Sum Total of All Knowledge

A Journal

Work on the bug continues...

 

 

 

"if you’re going to try, go all the
way.
otherwise, don’t even start."

 

                   –Charles Bukowski

P2180821

I've been focused on the bug. It's a mountain to climb, but I've definitely made progress. The chassis is pretty much done. After messing about with the original engine (which was not original- it was actually a Type III engine and it had a cracked case), I was visiting my in-laws in Sacramento and Tom presented me with a 1200cc motor that had been sitting in a field for 15 years. Free. This turned out to be a "D" case, which were built in Germany and Mexico as replacement cases for dealers dropping engines into vehicles. The number is D0291462 which puts it around 1965 or so. Maybe someone knows more about these serial numbers than I do. As the displacements very from 1200 over the years, these early cases are usually referred to as the "40hp case".

Before the teardown

This car is already such a mongrel, I felt like putting an older engine into it wasn't going to do any harm. the fact that it was free is also working in its favor. I'm not looking to win any races. Also, the body of the bug is slowly shifting to more of a 1966 or even 1965 car, so I think the car I end up with will be a 12 volt mid-sixties bug.

I trucked the engine home and started collecting the parts I'd need to get it running, most of which I was able to take from the 1600cc engine. As Rainman Ray says on Youtube, 'Custom parts will give you custom problems', and that has been forever the case with this car. This is a 6 volt engine, so the starter  and flywheel diameters are different. The intake and exhaust manifolds are 10mm narrower on each side, and the engine tins, and the generator placement on the fan shroud, and the pushrod lengths. It goes on and on. So throwing later engine parts on the older engines isn't painless. This motor already had a 12 volt flywheel ring on it. I put the 1600c flywheel on anyway as it was much better condition. A lot of the engine tin was missing. Even nice VW's down at the airport have the tins missing when you peek under there. I'm determined to get them all working properly again..

Well, I did get it on the chassis and I got it started, but there was a ton of blow-by and something was definitely not right. A compression test reveal ZERO compression in the No. 3 cylinder. This is the cylinder that's downstream from the oil cooler in terms of cooling airflow, and it gets the least effective cooling of the four. I think VW even retards the spark timing to run that one cooler; it's a known problem. The later solution was the doghouse cooler, which sits in its own separate chamber so it doesn't throw hot air back down into the engine fins. I won't be doing any of that kind of modification. In any case, it's not uncommon that No. 3 will fail in some way. I just didn't know how badly.

Piston3_with_hole

The picture says it all: there was hole on the piston. After messing about with trying to tear down only the top end, I just dove in and broke down the entire engine down to the crankshaft. I took the parts to Old Speed in Paramount, CA, who reconditioned the crank, rebuilt the heads, provided bearings and much guidance. I think I ended up spending about $1500 on all of it, which is a fraction of what a new long block would cost. I put the "big bore" cylinders and pistons in it. It's one of the only mods that is regarded as reasonable for the old 1200cc engines. There's a little vintage scene of dudes lusting after old-school early years Okrasa modifications where people will hot rod the older engines, but even the books from the 1960's make it clear that the early cases are just not built to take any kind of pounding- Bill Fisher's "How to Hot Rod Your Volkswagen Engine" has some very practical advice on al of this. It's probably the best of these VW engine books, in my opinion. Very dense with information- it's deceiving but so many details are in there, and he gets them all right.

P2180845

But the 77mm cylinders went up to 83mm, and I should get a nice little bump in power. The set is Chinese, AA brand. It's been interesting, and also a little disheartening to see how the smaller, almost cottage industry stuff has moved to China as well now. They make everything. It's not just circuit breakers and power washers by the millions any more. Things like violins and handmade shoes are now made very very well, and in small numbers. You can find the door check straps for a 1970s Mercedes 300D, and with plastic shielding around them to keep them clean, they're much better than the originals. I mean, how any of these do they think they'll sell? A few hundred? Who would bother with that tiny of a production run? Now they do. Parts like this used to be hard to find and expensive but they've just figured out that there is a market there and they make it work. All these little nooks and crannies of old car needs, they are filling the gaps, and all the little producers in the US are disappearing. And so it is with VW parts. They make very good heads, cranks and piston sets. I think in the early 2000s, the quality was highly variable. Some were good, some were junk, but those days are over now. The quality is superb. Russell at Old Speed said they've been running Chinese crankshafts for 10 years now with zero problems. And the piston set I bought- all the ring gaps were perfect. They needed nothing.

