Swifty's build of Howell V4

[Swifty]

Here are the heads with the final paint colour (color for those in the US).



I made a start on the crankshaft yesterday, and some more work on it today. What is supposed to be free cutting mild steel is a real pain to machine and get any type of good finish, but I have to persevere with it, and it's not to bad so far.



Paul.

 

[Cogsy]

Those are some mighty pretty heads Paul. Nice work indeed.

I don't know what grade of steel you're using for the crank but for my Peewee I imported some 1144 stressproof from the USA via Amazon. Landed price for a 1" x 24" bar was only about $40 Aussie. Might be worth considering getting some for your next engine, especially if you're going to do a 1 piece multi-cyl crank. It machines nicely and doesn't warp. Just a pity it doesn't seem to be available in Australia for some reason.

 

[Swifty]

Thanks Al, when I bought the steel for the crankshaft, it was from a small supplier and he wasn't 100% sure that it was free cutting. But the price was right, especially for cash.

Paul.

 

[michael-au]

Great looking heads Swifty

 

[Swifty]

Thanks Michael, I've just been setting up a chuck in the mill to do some more machining on the cranks.

Paul.

 

[gus]

The outer-heads look great. Day off today-------went fishing. Not a very good day. We lost the one and only biggy. Crankshaft turning tomorrow. Will work out the procedures/steps/details etc. Alignment worries me.

 

[petertha]

Coming along really nice, Swifty. 2 questions:

- did you do any valve seal testing against the cage seats prior to (assume they are now Locktited in) head installation?

- way back to post #33 is a picture of a cool looking boring head. Is that a German Wohlhaupter ?sp? or Czeck Narex or some such euro jewel that go for as much as some people buy entire lathes for? Reason I ask is I've been looking at (used) ones with finer graduation than my Clunk-O-Matic & through that net surfing came to realize how functionally versatile they are. Is yours on an R8 spindle by chance?

 

[Swifty]

Petertha, in answer to your questions, the valve cages certainly are loctited in position, but I haven't cut the valve seats yet. I plan to make a valve seat cutter with a pilot a bit later. I plan just to lap the valves in and see how they go, I haven't got anything to test the sealing.

The boring head is a "Kuroda", made in Japan, I kept it when I retired from work and closed my toolroom. It's a thing of beauty and a pleasure to use, if I want to take 0.01mm/0.0004" off diameter in a bore, that's all it will take. That's the graduations on the dial, but I can easily split them if I need to. It also has auto feeding for facing parts, but I rarely have to use it. It is on an R8 shank, by memory, we made it at work, but you can buy the different adaptors.

Paul

 

[Swifty]

Some more work on the crankshaft, I've been drilling and reaming holes for the crank pins, machining .020" slots and drilling and tapping for the clamp screws. As you can see, I also milled the relief on the webs, when I was doing the first one, the cutter grabbed on the outside and spun the part in the chuck that I had on the mill table, this left a cutter pattern around the outside of the web. After my heart skipped a few beats, and I was finished using bad language, I decided to clean up the OD and make all parts the same.



There is still some more machining to be done on the webs, but following the build guide, the next step for me is to make the cast iron cylinder liners. Once these are in place, I have to assemble the crankshaft as it is and install it in the block. When this is done, a special home made tool is inserted down the liner to mark the outside dia. of the web, this shows where to remove material. It seems a bit of a long winded approach, maybe I should just lay it out on CAD and work from there. I think that the designer is trying to allow for variations in size of the parts.

Paul.

 

[Swifty]

I made a start on the cylinder liners, I turned the outside dia. to .020"oversize, then drilled 1/2"dia, then 3/4"dia and parted off leaving a bit on the length. This gave me 4 rough blanks.



Next, I set up a boring bar and rough bored all 4, leaving .015" on the ID. After cleaning away all the cast iron chips, I proceeded to finish the bores leaving .002" for honing later. I do have a bigger boring bar, but the one in the picture has a carbide shank and is very rigid. There was no taper at all on the bores.



And here we have 4 liners ready for honing, I will finish the OD on a mandrel.



Paul.

