The heated piston trick is worth its weight in gold, I'll be trying that this winter out in my own shed. This kind of thing is exactly why I started watching your channel to start with. I don't want to know how a million-dollar shop would do things... I want to know how you would do it in your shed.. Cheers Ivan
Ivan and Allen Millyard, two Shed engineers who show just how talent and experience can get around seemingly any problem! Great to watch two such unassuming men doing what they know best!
Fanbloodytastic engineering I bet when you where racing Ivan retirement was a word never heard in your garage unless it had a major mechanical failure ,you both are what made this country a place of engineering excellence thanks chaps 👍👨🏻🏭
The gudgeon pad pins are better than circlips, most American Aero engines used them from the 30's. They are generally aluminium but I don't see why brass won't work. However for the last few years we have been using PTFE pads on all our race engine and it is the best we have found. I can't claim to have thought of this as the MMM MG boys have been doing it for years.
Hi Ivan, thank you for the mention always pleased to help with piston rings and plenty of wire circlips in stock !! Great filming/editing as usual from Tanya.🙂
Thank you. Nice bit of practical testing, machining and fitting. Less is always more when you have some tricky adjustments to make. Tanya, please note, NEVER brace a grinder in the way that Ivan did, with his left hand! 😊😮
"More or less dead right", gotta love it. I want to thank Tanya for her persistence with her photography, ie. finding the right camera position and angle to show what is being done. It ain't always easy!
Glad we Aussie's can still teach the poms something once in a while 🤣👍 thanks for the little shout out guys, keep up the great work and videos. Cheers Kurtis from Straya 🇦🇺
Wow Kurtis. Surprised to see you here. I think you and OLD JOHN will really enjoy some Japanese tuning. Greetings from Gary in japan. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-AgmuTQuYHxI.html
Mr Dutton should be in the national treasure chest,along with Alan Millyard.People like these two are irreplaceable,and not half enough recognition.I used to be a motor mechanic.When I watch these two I feel like pond life compared to them.
Hello from Canada: Heating the piston and seeing it expand so much it won't fit is part of my job. I design and build piston pumps for liquid filling. They have Acetal (Deltin) pistons for the most part. If a customer wants to fill a hot product we boil the pistons to check the expansion. The bore is 3.75". When hot an unmodified piston can expand .080 in diameter. An interesting thing is that the initial heating releases internal stresses in the plastic and they seldom return to the original diameter. It can 2 or 3 heat cycles for them to stabilize. Does the same thing happen with your aluminum pistons (if never used) with heat cycling?
Great stuff mate, yes bodge it engineering, no!!!, it is fettling, putting the components together so they work, you have to understand these old engines and work with them.
I would have made a tool of two pieces oh wood hinged at on end and drilled in the middle the diameter of the piston. Then put 400 wet or dry to line the hole. Then open it ant apply it around the piston and then spin it in the lathe while applying the abrasive lined hole to the surface being turned and you. Will have a more controlled abrasion than just a loose piece of abradsive.
I admire Ivan and John's Shed Engineering..."Don't know exactly how we'll do it, but we'll figure something out, we always do" as I remember Ivan saying...
Love this When I was a young lad I was working in a shop that built Porsche race engines. One day I took a piston pin clip and put it under a freshly built engine. Just to see the builder get nervous. He came in the next day and found the clip. He picked it up , looked at it and put it in a jar on his shelf. Didn’t even blink. Later at lunch he winked at me and said “ you gotta do better that that kid” 😊
I remember as a kid in the late 60s going with my dad to a shop in Indiana that built circle track and drag racing flathead Fords and rebuilt Offy engines. They had mills and lathes of course but the old guy showing us around laughed and said that you had to have a fully equiped machine shop to impress the customers but that didn't mean you had to actually use them. He joked about having to assure a customer that he would certainly resurface his cylinder heads on the mill and then honoring his promise by clamping the heads on the bridgeport to hold them while he cleaned them up with a file. You guys are all right by me
Ivan , John and Tanya filming these two amazing gentlemen just doing what they both love and showing us all just how to make stuff work , keep the videos coming
'More or less dead right'. Reminds me of the tale my father used to tell of an engineer bragging to a carpenter about how accurate the engineering shop was, working to the nearest thou. The carpenter replies 'really? We try to be exact!'
Those pistons look very similar to the Omega pistons I used in my Riley engine. Domed instead of flat top for higher compression, 2 piston rings and a oil ring. As I used 3mm longer rods (for even more compression) I needed to machine a step of the crown so the +60 thou piston wouldn't hit the head or gasket. Someone cleverer than me told me that the pistons are machined inside the skirt so you can make a mandrel to fit just as you did. But I also machined up a 'fake' gudgeon pin that has a threaded hole in the middle cross ways. I could then put a long bolt through the middle of the mandrel that threaded into the fake pin allowing me to pull the piston tight down onto the mandrel and machine the step on the crown. The Riley uses cir-clips to hold the pins in and one was missing and it was a massive pain finding new ones as it seems no one in NZ stocked the (imperial) type I needed. Regarding piston rings, they used to be made here in New Zealand but now that seems to have stopped as the one old chap who did it retired. I broke several rings trying to fit them and had to wait some time to get new ones from the UK. It's getting harder and harder to work on these old cars here as the people with the skills all retire or die and all parts need to be imported. Your content and knowledge is most useful for those of us trying to do similar and it gives me confidence the ways I get around problems are sound, thank you.
Thank you Ivan and John. I do love watching you work around the shed on all the lovely bits you put together. You like wonderful cars and I appreciate that.
My favourite old racecar is the old Amilcar C6 . a jewel of a little 1100cc supercharged and Double overhead cam engine from 1927 in the lightest little car they could build back then , I mean you didn't get more advanced for the day - they called them the "Poor Man's Bugatti' Now? now? not so much..
Practical automotive engineering at it's best. Way to go Ivan and John, great camera work Tanya. I think you nearly said the "F" word at one point there Ivan, that's exactly how I'd describe a situation where a gudgeon pin, (wrist pin, little end pin), came out of position and wore against the cylinder wall. Good darts!
Like your attitude and the way you do things, but it seems to me, it would have been easier to have the guys who sleeved your block hone it to fit the pistons. Also, in the 60's , it was a hot new deal to use teflon buttons in the wrist pins- maybe an idea to replace the bronze ones. However, since you decided to go with a circlip, I would have used an expanding mandrel to hold the piston.
Why don’t you hold the piston in the chuck from the crown. My Father said that he found the Martlett pistons would expand and machined them to overcome the problem. He did not have a very high opinion of them and did not ever use them again.
I love how Allen and Ivan have such a wondeful relationship...prolly both will think I am some soirt of wanker...but these two gentlemen live up to the word!!
You have got me confused Ivan. You said that there was wear on the gudgeon pin, but yet at the end you say that 5he pistons have never been used. Are the gudgeon pins second hand then?
Great channel !! Found my way from Cold War Motors I did spend some time in a machine shop here in Milwaukee (where is that?) USA Wisconsin I can see where you are taking this. I found out back in the 70's that this water cooled Suzuki had pistons that actually got smaller with age, not from wear, as they would look like new.