I used the original crank and rods,

New camshaft and lifters (Engle, stock profile)

AA 83mm pistons and cylinders

Old Speed rebuilt the heads

I rebuilt a janky old craigslist engine stand first. This was time well spent, though it took a while to do it. I hated the bolt-in-a-welded-nut method of securing the rotation, and I rebuilt it as flexure clamp. the first time I've done that but it works so well. It holds very firmly and won't wear out. I think Stefan Gotteswinter mentioned how the Haas TL-1 lathe tailstock had this flexure clamp on it to secure the ram, and how nice of an arrangement that was. It's so much nicer than a set screw-type thing. Seems like a machining job but it's mostly cutting stuff up with the bandsaw and welding it together. I also made new 'ears' that bolt into the engine mount holes of the case from scratch, trying to make them as accurate as I could so there is zero play. The case is feather light, so you don't think its a big deal when you start building the motor, but once the engine is all together, you're putting the generator and you forget just how little the area is that's holding onto the case, so the fit really matters.

IMG_3544 IMG_3544 IMG_3544 IMG_3606

What's also nice is that I took a spare flywheel nut and made a crankshaft holder that uses the same stand. I think after the 2nd day of working on it I was like "This is not worth it." then two weeks into assembling the engine, and rotating it for the 2000th time, I had changed my mind...

I think I must have assembled and disassembled the case about 6 times. The Hot Rod book warned me and I didn't believe it at first. But so many things trip you up if it's your first time. The biggest error I made was assembling the camshaft 180º out of sync, and I was putting the heads on at that point- that's how far I got when I realized it: the wrong valves were opening. I could've made it work- the distributor could have been 180º rotated, but it just bothered me. I used Curil-T sealant. For taking it apart it was fantastic. It never really dries, it always just stays tacky and smear-able, but for that last, final assembly, I wish I'd used the Perma-tex aircraft sealant. The Curil-T seals it, but I'm getting very small weeping leaks after only a few short runs. This might be due more to the condition of the case mating surfaces on the bottom (which is not great) than to the particular kind of sealant.

I might be able to fix this: if it's leaking around the bolt shafts and washers, I can remove one at a time and put Perma-tex Ultra black around the bolt, then move on to the next one. I think for those bolts on the very bottom, the smaller ones, they're not going to do much warping of the case if you remove one at a time.

 

 

The part you don't see is all the millions of little issues I dealt with as I went. The craziest one was that the base surface of the driver's side cylinder head (the casting part, not the machined part that receives the cylinder top) was bearing on the cylinder casting. So it wasn't seating properly. At all. I through it was hella loud on the first start up, but it ran ok. Only after I did another compression test did I see that I had another zero compression on cylinder 4. I was stunned. How could this be? And I mean ZERO. It makes sense when you realize the entire head wasn't sealing and had a massive, crescent moon shaped gap that air was going in and out of. I tore it down, confirmed the interference problem with bluing dye on the bench, then took it back to Old Speed. Mike trimmed it on the mill in 5 minutes.

Put it all back together and bam, purred like a kitten. So much nicer than the first run. I think a rebuilt carb and rebuilt distributer, that is static timed before you try starting it is worth spending money and time on. I spent a few more days with details: a riser plate for the carburetor. With the later, 12 volt alternator mounted next to the 40hp intake manifold, the carburetor interferes with that. So I made a quick plate out of aluminum.

I also rebuilt the engine tins. Everything on the 40hp engine is about 10mm shorter on each side because the stroke is shorter than the later engines. So the pushrod tubes, the pushrods, all the engine tins... So if you're trying to get all the tins fitted, you have to trim and customize all the nut plates and attach points. It's a lot of work, and when you're done, your reward, aside from better cooling, is something called "bastard tins".

