Different type of babbitt job today! Pouring two caps and a rod bearing for a Cletrac motor for a friend. Toss a few bucks in the hat: www.patreon.com/themadmailler PayPal donate to: themadmaillerATgmailDOTcom
First thing is the rod & cap need to be baked as you said to remove all of the oil, then you need to blast the parts clean. "Tin" the shells so the Babbit has a "Physical Bond". Without that, the heat can't transfer from the bearing material to the rod. I'll bet you can knock those Babbit shells right out of the rod and cap with a couple of taps with a hammer? A 1/32" piece of aluminum will work great at the joint line, and will allow you to take everything apart easily without you having to saw it apart. You can also re-use the shims. For small parts like rods, I like to "Puddle" the 1/8" Babbit wire in with a small Victor J-27 torch and a small tip. If you like pouring, that's O.K., but very time consuming for small parts. Just my 2 cents and thirty-five years exp! Thank you!
My father was really good at pouring babbitt bearings. I remember him pouring babbitt bearing in a Caterpillar 15 about 50 some years ago and it turned out perfect. The engine idled with 40 lbs oil pressure. I didn't watch him pour them. Wish I would have. Being a kid I wasn't very interested but I remember him being happy with it. A friend of mine has that dozer and it is still running today.
As an apprentice in 1965 I overhauled the Medows engine on an Oliver DDH cleat track dozer. Those conrods are the exact same ones that I worked on(blue, file a bit, scrap a bit). To determine the exact correct temperature of heating the babbit, lay a piece of brown paper bag on top of melting metal in pot. Paper will turn black at the right temp without burning the babbit. The New South Wales Foresty Commision in Australia had a fleet of these with winches used for snigging logs. The winches were the best designed in the world at the time. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
Thanks for the walk through. My father in law talks about about the old Cletrac he drove as a youngster in the 40s on the farm. Great to know folks trying to keep them alive.
When I'm casting lead or tin, I often times when I know it's still solidifying and starting to pull metal, I will play the torch along the top where it's pulling the metal from to keep it a little more liquid for a little bit longer to give it a chance to pull and settle so it doesn't wrinkle or get voids.
Cool old time trick of the trade thanks for having the guts to show us what life was like back then ,, I've been rebuilding automatic transmissions 44 years and don't see Babbitt thrust washers hardly ever anymore 🔥
In the 70's I worked in a connecting rod shop & would machine out the babbitt & size the rod to fit bearing inserts by the 100's at a time, on the old 6 cyl GM rods. No more babbitt.
As a seventeenager my 1936 Ford eight babbeted big ends clattered too much and my one off solution was to file material of the con rods and end caps to make a very tight fit on the journal,which I treated by marking the worn babbet with engineers blue and scraping away to get a round perfect fit.Result very good for many enjoyable if slow miles.
I’ve enjoyed your video, I’m in the U.K. and couldn’t find any of the special damming stuff you used so when I Babbitt my 1934 engine I used clay and it worked out great 👍👍
When I was in trade school 40 odd years ago , we had to do a set of rods but there was a cool jig with a handle that closed up on the rod , can't remember if we did half, you definitely need to tin the tunnel etc , I had an old 51 ford popular E93A engine , a trick if you have lots of spares is if you have a good set of say .040 rods , you can pin hole bore them back to .020 and grind a crank to suit .. cheers😅
I used to work at at automotive museum where we had all of the old tools we needed, including a babbitt setup that made pouring them a lot easier, though we preferred pouring them in place.
Very interesting I certainly learned something. Pretty sure it was Keith Fenner and maybe Keith Rucker that did videos on Babbitt pouring. Thank you for sharing.
I have always fluxed and tinned the bearing surfaces before pouring the Babbitt. It is important that no oil can get between the Babbitt and the bearing shells otherwise the Babbitt can pound and break up prematurely.
I have done many both small and very large. It's always better to tin the services at it stops the poured bearing from shrinking away from the bearing backing or in this case the rod and cap. It may look ok but they often get voids you cant see and then they delaminate as the oil gets under and hydraulic sections or the whole backing off.
@@themadmailler you can use the Babbitt but you can also use a high lead solder which means you don't have to heat the part as hot. I just use bakers liquid flux or silver solder paist if difficult surface. You must use a really hot iron (i use a large copper block one) after pre heating the part or heat the part and directly melt the solder stick with a vigous action to ensure good bond. I add shims to the cap ends if possible, so if the bonded bearing is still secure you can remove the shim and reclamp and rebore or scrape (better to hold the oil) to extend the life of the original pore. Anouther difficult trick if the bearing is worn and the bonded bearing is secure to the backing (cap, rowing this case) you can use a very hot large soldering iron to re solder new Babbitt onto the bearing surface and re fit. We used it a few times for emergency repair on large bearings and anon shimmed oil pump bearing when I was on the ships as a marine engineer.
You can use an oil Stone and remove all of the teeth set / kerf from the hacksaw so it's completely flat on both sides so it will only cut straight down.