 

[Swifty]

For anyone wondering how I was holding my boring bar in my last post, here are a few pictures. It's being held in a 20mm diameter ER20 collet chuck, which I made a holder for. I also have a few boring bars with 20mm shanks, and for a 16mm one, I use a bush to make it fit.




And here is the collet holder, it's great for holding smaller size boring bars etc. I also have chamfering bits that fit, so I can do outside and inside chamfers on bores.



No mucking around with packers or anything.

Paul.

 

[petertha]

For anyone wondering how I was holding my boring bar in my last post, here are a few pictures. It's being held in a 20mm diameter ER20 collet chuck, which I made a holder for. I also have a few boring bars with 20mm No mucking around with packers or anything.

That's a nice tooling idea. In another of your pics I noticed you had the typical dovetail toolpost. Is the ER so you can accommodate larger & variable diameter shanks than the tool holder slot? By packing you mean shimming vertical height so tip is on center, or just material protecting the boring bar from toolholder clamping set screws?

Mine is typical offshore model, 200-series (some refer as B) with max 5/8 tool thickness. So it can clamp most of the typical insert lathe style boring bars. But I also have 0.500" shank cutter tools for mill boring head that just sometimes seem to finish better than inserts now & again. I'm leery of marring the shanks because the boring head holes are a pretty nice, smooth fit. Is that another ER advantage?

 

[Swifty]

Hi petertha, you are quite correct about seeing a QCTP in a previous post, I bought it a few weeks ago, but most of my tooling was too big for it. I also bought a set of turning tools to suit the new holders. Although it's only a couple of minutes to change the tool posts over so I can use the bigger tools, I'm currently awaiting the arrival of a dovetail cutter so I can make some tool holders to suit. By packing, I did mean packing to get the centre height right. I have a lot of very small HSS boring bars that are ground concentric with the shank, this is where the ER collet holder is handy to hold the different diameters, with everything always being on centre.

The tool holders that came with my QCTP look exactly like that in your photo, the only complaint that I have is that the screws are a poor quality, I have just about rounded the hex sockets in most of them, I will source some better quality ones locally.

Paul.

 

[Swifty]

I made some more progress on the cast iron sleeves, first job was to hone all the parts to finished size using a brake cylinder hone. Next I made a mandrel and washer to hold the parts. I drilled and tapped the end M10 and jammed a screw in, after cutting the head off, I centre drilled the end. I then machined it down to suit the bore on the parts, when I took the photo of the mandrel, I had already moved the tailstock out of the way



The parts were then mounted up and machined to size, everything went very quickly using the mandrel. I actually roughed them all down using a carbide tip tool and finished them off with a HSS toolbit.




The head end has a step machined to suit an O ring, but before I do that, I want to number them and put them in the block, then measure how much they stick up, and then machine them down to .001"below the surface of the block. I have left about .005"on the head length to allow for this, my counterbores in the block vary slightly, hence my methods.



Paul.

 

[jimjam66]

Nice to see things moving along at a good pace, Paul!

 

[gus]

There will be a lot more parts to make and seem never ending. The liners look great.
All four pcs look identical.

 

[Swifty]

Hi Gus, when I bought the cast iron, I forgot to get some for the rings, so I better order some more soon. Have to make a lot of rings on this engine.

Paul.

 

[Swifty]

I have now matched the sleeves to their bores and numbered each hole and sleeve. The sleeves sit just below the face of the block, and there is a step for an O ring on each, there is no head gasket, just the O rings for sealing.



Now that I have finished with cast iron for a while, I need to give the lathe a good clean down with some degreaser.

Paul.

 

[gus]

Hi Gus, when I bought the cast iron, I forgot to get some for the rings, so I better order some more soon. Have to make a lot of rings on this engine.

Paul.

Hi Paul.

You beat me .I have 2 x 3 rings to cut. Pistons Rings are about the easiest to make.

Think I will go for the CI Flywheel and taper lock for show off. So many choice of items to make.

Time passed so fast and its week end.

 

[Swifty]

The weeks are flying away Gus, don't know when I will be finished with my engine, all the little bits take time. I prepared some material last night for the conrods, so might start on them soon.

Paul.