IMG_3717 IMG_3717

Now the chassis is in a hangar down at the airport, and I've moved onto the scariest part of the project: the body work...

April 06, 2022 | Permalink

Tackling the Vacuum system on a 300D

9EE3A884-A70D-4B7C-8BEE-916575E23374

I think I have enough material to put together a video on this, but I think it's worth logging the work so far on the Mercedes 300D vacuum system.

The first sign that things weren't so great with the entire system showed up immediately: the door plungers weren't going up and down. So I knew there was something not right. I just didn't know how deep the problem was. The truth was that the pump was not performing anywhere close to normal, so all the downstream components were either substandard or disconnected as a symptom of that.

I didn't' really have any testing equipment so I went out and bought a pressure/vacuum gauge from Harbor Freight (this is a nice big gauge and it's worked well so far. I've measured vacuum and boost pressure and I feel it's a good quality tool) and a vacuum hand pump with a gauge, also from Harbor Freight (I've been less happy with this- it simply doesn't hold vacuum very well after about a year, and it has a sliding ring on the front that switches it from pressure to vacuum. It's easy to knock or shove this in the wrong position, it doesn't stay in either position very firmly, and I suspect all the leaks are coming from that part of the pump. I'm looking for a better pump that's less than $100. McMaster sells one, I am tempted...)

Wild_vacuum_pair

The first thing I tried was measure vacuum from the main line connecting the pump to the brake booster. 1984 has two ports coming from the pump and both of them looked suspect- swaddled in black cloth tape and sticky epoxy. On startup, the gauge swung wildly from plus 10 to minus 15, eventually 'settling down' to vaguely negative territory as the check valves downstream built up a little resistance. But it still flipped on engine engine rotation from -5 to -15. That was an eye opener. I was kind of amazing that anything was working- especially the brakes.

I researched the issue enough to figure out that probably both the pump and the main check valve directly after the pump were shot. I ordered a good used check valve from Kent Bergsma, and removed the pump. Part of the challenge is removing it without stripping the socket head screws holding the pump to the engine. I cleaned them thoroughly beforehand with solvents and q-tips to prevent this problem.

I also bought another pump on Ebay and went through it. That was 150 bucks. The check valves and the roller bearings are what fail on these. The old pumps have two check valves, and for my car, the newer pump has three check valves. Rebuild kits are no longer made for them. But the secret trick is that if you can save the delicate o-ring and re-use it, the check valves for the new and old pump are identical, it just uses two valves instead of three. So I ordered two of the old kits to get 4 valves. The piston and sleeve on the Ebay pump weren't great. And the roller cam and bearing were sloppy.

When I finally got the nerve to dig in and remove the pump, I discovered the pump on the car was actually in much better condition. The piston seal was tight. The roller bearing was very good, and the o-ring was good too. So I decided to look at the eBay pump as a learning experience and set about rebuilding the original pump from the car. I think one of the check valves might have been installed backwards. It took a bit of clear thinking to 'see' the airflow through the entire pump to make sure the new ones were installed facing the right way. There is some finicky pressing you have to do with the piston spring. Kent Bergsma makes what appears to be a pretty solid rebuild kit for these pumps. which is why Kent's kit comes with a little wooden panel and some hardware. After doing the job on my own, in retrospect I think for about 60 bucks it's well worth the time he put into finding all the little details and tools that make the job actually work smoothly. I reassembled the pump.

Vacuum_pump_5733

I installed the used big check valve and put nev-r-seize on the the threads. Not sure if this was a good idea or not but whatever.

I also ordered a new main line from the pump to the brake booster. I ordered this from carsoemparts in Lithuania. I thought it was worth a shot. It's been nearly a year and it never arrived. I'm just too lazy to follow up on it and there's something fishy about how the item number is no longer valid. This vacuum line is often listed as available in internet auto parts suppliers sites, but when you try to check it out and ship it, it seems to vanish or it's not in stock. I think that this line could easily be custom fabricated. These lines are (or were) apparently made by a company called Festo. I haven't reserached this yet but it could be a solution to another part that seems to be gone forever.

