# Swifty's build of Howell V4



## Swifty

I've had too much time off already, doing other things, so its time to start the next engine. I always liked the look of the Howell V4 water cooled engine, so here I go. I called into the aluminium suppliers this afternoon to pick up some offcuts, they may be called offcuts, but they charge full price for them. My best find was the large piece for the engine block, only an extra 10mm on one side to machine off. A couple of the thinner plates were just grabbed to cut pieces out as needed, so $110 later I walked out with his stack.





I'm already intimidated just looking at the drawing of the engine block, so I will start on something a bit simpler first. I would also like to use metric screws on this engine, so will study the drawings a bit more to make sure that its suitable.

Paul


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## Cogsy

Another build I'll be following intently!

That stack of stock does look a bit light on for $110. The supplier I use charges a flat rate of $10 a kilo for offcuts and some of them can be quite large. On the odd occaision I needed something that wasn't available aas an offcut they would chop me a piece and still charge the same rate. They really look after the hobby guys for some reason...


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## Swifty

Hi Cogsy, I bought the material pictured from Capral, there is a scrap metal dealer that I can get some plate aluminium from, but not in sizes large enough for the engine block. I will weigh the material and see what the price is per kg.

Paul.


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## gus

Paul,

With your bigger machine tools,you will beat me hands down. Gus is at the mercy of the mini Japanese Lathe and Jap Mill.The C/bore now waiting for Case Hardening Compound. Trial cuts were not encouraging.
HiTensile Fastener does not respond to hardening. 
Week after next----------14--------18 Feb Deep Sea Fishing for giant groupers at Burma Bank,Burma.


Metric Fasteners. I used M4 Socket Heads for the O/Heads and M4 studs/nuts for the Cylinder bottom footings.M4 is about 1/2mm bigger than the prescribed 6-32. Now taking it easy with the O/H sub-assembly parts.

When you get to the double sized crankcase,Gus will be watching like a hawk. Basis if I could machine the V-4 CrankCase then same engine would not be impossible for Gus to tackle.

Best of luck to your latest engine.(Spent S$120 for materials to build 2 V-2s,Guess may be due to lower labour cost)


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## Swifty

Cogsy said:


> Another build I'll be following intently!
> 
> That stack of stock does look a bit light on for $110. The supplier I use charges a flat rate of $10 a kilo for offcuts and some of them can be quite large. On the odd occaision I needed something that wasn't available aas an offcut they would chop me a piece and still charge the same rate. They really look after the hobby guys for some reason...



I weighed the stack today, it's 10.4kg, so I'm paying about the same price as you.

Paul.


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## Cogsy

Interesting. It's hard to gauge scale of the materials I guess, it just looks like a smallish pile. Maybe because I know it's for a V4 and I know how big my V4 will be so that skews my brain into thinking it's a small pile.

I've never contacted Capral (we have them over here as well) but I might give them a go next time I need something as they're just down the road.


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## ruzzie

I started the V4 a while ago and looked at using metric screws but decided they just didn't look right, so I splashed out and bought the V4 Fasteners Kit $35 & the V4 Ball Bearings Kit $99. Our exchange rate was a lot better at the time.


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## barnesrickw

I pay $1.50/pound at my local scrap yard.  So, $1.50/lb x 2.21lb/kg.  $3.32/kg?


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## Cogsy

barnesrickw said:


> I pay $1.50/pound at my local scrap yard. So, $1.50/lb x 2.21lb/kg. $3.32/kg?


 
I can't buy scrap that cheap here either, but is the stuff at the scrap yard brand new? If you can buy stuff like this at that price then we can probably work out a deal to ship it to me, I'll sell it locally and we'll both still make money!


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## Swifty

Barnsrickw, with our current exchange rate, the amount that I paid for new stock equals US$3.56 per pound. Next time I'm passing the scrap dealers I will call in and buy some plate for my own stock and compare the price.

Ruzzie, I may do like you did and buy the fasteners and bearings from Howells.

Paul.


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## gus

Hi Paul,
Bought ''O'' Rings and bearings from Howell. You will surprised with the qty of ''O'' rings when it arrived.
For your V-4 that will double qty. CounterBore Spark Plug holes done though a bit scary when I recalled messing up two Nemett-Lynx O/heads. 
Looks like we have at least three Howell V engines being build now. PistonBroke,Paul and Gus. I can imaging more will follow shortly.Raw Beginners not encourage to build this engine as their first or second built. Same engine not very forgiving. 
When can we see the first foto shot???


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## Swifty

gus said:


> When can we see the first foto shot???



Gus, I'm keen to get started but other things keep interrupting me, one of my sons came over this afternoon and wanted to make a rack to put on his KTM dirt bike so he can carry some sleeping gear for overnight trips. So off to the aluminium suppliers again for some 4mm plate, then spent a few hours machining it up and milling plenty of slots in it for tie down straps. Still not finished, have to put a few lightening holes in it. Rest of this week is busy with other things also, hopefully next week I will have some progress pictures.

Paul.


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## digiex-chris

Neat! Eager to see more!


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## barnesrickw

Most of the aluminum in the scrap yard here is off fall from one of the local machine shops.  You have to dig, but I've come up with some nice pieces.  Most appears to be 6061.


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## Swifty

barnesrickw said:


> Most of the aluminum in the scrap yard here is off fall from one of the local machine shops.  You have to dig, but I've come up with some nice pieces.  Most appears to be 6061.



The plate that is available here is 5083 grade, used for high strength structural applications, I find it great for hobby work.

Paul.


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## Swifty

I've ordered the O rings, screw set and bearings from Howells, their in the mail already. I'm getting ready to block up the crankcase, I decided that I may as well make the hardest part first, so will be on the way shortly with this build.

Paul.


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## Swifty

I'm on my way, I machined the crankcase slightly oversize as per drawing, this allows material for a skim cut in the lathe when boring the main hole. I decided to differ from the method stated in the drawings for the next stage, the instructions call for an adaptor plate to be used to hold the cylinder block to the face plate, but I decided to hold mine directly on the plate, my faceplate has a 2" bore so there is plenty of clearance for boring through. So instead of putting tapped holes in the crankcase to screw on the adaptor, I put in clearance holes and counterbores for M8 screws.





I'm a little bit ahead of myself here, I retrieved the faceplate from where it had been lying for the last 12 years, still covered with waxed paper, so after a bit of a clean up I mounted it on the lathe. I have a DI-4 mount on the headstock, so its easy to mount chucks / plates up, the faceplate was running out about .012"on the face, so I took a skim cut to fix this. Next, over to the mill to locate the centre and drill and tap 2 x M8 holes for fastening the crankcase, this will be the first time that I have used the faceplate, so I thought that a couple of tapped holes might be handy.





When I was drilling the screw holes, I also centre drilled the correct position for the main bore, so loosely clamping the block with 2 cap screws, I then held the block in place using a centre in the tailstock and nipped up the screws. Another MT centre was used with an indicator for final check of position.





The main bore was drilled out and bored to finished size, along with a counterbore, the face of the block was also skimmed at this stage.





Now I have to make a special boring tool to machine 2 reliefs in the bore.

Paul.


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## Davewild

Great start, I'm following along.


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## Cogsy

Looking good. First part, first setup and I'd be out of my depth already. Maybe I'll take the Howell V4 off my wish list.


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## Swifty

Thanks Dave. Cogsy, this is the easy part, machining the reliefs for the water cooling in the 4 cylinder bores is going to be tricky.

Paul.


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## Cogsy

Not sure how you plan on doing that, but with the Peewee I plan on using a woodruff cutter on the mill and just moving the cutter in a square pattern inside the bore. I'm thinking it should be one of the easier jobs.


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## Swifty

Cogsy, I do have a boring head with the capacity to feed out while it's running, but I also have to do O ring grooves in the bore as well, that's just a bit dicey trying to get the right diameter. The build instructions say to mount it on the faceplate in the lathe, I'm not looking forward to that.

I think that if I build an engine to my own design, I will incorporate the O ring grooves and cooling relief into the steel liners and just have plain bores in the block.

Paul.


