new member intro

[Red Duck]

First post

We have a 30 x 60ft shed that is full of tools, equipment, bikes and spare parts for bikes. We park our cars outside all year round. Friends tell me that I'm at "peak shed" in terms of the contents-to-space ratio . . .

My background is automotive machining, and although i have a full-time job, I have accumulated a useful range of machine tools for performing many of the machining operations on cylinder heads, conrods & blocks and producing swarf in abundance. The machine tools are partly for my own vehicles but I also do engines & gearboxes for very patient friends and acquaintances

Equipment includes a 1980s Taiwanese Tiger Turn 1340 lathe (similar to Jet, Lantaine, Grizzly etc), ancient Sunnen horizontal hone, equally ancient Van Norman 944S portable boring bar, reasonably modern Kwikway SVS11 valve refacer, Emco FB2 mini mill, and a Scledum RVA 300 S surface grinder (better known in the USA as Storm Vulcan RVA300). Various other odds & ends include a 50 ton hydraulic press, a self-made conrod aligning jig and conrod balancing jig, and a Sunnen AN cylinder hone powered by an antique Wolf 1/2" heavy duty drill that refuses to die.

We have several bikes from classic BMW airheads to more modern Ducati's and a pair of Honda "postie" bikes.

And, we're domiciled in New Zealand

 

[nadogail]

Welcome to the Forum , you have in my opinion almost everything you need to open an engine rebuilding shop. A crankshaft grinder, an Align boring machine and a Hot Tank should make you complete.
The shop I worked in, 1950’s, had Tobin Arp
Equipment, the Crankshaft grinder and Surface Grinder were Surface Grinder were Storm Vulcan.
I am on the Southwestern corner of California.

 

[four.cycle]

Greetings from the City of Destiny

 

[RoninB4]

-From Appalachia, welcome to the ranch. Pull up a chair and join the conversation.

 

[Red Duck]

Welcome to the Forum , you have in my opinion almost everything you need to open an engine rebuilding shop. A crankshaft grinder, an Align boring machine and a Hot Tank should make you complete.
The shop I worked in, 1950’s, had Tobin Arp
Equipment, the Crankshaft grinder and Surface Grinder were Surface Grinder were Storm Vulcan.
I am on the Southwestern corner of California.

I have acquired equipment over the years by trying not to be impatient, and trying to be ready when they do become available. The surface grinder is a recent purchase that i was actively looking for, but it took two years to find what I wanted at a fair price.

On the other hand, the new 50 ton press was a replacement for my previous press which had leaked for years. The final straw came when assembling a BMW /2 crankshaft which is a press-fit affair with separate bigend pins and full circle conrod bigend bearings & cavities. The force required to assemble it actually bent the frame of the old press . . .

A crankshaft grinder would be a nice-to-have, but conversations with those still in the trade suggest that the days of keeping someone permanently occupied just grinding cranks are over. The shops still grinding cranks are either doing heavy duty diesel work, or they are doing classic and performance work. Either way, it tends to be very intermittent instead of constant now.

I'd still like the tooling to cut recesses for valve seat inserts, better seat cutting equipment, pressure testing gear etc . . . however space is becoming a constraint, which is something I didn't foresee when we built the shed 20+ years ago!

 

[nadogail]

The Owner of the shop was the principal crankshaft grindef, he hired a member of the Air Force’s who worked partime usually Saturdays, we had popular reground crankshafts in stock waiting for future use, they were sold as exchange shafts.

 

[Red Duck]

The Owner of the shop was the principal crankshaft grindef, he hired a member of the Air Force’s who worked partime usually Saturdays, we had popular reground crankshafts in stock waiting for future use, they were sold as exchange shafts.

The shops i worked back in the 1980s did the same, and had a crankshaft exchange service for the popular engines of the day. I operated the AMC 1500 crank grinder back then and it was a nice machine to use.

 

[micromind]

Welcome from western Nevada, USA.

 

[loganb]

And welcome from Nebraska USA!

 

[larry4406]

Welcome from northern VA

 

[nadogail]

The shops i worked back in the 1980s did the same, and had a crankshaft exchange service for the popular engines of the day. I operated the AMC 1500 crank grinder back then and it was a nice machine to use.

We seem to have similar backgrounds and experiences.

 

[Red Duck]

We also had exchange short and long blocks for the common Australian and English cars that were on the roads of New Zealand at the time. We had engines on the shelf for GM Holden and Ford Falcon straight sixes, Ford Pinto 2 litre and Hillman Hunter, and they were all quite popular. The shop i worked for also had a good reputation for European engines, which I preferred as they tended to be much more interesting. We did Alfa Romeo, Jaguar and Mercedes twin cam engines engines with the intermittent Peugeot wet sleeve engine thrown in too.

Back then, I occasionally did engine work from home and would take the required machining to work. The most ambitious was rings, bearings, heads and timing chains on a Porsche 911 2.2l. I must have been mad. If it had failed for any reason, I'd still be paying it off today.

 

[Red Duck]

And welcome from Nebraska USA!

Ok, here's some of my equipment, some of which is older than me. You can see in the pic that the surface grinder has an integrated rotary table for machining flywheels and clutches on the left at the back. The Sunnen horizontal hone dates back to the 1940s, possibly late 1930s. I have a few resizing mandrels in the size range I usually need.

I've added pics of the balancing jig and the conrod alignment jig that I made two years ago out of scrap (ok, the gauges weren't scrap!). I'd post more pics, but the shed is overdue for a cleanup.

 

[Mike65]

Welcome from SW Virginia. Nice machines.

 

[Miss the Pontiacs]

Welcome from Canada. Nice setup Looking forward to your input.