I carefully cleaned the mating surfaces of the pump and the engine. For the engine, it's extremely tight quarters down there. To prevent contamination, I put a rag around the internals and zip-tied around the perimeter to keep it in place. I put a single edge razor blade on a pair of vise-grips and scraped it clean. That, combined with some work with a dremel and scotch-brite on a die grinder got the surface to a properly clean state. Very frustrating work.

Vacuum_pump_5750

With the pump reinstalled, I tested again and the vacuum reading was greatly improved.

I moved on to the next part of the system, downstream from the pump. With the main hose being not so hot, I have since improved it by reaming out the ports, then epoxying a new tap onto it. This lasts a while, then pulls out again. The epoxy just doesn't hold onto that plastic. Lately I tried a different tactic- I tapped the hole and made a new, threaded connector and screwed it into the hole. There isn't much left to work with, but having a more mechanical grip on the parts seems to be working, and the vacuum is better than ever.

I replaced a check valve by the firewall, and started going through the connections. Lo and behold there was a hidden surprise- someone plugged the entire system leading into the engine compartment with a screw. With such poor vacuum coming from the pump, I guess I don't blame them for still wanting brakes instead of fancy door locks.

Now that I had stronger vacuum, I removed the plug and the locks were working again. Very satisfying. Though they'd only hold vacuum for about 5-10 minutes after I turned off the car and locked it. Still working on that one...

The current state of things is that I've been focusing on the transmission shifting, which I'l go into more detail with in another post. Also the 3/2 valve is completely missing from my car- something I didn't really put together until recently. I just thought maybe this year didn't have that because there were so many variations. But the entire system that controls the EGR is complex and most of it missing. Over the winter I personally removed the EGR valve and blocked the ports with plates I made on the milling machine. I also plugged the lines to the switches. There may be a point where I put the entire thing back together as designed. One of the things that Kent Bergsma discusses in his Transmission Tuning manual is that while many folks think you should just tear out the 3/2 valves and all the EGR stuff, the other side of the argument is that there are subtleties of how vacuum signals are sent to the injection pump that are part of the EGR system, and that should probably stay in place if you want to properly tune up the car: it all affects the shift points as designed when it's all running as it left the factory

While that might be true, I do wonder how a Euro-spec 300D looks under the hood and how much simpler and perhaps more efficient and powerful it is compared to the California and Federally mandated rules that they had to adhere to.

For the gassers in particular, the V8's- the hoops they had to jump through with the detuning of the 560SEL for instance, it seems ridiculous.

As to the adventures with adjusting the transmission shifting, that is a rabbit hole that I have fallen completely down into, and I'll discuss more in the upcoming posts.

September 30, 2021 | Permalink

Mercedes W123 300D air filter proper part numbers

Air_filter_diameters

Correct air filter part number for a 1984 Mercedes is MANN C 31 190. This fits the range for years from 1977 to 1983.

There is a smaller version of the assembly which partially overlaps year range (1978-1985)- this is confusing. The part number is MANN C 30 122.

September 19, 2021 | Permalink

Mercedes Hood hinges

As wonderful as the W123 chassis is supposed to be, it has its flaws. Maybe I've lived a sheltered life but I've never heard of a car's hood hinges disintegrating before. To be precise, it's not the hinges but the attach points in the wells that carry the hinges and springs. These are well-known trouble spots that collect water and leaves and other junk that falls into them, blocking the drains and rusting the holes that the hinge pins fit into. One of the things that IS truly great about the W123 is how the hood can lift up like a normal hood, then you flip these little levers on the hinge corners and the hood can continue lifting all the way to a vertical position, making access to the engine much easier. In my case, The hinges themselves are distorted, and the levers the release the hood to the vertical position are twisted and broken off. Also, my hinge attach points are suffering. Someone has been in there already, stick welding some metal to reinvigorate the receiver holes. The hinges are so bend that they keep popping out of the holes and the springs yank them back into the wells.