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## ruzzie

I used the face plate and it wasn't as daunting as I thought it would be.
I also put a support on the unsupported (nut) end to make it solid and to stop the chatter.
Once it was set up it all went rather quick and smoothly.

hope this gives you some ideas

Paul R


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## gus

Hi Ruzzie,
Thanks for the post. I have a mini lathe. Looks like I may have to give up making the V-4. Or perhaps request Paul Swift to machine a spare for me. Meanwhile I am having some wild ideas like turn the lathe into a jig borer.    will be tough.
Paul may come up with his very unique method of boring the cylinder block to take cylinder liners and crankshaft. MEanwhile the V-2 is miving at a comfortable space. No rush.


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## Swifty

Ruzzie, thanks for the photos, they are a great help.

Paul.


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## gus

Hi Paul,
Gus will be watching every step you make. After taking a good hard look at Ruzzie's post I get a fair idea. My mini lathe cannot cope with the swing required to do the cylinder bores. Looks like I have to let it pass. Meanwhile I have some very wild ideas. Will take a while before I decide to give up.


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## Swifty

Don't give up yet Gus, I'm planning to draw up the block and see if I can put bigger diameter liners in, the liners will hold the O rings and have the cooling relief. Just have to see if there is enough room for everything.

Paul.


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## Swifty

I modified an old boring bar to hold 6mm dia. broken cutters, the shanks of the broken cutters make great boring tips. After grinding the correct rads and relief on the tip, I machined the internal relief. The block was then turned around, clocked up true, and finished to length as well as turning the spigot on the end. I then machined the other internal relief from this end.





Next step is to mill a cavity in from underneath.

Paul.


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## gus

That will be hell of a lot of aluminium to remove. Gus done his fair share. The V-4 will be double. 
Will be watching every move.


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## Swifty

Here's the block with even more material removed.





It took ages to mill the O ring groove around the rectangular opening, 1/16"cutter running at max revs, .008"depth of cut until I got to .062"depth, managed to do it without breaking the cutter.

I went to my local industrial suppliers inquiring about some 2-56, 4-40 and 5-40 tap sets, I'm still recovering from the shock of the price they quoted, $156 for the 3 x 2-56 taps, and $103 each for the other sets of 3. I guess I better do a bit more looking on Ebay.

Paul.


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## Cogsy

Looking really nice Paul. 

See my post here that has detail on a 'watchmakers' tap and die set that I got from Chronos in the UK for about $40-50 shipped. It doesn't have the 5-40 in it and it only has 2 taps per size but so far it has worked really well for me. I've tapped 00-80 and 2-56 in ali, drill rod and 2-56 into some horrible tool steel for my rocker arms (long story). I've also externally threaded some drill rod 00-80 with no problems. I honestly didn't think such a cheap set would be much good but I've been pleasantly surprised.

Also, I'm pretty sure the guys in Adelaide that sell on ebay have the same set (At least it looks the same) for about the same money, but as they've provided horrible customer service in the past I refuse to deal with them and Chronos has been really good.


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## Swifty

Thanks Al, I will check it out when I have a chance. I've just had a cup of tea and a short rest, now it's back into the garage to do more machining on the block.

Paul.


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## Swifty

Here's this afternoons effort, I'm deviating from the build guide and not using a rotary table for machining the rest of the block, it holds securely in my 6"vice and I'm using my 45 deg setting square to get the correct angle. Before I did this, I turned up a spigot that fits neatly into the main bore, has a flange to clamp against and also has a 6mm reamed hole for a location pin. You can see the dowel at the front, I picked up the centre of this and also the edge of the block for my datums. I worked off these datums to mill away the material not needed.





Next step was to rough drill the cylinder liner holes and bore to finished size, I don't have a 1"reamer but that's no problem, the boring head that I have is excellent and its easy to achieve the size required. I swapped over the boring bar for a 20mm dia. cutter and bored the required steps on top of each hole.





And here we have the first side done.





Paul.


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## Cogsy

So if you're boring a 1" hole for the liner then I'm guessing the final bore size is around 3/4"? What is the bore and stroke of this engine?

I'm assuming you couldn't find a BIC lighter so went with the matches


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## Swifty

Ha Ha, no I couldn't find one of those giant bic lighters, so just grabbed a box of matches that I had in the garage. The cylinder bore is .875" and the stroke is .812". I was thinking of changing the design a bit to allow me to put the O rings that seal the sleeve on the sleeve itself, but it's too tight to do that, so I will make it as per drawing.

Paul.


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## Lesgsy

Your pictures bring back some good memory's, machining a big lump of Ali like that into an engine block gave me a lot of satisfaction.
Hope it all goes well for you to
                                        Les.


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## Swifty

Thanks Les, I've bookmarked your build so I can refer to it.

Paul.


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## gus

Swifty said:


> Thanks Les, I've bookmarked your build so I can refer to it.
> 
> Paul.




Hi Paul,

SOS SOS. 

Please advise how to book mark.

Your current post has given insight and confidence to build V-4 in 2016. Gus will be 73 and hopefully still alive and healthy.


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## lvn71

I started the V4 about 4 years ago but lost 2 years because of some life changes. I am down to just the distributor left and plan on putting the whole thing together this summer. I own the gear cutters DP48 # 2,3,and4 and will lend them to anyone who needs them. I also have extra babbitt for the Shaft Oil Bushing (sheet #45)


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## picks27t

How to make a counterbors


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## ozzie46

lvn71 said:


> I started the V4 about 4 years ago but lost 2 years because of some life changes. I am down to just the distributor left and plan on putting the whole thing together this summer. I own the gear cutters DP48 # 2,3,and4 and will lend them to anyone who needs them. I also have extra babbitt for the Shaft Oil Bushing (sheet #45)




  That's extremely generous of you. I may take you up on your offer as I have a few 48DP gears to make for the V4 and a couple other engines want to make.


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## Swifty

I noticed the Babbitt material being called for, not something that I have used in the past. I will have to study the application a bit more.

Paul.


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## lvn71

I'm new to using this website and will post some pictures as soon as I get that process figured out. As you can see from my avatar the first IC engine I built was Jerry's Plunket Jr. He gives a lot of information with his design and I found the drawings easy to follow. Lee


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## gus

Swifty said:


> I noticed the Babbitt material being called for, not something that I have used in the past. I will have to study the application a bit more.
> 
> Paul.



Hi Paul,

Have seen the uncles next door casting and machining Babbit Metal Bearings and they seemed to make it look so easy. Another learning curve. Getting the metal to stick on to the bearing shell is an art. Turning the bearing another.
I guess we can surf YouTube for info.

Same with another neighbour casting aluminium but but when I had to cast a hundred Auto-Condensate Traps for a Thailand Oil Company Order,it was a very steep learning curve. After a month of trial and error and research, I eventually arrived at the pour temperature and C.I.Mould Temperature and the pouring speed. All these uncle tradesmen are dead and gone.

*DP 48 Gear Cutters.*
Have decided to buy Imperial Involute Gear Cutters to timing gears as per Jerry Howell Drawings. Substituting with metric gears will be tough.Too much to re-invent. Found vendor------GlobalIndustrial.com.


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## Swifty

Hi Gus, I will buy my own gear cutters as well, not much progress lately as we had our grandson staying for the last 2 days. I will be able to finish maching the second side of the block today, then I have to sort out a way of machining the grooves in the bores where the liners fit. I find it's always best to think about problems for a while, that way hopefully I come up with the best solution.

Paul.


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## digiex-chris

I agree. I come up with my best ideas just as I'm falling asleep 3 days after I first start thinking about something.


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## Swifty

Here's the other 2 bores done, starting to look like an engine block.





I had a play around with various ideas about holding the block on the faceplate for doing the water bores and O ring groove. Thanks to Ruzzie for his picture, I did something very similar. I have a small cast iron angle plate that I never use, so I drilled and tapped an M12 hole in one side and then clamped it on the faceplate. To get an approximate alignment I used a piece of 1"brass bar with the end turned down to 13mm to suit my drill chuck in the tailstock. I used the brass bar to support the angle plate and engine block whilst I clamped the whole lot up, I then used an indicator to do the final centering. there was a bit of difference front to back, so I made sure where the O ring was going to go was running true, the cooling relief isn't important.





I turned the water relief first, then the groove for the O ring. I never like machining things in this type of set up, I'm always waiting for a big crash, but 1 down and 3 to go. Here's a picture of the tool I used for the O ring, the tool for the relief was more solid than this one.





