Ok. According to both my books aluminum is not subject to cross contamination because the melting point is so far away from other metals so steel is acceptable. I hope they didnt lie!. Merrickville. I know the place! My brother had his antique cl***ic boat restored in the old mill building nearby. We have several foundries here too. I have had work out of two of them. yes i am tired for sure. I am trying one more today but I am cranked! Looky here!
if you have the material and the time i would pour another set, if you wait till next summer say, you will have another learning curve.
Got 7! I think one more will be enough. After that i will be machining them but i need to cast some feed handles for my next project (Top Secret!) so i wont quit. Just will be learning to use a cope and drag instead of an open pour permanent mold.I have had enouf for today . Maybe tomorrow afternoon i will run the last pour. I dont have enuf muffins left even for that one so i will have to "bake some muffins" first. Don
Nice work Don. I've quietly been reading along here for quite a while and watching your progress. I would love to see some good quality pics of the machined pistons when you're all set and done. Very inspiring!
Count on it Herman. I will have Linda take them since you said good quality. Picture taking is not one of my skills. They wont be much different from this one except for the oil ring width which will go to 3/16th". With only a single compression ring I will need all the oil control I can get. The friction should not be much different since the contact area (two stainless rails ) is the same but the drain area will be greater. Also I revamped the pin area to provide about 20% more surface area. Also i cleaned up the mold a lot to make for a smoother look in the unmachined areas. Don BTW she says HI
I keep looking over here and thinking about the song Seven Spanish Angels. Maybe because when I was a boy they used to say people from this area where I live were from "Little Spain" Anyway , one more to cast. I will pour it sometime today. Hopefully it will be a good pour. Using a permanent steel mold it is amazing how much alike they are right down to the little marks in the casting. Don
The last one fought me every inch of the way. I had to make a batch of "muffins " first. I was starting to run low on propane during the melt. I made it and it looked great but when I popped it out there was a cold seam in the pour. I took my burner down , cleaned everything , set it back up, rebaked another sand core and then baked my muffins in the toaster oven too to get them to about 450F. The burner was going "putt, puttt, putt, when the final chunk slipped in to the soup but it never went out. The pour was good. I am done! Got 8 sitting here now. Wonder how a slant eight would---? Nope! stop!!!! Sometimes my mind wanders It was a lot of fun and very interesting but to be honest I am glad I am done pouring for a while. I started storing the stuff away. I also have a few bad ones. I will keep them Two are repairable as the faults are minor. I will use them for trial machining set up. Next step is to clean up the castings and get them ready for the lathe. Don
Maybe 2 slants facing opposite of each other making a "V" 12? Looking forward to the machine process, great work Don.
I am thinking end to end. Straight 12. No i jest. Tomorrow i will start prepping them . This is gonna take awhile since if i goof I have to pour another so i would rather not goof. Got a reply on my 198 crank Kijiji ad but i havent been able to talk to the guy on the phone. I have had emails but it doesnt seem to be the same guy. Some other guy also emailed and wanted $275 for a complete engine. ????????? I was given the last three and two of them were fresh , bored new pistons cam etc etc . I told him $100 period. No reply. Heck I bought the fuel injected jag motor for $300 with trans. $275! That is twenty seven thousand five hundred Pennies. That's a lot of copper for a slant six. The pile of pennies would be bigger than the motor. That just aint right! Don
I did some destructive testing on one of the bummers. Tough as nails. Not able to scratch them and a hammer would not bust them. Was able to put a partial casting in my 9 inch vice and crank and hammer and eventually it busted but it took everything i had to get there and it was a one I dumped when it g***ed since I knew it would be no good anyway. There was a lot of it missing. The pieces are in this new last one. Don
Some conclusions. Sand casting would have had less rejects I think because the riser would let the gas exit but dimensions would not be as consistant as the permanet mold is. When I tried sand casting the one it was just an open pour and it bubbled. I had started to build the steel mold I used when I first saw the movie several years ago so I sort of owed it a chance. (that might sound dumb but is how i think) It worked well and produces indentical results with a good finish. When I had problems the core didnt vent the gases properly or the pour was not good. It is not easy for me to pour smoothly but that is the trick .How you cover the top of the core as it flows together to form the piston crown seems to make a huge difference as to whether it stays good or not. You have to not change the pace you are pouring at even though that is a huge temptation. When i got tired or anxious I messed up everytime. If I had put a plate in the mold for the piston crown and made the sand core so it was self suspending and poured the whole deal upside down I think problems would have been less but it would have taken a lot of work and probably wouldnt have gotten done. I needed something that was doable and this worked for me. Others would probably do it different and have just as good results. i realize that but the guy I see in the mirror when I shave is the one I have to deal with and he can be incredibly stubborn at times. Am I glad took a crack at this? Yes. Very much so. Everytime i look to me right and see the row of 8 identical piston blanks sitting there I get a wee bit excited. I didnt think a few years back it would ever happen. It was S Chastain book that made me give up back then. It has a lot of good info for sure but it wasnt good for me. I am not going to say anymore about that. Don BTW, I used to have pictures of that steel mold back when I built it on my website. I removed them not that long ago feeling it was not right to have them there since I had done nothing with it. Little did I know!