I found a much better set at the LKQ Pick & Pull near here in Wilmington, CA. today I picked up some custom mixed touch-up paint today at Stevenson's in Carson. Tomorrow I hope to remove the hood and install the better versions. The paint code for the car is 623, or Hellelfenbein (light Ivory).

Mercedes_data_plate_under_hood2

Hood_hinges_before
Hood_hinges_before

September 15, 2021 | Permalink

A setback, or two...

My case is cracked.

I took the case halves, the crank and the cam down to Old Speed in Paramount here in LA. Russ was very up front- you might even say blunt- that the case was no good. He passed a torch over the area where they usually crack and sure enough, it was cracked. When you put a flame to it, if there's any oil or moisture in there, it will bubble out or at least seep from the crack visibly.

Crack_in_case

It's only very faintly visible in this still frame- and honestly it was difficult to see in person.
Crack_in_case

An option is to just use the case anyway. But it had already been line bored several times- to the edge of what is allowable. I left his shop feeling pretty down. He suggested that we use a good case that he has in his stock of used engines. That's a possibility, but he wanted to build the engine all the way up, bench test it and then install it. I know that's a really good option but it comes at a pretty high price. I believe over 5,000 or more.

At any rate it clipped my wings as far as momentum on this project.

Something else that revealed itself was just how chewed up the front quarter panel is on the body. I was happy to finally get it up on the rolling stand. I had grand plans to make a rotisserie but I didn't like the idea of my self-engineered contraption and substandard welding failing and crushing some poor guy in a body shop down in Wilmington. I just removed the complexity and welded the supports to the verticals and it seems overbuilt enough, and high enough that I can get all around it an under it.

But the quarter panel... I've seen some really beautiful threads on TheSamba with folks carefully cutting out the old panel, grinding all the spot welds clean and installing another. I think in a different world I could spend 8 days grinding and prepping and fitting, but even then, I don't have a TIG welder.

I've made some attempts to cut apart and re-weld pieces with the MIG but even with the .023 wire, it's not pretty. It dumps so much heat into the parts, and it blows right through the thin sheet metal. The trick is to just pulse it together with tacks, then add more in between, then more until the seam is closed. But it's so clumsy and ugly compared to what a TIG welder can do.

So the pieces sort of knock around the garage, and the engine parts knock around the garage becuase I can't bear to just throw them away.

But the time will come... I'll get a TIG, and I'll buy a new engine kit, and the bug will continue....

September 08, 2021 | Permalink

Volkswagen Progress

IMG_0334

The chassis is pretty much complete. I say pretty much because the wheels are on, the brakes are installed, the transmission has oil in it. I just towed it down to a friend's hangar at the local airport to get it out of the way while it decide how to proceed with the engine and body. The emergency brake works, but the braking system has no fluid in it. I was concerned that towing it with the axles angled so sharply might not be good for the fulcrum plates. I suppose I could have adjusted the torsion bars to ride level until the rest of the cars's weight was on board.

Buying that little tow bar from the seller in the desert was an excellent investment. I keep finding that I need to use it, though I don't particularly like how it connects to the front beam and scratches the paint work.

Now the decision is whether to rebuild the engine myself or not. The engine is not original to the car. It has a U prefix code which appears to indicate it came from a similar era Type 3 Volkswagen. There are some small differences in how oil dipstick is implemented,though from what I see it's no different than a Type 1 engine. The Carburetor seems to be too small, so its some kind of frankenstein setup. It was running when I removed it. I know very little about VW details such as how piston dimensions relate to displacement, etc., and I don;'t intend to do anything more than put dual carbs on it. Looking at the kits, I think this might be a little easier than I had originally thought. Ha! Likely, it's not easy. Now that the chassis is out of the way, I have a lot more room to let the parts explode all over the shop again.