Paul.


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## Lesgsy

Hi Paul 
I made dummy head a bit longer than the one on sheet 19 of Jerry's plans,
With some fixing holes in each end I bolted it to an angle plate which holds it good for bouring the opposite boars.
As for the babit I machined mine from phos bronze and after 1 hour + of running I've still got good oil presure 
                                    Les.


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## Swifty

Hi Les, I was thinking about using phospher bronze as well. I have a bit of chatter in the water relief holes, but it's of no consequence.

Paul.


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## Swifty

I've finished the first stages of the engine block, a lot more material comes off later after more holes are drilled.











Paul.


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## Swifty

No work yesterday, and just a bit today. These parts are bearing holders that fit either end of the engine block. I tried machining some aluminium pieces that I could attach to the hard jaws on my 3 jaw chuck, to enable me to use it as a soft jaw chuck, but I wasn't happy with how they were holding, so gave up on it after a couple of hours and reverted to the 4 jaw chuck. I had to machine bores on the opposite sides of the parts in the pictures, was easy to get them running true in the 4 jaw with gentle pressure to avoid squashing them.





Now that I'm back working on an engine, those mysterious gremlins that creep into the workshop and pick up the aluminium swarf are at it again, they come into the house and spread it around. I spot various small bits as I walk around the house.

Paul.


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## Swifty

The bearings, screws and O rings arrived this morning. I was initially surprised at how small the package was, but then again, most of the parts are tiny.





I'm just waiting for another parcel to arrive today, this time for my son, I have to sign for it. Then I'm off to the Hare & Forbes 3 day sale to get a 6 x 4 bandsaw, it's too much hard work using a hand hacksaw all the time.

Paul.


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## gus

Welcome to the BandSaw Club. Three years ago I gave up manual hacksaw. Good reason why Gus became very pro-active with so many projects.

Bimetal Saw is best for our type of jobs. The normal cheapy blades will lose the sharpness after a few jobs.Sawing straight manually is nearly impossible when the blade lose its initial sharpness.

The Makita Portable Bandsaw became an asset on day one.


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## Swifty

Hi Gus, we used Bimetal blades on the band saw at work, they were great. The suppliers that I bought the saw from don't stock Bimetal blades for that model, so I will have to go to a different suppliers for the blades.

Paul.


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## gus

Bimetal Saw costly but money worth and same holds good track on scribed line for quite a while more than normal cheapy saw. The Taiwanese BandSaw I bought for the plant ,had Bimetal Blade. For the very rough
punching/stamp tools I made,same saw was very handy to have. 

Majority of HMEM Forum Members are no longer young men with strong arms. Manual Hack Sawing sapped out precious energy. Power Bandsawing leaves us with ample energy to work on engine projects. Pre-BandSaw days would have Gus procrastinating manual sawing a bar stock.


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## gus

I am following this thread studiously.
( Hooked up a 200 kg Hammer Shark and required by Burmese Law to release. It was painful to so see so many metres or precious 80lb Braided Line gone with the fish.We did have a a good look before H/Head took off.) Also landed a 10 kg Dog Tooth Tuna.  Fishy mate happily holding fish up for me. Slimy Doggie not my liking to hold.)


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## Swifty

I made a start on the cylinder heads today, all fairly straight forward.





I'm leaving on Sunday for a week long break, so no more machining till I get back.

Paul.


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## gus

Have a good time.
Was a good fishing trip though boat not as spacious.Sleeping space bit cramped.Now on shore in the south enjoying South Thailand Food.


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## Swifty

Back from a short break and I did some more work on the cylinder heads.





Now I just have to decide what to do next.

Paul.


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## gus

Just wondering if my mini mill can handle these O/Heads???
Just learnt how to drill/tap perfect holes for the spark plug. With a small 13mm Bench Drill Press is tough.

The Outerheads looks good. Meanwhile the RockerArms are not happy with Gus. Messed 4 pcs. Scrap value is nearly zero but too much time and labour lost. Two more arms to make tomorrow. Flu gone. Work comes.


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## Swifty

Gus, you could handle the heads ok in your mini mill, they are only just over 81mm long. But it's handy having a digital readout and CAD to work out where all the ends of the slots are.

Paul.


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## gus

Swifty said:


> Gus, you could handle the heads ok in your mini mill, they are only just over 81mm long. But it's handy having a digital readout and CAD to work out where all the ends of the slots are.
> 
> Paul.


e

OK. Will gear up with DRO. Currently I use the Starrett Digital Height Gage to do ''mark outs'' . Pin point centre punching is now up to mark. Mating holes are jig drilled. 

Plan to build the V-4 2016 if Gus still alive. Just can't imagine and believe 73 in 2016.
The Rocker Arms are quite tricky to make and to look identical. Calls for careful marking out and scribing. All part of learning curve. Scrapped four R.Arms. Will go on to carbs next week. Very mini and challenging.

Take care.


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## Swifty

Here are he Rocker Arm Brackets, a lot of fiddly machining but all good in the end. I still have to remove some machining marks, but that won't take long. I should think about getting a sand blaster, would be great on these small parts. The relief in each end of these brackets will be painted later.





I may look at making something bigger next, just for a change.

Paul.


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## digiex-chris

I recently discovered bead blasting. Its like cheating for taking out machining marks without changing things much dimensionally. I shouldn't have resisted for so long.


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## gus

Great job on the rocker arm brackets and they look identical whereas my first atempt rocker arms looked
bad.


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## Swifty

digiex-chris said:


> I recently discovered bead blasting. Its like cheating for taking out machining marks without changing things much dimensionally. I shouldn't have resisted for so long.



I too, have put it off for too long, they aren't too expensive, a local auto shop has small bench top models and they often have 20% off sales. So I better move next time they have a sale.


Gus, working with a stop in the vice made it easier to handle the parts. I just did them in stages. The biggest hassle was the milled relief in the ends, it's only for show, but there were three separate set ups involved due to the tapered sides.



I decided to do a bit of turning for a change, I chose the cover for the air intake. First stage, I machined the outside profile and then the inside, then parted off.





 In order to hold the part to machine the parted off side, I used some square poly that I had lying around, mounted it in the 4 jaw chuck and turned it to be a tap fit for the ID of the cover.





 A short while later I had the part finished.





Paul.


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## gus

Intake Cover looks good.  I am getting a fair idea to make same.

Happy Easter.


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## Swifty

I've been holding off on further work on the block, as certain sizes have be verified once the gears are cut. The drawings call up for the gears to be 48DP, for some unknown reason the cutters are much more expensive than Module cutters. I have laid out the gear trains in CAD seeing if I could match up everything using Module gears, I can get close but it would mean altering a lot on the engine drawings, it's just too big a risk of something going wrong. I would prefer to buy the cutters, but if all else fails, I will make a hob.

One thing that I have learnt doing this exercise, if I design my own engine, I think that I will start with the gear train first and design the rest around it.

Meanwhile, I have been doing some more parts for the air cleaner.

Paul.


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## gus

Hi Paul,
Gus has the same problem. About made up my mind to buy Module 0.5 Gear Cutters. Will have trial and error with metric gears on a dummy gear case to get angles and gear mesh centre distance. In the latest Model Engineer's Workshop No.227 is write-up on Glen Bunts' Depthing Tool to gear gears meshed up and get centre distance. See page 42 --------45. Meshed depth is by eye ball judgement. Am thinking of using hand rolled cigarette paper as shim. The fun will be getting the holes drilled to the precise centre distance.

48 DP Gear cutters is too expensive landed in Singapore.


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## Swifty

I did a bit more work on the air inlet / filter / choke assembly.









Here I'm holding the assembly, the choke works by turning the aluminium cover which in turn blocks off the air inlet holes. Just near my thumb in the picture, you can see the choke stop inside the lip. The 2 brass tubes connect to the engine breather.





Paul.


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## Swifty

I mentioned earlier that I need to cut the gears to confirm some sizes, these are the centre distances between the gears when they are in mesh. Due to the minor differences that happen with home made gears, it will be necessary to cut the gears then mount one on a dummy plate and have the mating gear in the milling machine spindle. The centre of the first gear is zero on the readout, and when the gears mesh nicely, the readout will confirm the centre distance. Not having these sizes yet, stops me from reaming the camshaft holes in the block and also from finishing the timing gear cover.

