New Project 1911 hupmobile

[jeff10049]

Next it was time to get the gearbox assembled I got the gear heat treated and went to work putting it all back together. I found out that some end play washers had been lost in the past so made those up and, had to modify the reverse engagement stop to account for wear. Also decided to modify the clutch release fork a little its a rather heavy chuck of cast iron that hangs off one side of the box and tends to droop onto the clutch hub when free and try to lathe it in two (seems to be a thing with these cars) so I put a ball stud in the other side and drilled the push rd to accept it so it all stays square.
Much more to come in the next few days as I get this up to date. Don't forget to check back to page two I just added a lot at once. 

[MiniDave]

Wow, incredible amount of work, it has to be very satisfying to see the parts all come together and work as designed.

I'm curious, among all the equipment in your shop, you don't have a press? 

[jeff10049]

Wow, incredible amount of work, it has to be very satisfying to see the parts all come together and work as designed.

I'm curious, among all the equipment in your shop, you don't have a press? 

LOL... I should, I had taken it to the business years ago and when I sold the business the press went with it. I've always wanted to build a badass one with a powerpack to run it and all that but I probably just need to go get another HF one for now. I have a blade tilt ram off of a D8 caterpillar set aside for this project one day and a 5000 psi power pack, and a control valve. Just need to design a frame and probably have an engineer approve it of course I want to add a system to raise and lower the table as well because that part always sucks. But for now, do I really need a 50-ton press?
 
I've seen guys modify the HF press with a table lift and an air-over hydraulic power pack for the jack and that's a pretty sweet 20ton setup all a guy really needs that's all I had for 20 years without any mods. 

[jeff10049]

Next got on to some more babbitting the mains were poured and machined.

The front main is a one-piece bearing, and the center main is of course a split bearing so for this bearing I poured two so that I could turn the od to precisely fit the center main carrier and then saw each one in half leaving a slight extra bit of material protruding from the cap for some crush to help hold the bearing.
The final fit of the OD was done by scraping the bearing and blueing the cap surface and checking the fit until good contact was achieved this resulted in over-cutting one half and needing to repoure and start over.
The rear main is also one-piece and the clutch hub rides in this bearing. The tail of the crankshaft is supported by this hub. So the ID of the front two bearings is smaller than the rear.

The large bearing is the rear the two next to each other were for the center te front was another casting just like one of them.

 

[jeff10049]

The next part of the main bearing process was to build a line boring setup.
I ordered a piece of precision ground bar 36" long and made three locations to install a cutter through the bar with an adjustment forcing screw behind the cutter and a set screw into the side of the bit to hold it. I ground up a nice high-speed steel tool bit to cut the babbitt.
Then ordered some pillow block bearings and made mounts to center them up in the main line of the engine the bar was squared to the deck and the side plate of the engine with shims under the mounts.

Then the lathe was used to drive the bar and feed the block the lathe is nothing other than feed and power to the bar. The bar is guided by the pillow blocks which ensures an absolutely straight main line. I drove the bar with a couple of 1/2" drive socket universals and a 1/2" extension to allow for any misalignment with the headstock of the lathe.

Then it was time to start cutting and checking the goal is .0005 oil clearance the crankshaft came back 1.230 journal diameter so I'm shooting for a bearing dia of 1.2305 you can not sand or hone babbitt because it is designed to embed any foreign material so you have to hit the number with machining if you overshoot your number melt it down and start the whole process over no pressure. I managed to hit all the numbers right within a .0001.
Pictures of the setup and the surface finish of a cut bearing.   

[jeff10049]

Next, the oil grooves were put in the bearings and the crankshaft was installed it spun nice and felt so good but then...Drag the needle off the turntable without picking it up. You know the sound party's effin OVER.
I went to install the clutch in the rear main and it did not want to go over the crankshaft tail. Well that's neat when the crank was reground the front and center main were not ground in line with the rear hub of the crank it's off by .005 that's 10 times the oil clearance the bearings have no way can it work.
I don't know how or why this happened I should have probably given them the clutch so they could indicate off of it but it is concentric so shouldn't matter other than reminding them that they cannot offset to account for wear because they are not grinding all the journals like most crankshafts.
 