If you wanted to do these again you could drill and tap a hole in the centre of the tool you made and do the same to that bar stock you rest it on and use a stud to hold it in place and put little wings of shim material on the upper ring to hold it centre up top, and have a bushing welded or threaded to the plate at the rod end with a shoulder to keep it in line with the other part, and if you really wanted to make it easy you could put a stud or pin somewhere to hold the rod from moving at the bottom end (it will only swing as the wrist end bushing thing will hold it. And if the top rings get stuck you can just pry away and bend the shim stock, or chisel the layer covering it away and pry upwards.
Very interesting certainly learned something there. Pretty sure Keith Fenner and maybe Keith Rucker did videos on Babbitt pouring. Thank you for sharing.
Yes,both Keith’s are great teacher of old iron restoration. Good of the land channel too. Looks good from my Couch. Thanks for sharing! Keith Fenner shows a tinning process on one of his Babbitt pours. Oxtoolco has done some video on Babbitt.
Good job. Dave Richards of Old Steam Powered Machine Shop has a few videos on the subject, you'll have to search through his content though, thanks for sharing
"Maximum material condition"........I can tell you are accustomed to using geometric tolerance, or worked in engineering and/or QA. Great video. Cheers from Akron, Ohio.
More consistent heat will go a long way toward getting a better pour, plus always secure all the parts of your mold. As for damming material, I prefer ceramic clay. You pack it and heat it, and it turns to rock.
Next time put the “mold” in a owen and preheat everything to be just over the melting point of the tin, you don’t loose temp in the tin when pouring, and the mold is not overheated.
That knife you have on the table at the beginning of the video did you make it I made on that looks just like it It was my first folder and still my favorite Great video👍👍👍👍
Your damming material was made with water, oh for shame! That was the sizzle causing air belles that ruined your first pour. Water and liquid metal are the most mutually exclusive things there are. The frosting is a result of the Babbitt cooling too quickly (mandrel or cap not pre-heated enough). Great problem solving though, pour oversize and machine away the rest is also my plan of attack when doing this. I'm not a machinist and have sold several "Raw Pour" jobs. The customer will pay for that extra Babbitt, believe me. You will be seen as the hero in the end, the overage can be collected and reused on the next thing. Retaining holes/drilling of the cap so the lining does not fall out sort of works, the fatal flaw is that caps should be "Tinned" like soldering copper pipe or a brass radiator. This initial bond is the key to a secure bond. There is a special tinning flux that comes as a dry powder to sprinkle on cast Iron used to tin the cap. I have some so old I think it now might need a screwdriver to get it out of the can. Check with roto-metals or Mc Master-Carr for a supply. On final assembly after machining, a product known as 'Time Saver" is mixed with light oil and smeared on the rotating member and bearing surface and used as a lapping compound. The shaft is rotated by hand and the caps gradually tightened as the process goes (shims in place), repeat additional time saver if needed. This wipes any machine/scraping marks and will give a very consistent .002 oil clearance allowance. Rule of thumb after blueing is a +75% bearing surface for hand scraping, time saver can give you a very predictable at least 95%+ bearing depending how far you want to take it. The more perfect it is, the fewer hours it will go so keep a happy medium. There is not a thing wrong with a machine running on poured bearings with 85% contact surface. Laminated shims and being adjustable are a great thing. Each shim removed at adjustment also reveals greater surface area/bearing surface increase. Oh, oil galleys only need to be cut a few thousandths deep, most guys go deep when it's really the tip that makes the magic happen. Tip for others, do not reuse old Babbitt, you do not know it's compounding. If it already failed once...? It does however make great cast High Velocity bullets (it's bearing material and mostly Tin so it holds up quite well, weigh finished bullet weight against load data before trusting what the mould has stamped on it, tin is not as dense as lead), also makes fairly Eco-friendly fishing weights.
That's true about the damming, but i've heard of other people using that mix for damming so I tried it. Oh well! I tried tinning once, the cast iron was so oil soaked it wouldn't tin. I didn't even think of it this time. maybe if i find some i'll give it a try for the next job.
nice try at making lunch at the same time with the babbitt dam. :) Is the ID the finished surface, or will it be machined as well? Sorry if you mentioned that. My wife says I have listening issues, or at least I believe she said that.....
The very last thing you want to be doing is drilling holes in the rod and cap as it will certainly weaken them. This video is a good example of failing to do your research before starting. The result is very amateurish. No bond between the babbit and the rod/cap except a mechanical one,, damage to the rod/cap mating faces, weakened rod and cap, seconhand babbit risking inclusions, inadequate heating of the parts before pouring etc etc. The golden rule of being a good engineer is "Do no Damage", to the part, yourself, the environment, your reputation and your tools. The way most amateurs work is to do the first thing that comes into their head. Rarely is that first idea an ideal solution. Only start the job when you have thoroughly researched the best solution.
I do this for a hobby, not a business. If viewers enjoy my videos, they can donate to keep the wheels greased! I'm pretty far from georgia - good luck with your project! what are you looking to have done?