However, I decided to push ahead with some of the machining of the timing gear cover. I am using a different method than that specified in the build notes, these notes call up for a dummy base plate to be clamped to a faceplate and the timing cover bolted to this for machining. My first step was to hold the oversize blank in the 4 jaw chuck, turn a boss and machine a bearing location in the centre of the boss, as well as a through hole concentric to the lot.





There is a location spigot required on the other side of this cover, which must run true to the bearing bore. So I turned up a short mandrel that located precisely on the previously bored bearing hole, the cover was then held on by a large washer and screw. This allowed me to finish the thickness of the plate, there was no deviation at all on the thickness, and to turn the spigot. I could only turn the spigot down as far as the washer, but this was fine as it doesn't locate on the whole face.





All I had to do after that, was hold the part in the 3 jaw chuck and bore a clearance hole for the crankshaft gear.





A lot more machining on this part yet, but it will have to wait until I have those centre distance sizes.

Paul.


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## Swifty

I blocked off some of the interconnecting holes and slots in the block as per the drawing. These holes and slots were for cooling channels, and so, of course they had to be blocked off to allow the proper flow of coolant. I still have to do the cooling return holes yet. I machined up some aluminium plugs with small grooves around them which I filled with some Devcon 2 part aluminium filled epoxy that I had lying around, it worked quite well considering it's use by date was in 2003. The weather was a bit cool, so to aid curing, I placed the block in a plastic container and poured in some boiling water to help warm the block, it worked great and the epoxy went off nice and hard.

In the picture you can see that I have machined the plugs down on one side, just to show a before and after picture.





Paul.


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## gus

Hi Paul,
Gus is watching every move you make. This will decide on the final decision to make the V-4. 
Looks like the start on Carbs delayed for a day or two as a mate has urgent request to turn out some ivory necklace clip joints. No Problem as it gives me time to mentally plan routing for Carb machining.Plan to start work early as the humidity kills me by 10 am. Down draft from Ceiling Fan not best. Will figure out how to make it po:fan:werful.


----------



## Swifty

Hi Gus, strange how everyone wants you to make things for them, I had a friend come over yesterday who needed some machining done. Not a problem though, but it stops me working on my own things. Friend left very happy a few hours later. I'm not a fan of high humidity either, just saps the energy from me.

Paul.


----------



## gus

Swifty said:


> Hi Gus, strange how everyone wants you to make things for them, I had a friend come over yesterday who needed some machining done. Not a problem though, but it stops me working on my own things. Friend left very happy a few hours later. I'm not a fan of high humidity either, just saps the energy from me.
> 
> Paul.




Hi Paul.

Done two pairs ivory necklace couplings. Humidity sapped my energy and I am now doing some very unproductive stuff like internet surfing. I have another two pairs to make. After a good pee/tea/surf break,will go on to finish up the two couplings. Will only do this for good friends. Its Thursday and weekend fishing round the corner.The fishy mates are eaching and all looking for another productive fishing. Will be Neap Tide and good for fishing outside Straits of Johore.


----------



## Swifty

Turned up 4 valve guides this afternoon, I was feeling quite happy with them until I realised that I need 8 of them.  :wall: That meant going out to get some more bronze bar and starting the whole set up again. Still, it all ended well with a set of 8 guides. I haven't machined the actual valve seat yet, I will probably make up a guided reamer for that.





Paul.


----------



## Swifty

I'm working on the rocker arms at the moment, 8 of them plus a couple of spares. I machined a block down to the correct length and width, but about 100mm long. Next step was to hold it upright in my vice and use a 1mm saw to cut to finished thickness's of .212". Worked great, thickness held within .001".




Next step was to have a set up in the vice for drilling and reaming 2 x .125" holes and 1 x .187" hole in each piece. The hole in the middle is offset to one side by .005", so I have been careful to mark one datum end.




When all the pieces were ready, I held a piece of aluminium in the chuck on my rotary table, reamed 2 x .125"holes and tapped M4 to locate and hold the pieces down. The simple fixture allowed me to machine the tapered sides in one set up (its times like these that a CNC mill would be so handy).




Another piece of aluminium was used for a different fixture to mill the rad's on the ends. Certainly a lot quicker and neater than hand filing.




Still a lot of work to go on these parts yet.

Paul.


----------



## gus

Eleven pcs Rocker Arm Blanks to make eight. Good planning and strategy.

Not much work done. Still at the ''Carb'' Department. Can't see why four M2 holes and one spray bar took entire morning.Broke two M2 taps. Both Triang hand taps. Went over to machine tap.
Its weekend fishing again. I have rising tide and ebb tide to try my luck.


----------



## Swifty

Hope you have better luck fishing than with the taps, I went flyfishing with a mate a couple of days ago, 1 small one each, but we always put them back.

Paul.


----------



## gus

Swifty said:


> Hope you have better luck fishing than with the taps, I went flyfishing with a mate a couple of days ago, 1 small one each, but we always put them back.
> 
> Paul.




Most of the fish we hooked up came from fish farms freed by some ''do-gooders'' to score merit. These poor fish are so used to being fed every day at the fish farms and are ever ready to strike at every hooked bait drop. Fish sold in the local market is some times chemical treated(very formalin dip) to slow rotting by some unscrupulous wholesalers.The AVA of Singapore makes very frequent checks and very heavy penalties for offenders.Pesticides on veggies has come down to very low level with surveillance.  

Most natural fish are almost gone. We are entirely dependent on escapees and charity release. Ha Ha Ha. Gus surviving on Charity Fish.


Come Monday will work on the Filter Housing. Enjoying making the so many parts. Never ending. Now waiting for a Sensitive Chuck for micro drills to come in before attempting the orifice drilling.Broke two 0.30'' drills.

Take care.


----------



## Swifty

Carrying on with the rocker arms, next step was to reduce the thickness on part of the arm. I used the jig that I had still set up on the mill, but drilled and tapped an M3 hole to clamp the parts, I still used a short dowel to locate and hold the other end. The picture isn't quite clear, but you will get the idea. After a quick modification to the jig, the second side was machined the same way.





After deburring, the next step was to machine the slot where the bearing will fit. The slot is .112"wide, but I used a slitting saw that was .060" thick, machining the slot in 2 cuts. Worked out very easy doing this part.





Now all I have to do is a bit of  deburring and polishing to finish these parts.





Paul.


----------



## gus

*48 pitch gear cutters.* 
Been buying from TracyTools.com. Just email for price and delivery.Will keep you posted.
Was flipping thru their 2012 Summer Catalogue.


----------



## gus

Swifty said:


> Hope you have better luck fishing than with the taps, I went flyfishing with a mate a couple of days ago, 1 small one each, but we always put them back.
> 
> Paul.



Was kind and thoughtful to release the fish from the wild. Hopefully this fish will get to spawn more to sustain fish population.


Fishing today not best but we did have hook-ups. The water was brackish and bites were not robust. Will try tomorrow. Tide prediction looks good. Hopefully with the very strong spring tide and the brackish water gets flushed out.

Planning to make my own electric fishing reel which will come with drag and line drop. Gear box will be DIY. In fast tidal current,we need to use heavy sinkers which hard to retrieve. A power reel helps.


----------



## gus

gus said:


> *48 pitch gear cutters.*
> Been buying from TracyTools.com. Just email for price and delivery.Will keep you posted.
> Was flipping thru their 2012 Summer Catalogue.




48 Pitch Gear Cutter,

I give up. TracyTools estimate is 80 B.Pounds per cutter. Need 4 cutters and thats 320 Pounds and about S$700. After the Howell Engines I have no projects that require 48 Pitch Gears. Its back to Module 0.8 or 0.5. Please advice which Module you are going for.


----------



## Swifty

Gus. I have to stick to 48DP as it just changes too much on the engine. The V4 has a compound gear train, 5 gears in total, the other alternative I have is to make a hob to cut the gears. Only one hob is required for all the different gears, but the only problem that I find with the hobs is that the teeth have no relief on the sides and end up rubbing a lot. I may make one and see how it turns out..

Not having seen the drawings for the V2, only some pictures, I assume that you only have the 2 gears, is it possible to buy some? I could always try to source some here for you if you like.

Paul.


