antique – Twisted and Delusional

New things happening this month….

Well, the heat is finally here and I haven’t been spending too much time up on the property. Mostly I go up in the morning and take care of the things I need to do like watering the plants and checking on stuff. I purchased two new raised beds made from corrugated Gavalume, with some kind of paint on them to help with corrosion. I plan on putting one together this weekend and getting some pictures of it. I probably won’t install them this weekend since I want to level a spot and put some gravel under them. I also plan on trying Youtuber ‘Self Sufficient Me” way of doing Hugelkulture planting. It’s interesting and sounds like something that may work. He lives in Australia and has a pretty nice set up in an arid hot land.

I also worked out a deal with a gentleman in Massachusetts for some antique engines. Yes, I know…. how many antique engines does one person need? I already have a turn of the century Half-a-Horse, 5 Model A engines, a ’20s Fairbank Morse Z 3hp, and others. And yes, they all need a little bit more attention than I have been giving them. But how could I not rescue what looks to be four 1930’s LeBlond 5 cylinder radials? After all, not only are they fairly rare antique engines, but they are also radial airplane engines! The only downside is that they are in pieces… and in Massachusetts.

This is one of several pictures full of parts for the engines. The gentleman I am purchasing them from didn’t want to ship, but after talking over things came to an agreement that he will ship some parts to me now and then bring the rest out to Cali later this year. He has been packing things this week and plans on shipping them next week. It’s a good thing I am building a shop.

Or am I……..

*Sigh* So, I have no pics of shop construction yet because the person who has the bulldozer to start cutting the pad broke his hand. He seems to be healing up fine from what I am told, but no date yet when I can expect some dirt to be moved. In the mean time, I do have the permit for the shop and the metal parts are in production. I should have a truck of parts heading my way in about a months time and hopefully some dirt moved by then.

That’s the update for now. I will post more when there is anything interesting to see.

Inspecting the starter….

After seeing that the starter decided to no longer work on Saturday I removed it, the carburetor, and the battery. I brought all three home since the starter and carb need some love, and the battery could use a charge. I decided to check the starter first because I could have a perfect carb and full battery but neither would do me any good if I can’t turn the engine over. First order of business is to take the bendix off of the starter. The bendix is what engages the engine to make it turn with the starter motor and then release the starter from the motor once the engine is running.

In the pic above the motor is the big thing toward the bottom, the bendix is upper left, and the starter switch is upper right. With the bendix off I turned the motor shaft by hand to see if there was any binding. The motor has a little bit of drag to it, but it wasn’t sticking at any position in the rotation. Looking in the cut outs on the right side of the motor I could see the brushes and commutator were packed full of carbon. That needs to get cleaned up since it gums up the motor and can cause a loss of power as electricity can jump to areas it shouldn’t be. Time to take the motor apart.

I was kinda surprised that the long screws that hold the whole thing together weren’t frozen in place. The would be the two screws center top in the pic. The end plates are upper left, armature lower left. If you click on the picture to make it larger you can see the end plate with the brush holder is caked in carbon, and a trail of carbon chunks leading from the motor housing up to where I set the brush holder down. What a mess, carbon sticks to everything and you can’t just wipe it off. If you try then you just smear it all over whatever your trying to clean up with.

A closer look at the commutator end. All that black carbon in between the commutator segments can cause your motor to run weaker. It can allow some of the energy that should go to the winding you are trying to energize to go to other windings. This means the winding you want to energize isn’t as strong and other windings can energize weakly, but enough to further impede your starter. All of that needs a good cleaning and a piece of pegwood to dig the carbon out between the segments.

Mmmm. More carbon dust. The field coils look good though. A quick check with a meter shows that they don’t have any breaks in the wire and aren’t shorted to the case. I don’t like to remove field coils that have been in place for a long time. I’ve found that the insulation can become brittle over the years and sometimes it creates problems that would never have happened if they were just left alone. Now to the brushes.

