Crankshaft grinding - video

[marksbug]

the sad thing is.... way to many good cranks get ****ed up when they did not need and should not of been turned....just go by a local auto machine shop that does crank grinding and have a look at the stack of good cranks awaiting thier time to get ****ed up....grind it and loose the hardening.along with the precision it was made with. most all bearaing are availble is .001"~.003 if you only look.and yes you can mix and match to get the clearance you want.just dont get the uppers and lowers mixed up...some are specific...some arnt. also many times reconing the rods you can put them on the low side to tighten it up a little.as well as seprate main cap engines can be adjusted too. Im a big fan of thin synthetic oils I like tight clearance.as well as all my bearings and most other engine componets get either ceramic coated or DFL coatings. they work oh so awesome!!!
most cranks need a light fine/mirrior polish, deburing, balancing,chamfering oil gally holes.and cleaning good proper cleaning.and of coarse lightening before balancing.....for performance stuff.

[Toolmaker51]

Me thinks a set of video would answer, next person asking "why not" to running engine work.
They have no clue degrees of specialization between common machine tools and engine-work machinery with built in fixturing.

[Toolmaker51]

Not I certainly, least-ways in person, yet aware; especially tricks performed completing in frame overhauls.
Quite a range exists in 'bolt-on' aka 'portable' machine tools; journal squirrels, facing machines, boring bars (ie Frank S's avatar), keyway cutters, hand lathes... There might be portable broaches; mass needed to deliver rigidity makes that hard to imagine.

[Frank S]

Not I certainly, least-ways in person, yet aware; especially tricks performed completing in frame overhauls.
Quite a range exists in 'bolt-on' aka 'portable' machine tools; journal squirrels, facing machines, boring bars (ie Frank S's avatar), keyway cutters, hand lathes... There might be portable broaches; mass needed to deliver rigidity makes that hard to imagine.

My avatar wasn't named a Do- More- versi- mill for nothing. I use that thing for a multitude of things and since I has the 48" way bed for it I could either mount it on 1 end and use it like a lathe or mount it on the carriage and use it to mill long groves or whatever I used it as a drill press or a mill at times, as a tool post grinder at others it was a great supplementary tool for other machines or a standalone machine of its own.
My dad had an early model Kwik-way cylinder borer that we sometimes used to bore out a single cylinder of a tractor engine in the field or in the case of a @ cyl popping johnny John Deere tractor just bore out both cylinders as much as 0.100" on 1 old tractor, or bore out an entire engine if doing a rebuild.
People today would look on in horror if they saw someone do the things, we did without the aid of several hundred thousand of dollars' worth of fancy machines.

[hemmjo]

When you are in a "make do with what you got" situation, the goals and tolerances are different. This is especially true for an engine that is going to spend its life seldom running more that 1500-1600 RPM

I expect someone with a dedicated crankshaft grinding machine to do much better than "close is good enough".

[Frank S]

When you are in a "make do with what you got" situation, the goals and tolerances are different. This is especially true for an engine that is going to spend its life seldom running more that 1500-1600 RPM

I expect someone with a dedicated crankshaft grinding machine to do much better than "close is good enough".

Or at least not say it out loud for everyone to hear. It would have been the last one he would do for me. the old engines my dad did would last for 10 to 20 years seeing some pretty rough service even with the portable equipment he had there was no such thing as close enough unless the damage was to the extent that it could only be a temporary fix until it could be brought to him for a good tear down, which he would always tell the guy what really needed to be done. sometimes they listened and my dad would send the cranks and blocks out to a real engine machine shop to have all bores and journals matched correctly then build up the engines for them, other times it might be a couple years before they would have him pull an engine, transmission or rear end and replace with new parts. I never heard of one of his repairs even the ones he told the guy were only patch jobs to be the reason for causing a failure. After I got older learned how to weld and eventually bought my first lathe and welding machine his health had started going downhill so he had gotten rid of most of his equipment. When I finally brought the lathe home from the Blacksmith shop, he told me one day if he would have had one of those things back in the day, plus the portable equipment, he had sold he and I could have really done some things.