1967_engine_before_picture

 

Data Plate on body:

VOLKSWAGENWERK AG

MADE IN GERMNAY

Typ 11

Heizg. Typ 1/255 A Prüiz~~~ S 43

Fahrgest. Nr. 117302684

Zul. Gesamtgew. kg. 1180

Zul. Achslast vorn kg. 490  hinten kg 1150

 

Type 11, Sedan

Heating device 1/255 conforms to German law S 43

Maximum gross weight 1180Kg (2601 lbs)

Maximum Axle weight front 490 (1080 lbs), rear 710 (1565 lbs)

 

Curb weight is apparently 1698 lbs, so about a 900 lb useful load, speaking in airplane terms..

 

Engine serial number U014721

 

 

 

July 14, 2021 | Permalink

Making a replacement locking handle for the Millrite

https://vimeo.com/513563272

 

 

Most of the work is in the video itself. I had the Clausing up on Ebay. It sold but the buyer didn't pay, so I took it as a sign that maybe I should keep it. Then a few weeks later, while trying to make room, I suddenly put the South Bend 9A up on Craigslist. It sold the next day for a grand. Pretty fair price, I think. It was clapped out in some respects, but very nice in others. Plus it was so well-tooled.

Since then I've doubled down on the Clausing, getting the collet closer to work, tightening up the gibs.

February 17, 2021 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Airdrop not accepting a movie file exported from Premiere Pro

TL;DR If your sequence is 29.94fps, trying copying and pasting your sequence into a new 30pfs. Export as H264.

While trying to airdrop a 1 minute clip, I repeatedly received the message:

Airdrop_issue

Airdrop can be fussy. I'm not alone, so yes other people are trying to figure this out too, but I also don't want to watch a 10 minute video on how to fix it.

So here's my answer: the native format for my camera is 29.97fps, and I think iPhones "like" 30fps. (I think they can play all sort of formats- Filmic Pro can record at 24fps and the iPhone handles this fine.)

I had no luck importing this 29.97 QT clip into Quicktime Player then re-exporting. One alternative solution was to create a new sequence in Premiere that is H264 and 30fps instead of 29.97. Then drop the existing sequence into that new sequence, forcing it to conform to the adjusted rate. Then try making another export using H264 format, and use 'Match Source' as a preset. This file was 84mb, and went to the iPhone via airdrop without any other conversion hassles.

Good luck.

 

February 16, 2021 | Permalink

Finishing out 2020 / Getting back into the bug

IMG_6573
Without a doubt, the big project of the last few months was selling the Cessna 170 and moving out of the hangar. This took literally months. I owned the airplane for about 15 years, and I felt like it was a long chapter that needed to finally end- the plane needed to move on to someone else. I also wanted to lower my expenses, simplify things and take a break fo General Aviation. I'd like to move to an IFR-equipped, 200mph airplane someday, but right now, I think this is a good thing. Honestly, selling the plane was the easiest part of the journey. I had been accumulating stuff for longer than I owned the plane, and the hangar was always an easy place to just store stuff that I wasn't using but I didn't want to let go of. It was always the answer that was too easy: "I'll just put it down inthe hangar." So, it took quite a while to get rid of all this years of accumulation. I must have done 30 Craigslist transactions and nearly as many Ebay sales. I sold a 4X5 view camera kit with 3 lenses. A Voigtlander R2 camera. A complete 4X5 darkroom including a Beseler 4X5 enlarger, 2 cold light heads, 18 trays, chemistry containers... giant flat files full of art, airplane parts, car parts, the Okamoto surface grinder (yes, it went to a machinist in San Pedro for about a grand), tool carts, tools, sheets of foam, a hydraulic press. The bug body and all the associated parts, desks, chairs, thousands of photographs and drawings. Even the pallet racking is gone, as is the wood from the overhead loft I built between the two rack towers. What I needed to hang on to I moved to a small 10X10X10 storage unit in Carson. This dropped my monthly expenses from, I'd guess about $1000 per month ($600 hangar, airplane insurance, annual inspection, operating costs, foreflight, etc) down to $200 for the storage unit. I'm hoping to eventually get rid of that too. Sooooo many trips to the dump, to goodwill, to the house...I thought it would never end. But as of today, I removed the padlock, the space is empty, and I no longer pay rent there. It's liberating.