Well that’s ugly. Every one of them is worn at an angle. Someone didn’t take the time to make sure the springs that hold them in place and press them against the commutator were centered. The concern here is that the brushes won’t be sitting straight in the holder that they are supposed to slide in. By sitting at an angle they can bind in the holder and stop making contact, and then the starter won’t turn. To make sure they didn’t bind I cleaned up the brush holder plate and then tested the brush holders themselves for shorts to ground. The ‘hot’ brush insulators are still good and the ‘ground’ brush holders weren’t insulated, exactly as it should be. once cleaned up and inspected, I put the motor back together and made sure the brushes didn’t hang in their holders. I also tested the brush springs for proper tension and found them satisfactory. Next step is to take the battery and a good set of jumper cables and see if it spins…..

I’ll let you know once I’ve done that.

More info on the Model A…

Where to start? Ok, so I bought a ‘runner’, but I always take that with a grain of salt. Turns out it wasn’t far off the mark, but it wasn’t ‘turn key and go’ either. I started off the morning by installing a new rear exhaust clamp to replace the bailing wire that was *kinda* holding the exhaust system in place.

Next up was installing an aftermarket safety fuse on the starter motor. I really really don’t like the idea of having absolutely NO fuses anywhere on anything that has electricity running through it. A stock Model A does just that, no fuses…. nothing at all to stop a short in the wiring system from turning every wire into a hot, red glowing, fire starting, heating element.

Nope. Not gonna let that happen.

After the fuse was installed I put an auxiliary ground cable between the frame and the bell housing on the engine/transmission. I don’t know if it actually needed it, but I cant see trusting almost 90 years of rusting engine mounts to be a good conductor.

I did a quick double check of things, put the battery in, and hit the starter switch on top of the starter…..

Nothing……. nada …… not even a click of the starter. *sigh*

Of course, in order to take the starter switch off the starter I had to take the fuse assembly I had just installed back off. 15 minutes later I had rigged the switch to work, they used paper insulators in it and over the years they swelled and got in the way of the internal contacts. Everything went back together and I tried the starter again.

What I got was a pitifully slow turning of the engine. It barely cranked. *Sigh*

Further inspection revealed that the water pump was frozen damn near solid. By this time my Dad had come around to see what was going on and he suggested just robbing a good pump from on of my other Model A engines. “Great idea!’ I thought. It was then I realized that there was something a little different on this engine. The water pump is way different than all my other A motors. Turns out, someone has put a 1932-ish Ford Model B head and water pump on this thing, which leaves me to getting this water pump turning freely. It took a good hour or more to work it free, lots of Marvel Mystery Oil and liberal applications of a dead blow hammer. In the end I think I will be able to overhaul this pump and make it usable. Right now, I just need it to turn freely and re-install it.

Ok, time to see if it will crank over like it should. Hit the starter switch and….. it’s working like it should! Yay.

I turned the key switch on, did a quick check to make sure that I had spark and hooked up the temporary fuel tank. I asked Dad to put just enough fuel in to fill the bowl, and in typical Dad fashion he put in more than that while saying “aren’t you going run it a bit?” About that time the fuel started to pour out around the edge of the fuel bowl on the carb, and I had to give Dad that look only some people familiar with me know… the one that says “and thats exactly why I said…..”. I pinched off the fuel line to keep all the gas from running through it and onto the ground while dad smacked the carb to get the float to unstick. It took a couple seconds for the float to start working and regulating the fuel. Dad hand choked the carb and I hit the starter. About 15 seconds of cranking and the engine came to life.

I did a happy dance. 😉

We ran it for a couple minutes, but without the cooling system functioning I didn’t want to run it much more than that. I concluded my day by putting a new tube in the passenger rear wheel with Dad’s help. At that point it was 100+ degrees out and all I wanted was a shower and my air conditioning.

The rust baby runs….

Here is a short clip of the new project running. After a mornings worth of getting things ready it only took it about 15-20 seconds of turning over to start and run. I will post the details in a follow up tomorrow.

Some more rust for the pile….

