This winter's project. A transmission for the 302 engine

[gbritnell]

Gentlemen, the next 3 posts are going to be just pictures. I have finished all the machining and wanted to share it with you before I started all the grinding and filing. I want to share a mistake I made and why I made it before the pictures. On the left side of the housing is a boss for the speedometer drive. It was roughed out very early on and I didn't pay any attention to it until I started blending in all the surrounding surfaces. While I was nibbling away around it I thought it looked a little 'off'. It certainly didn't match my drawings and they are very accurate. At this point a little checking was in order before I went any farther. The face of this surface is 34 degrees off of the horizontal. That shouldn't have posed a problem for setup, not like when a surface is 47 degrees and you're not sure whether it's from the horizontal or the vertical. When I put the protractor on it it read 26 degrees. What!!!! 26 degrees? That can't be!! How on earth did I set it up on 26 degrees? Nevertheless I laid it out in Autocad to see if it could be saved. I could skim the existing surface back to 34 degrees, open up the hole, make a flanged insert, press it in and all I would have to do is shift the centerline .036. Now I have to insert another clue into the story. Usually I set my jobs up with a vernier protractor, no problem. Just prior to cutting this surface I had just purchased a set of angle plates, 1-30 degrees. As I was resetting the job to recut the surface I pulled out the 30 degree plate and the 4 degree plate and set up the case for re-cutting. Hmm, something didn't look right, the surface was horizontal. Now that can't be! What the heck is going on. ??? FLASH! What happens when you put a 30 degree block together with a 4 degree block but turn the 4 degree block the wrong way? You get 26 degrees. Although it involved more work I was really happy to find out why I screwed up and that the part wasn't ruined.
That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.
Anyway, on with the pics.

 

[gbritnell]

Next 4 pictures.

 

[gbritnell]

The last 3 pictures.
George

 

[Metal Butcher]

Your work is super George! :bow:

If I didn't see you working on it in person, using your mill/drill, I would think that it could 'only' be done with a CNC machine.

George, your the equivalent of a 'Super Human CNC Machine'. :big:

-MB

 

[stevehuckss396]

This is the most impressive piece of machining that I have ever seen!

 

[kustomkb]

Amazing George. That's incredible!

 

[kcmillin]

George, your the equivalent of a 'Super Human CNC Machine'. :big:

-MB

Gentlemen, I think we found "The Six Million Dollar Man", must be some kind of bi-onics. :big: :big:

Absolutely incredible George!!

Kel

 

[steamer]

Damn BubbA!....I don't have any superlatives to describe.....

Dave

 

[steamer]

George,

The more I look at it, the more I see, the more blown away I am......
I wouldn't even know where to begin with that..... :noidea:



th_confused0052

 

[coopertje]

George,

I have no words, just fantastic! Incredible what you can do with a milling machine... Even with CNC this would be a very complicated part and it would take a excellent programmer to make the code for the machine. The fact that you do it by hand is beyond all superlatives :bow: :bow:

Regards Jeroen

 

[Bill Gruby]

Absolutely unbelievabe craftsmanship. Talk about pushing the envelope.I have 40 yrs exp. and this makes that look like nothing. I can't wait to see the end of this project.

"Bill Gruby"

 

[Deanofid]

It's such a pleasure to see what a man can do with manual machines, George. I used up all my fancy
words in your last build thread, so I'm just sitting here slack jawed, watching.
I can't imagine what must go on in your mind keeping all these cuts and angles squared away.
Very inspiring, to say the least.

 

[b.lindsey]

Amazing George!!! These latest pictures also give a much better size perspective...I had been thinking it was larger than it is...which makes it all the more amazing!!!

Bill

 

[gbritnell]

Well with the Galloway builds I haven't had much time to work on the trans but I have the second engine almost complete and needed a change of pace so I went back on the tailshaft housing. The first 3 pictures are the housing with the burr and stone work done. A lot of shaping and radiusing needed to be done so I had to do more burr work than I care for. They can be tricky devils at times. I have found that the best thing is to let them cut with light pressure and not force anything otherwise they'll grab and pull themselves somewhere where you don't want them to go.
George

 

[gbritnell]

I didn't show the process for burring and stoning as I had done a fairly comprehensive coverage when I was building my V-twin engine. The areas to be cleaned up get a coating of ink from a marker pen and then the high spots are slowly brought down until the blue lines disappear.
After the stone work I go in with jeweler's and riffler files to smooth out all the little bumps and marks. Once this is complete I use varying grades of emery paper to smooth things out. When you start to polish, especially with aluminum, you start to see all kinds of little imperfections so you have to go back with the files, and sometimes small stones and clean them up otherwise the part can look pretty rough.
These finished pictures will be in 2 postings.
George

 

[gbritnell]

This is the last finish picture plus several with the 2 cases bolted together.
George

 

[b.lindsey]

Every picture still amazes me George. Simply beautiful!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bill

 

[gbritnell]

These last 2 pictures are for Steve. Along time back he had asked if I would take a picture with the miniature next to the full sized trans for comparison. The pictures aren't great because of the flash in the garage but at least you get the idea.
George

 

[BillC]

Beautiful work George! Your description of working with burrs is good - kind of reminds me of raising children - "light pressure and not force anything otherwise they'll grab and pull themselves somewhere where you don't want them to go." Yep, that's a very good description!

I have some photos of a casting that I attempted to buy that was listed on eBay....I looked them up last night and found them in my photo files. These were taken by the person that was selling a beautiful scale iron casting of a 302 Ford engine block - it's little over 7 inches long. I found and bought the cast iron crankshaft that I feel quite sure goes with it. I could never bring myself to do anything to the crankshaft but just look at the way it was cast - remarkable. The iron block would have been a treasure too...It can be readily seen that the patterns for these castings were done by masters. I'll post them when I get home this afternoon. The fact that you have fabricated a 302 reminded me of these castings that you may get a kick out of...

BillC

 

[BillC]

Miniature Ford 302 Iron block casting...