----------



## Cogsy

Guys, I made a hob for my Upshur build and used the same one for my Rupnow Hit and Miss, from memory it was mod 0.8. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by 'side relief' of the teeth (I'm not 100% on gear terminology) but the straight toothed hob ends up cutting 5 flats on each side of each tooth and I'm told is quite a good approximation of the involute form, at least in the smaller sizes that we use. I suspect these flats blend together and round off with a little bit of running in.

What I do know is that my gears have held up well and seem to run relatively quietly (not like those noisy miter gears). The hobs are really simple to make and I recommend you make one up and test it out before you rule it out as an option.

Disclaimer : For my current V4 build I've purchased all the required gear blanks as I feel the gear-train in it is an extra level of complexity I'm not quite ready for. I do plan on making all the gears for my future V8 build though.


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## Swifty

Hi Cogsy, it's the teeth on the hob that end up with no side relief. I made a couple of Mod1 hobs in the past, and relieved the teeth as much as I could, but they still rubbed and threw up quite a burr. I ended up buying a full set of cutters and it was so much better.

Paul.


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## Cogsy

Ah, now I understand. I agree, the gears a hob produces do need a fair bit of deburring.

I haven't done it myself but supposedly it's not that difficult to make your own single tooth involute cutters, you just have to be able to accurately grind cutting tools into 'form' shapes. I have zero idea how you work out what shape each cutter needs to be without a template or something to compare it with though.


----------



## Charles Lamont

"Gears and Gear Cutting" by Ivan Law, ISBN 978-185242-911-2 explains how to get a close approximation to an involute using circular arcs, how to make a tool put the form on a fly-cutter using a pair of hardenend silver steel buttons, and for the really advanced, how to make a form relieving attachment for making multi-tooth cutters.


----------



## Swifty

Charles and Cogsy, thanks for the replies, I'm aware of Ivan Laws method, however the cutters will only cover a certain number of teeth each. Unless I build a form relieving attachment, I'm in the same position as I am with the hob, no side relief. There is a method of using the buttons to make a single point cutter and offsetting the centre to give some relief, but I have decided to make a hob again. I will back the teeth off as much as I can to prevent rubbing. When I last cut brass gears with a hob, there was a fair burr thrown up, however the brass was a fairly "sticky" type from the scrap yard, maybe I can seek some harder brass next time.

Paul.


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## gus

Hi Paul,

Here is contribution. Plan to go "Module'' on the gear train. Failure of which,will splash on Imperial Gear Cutters. The Howell Engine  is a long term project. The carbs alone set me back three weeks.Working on the throttle barrels tomorrow. Just figured out  the working procedure or routing list. The carbs looks good mounted on with fasteners to O/Heads.

There are 11 gears to cut. With this project, we can claim to have cut more than our fair share. 

Still going snail pace and enjoying making this Howell V-2 Engine. 

Take care.


----------



## Swifty

Gus, it's impossible to match up the centre distances for all those gears if you change to a Module form. I laid out the V4 gears on my CAD and gave up in the end, it is just too difficult to alter the centre distance dimensions. There are more gears on the V2 than the V4.

Paul.


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## Swifty

I had a go yesterday at making a hob for the gears, those teeth sure are small. I turned the tooth form in the blank first, that came out great. Next I milled the relief on the cutter, that was the downfall, the burrs thrown up by the cutter were just too hard to remove from the teeth, I tried putting the cutter back in the lathe and remachining the tooth form, but a slight mismatch ruined that.

Next move, I will mill the relief on the blank first, then turn the tooth form afterwards. Some pictures to follow later.

Paul.


----------



## gus

Swifty said:


> Charles and Cogsy, thanks for the replies, I'm aware of Ivan Laws method, however the cutters will only cover a certain number of teeth each. Unless I build a form relieving attachment, I'm in the same position as I am with the hob, no side relief. There is a method of using the buttons to make a single point cutter and offsetting the centre to give some relief, but I have decided to make a hob again. I will back the teeth off as much as I can to prevent rubbing. When I last cut brass gears with a hob, there was a fair burr thrown up, however the brass was a fairly "sticky" type from the scrap yard, maybe I can seek some harder brass next time.
> 
> Paul.



When hob is done ,please mail Gus drawing. I know nothing on making hobs.
48 Pitch with DIY Hob is a very wise choice. About to get off from PC Desk to work on throttle barrel. Enjoying every minute of throttle barrel making. Drilling the mini orifice is fun and challenging. Holding my breathe at every plunge.
Take Care and have a nice day.


----------



## Swifty

Here is the saga of making the hob, I'm lucky that I have a cutter grinder that I can put a 3/8" square tool bit in, this made it very easy to grind the required angle and relief on the toolbit. When I mounted the toolbit in the lathe, I clocked up the side of the toolbit to make sure that everything was nice and square.





I used 16mm dia silver steel for the blank hob, Machining the grooves in went extremely well, I measured the depth of the tooth using a 0.9mm drill bit shank, I had previously worked out the size required on the CAD.





I used a plunger dial indicator to get the correct spacing between the teeth.





Everything was going well until I machined the relief on the cutter, the burrs were just too hard to remove, I tried returning the form again, but there was a slight mismatch, so I scrapped that method.





Paul.


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## Swifty

The next thought was that I would machine the relief a bit deeper and then go back to the lathe and cut the grooves for the teeth. this gave a much better result. I hardened the cutter by heating with my Map torch and quenching in water, I didn't bother tempering as their is not a lot of work that the cutter has to do.





The cutter was set up in the mill along with the dividing head, I centered the tooth profile with the centre of the dividing head.





With everything set up, I cut the teeth to full depth in one go.





After going around once, I moved the cutter down by a tooth and ran the cutter through again, that's 78 indexes each time, By the time I was finished, my indexing hand was starting to cramp. The drawing calls up 12L14 free cutting for this gear, but not having any the required size, I used some brass instead. The rest of the gears will be 12L14 though. I'm not 100% happy with the finished gear, the tooth form looks slightly wide in the gap, maybe I'm being too critical. I will have to wait until I cut another gear to check the mesh.





Gus, if everything works out OK, and the hob is still good, I can send the hob over to you if you like. Will have to wait and see how it is by the time I finish all the gears.

Paul.


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## gus

Thank You .Uncle Paul. But Please let Gus make his own. Failure which,that is when I threw the towel,you throw me the hob. I am itching to make my very first hob.

Your very first gear looks great.

Following info required.

Hob Pitch.
Tool bit angle.
Depth.

Looks like in the future,Gus no longer buy Gear Cutters from ctctools,


Just cleaned up the two throttle barrels. Will make the Throttle Lever Hubs tomorrow.


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## Swifty

Hi Gus, the tool angle is 14 1/2 deg per side, pitch between teeth is 0.0655", now tool depth depends if you get your tool bit to a point or a slight flat. Going deeper with the tool bit isn't any problem, as only the top and sides of the hob need to cut. I made my tool bit smaller than theoretical size at the front and just went deeper. The hob gap width needs to be 0.0435", the size at the root is 0.019", the theoretical depth is 0.047". My toolbit was narrower at the front, so I had to go deeper, I used a 0.90mm drill shank and micrometer to check the depth required. Place the drill shank in the V and measure over the drill and the opposite side of the blank, just make sure that there are no burrs, you will be at correct depth when the size is .003" larger than the hob diameter. Of course you can use drill shanks in opposite sides, but the size will be .006" bigger over the 2 drills. I only used one, as it was too hard to balance everything, just remove those burrs.

Paul.


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## ruzzie

He are a couple of cutter I had made.
I used my Eureka form relief tool to make the 48DP cutters for my Howell.I have shown the finished gears along with my jig for checking the gear center distances
The hobb was for a gear used in a microscopes fine focus adjustment mechanism I think it was around 64dp. I was going to use the Eureka tool again but I found a site that showed you how to make a hobb and it look like a lot less work so I went with it.
http://www.helicron.net/workshop/gearcutting/involute-gears/

Paul R


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## Swifty

Hi Ruzzie, I like the fixture for checking the centres. I have now machined all the gear teeth, I need to just finish the bore on the 2 cam gears. I checked the centre distance of the crankshaft gear and the large gear in the milling machine, everything looks fine.