Well, I’ve been wanting to build a Model A Speedster for a while. I know, I already have an old car to drive… but I can’t get parts for that one if anything bad were to happen. In fact, I have been in touch with a bunch of people and have yet to see another coupe from that year and manufacturer. So, I just don’t want to take it out and let someone damage it. On the bright side, Ford Model A’s are EVERYWHERE. Plus I can get almost every part for it new from the various people reproducing stuff. Thus, the desire to build one to drive and enjoy.

I bought a 1929 Model A chassis on the 29th of June, which kinda cracks me up. So that makes two 1929 cars for me. The number 29 and old cars is becoming a repeating theme….

Like I said I bought a chassis, not much to look at. Frame, wheels, engine, and a radiator. A bonus was that it was located in Klamath Falls, Oregon and a road trip would be necessary. Lol. Here is what I picked up in Klamath..

Whoo Hoo….. a pile of rust with wheels! It has almost every part on it that it rolled out of the factory with, except for the rear exhaust bracket. All of the brake rod hangers and springs are there, everything still moves without binding. I consider that a good deal compared to most of the antiques I start with which usually are rusted into solid lumps that have to be teased apart before rebuilding. Overall, a good start to my project car.

So I bet you are saying to yourself, “It doesn’t even look like a car. Where is the body?” Funny you should ask. While I was in Klamath I found a possible cowl for it in Redding, California. So, I contacted the person who had it on my way back down from Oregon and asked if I could take a look. Turns out he was a great guy and the cowl was in better shape than I expected. So I left Redding with the first part of the body and it looked like this…

There. Does that make you happier? The trip back was fun, Mom went with me for the trip and Dad stayed home to play Xbox. Dad did help me unload it though, and here it is in it’s temporary spot on the side of Dad’s shop..

Hopefully this weekend I will get some video of it running. Stay tuned.

More coil winding…

The wire came in so time to continue this experiment. I finished unwinding the second of three coils on this item. The third coil is looking good on the meter and shows no signs of rot, so I will leave it and save Louis some tuning work. The outer coil was that mangled mess, so no chance of counting windings as I pulled it apart, but the second coil ( post 5 to 4 in my diagram) was in good shape other than the breaks in the wire and I got a good count off of it. It was post 4: -> 5 winds up, 6th is a gap transition, and 7 to 43.5 where it drops back into the middle hole and goes internally to post5. After cleaning up all the oxide and applying a little bees wax I can start winding.

I started from the middle hole and worked my way back to post 4, that way I could keep the windings of coil 2 up tight against the remaining coil 3 just like it came from the factory. winding on this coil goes in the direction of the new wire, left in this pic. A few minutes of work making sure its all snug and I eneded up with this….

Mmmmmm hmmmm, thats nice and pretty. You can see the transition winding (number 6) in the gap between the new windings. In case anyone is wondering, I measured the gap that winding number 6 jumps as 0.088″ between winding number 7 and number 5. A quick application of some Kapton tape to keep the windings safe and insulate them from coil 1 which wraps over the top and I can start on getting coil number 1 started.

Since I couldn’t count the number of winds because this was the ‘Medusa nest’ seen in the first post, I assumed that the wire was still it’s original length and was once nicely wound. So I took all the broken pieces and cut a piece of new wire the same length as all of them added together and wound it nicely starting from where the remaining original coil started and see where it gets us. The final count is 47 winds on this coil. Time to hand it to Louis and see if the radio will tune up properly with the rebuilt assembly.

I’ll keep you all posted on the results………….

I’m back… and old radio parts

Ok, first post since returning from a trip all the way across the states…… and I’m not posting about the trip. I know, big disappointment, but I will post about it soon. Just not now.

So dont ask when I will.

Right now I’m more interested in posting about a little experiment I have going on. A friend has an Emerson BJ-200 radio that doesn’t work because the oscillating coil is busted. I wind coils, so I thought “Hey, what the heck it’s already broke, right?” The last time I thought that it didn’t turn out so well, repairing cell phones while intoxicated was a bad thing, but I still bust out with a smile everytime I think about it.