You just need some self declared expert to tell you: it can't be done, is too much work, or makes no sense.
nice pistons, but forget about making a aluminum vortec head for some ****y slant 6.. or should i say magnum head..lol
No head planned. but ****y? Slant sixes aren't ****y. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RrGDPXOQtI&feature=mfu_in_order&playnext=1&videos=fFM16O5ukcw I went to work on the pistons today. Cleaned up the mold seam. Cleaned inside the skirt with a die grinder. Squared off the bottom of the skirt and the crown and took a light cut down the skirt. I will do that to all first so I can determine what is the biggest bore I can use. I will be poking away at this probably a half hour a day or so. I am about worn out from the casting thing. It was just something I wanted to try. Thanks for all who stood by and encouraged. I counted up today. All in all from the first till now I cast 17 pistons. Some were as I was figuring the mold out and what to do to it. Two were when I was learning to make and use sand cores but hadn't made the core box yet. One of those I finished completely and you have all seen it. Some I rejected for faults and re-did them but several of them could be used if I wanted to. They aren't perfect but wont fail. I actually have 12 servicable pistons as of tonight. 8 that I would call good. And 4 maybees. Don
I had to smile at that Unk. My wife tells people almost screaming , "Dont tell him he cant do it. That is just like waving a red flag at a bull. " Hopefully I am beyond that mindset now. I have for the last couple of years been doing some of the things I often thought of but never had the time to do. Don
Was working on the piston machining movie just now. I will post it to Utube and link it here when I have finished a piston. Don
Hopefully NOT. Way too many people will tell us that something can't be done, based on absolutely nothing, when they would never consider trying anything remotely similar. I don't think you are ready to join the mindless m***es just yet.
Something else i figured out along the way. When a steel insert is used for the inner core ,even a three piece, it must be removed before the piston totally solidifies. i rewatched the movie too as I have it here (Wrlds Fstest Ind) That is what he is doing in the movie with the monkey wrench and the plate with the four legs. Removing the inner core before the casting completley solidifies which by the way takes longer than you might think. I know it is just a movie but I think it is close. The reason I think this is aluminum contracts 5 % when it cools so even if you remove the wedge from the centre like in the Egge deal there is still lateral contraction and the piston is still pliable enough to pull it out. You will notice he is using hydraulics like a jack mechanism or something to remove it. What got me thinking was another thread on here about pistons losing their heads and I realized that might be why that could happen although I am sure it isnt the norm. A sand core does not have that problem since it crumbles although I am sure if one could anaylze the skirt material near my sand core vrs the upper part of the piston there would be some molecular compression just from the 5% shrink. The core is really quite tightly held in there and it is a good thing it crumbles otherwise you wouldnt get it out. That is what I think is happening in these situations. Or to put it another way if the guy in the video poured the piston and went for coffee he might not get the wedge set up out. (without damage anyway.) Same for Burt's set up. It must be removed during the cooling process not after. Today i have a little invention I am making to speed the set up process and elimnate some of the time it takes. Don
Thank you Don! This thread has been an inspiration for me too! If I survive this economy with any simbulance of a shop left, casting various parts is something I too have on my list of things to do. Dan Stevens dba, Steelsmith
Here is my device I whipped up to ball park centre the raw castings so as to use the most of them. Cost was zero. Some s**** wood some nails and some glue. A bit of time and I have a device to ballpark the casting in the four jaw chuck. Don Re Steelsmith. It was fun and a great learning experience but it took a lot out of this ol boy. I am content now . I tried did it and can now get back to my jobs at hand for awhile. I will tinker at the machining as I go. Don
don, I can't really tell in the pic how you are grabbing the piston. are you grabbing the skirt or the dome? if it's the skirt are you holding it by the ID or the OD?? I guess the fixture makes it quick to get it close. here the guys would freak out if they couldn't use an indicator that read finer than a tenth to do the same thing lol
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