Technical Buddy of mine sent me a video of a guy hooking his cherry picker to the intake valley

I’d post it, but OT car/engine, etc. Intake was off, heads and exhaust manifolds still on. I’d assume the rotating assembly was in the engine as well.
Surely that can’t be a wise move?

Been trying to talk him out of doing it that way. Seems like a poor choice.
I’ve had shops do that with a bare block, but not 450-500lbs before.

 

Much depends on the size of the fasteners.

 

It looked (to me-quick video) the guy just used the hook.
Heck, besides breaking, I was thinking about the hook slipping out/off.

 

How was it hooked up? To bolts screwed into bosses in the intake valley or just wrapped the chain through the intake valley? Because if it was chained to bolts in bosses, you'd be shocked at how much weight threads can hold.

Years ago when I was building cars for my University's Formula SAE team, we tested how much force it would take to rip a 5/16 rod bolt out of a threaded insert in a piece of .035 Chromoly. We used a machine called an Instron machine, that measures the load in tension and graphs it across a chart. At over 5200 lbs of tension, the tube the rod end was in tore apart at a heat affected zone near a weld. The threads and rod end were totally unharmed. When thinking about those findings relative to this thread, even a 394 Olds comes in only around 725 lbs. That would have been a safety factor of over 7 with just a single bolt. That's how you're able to lift these monster engines with just a carb plate and 1/4" bolts.

 

To be honest, it appeared the hook on the picker just went in and grabbed it. I didn’t see anything on the heads, it looked like the guy grabbed something in the engine, I was assuming it was the valley. That’s what I was trying to tell my friend, it didn’t seem like a good idea.

 

I'm always leery about lifting engines with carb plates on aluminum intakes.

 

Ancient Roman saying " If you don't have 100% trust in your 1/2" lifting bolts or attachments, wrap a sling around your engine and hook". Always done it, and never had to "load test" the hook.

I did the same stuff for a Uni here, for the same races and used an Instron as well!
Speaking of engine cranes, we did a destructive test on a "Harbour fright" type engine crane (the foldable ones with the 6 casters) to see what happens when you overload the jib weight. The adjustable boom (the bit that the hook is on) just bent slowly at the point it emerged from the fixed boom part. Around 200% of the rated load, from memory.

 

I saw an engine removed at the junkyard using a bucket loader and some big fan belts kept around for that purpose... they wrapped them around the exhaust manifolds.

 

Place I worked at, the "Engineer" couldn't come up with an cost effective design for a
simple part, so I made one. I calculated that a 5/16 bolt was strong enough for the load.
Needed to hold 5000 lbs without complete failure. I ended up using a 3/8 SHCS, because the head
was a little bigger, so I didn't need a washer. The "Engineer" and his boss, a "Professional
Engineer with a Masters in Mathematics" said that a 5/8" bolt wasn't strong enough.
But they couldn't do the math, to prove me wrong. Hmmmmm. I had to built a hydraulic
test fixture, to prove my design in front of a crowd of "Engineers" and corporate VPs.
We ended the test at over 9000 lbs. The bolt had developed a very slight bend.
Good bolts are stronger than they appear.

 

Damn time flys... been 50 yrs since I've come across a cherry intake valley....

 

I’ve pulled many engines with chains and 3/8” intake bolts w/flat washers going through the last chain link into the bolt holes on the cylinder heads, not tightened though. Then use the cherry picker hook under the chain where it best balances the engine. Never had a problem, I always tried to make sure that the bolt threads were bottomed out (not torqued) and I was lifting on the shank. The biggest threat would seem to be that you’re pulling on the bolt at an angle, in somewhat of a shear. That and cheap fasteners, I try to stay away from cheap hardware.
I have seen several people on TV shows lifting complete engines with those cheap carb adapter plates that have cold looking MIG welds that resemble small night crawlers. No thanks. In case I want to remove or install an engine that way I have a carb adapter plate I made myself out of 3/8” cold rolled flat steel bar, TIG welded with 3 overlapping passes on each side, with the vertical plate having the grain direction running in a vertical direction to avoid cracks and any unlikely lamellar tear problems. Guess I’m not a trusting type of person. If I put thousands into an engine I don’t want to scrimp on installation tools.
The four small fasteners going into the threads on an aluminum intake manifold always concerned me as well, Helicoils would be preferable. At least with using the carb adapter plate you are pulling those four carb mounting bolts in tension and not shear.