So, no drinking during this attempted repair.

My friend Louis (who is repairing the radio) pulled the coil out for me to repair. I couldn’t believe what he handed me, it looked like this….

What the hell is that mess about half way up the coil? I mean really people, it shouldn’t look like a fishing reel after my ex-girlfriend tried her first cast. All of that should be nice and orderly, smooth layers of even windings. So, either this radio saw a REALLY bad day or someone else has been playing with this. I started deconstruction of the coil to see where everything was loosing connection. I had a pretty good idea where some of it would be when I saw the the green death-rot on some of the exposed windings.

See that ugly little bit of green on there? That is the pure copper wire turning into oxide powder. Oxide powder doesn’t conduct, it just crumbles into dust and leaves a gap where wire should be. I needed to look deeper so I did, and found more rot.

Mmmmm. Tasty, like licking a penny when that green rot-powder starts floating through the air. And yes, this is where all the problems are at. Time to order some of the proper size wire and get to winding. So, as soon as I get the wire I just ordered in the mail we will continue this experiment and see if we can get the radio to work again.

Continuing work part 3

It was another productive weekend in the garage/shop. I’ve been needing to get the valve work finished on the Fairbanks-Morse motor so I decided to tackle that. I wasn’t comfortable with the bronze valve guide expansion rate in the cast iron when heating while running. We used Bronze valve guides in the cast iron heads when I worked for Harley, but replacement heads are easier to find for old Harleys than they are for this engine. So, I made a new set of guides in cast iron, to go in the cast iron head, and everything should expand approximately the same and nothing should crack. I won’t go into the making of the guides as the machining is the same as the bronze guides. After the guide is cut then the head needs to go on the mill table and be prepared for machining the previous guide hole to accept the new guide.

The head is locked to the table and I have chucked a piece of material in the spindle that is the same size as the old valve guide bore. This is my home-brew way of aligning the work piece to the mill machine, and it works good enough for this kind of work. I keep adjusting the mill table until the chucked material moves freely in whatever I am trying to align.

Once it’s a free slip vertically in the hole, I consider it aligned and its on to the next step. Make sure you use a straight piece of material in the spindle, otherwise your hole will still be off. Next I removed the locating piece and chucked up a 21/32″ HSS drill bit and started roughing the bore in.

I always take it easy when starting a hole in soft material like cast iron with a large bit like this. It’s too easy for one of the drill bit flutes to bite and ‘grab’ the work, pulling the drill bit off center and throwing off the bore. It goes against proper machine work, but I kick the spindle speed up really high and then lightly ‘peck’ at the hole a few times to get the bore started and just below the surface. Then I slow the bit down to proper cutting speed and cut at normal feeds/speed. In the above pic the bore looks centered and it’s cutting good.

Done with the drilling portion and there is a nice even amount of material still left around the hole. Hit it pretty dead on center and I’m happy. Now I need to ream it to final size. Since the reamers I have are of different types, chucking and hand reamers, I sometimes have to get creative about how to ream a hole. I would prefer to have all chucking reamers so I can just drop the drill bit out, chuck up the reamer and keep everything concentric, but my budget isn’t going to allow that. Lol

So here is how I keep my hand reamers in line and concentric. I have a brass center I turned up and mount it in a collet, which sets in the pilot hole in the back of the reamer. I use small amounts of manual down feed to keep the center ‘locked’ into the pilot and then turn the reamer with a wrench till it feels free in it’s rotation. Apply a little more down feed and repeat. It’s slow but it works.

You also get a visual indicator when the reamer is through the material. That concludes the work needed on the head until it’s time to insert the new guide. The next step is to take measurements from the hole that you just made in the head, and a measurement from the outside diameter of the guide that will go in the freshly made hole. The reamer finishes a hole to 0.6875″ and the outside of my guide was at 0.710″. I turned down the outside of the guide for a proper interference fit of 0.0015″ larger than the hole. I then put a chamfer on one outside edge of the guide, put a tiny bit of high pressure lube ont it and checked the fit.