I was frustrated at one stage with machining the teeth, the teeth looked like they were being ripped off the blank, I couldn't understand it, I made another blank and the same problem, then I realised that I had not changed the quadrant arms on my dividing from the previous gear with a different tooth count.

Paul


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## Swifty

Not a lot of work in the past 2 days, although I did manage to finish the gear cutting. The 2 gears for the camshafts were held in a fixture in the lathe and finished off to length, as well as reamed to size.





Here we have a picture of all the gears, I even cut a length of brass to make the oil pump gears from.





The cutter stood up well, apart from a nick on 1 tooth where I hit the hardened centre in the tail stock, that was no problem, plenty of other teeth to cut with. Gus, with the cutter still being OK, the offer is still there for you to use it.

Paul.


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## Cogsy

The gears look great. I have to make several fixtures just like yours to modify my puchased gears. Not looking forward to that, so with my new philosophy I might attempt that next after I get the cam cut.


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## Swifty

I hesitated for so long about the gears, but in the end it all went well. I just have to make a quick fixture to check the centre distance of a couple of the gears, and then I can forge ahead with the rest of the machining on the block.

Cogsy, there is a little M3 grub screw holding the gear in, you can't see it in the picture, I also made sure that I had a through hole in the fixture in case I had to tap the back of the gear to get it out.

Paul.


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## gus

Swifty said:


> Not a lot of work in the past 2 days, although I did manage to finish the gear cutting. The 2 gears for the camshafts were held in a fixture in the lathe and finished off to length, as well as reamed to size.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Here we have a picture of all the gears, I even cut a length of brass to make the oil pump gears from.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The cutter stood up well, apart from a nick on 1 tooth where I hit the hardened centre in the tail stock, that was no problem, plenty of other teeth to cut with. Gus, with the cutter still being OK, the offer is still there for you to use it.
> 
> Paul.



Thanks Paul.

Please mail to ,

Gus Teng,

6-B Gray Lane,

Singapore 438938.

Will re-imburse when I drop in November 2015. 


Also need another favour. I presently have no Dividing Plate.

Please cut me one each following

13 T for oil pump
32T    21T    

Above to use as direct dividing plate on the Harold Hall DH for gear cutting.


----------



## Swifty

Hi Gus, sending the cutter is no problem, but I need more information on the other gears. Is the 13 tooth oil pump gear the same as mine, .313" OD, I can cut you a length like I did as shown in the photo. The other 2 gears that you need for masters on the Harold Hall dividing head, I will need to know the ID that you require to fit on the shaft. Are you not better off trying to buy some gears to act as masters, you need 32T, this could be 64T as well if you use every second tooth, the same applies to the 21T gear, this could be 42T. I can check some prices for gears from a local supplier if you like, otherwise send me the sizes that you require. Just bear in mind that the master gears will have to be a bigger module than the model ones, the only cutter set I have is for Mod1.

Paul.


----------



## gus

Swifty said:


> Hi Gus, sending the cutter is no problem, but I need more information on the other gears. Is the 13 tooth oil pump gear the same as mine, .313" OD, I can cut you a length like I did as shown in the photo. The other 2 gears that you need for masters on the Harold Hall dividing head, I will need to know the ID that you require to fit on the shaft. Are you not better off trying to buy some gears to act as masters, you need 32T, this could be 64T as well if you use every second tooth, the same applies to the 21T gear, this could be 42T. I can check some prices for gears from a local supplier if you like, otherwise send me the sizes that you require. Just bear in mind that the master gears will have to be a bigger module than the model ones, the only cutter set I have is for Mod1.
> 
> Paul.



Hi Paul,

Please send the gear cutter over.
Will buy sample gears from SDp-SI.  The 13 T spur gear is as per Howell V-2
Specs. 
ABout to get out of the Carb Department by this Thursday latest. Intake Filter housing will be done tomorrow. You are correct,Howell V-2s and V-4s are not for the faint hearted and impatient.


----------



## Swifty

Other things in life have been getting in the way of my engine building lately, that's not a real problem, but I consider my machining time very therapeutic and I look forward to it. However, I now have some time available, so I got to work on the engine.

Now that I have confirmed the centre distances for the gear train, I can proceed with finishing the timing gear cover. I have approached it a different way than that set out in the instructions, of course, the instructions have to cater for everyone and the equipment that they have, a bit of thought about the steps required and what equipment I have soon leads to a plan.

I had previously part machined the timing cover, the next step was to bore a recess in the rear where the large gear fits, and drill and ream a 1/8" location hole to be used as a reference when machining the outside rad's. I then drilled and counter bored the holes for the screws that hold it to the main block, I used the DRO on the mill to get the correct positions.

Next job was to set up the rotary table on the mill, zero the centre, then clamp the timing cover on the table, using an indicator to make sure it was centered. Then I proceeded to machine a step around the outside, although not all the way down, there will be another wider step milled later.





Once one end was done, I realigned the part for the other end, using the 1/8"dowel hole as the centre, and finished that end.





Next step was to hold the main block in the vice and drill and tap for the cover hold down screws. The timing cover was then screwed onto the block and squared up. I then mounted the block on the rotary table, making use of a steel sub plate, I drilled and tapped 4 x M8 holes to suit the hold down holes in the block. After making sure that everything was centered, I milled the outside profile that went past the cover and into the main block by .130", excess material around the outside was milled away whilst in this setup.











Now I have to do some deburring and blending in of the machining marks. 

Paul.


----------



## barnesrickw

Amazing work.


----------



## Swifty

Another day where not a lot is being done. While I had the rotary table set up, I milled an O ring groove where the timing gear cover fits. Again I'm deviating from the instructions a bit, they say to use a 1/16"ball nose cutter, not having one handy, and having to wait to make a trip to the cutter suppliers, I decided to use a straight 1/16"cutter. Most O ring grooves are straight sided anyway. I machined the parallel sides first, then the rad ends in a couple of set ups.





Paul.


----------



## gus

Hi Paul,
Great work. Watching and learning. The V-4 will be too tough for Gus to chew,swallow and digest. May buy the plans to read,study,comprehend and decide.


----------



## Swifty

More work on the block today, I tackled the 2 x 1/2" dia. reamed camshaft holes. These holes are right through the block from front to back, approx 3 1/4"long holes, I wasn't looking forward to putting these holes in as I was worried about run out at the other end. I made sure that everything was square by checking with an indicator first, and then drilled successive holes, 10mm, 12mm and 12.5, then ran the 1/2"reamer through, clearing swarf often. Whilst I was set up, I finished the necessary bores to clear the gears, some holes for buttons to hold the bearings in and the tapped holes. It was with great relief, that after checking the block on the surface plate with an indicator, the holes were well within .001"of position on the other end.










Next step was to mill 2 x 1/2"wide slots from the bottom of the block, up into the camshaft tunnels, this provides splash lubrication to the cams. The biggest problem was that these holes are 3 1/2"deep, I first used a 12mm long series cutter, one with a straight shank, no thread on the end, this was held by about 10mm in the collet to get enough length, and the holes roughed out. I followed up with a 1/2"dia cutter with a slight radius on the cutting edges, this cutter had a threaded shank which prevented me from getting the full depth, the end result doesn't look too bad, the rad's on the tip of the cutter made a nice blend in.





I'm gradually getting all the difficult parts on the block done, I have to be very careful at this stage, as making a mistake would be disastrous. 

Paul.


----------



## Cogsy

The finish on the inside of the block is impressive! I know what you mean about mistakes - the more time I have into a part the more paranoid I become.


----------



## gus

Hi Paul,

Take extra care. Take plenty of tea/pee breaks. Take plenty of dry runs before the plunge.


----------



## Swifty

When I had a chance over the past 2 days, I did a bit of drilling and milling on the block. Following the stages in the build guide and the drawing sequence, I drilled the head attachment holes, and also drilled and reamed where the pushrod guides go. Next step was to mill away a lot of surplus material, I held the block in the vice to rough mill it, then set up an angle plate and clamped the block to it for finish machining,





By clamping to the angle plate, I could easily check that everything was square before finishing.





Now it's starting to look like an engine.








Still more milling and drilling on this part to do.

Paul.