 

My last job, they torqued NOTHING on deliverable military hardware and suddenly got religion when something loose was found in the field. We had a couple of archaic torque tables in some workmanship manuals and "engineering" came up with new tables where you had to be a shit-house lawyer to interpret them.

So I did my homework, by then I was a degreed engineer. I scoured textbooks, stuff online and finally came up with my own fastener torque formula. One design engineer looked it and liked it, but NOBODY wanted me using it. It was a good basis to double-check odd fasteners we were developing a torque for.

But I learned a lot about cross-sectional strength, coarse and fine thread differences. We had a high-strength bolt we were using for the first time and had doubts about the torque it required. I ran it through my formula, others used the existing borderline useless tables. Finally we decided to make up a steel bar with a thread through it, to see what it took to break the bolt.

They went to the table value first, then went with my recommendation. Well, it was higher than theirs by a lot and didn't break. However it did break very close to a value that I had calculated.

 

I lift my heavy Nailhead engines with 4 - 5/16 fasteners and have lifted it with the 1/4" fasteners on the intake. YMMV.

 

Without seeing the video, we can only guess at what's going on.

I expect it's just fine, but not what you're used to, so it looks scary.

 

Pretty sure that’s how they lift them in the factory (from memory). The lift hooks don’t get assembled until the engine is nearly fully dressed. In the interim, there’s a big hook that gas in the valley

 

I know they make a fixture for Ford flatheads that slips into the valve chest (valley) and fits into some factory recess. It is then used to lift the engine. Perhaps such a fixture exists for other engines?

 

this thread is very uplifting.....I use nylon straps or the factory brackets...careful not to damage valve covers is a concern...

 

I think the concern isn't about whether 4 grade 8 bolts are strong enough to support an engine, the concern should be about whether the aluminum intakes threads are strong enough, or that the casting itself is strong enough. I have lifted engines out with a cherry picker and intake manifold plate lots of times and never had a problem.....but I never really trusted the process. Consider also the diameter of the chain links on the cherry picker, their total thickness is less than the 4 bolts.

Something that always played in the back of my mind was when we install quality studs in a cast iron or even a newer aluminum engine block. Then we torque the nuts down on them based on the studs elongation..........but what about the threads on the other end of the stud? They are screwed into metal that does not have the same strength as the nut or the stud. Are we overtightening that end when we torque the other end? It seems to work OK in real life so I guess I'm just supposin about something that doesn't cause a problem.

 

think about how many threads are engaged where the stud enters the casting, vs the number of threads engaged on the nut. Usually there is a lot more engagement in the softer material....

 

All you have to do is look up the tensile strength of the the bolts your using.
If you use 2 bolts half the weight of the engine is on each bolt.

 

That's how you lift an LS.

 

Unless something shifts.

 

Yeah, and drop it on concrete from 10 feet off the ground....

 

I couldn’t tell the make/model of the car, but you very well could be correct.
I had to change intake gaskets on my ‘03 Chevy PU a few years back, maybe something attaches to where intake bolts down?
As I said, it looked like the intake valley was just hooked and pulled.

 

Good engineers are worth their weight in Gold. Unfortunately, I got stuck with a
moron "engineer" who didn't know the difference between Add and Subtract.
This guy could not make a drawing without several missing dimensions, I sent one
back 3 times before giving up and designing it myself. Another job, he designed 2 parts,
that were supposed to be assembled together with 2 screws. They couldn't be assembled,
the pitch between the screws was wrong. And when that problem was solved, the design didn't work.
I bet he still works there.

 

Intake and valley pan off. Bolt a plate like this to the valley:

https://motionraceworks.com/product...KRyy4Zp2pbJ21dy2IhVNafvQSJpKrBHwaAtxoEALw_wcB

 

I used these until I made a plate that covers the complete intake valley & I can use any of the bolt holes.

 

this is what I'm talkin bout.

 

Yes, I agree Jim.........that's usually true. I know from fooling with airplanes that generally when cutting a thread in aluminum it's best to use a coarse thread instead of a fine thread..........same with cast iron.