm. Must be real big ones. I have overhauled several Lycoming
and Continental aircraft engines, never seen any rings that are pinned. Stepped rings on some, but never pinned.

And I wonder what the "Michigan Knife Company" had to do with making Babbitt pots? How does that
relate to knives?

Bill

 

[Intheshop]

Good on you 35,am sure the guy is happy his stuff found a good home.

 

[Bret4207]

Many chainsaw engines still use pinned rings as did some tractor engines post WW2. I believe some large truck engnes used babbit bearings post WW2, but not many and that going off my memory so I'm probably wrong.

 

[RicinYakima]

"Pinned piston rings...like aircraft engines", hmm. Must be real big ones. I have overhauled several Lycoming
and Continental aircraft engines, never seen any rings that are pinned. Stepped rings on some, but never pinned.

I was told that 1920-1930 aircraft radial engines all had pinned rings. The pin goes down through the compression ring grooves, but not the oil ring. They did not want the rings to ever rotate around the piston. Other than making it a pain to set end gap, I don't know why they did this.

 

[Pistolero]

OK, I never have (yet) worked on any of the old radial aircraft engines, only the flat fours and flat
sixes of Continental and Lycoming, and a bit of fiddling with one friend's Franklin.
I wonder what the idea of is pinned rings? Seems like you would want them to work around and
get more uniform wear on ring and cylinder.

Bill

 

[Wasalmonslayer]

Do you mean pinned to keep the rings from rotating?
Most all 2 stroke engines run pinned rings to keep them from rotating and snagging an air transfer port either intake or exhaust.
Never seen it in a 4 stroke motor.

 

[Bret4207]

Yup, like Salmon said, in small 2 strokes it's to keep the ring(s) end from snagging a port. In larger engines I imagine it was to prevent the gaps from lining up and causing a loss in compression. The old "Perfect Circle" rings were a way of avoiding compression loss due to the gaps lining up. I don't know if Perfect Circle rings are still made, but they had a loyal following in the drag circles back in my earlier years. Whether they made a real difference... who knows. We used to "index" spark plugs too, but I doubt it made any real difference, and the differing depth of exposure of the tip to the combustion chamber might have actually done more harm than good. But, it sure sounded like a great idea in the pages of "Car Craft" and "Hot Rod"!

 

[Wasalmonslayer]

Brett
There are a couple 2 stroke outboard models that require spark plug indexing to even run correctly!
The Johnson Ficht Ram high pressure direct injected was one of them.
That poor motor was doomed from inception.
It was the predecessor to the newer etec.
If you did not index the plugs correctly they would build a carbon bridge and quit sparking.
That motor relied on the extremely high pressure fuel to clean the plugs so they would stay sparking.
Let’s just say my shop does not work on them any longer...