The easy fix for the crankshaft is to just grind another .0025 or so off to bring it back to center but then all my bearing work is for nothing start over on the front and center mains that's 200 dollars of babbitt and about 30 hours.
I talked to places about welding hard chroming and other options in the end I'm now heading up a project to get some spare model 20 crankshafts cast in ductile iron. The club had possession of a pattern that was used in the past for this and those crankshafts have been successful. So I have a foundry lined up to cast some if I get 6+ the price is right I got 6 orders before I put the pen down so now I'm just waiting for this to happen. $300 each for the raw casting of course there will be another 1000 in machining but that's a cheap crankshaft.

Scat told me even for a run of a dozen at least 5k each but they have to start with a 2500-dollar billet of 4340 so I get it. It would be a badass crank but a 1500 rpm 20 horsepower car doesn't need a 5000-dollar crankshaft. This Ductile iron will actually be an upgrade over the forged factory crank it's about the same tensile strength material but the pattern was beefed up in the areas these like to break. And given that they like to break and mine was over 100 years old I'm not too upset about getting a new one but the time and cost suck and I had a rare good one oh well what can you do.

I'll put the new crank back to stock size so I'll have to set the line bore back up again and take the bearings out to 1.250. I'm really looking forward to putting the engine together in the meantime I'll focus on jigs for pouring the rod bearings and machining.
 

[MiniDave]

Whew! What a journey so far!

Somehow I saw the request on FB for people interested in a crank - I don't know how I got into that group - and I wondered if you were on the list......I didn't know you were heading up the effort! Having a pattern for a crank for a 100 year old car that they didn't make THAT many of in the first place is pretty incredible....

It makes my project pale in comparison......but you and your work are a real inspiration to me to do it right.

I'm surprised pillow block bearings allow you to hold that tight of a tolerance.....but the machining came out amazing....

I'm a little unclear about what happened....when they ground the crank they got the main bearing journals offset to the hub somehow?

[jeff10049]

So the pattern was made or he had it made by a club member about 10-15 years ago because he needed a crankshaft and could not find a usable core after his run of castings he donated the pattern to the club.
It certainly does help and we will use it.
But the foundry has the technology to simply 3d print the sand itself for the mold so having a pattern or paying to pattern shop to make a complex pattern for a small run is not really an issue anymore. The 3d printing of the sand is especially useful for castings that require a core as core boxes are usually more complicated than the main pattern.
Of course, you can also print a traditional pattern out of plastic sand and paint it, and it is just as good as a wooden one.

The traditional pattern shop still has its place as well but there sure is a lot of exciting new tech that helps support old processes.
One neat thing about printing the sand direct is you no longer need to worry about the draft. Although sometimes it is aesthetically pleasing so you might put it in your cad drawing in some areas anyway.


So if you think about a line boring operation the tolerance of the bearings and bar has little effect on the tolerance of the work (within reason of course) as everything is rotating together. If the bearing has some runout it only results in cutting a slightly larger diameter but still round and straight as you make adjustments with each pass you learn how it cuts and adjust for that.
Maybe a cut that should take .005  only takes .004 because of spring in the bar or maybe it takes .006 because of some runout you can then adjust your cutter advancements to account for this. A relatively tight setup is more important to surface finish than tolerance. With all that said pillow block bearings are pretty good. Any rolling element bearing with ground races is probably pretty darn good just by the nature of how it's made. 

Dave, I think you get the Facebook hupmobile group posts because we are Facebook friends I get all kinds of stuff I need to figure out how to turn off some of the notifications. I wouldn't say your projects pale in comparison, I've seen some interesting stuff go through your shop.

To clarify on the crankshaft the front two mains are journals on the crankshaft as normal. The rear of the crank inserts into a hub that is the third main bearing those front two journals were not ground in line with the rear hub of the crankshaft. 
For those interested, I also made a video about the crankshaft it's not a great video I have a phone camera and no editing software. It's a shaky video if I make any more I'll get a tripod or something.

 

[MiniDave]

Terrific, much easier to understand with the video, thanks for taking the time to explain it....

[jeff10049]

My wife found a clock for the car and gave it to me for Christmas, a keystone auto clock co. 8-day car clock with a patent date of 1911. It will look good in the Circassian walnut Dash.
I opened it up for cleaning and had to straighten the hairspring a little clean, oil it, polish up the case, and had a new glass cut for it seems to keep time well. It winds and sets with the Nickle plated rim I think it's pretty cool.

[MiniDave]

Wow! Very cool....

[jeff10049]

Another part that I cleaned up over the winter was the steering wheel the glue joint had come apart on the rim. It only has the one joint so that was a pretty good steam bend. I also sanded down and polished the aluminum Spyder and then oiled the wood with watco.