----------



## gus

Your machining skills is tip top. Mine is only barely can do. Working with a mini mill can be very frustrating. I have to live with the mini feed rate and shallow cut depth it can only take. The recalling BridgePort Mills and Leblonde Lathes I worked on I sometimes get very upset. Thats life. The balcony just won't take heavier machines.:rant:  Ha Ha

Recalled completing a simple 4 key-hole stamping tool c/w stripper and hold-down plate in less than a week with the full size machine tools. And stamping out hundreds of compressor sub-bases.


----------



## Swifty

Gus, you are doing an amazing job on the V2 with the machines that you have. I often wish that I still had all the machines available that I had when I worked, would have made life much easier.

And a thank you to those who have been posting likes, it's encouraging and spurs me on to post more progress.

Paul.


----------



## gus

Sometimes it gets very frustrating. Comparable to digging a big hole with a tooth pick. A pair of chopstick would do slightly better. 
Did some therapy early this morning,clearing up work bench and swarfs from lathe,mill and drill press.
Now working out a wooden case to store the micro feed drill chuck and the micro drills.Carpentry is very relaxing when you have bandsaw and power sander and the Japanese jack-planes.

Slept well last night. The V-2 is smiling at me like a pet dog and not begging me for more parts.


----------



## Swifty

Gus, the gear cutter should arrive soon, maybe working on a different part will relax you. I'll make some simpler parts shortly, just for a bit of a break.

What you need is a holiday in Australia visiting family and friends, I'm looking forward to meeting you when you come over next.

Paul.


----------



## gus

Swifty said:


> Gus, the gear cutter should arrive soon, maybe working on a different part will relax you. I'll make some simpler parts shortly, just for a bit of a break.
> 
> What you need is a holiday in Australia visiting family and friends, I'm looking forward to meeting you when you come over next.
> 
> Paul.



Good idea. I had some big travel plans with the Dividends coming end May. But now I seem to chicken out. November Oz trip still on . Have not seen Ari and Tasha for two years. Ari is in first grade and Tasha in Kinder 2. Both likes to bake.


----------



## Swifty

A little bit of work done today, a pocket was milled in each side of the block and holes drilled at an angle into the bores to allow coolant flow through the engine. Plugs were made that will cover these pockets, there are quite a few holes that get covered up permanently in this engine. 
Drilling the intersecting coolant holes.




The pocket and plug, just needs a bit of filing on the corners to fit. The plugs will be held in with some Devcon filler. I'm not worried about the milling marks, they will get removed with some wet and dry paper, and the block will get painted as well. Not the best photo, but you should get the idea.




Paul.


----------



## Swifty

Straight after the previous post, I thought that I better get rid of those machining marks, So I grabbed one of my "emery sticks", and using double sided tape, I stuck on some new 80 grit paper.





And, with about 5 minutes work, the marks were gone.





Paul.


----------



## gus

New 4 cylinder Engine to look at. See attached.


----------



## Swifty

Always wanted to make a flat 4, I might have to consider it.

Paul.


----------



## wirralcnc

Swifty hows about this for a flat 4. Designed by bruce satra.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=b...5%40N06%2Fsets%2F72157649482852173%2F;500;431


----------



## Swifty

Wirralcnc, that looks interesting, I've also looked at this one for quite a while. http://www.cad-jung-shop.de/Construction-plans-for-4-cylinder-flatl-engine

Paul.


----------



## Swifty

I fixed the plugs into the sides of the block, with a bit of a clean up of the excess Devcon, it's not too bad.





Next was to make 2 water inlets that screw on to the plugs in the side of the block, I machined each piece on the end of a short length of brass bar, then parted them off in the lathe. A piece of brass made into a tube and silvered soldered in completes these parts, except for some polishing later.





Here they are in position.





Paul.


----------



## Art K

Paul,
I just read through your build log. Looks good, I'll be following along now.
Art


----------



## Swifty

Hi Art, thanks for your comments. I'm not moving at a great pace on his build, always seems that something interferes with my machining time.

Paul.


----------



## Swifty

Here's today's work, an engine breather. There are actually 4 pieces in the photo, each piece that you can see has another piece loctited into it. There is still one more piece to make for this, that's an .011"thick shim disc that acts as a one way valve. The disc goes between the parts when they are screwed together. I deviated slightly from the drawing, the thread that you can see is called up as 3/8"x 32, I only had a 3/8"x 40 tap, so that had to do. I made a very small thread cutting tool for the external thread, and wound the chuck by hand to cut the thread.





Paul.


----------



## michael-au

Nice work Swifty


----------



## canadianhorsepower

Swifty said:


> Paul.



nice work did you lose your Humongous lighter 
cheers

Luc


----------



## gus

Swifty said:


> Always wanted to make a flat 4, I might have to consider it.
> 
> Paul.



Hi Paul.

I knew it. Would very hard not to build this engine.The flat four looks very challenging. The Cylinders are detached from block. So cylinder scrap would not lead to scrapping entire integral engine block. Will follow every flat four engine article in  Model Engineer Mag.My mind is still on the V-2. 
Did I stir up hornets nest???


----------



## Swifty

canadianhorsepower said:


> nice work did you lose your Humongous lighter
> cheers
> 
> Luc



Hi Luc, it's a giant match! I thought that I should grab something to show the scale of things, there's always a box of matches in the toolbox for lighting gas torches.

Paul


----------



## Swifty

gus said:


> Hi Paul.
> 
> I knew it. Would very hard not to build this engine.The flat four looks very challenging. The Cylinders are detached from block. So cylinder scrap would not lead to scrapping entire integral engine block. Will follow every flat four engine article in  Model Engineer Mag.My mind is still on the V-2.
> Did I stir up hornets nest???



I've probably looked at the flat 4 for the last 2 years, but I thought that I better get a couple of IC engines done before I tackled that one. If I buy the drawings, at least they will be in metric, makes screw sizes much easier, although I must say that I'm getting use to using imperial measurements again.

I'm still keen to design my own engine, now that I understand a bit more about them, I'll have to look into doing it.

Paul.


----------



## Swifty

I completed the final bits on the breather today, the drawing calls up "plastic" for the .011" shim disc that's inside the breather, I recall someone posting that brass is a better material. Having no brass shim, I decided to turn up a disc, that was easy. There is a pip on the disc where it was parted off, but I'm leaving it on as it doesn't interfere with anything, I made a spare as well for when the first one gets lost.





Next I made up a quick bending jig for the brass breather tubes that are attached, the tubes are connected to the air filter by plastic hoses. The tubes are loctited in, you can see where I missed a bit of loctite on clean up.





Next I had to machine a 7/16"dia. hole in the block for the breather, I bored the hole to size, as I don't have a reamer this size. For anyone thinking about making this engine, there is something not quite right with some sizes on the drawing for the breather and hole depth in the block. The bottom of the breather may interfere with the cams, but it may only require a larger chamfer on the bottom.

And here is the breather in place.





Paul.


----------



## wirralcnc

What about the maltese falcon flat four engine.

http://www.camdenmin.co.uk/products/building-the-maltese-falcon-special-price


----------



## Swifty

wirralcnc said:


> What about the maltese falcon flat four engine.
> 
> http://www.camdenmin.co.uk/products/building-the-maltese-falcon-special-price



260cc, now that's a large engine. Not really a model but a full size one, I would have to build something to run it in as well

Paul.


----------



## wirralcnc

Paul.
I have had the book a while. I'm sure it uses pistons and valves from a honda motorcycle. Also gives you the option to machine them.
Robbie


----------



## Swifty

Robbie, I did a quick search, and it mentioned that you can use off the shelf parts.

Paul.


----------



## wirralcnc

To be honest there isnt that much to it. Especially compared to the howell v4.


----------



## gus

wirralcnc said:


> What about the maltese falcon flat four engine.
> 
> http://www.camdenmin.co.uk/products/building-the-maltese-falcon-special-price



Thanks. Just bought this book from Camden. 

Engine a bit too big for my balconcy size machineshop. Will read and evaluate.

There are so many 4 cylinder engines to go for.


----------



## gus

Hi Paul,

The gear hob and 13t gear came in Monday 11. Thanks. Will buy Mr & Mrs lunch when I drop by.
Tasha and Ari has grown so fast and I have not seen them for last two years.
 Mill capacity is 12mm and Gus has the excuse to make one DIY Hob.


----------



## Swifty

Gus, the shank should be soft enough to turn down to 12mm dia, just make sure that it runs true.