Well, that looks about right. Feels about right. Astute readers will see a line cut toward the top of the guide. I part most of the way through the guide at total length plus about 1/8″, it comes in handy during the install of the guide. Time to smack it a few times with the hammer and see how it seats.

Almost fully inserted to depth, you can see how much is left thanks to the groove that is cut. Now the lube isn’t on the portion that is driving into the head and there is more resistance to the guide going in the hole. If I got everything right, just about the time it gets to the right depth…..

Perfect. The valve seated to depth and the last tap with the hammer caused the groove to fracture, leaving about 1/8″ standing proud over the hole. Now the head goes back over to the mill table.

A nice pic of the guide and you can see the parting line where the top snapped off. I like to finish this off in the mill with a cutter to bring the guide flush with the old castings, making everything look nice and neat.

That takes care of the outside of the guide, the inside is already done, and we are finished with using machines to do the work. From here on out, it’s all by hand and feel just like I was taught.

A quick run of the reamer through the guide to make sure any burrs or debris is clear of the hole and I can slide the new valves into the head. The valves look and feel good, I get a satisfying whump when they drop into place, the sound that says they will take just a little lapping to seal up good and tight. The sound you dont want to hear is a tinny ring when you drop the valve in the hole. That ringing means some part of the valve isn’t seated against the head. Final pics before lapping the valves.

Building a super mosin….

I’ve been lazy about posting for a bit due to holidays, trying to get a piece of property, work, ect. Posting should pick up again, unless I get that property then I’ll be moving stuff.

I have been busy out in the garage, working on various projects. Lately it’s been a mashup of small things from the hit-miss motor restoration to model engines and firearms. I took a series of pictures on the latest Mosin Nagant 91/30 overhaul and figured I’d share them with everyone. The 91/30 is a WWII era Russian rifle, the one in the pictures was made in 1936 and bought surplus from a box store. Firing one of these in it’s as-purchased configuration is painful, it kicks solidly and the buttstock has a metal plate on the end. Somewhat uncomfortable on the shoulder after a few rounds. Also, it doesn’t have any place to put an optic on it as it came from the factory unless you want to use a WWII era PU scope, which I dont. Optics have come a long way since the 1930’s, and even a ‘cheap’ optic made recently is easier to see through and use.

On to the pictures and descriptions…..

There’s the basics of the rifle with the bolt removed and taken out of all the woodwork. Not a lot of parts there, basically the trigger, trigger spring, chamber and barrel. I will be doing a trigger job, installing an optic rail, changing the bolt handle, refitting an M1944 muzzle break to fit the 91/30 and installing it, putting it in a more comfortable stock, and putting a bipod on it. To give you an idea how radical the change is here is a before and after of a previous super mosin I built.

As you can see, it’s a tiny bit o’ difference.

Time to get the trigger out for a little modification. The trigger is held in by the trigger spring, which is held to the gun by that big screw in the middle of the pic, and a pin that acts as the trigger pivot. Thats it, remove the screw and the pin and everything comes out. What those parts look like….

The trigger spring is on the left, trigger on the right, pin and screw in the middle. The trigger spring passes through the trigger out the other side. That weird block on the spring is the sear, when the trigger depresses the spring enough it releases part of the bolt and the firing pin sets off the cartridge. The problem with this is that there is usually a gap between the trigger and the spring, allowing the trigger to just kinda flop around before making spring contact. I don’t know about you, but that annoys the shit out of me. Floppy triggers suck and need to be fixed. Fortunately, a little time and a set screw can go a long way to remedy this situation. First we need to get the trigger in the mill (or a drill press) to drill a hole.

Trigger is in the vise, wrapped in a surplus business card from my last employer. No need to mar 70 years of patina if I don’t have to. 😉 Next comes a center drill to make sure I place the dimple in the right spot and get a good penetration on the surface for my drill bit. Center drills arent expensive, they are very rigid, and they beat the heck out of trying to start a hole with a drill bit wandering all over trying to get a start. Buy them, use them. On to drilling the actual hole.