No my focus is on home, on family, and reorganizing the garage shop, and the languishing project that is the Volkswagen bug. I think I may have found someone to bring the body to, and that's a small breakthrough in itself. A guy in Wilmington that wants to do it quickly- not keep it for a 'minimum of 1 year' as another perfectionist guy wanted to do. I just need a good driver. I cut up the 67 body, and took the dash out of it. The '64 body has a large hole where the gauge cluster is supposed to go. Tragic...

Bug_sawn_up_hangar

Next are the quarter panels. I'm trying to retrieve as large and intact sections as I can manage. There is an amazing thread of thesamba.com of this dude in Florida doing his own work on his bug, and it's just amazing seeing how he does it.

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=699235

I hope this doesn't turn into a dead link- he seems to have lost some momentum over the last few months. But watching how he removes panels by grinding the spot welds away, then seeing his careful fitting and tig work... it's just masterful... very inspiring. I thought- "Oh, I'll do that!". It really made me feel ok to start cutting body panels instead of fretting about it. So I started grinding the front sill spots rivets away from the dash piece. Let me tell you, it's exhausting. I went immediately the "what the hell was I thinking?" place. I go there a lot with this particular project, which has now expanded like some car-parts-kaleidoscope. Now that I'm committed to having all the parts in and around my garage, it has completely overwhelmed the space.

Rotisserie_cluttered_shop2

Adding to the mayhem, I impulsively put the Clausing 5914 lathe up on Ebay. I just had enough of it taking up so much space and never quite coming together. then, of course, as it was up for sale, I started putting it together. Not only getting a new leadscrew shear pin back in place (which is, like, everything if you want to actually use it) but I was so disappointed in the performance, I bit the bullet on changing the motor drive pulley diameter- I went from 24 teeth to 18, I think. and that made a huge difference in usability and torque. This was all happening while it was up on Ebay. There is nothing that will get the weird dudes out and stalking you than putting a decent American lathe up for sale. This one guy from Texas stalked my via craigslist, found my email and got my number, then talked my ear off for over and hour. All they want is the same thing- they want you to take the machine off the listing and sell it to them directly. Of course, Ebay very much frowns on all that.

Here is a short video I made that acts as a sort of sales pitch for it:

https://vimeo.com/490324526

As I got it ready for the auction close and eventual pickup, I kept fiddling with it. I installed the Royal collet closer. It had been sitting for years- I never installed it. What a sweet piece of kit that thing is. So satisfying to operate and dial it in (Joe Piecynski has a great video on refining the bearings and mounts to reduce clatter and noise). In any case, by the time the auction was halfway through, I was like, 'Damn. I don't want to sell this now.' The clincher was an exchange I had with Ryan Kalamers- a fellow in Northern California who has completed a stunning restoration of his 5914. He convinced me that the lathe was so close to getting dialed in. I have a small leak from the headstock which he thinks is not a big deal to fix (he's been all through his own headstock so I'm inclined to believe him on this.) His own machine had been crashed so hard that the chuck was seized, the spindle bent and the T-nut slot was bent upward. After all that, he is now a hug fan of his machine. All this made me regret putting it up on Ebay.

So, somewhat fortuitously, some mystery no-name bidder with like 2 transactions in their history won the auction. For $1900. Less than I had expected, honestly. But no call or message came. I opened the 'unpaid item' case. Still nothing. The case finally closed and now I'm just thinking I will keep it after all.

Continue reading "Finishing out 2020 / Getting back into the bug" »

January 04, 2021 | Permalink

Cessna 170B Continental O-300A parts for free on Barnstormers

After a major overhaul from Tim's Aircraft Engines in Long Beach, these parts were returned to me and have been sitting in the hangar ever since.

IMG_5793

Cylinders

IMG_5793

Pistons

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Starter gear?

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Delco-Remy starter

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Ignition harness

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Pushrod tubes and springs

 

December 05, 2020 | Permalink

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