Makeshift lap

[Frank S]

Very nice, we do not think much, well me anyway, of using wooden bearing much these days, have to keep that in mind!!

The key trick is a good one also.

Another material most don't think about using anymore as a bearing is leather. my dad and I were bringing an older truck back home to rebuild the engine but it was still running. I was following him in it when the engine started knocking whenever I let off the peddle to shift. I flashed the headlights several times to get his attention so he would stop. we found a place to pull off the road and I showed him what it was doing by giving it a little gas then letting off. We still had about a 100 miles to go and knew it was not going to make it in that condition, and that would have been a long way to chain tow it, so we dropped the pan removed the rod cap and there wasn't hardly anything left of the insert shell. He cut a couple pieces off his belt 1 a little longer than the other placed the longer piece in the top half of the rod cut holes for the rod bolts and the shorter piece in the cap Tightened it up then removed it and shaved a little off a couple times put the pan back on all this without draining the oil out of the pan. I kept the RPMs as low as possible we drove about 40MPH the rest of the way. If we hadn't done that the engine would have thrown the rod possibly damaging the crank beyond a regrind and even could have put a window in the block As it turned out we managed to save everything just had the crank turned something like .010& .020 bored the block ourselves with our Quikway, decked the block and the head with his huge file. New pistons rings bearings gaskets and a valve job. I drove it back to the customer at 60,70 and sometimes with my feet flat on the floor the 300 miles and took the bus home.