In case anyone is wondering, I’m going to install a 4-40 set screw. Go bigger if you want, I don’t think it will hurt anything, I just have always used 4-40. I typically use a HSS numbered bit for drilling tapped holes. Tapping charts are available everywhere to download so I won’t get into numbers. Once the hole is drilled, time to tap it.

Whoo hooo, the joys of free hand tapping. Slow is best, break off a tap in that hole and you’ll be shooting with a sloppy trigger, guaranteed. Once again, retired business card to preserve the patina. I use a tapping compound to keep the threads going smoothly, picture of that later in the series I think. I also use mineral spirits and an old toothbrush to clean the tap about every two full turns , it gets the grease and any trapped debris out of the cutting threads and helps prevent chip binding. Learn from what I say, don’t add to your scrap pile by repeating mistakes I’m trying to help you avoid.

Once the hole is tapped, put a set screw in it and reinstall the trigger. Access to the set screw is through the receiver from the top with the bolt removed. Even without the bolt you can adjust the set screw and get a feel for the adjustment possible on the trigger. I usually take the slop out of the trigger, install the bolt, feel the trigger break, and then remove the bolt and make adjustments as needed. Once I find my happy place, a drop of green (bearing retainer) loctite keeps it from changing.

By the way, here’s a pic of my loyal shop companion. Usually hangs out right by my side through all of my workshop time keeping me safe from roving bands of shopping-cart-pushing zombies.

I bet you thought it would be a dog……. lmao! Next post, optics rail.

Continuing work part 2

I did quite a bit this weekend and didn’t think to get any pics of it. Just for the fun of seeing how it would turn out I stared the fermentation of 15lbs of red flame raisins in my main fermenter. It’s just the raisins, a couple pounds of sugar for starter, and the yeast. I’ll post more on it when I get the first taste and see if it was worth it. I also worked on the cast iron treadle base from the table project. I tried to braze one of the cracks but couldn’t get enough heat for the rod to stick and silver solder didn’t like the cast iron. I may have to get a specialty braze for it. The mead is still giving the occasional bubble in the water lock, so the ferment isn’t done yet. I am looking forward to pulling that batch and getting the first taste once it’s done, I’ll be posting that moment for everyone. And I spent Saturday morning partly on my Kenwood TS430S radio talking to people on 40m Ham bands and partly playing my bagpipes.

Yes, you read that right. Bagpipes.

I began the machining of a new valve guide for my 1929 Fairbanks-Morse hit-miss engine in part one HERE. It’s a couple weeks later and I felt like spending some more time on it, so here is the next bit in it’s making.

The inner bore where the valve itself rides is done, now I need to turn the outside down to be an interference fit with the reamed hole in the cylinder head. An interference fit means that the part to go in the hole will be just slightly larger than the hole itself so that the parts ‘wedge’ themselves together. They have to be a tight enough fit that when they get hot from running the engine, and expand at different rates, that they stay ‘wedged’. This also means that I have to turn the whole length of the guide to size, and I cant grab on to it with the chuck in the usual manner, instead I’ll have to hold the work piece from the inside while I machine the outside.

In the picture above you see the valve guide in the middle with and expanding lap on the left and a ‘live’ tailstock center on the right. The expanding lap goes into the guide bore and the center does the same from the other side. The pointy part of the center is mounted in bearings that allow it to rotate with the part it is contact with, thats why it’s called a ‘live’ center, it moves. All together in the lathe it looks like this.

Now that it is all in place it’s just a simple matter of turning the outside diameter down to size. Any machinists out there who look at the next picture, yes, I know that I’m cutting using the back side of the insert and it isn’t proper. I did it on purpose because there is just enough ‘spring’ in the insert holder that running the cut backwards gives a smoother finish. And since I need a fine finish for the press in fit, it works for me.

And the guide all finished inside and out, ready to be sized to length and pressed into the cylinder head.

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