Paul.


----------



## gus

Swifty said:


> Gus, the shank should be soft enough to turn down to 12mm dia, just make sure that it runs true.
> 
> Paul.



Thanks. GoodBye DIY Hob.  Tacho done. Will make one for you.


----------



## Swifty

That's very generous of you Gus, I'm sure that the hob will turn down to 12mm, you only need enough length for a good grip in the collet.

Paul.


----------



## Swifty

I spent this morning running around getting some more material etc. First call was to get a Bi metal blade for my 6 x 4 bandsaw, then some 1/2"square brass for the radiator, I now have enough for a few radiators. Next was some mild steel for the crankshaft, then some silver steel for the cams and other pieces. Came home with a near empty wallet, and the credit card got a going over as well.

So, after lunch, I machined some brass spacer bushes that go on the camshafts. 0.250 OD x 0.188 ID, 4 each of 2 different lengths. I turned the OD, drilled and reamed the ID then parted off. The parts were then held in a collet and cleaned up first, then taken out and measured, then returned and the correct amount taken off to bring them to size. A bit tedious, but at least there were no mistakes.








Paul.


----------



## Swifty

I was just cleaning up a bit and decided to photograph all the parts so far, still a long way to go yet.





Paul.


----------



## Cogsy

That's an impressive pile of difficult parts in a short space of time. You'll be finished in no time at this rate.


----------



## michael-au

Good lookin stack of parts you have there Swifty &#128512;


----------



## Davewild

Swifty said:


> I was just cleaning up a bit and decided to photograph all the parts so far, still a long way to go yet.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Paul.



Looking great Swifty, how do you guys do it so quickly?


----------



## Cogsy

Davewild said:


> Looking great *Swifty*, how do you guys do it so quickly?


 
It's all in the name


----------



## Swifty

Yes, I know, Swift by name, Swift by nature I feel that I'm moving slow on this build, but members have to realise that I worked for 35 years as a Toolmaker, so I can machine fairly fast once I get going. I also have a King Rich mill, which is just a bit larger than a Bridgeport, and a 14 x 39 lathe. Whilst the machines are great to use, they are sometimes a handicap, a lot of small parts are more suited to smaller machines, but when that larger part comes along, I'm covered.

Paul.


----------



## gus

Its true big lathe and mill do not handle small parts well. During my time with full compliment machine shop, I had to buy the smallest Leblonde Lathe to machine small parts and also as a standby. Sometimes I chip in with machining when shop gets to busy. Parts machined by sub-contractors are not stable and we waste time doing q.c. checks.


----------



## Swifty

Whilst I am working on small bits, I thought that I better make some more. I turned up a screw and a couple of spacer bushes that fit, along with some bearings, in the main 78 tooth gear assembly.








Next on the list were the valve spring retainers, one side of these is stepped and the other side has a counterbore. I turned the OD and the counterbore first, drilled and reamed the centre hole, and parted off to length. In order to hold the parts and turn the step on the other side, I used a piece of scrap and machined a .020" deep recess to fit the OD of the part, and also tapped an M3 hole in the centre to clamp the parts. This allowed me to easily hold the parts and maintain the step concentric with the outside.





The parts just have a bit of dirt on them in the photo, the material is stainless steel.





I may tackle the valves next.

Paul.


----------



## Swifty

With 8 + 2 spare valves, I have to have some type of production set up or I will be here for a week machining them. First job was to part off some over length slugs of stainless steel, whatever the grade, it's very easy to machine.





Next stage was to step one end and centredrill, I plan to finish turn between centres. The pieces were then turned around and centered on the other end with a No: 1 centre drill, I only broke 2 ends of the centre drills. I could not go any larger on the centre drill as the shank of the valve is .125"dia. I forgot to take a picture at this stage, sorry.

Next, I held the end with the reduced shoulder in the chuck and the other end with a small live centre. All the valves were roughed out in this stage, the chuck acted as a stop on one end, so I could just work to the dials on the lathe.





And here we have all the valves roughed out. They will be finish turned between centres, this will allow me to complete similar operations in one go, without having to change tools all the time.






I wasn't looking forward to doing the valves, but with a bit of thought put in to the method of manufacture, I think that it will all go smoothly.

Just a bit of a foot note, I mentioned in the previous post that I was thinking about making the valves next, that posting was at 12.50pm. Well after that I had some lunch, took my wife out for coffee, did a larger CAD drawing of the valves, and then started work on the valves. And now, just over 4 1/2 hours since the previous post, the valves are at the stage shown. It just shows, that with a bit of planning, things can move along fairly quickly.

Paul.


----------



## gus

With my 4'' chuck mini lathe and 12mm max mini mill, it will take two years before I see day light.
K.I.V. My worry is the crankcase cum cylinder block.I am accident prone. One miss-cut and thats it.

Paul .I am following and making wicked plans.


----------



## Swifty

Hi Gus, yes the cylinder block is the largest part, and the one that you have to be most careful with, one slip up, and there's no return. There are a couple of minor mistakes that I have made, but I'm not telling anyone, I can get away with them.

I started to set up to finish the valves tonight, I adjusted the tailstock slightly for the first one to get it nice and parallel, but the next one is .001" taper, will probably just have to use some wet and dry paper to correct it.

Paul.


----------



## gus

As for me, the insides of the crankcase don't look too good but can do.

Good News, taking Nellie to Penang,MAy 18----21, for four days to savour the Penang Cuisine/Cullinary. Will try hard not to over eat. Will be a good break. Mid June 3 days in Central Malaya to visit ex-air receiver supplier. Good food here too.The V-2 been very challenging and not for raw beginners and faint hearted wannabes.Budget Fare sure make flying cheap.


----------



## Swifty

More on the production line for the valves. After roughing them out, the next step was to hold the shaft in a collet and machine down the end with the small centre in it, I machined this .005"under the shaft dia, this way I can bring the tool right back to the tailstock centre and not have anything get in the way.





I then held some silver steel in the chuck and turned a 60 deg centre on it, this way I know that it runs true. After making a quick carrier (lathe dog to our US friends), I mounted up the parts and proceeded to turn the shaft down to .0005"oversize, I will finish off with wet and dry paper later to get to final size.









I didn't finish the blend radius at the previous stage, just straight turning. So next step was to grind a tool with the correct radius and machine the blend between the shaft and head. Here is a before and after picture.





Next, the parts were turned around and the head diameter finished.





After that, the parts were turned back around and the 45 deg chamfer was machined on, I use a form tool for this.





Paul.


----------



## Swifty

After the last stage, the parts were reversed and the head thickness was finished.





Next came the grooves to suit the valve retainer clip, I was lucky and found a carbide grooving tool .019"wide, the correct size for this clip. The other groove that you can see on the right, is a witness for the finished shaft length, I will trim the end off to this later.





Here's a close up of the groove detail and the head end.








And all the valves ready for a bit of a polish to final dia.





Paul.


----------



## gus

Everything x 2 or 4 or 8.  There are so many mini parts to make. The Howell Engines are quite demanding on time and skill and quality and finishing.You want to make good parts. When there is one of the four is not so good looking, you will want to redo that part too.Eight Tappet Valves to turn is no joke.The stem is not thick and easily damaged.

I admire your determination to turn out a good engine.


----------



## Swifty

Next part to tackle is the Valve Lifter Bushings, 8 required plus 2 spare. The material is bronze, and they have an offset head for clamping purposes. First problem was that I did not have the right dia. bronze to turn them in the 3 jaw chuck, I had a slightly smaller bar, so by using the 4 jaw chuck and offsetting the bar I was able to turn all the parts.








Next job was to mill the heads to the correct shape, after a bit of thought, I made up a quick fixture that I clamped down on my rotary table. This worked out well, and they were soon all done.








Next, the parts were held in a collet chuck in the lathe, and the centre hole drilled and reamed. The only thing left to do now was drill and counterbore the hold down holes, each part has half a hole in them. Another quick fixture was used, held in the milling vice, the pressure closed the fixture and held 2 parts at a time.





Finished parts.





Paul.


----------



## Swifty

Just for a change, and to get away from multiple parts, I ground up the form tool that is used for the pulley grooves, and then turned the crankshaft pulley. There are 3 other pulleys that I can use the form tool for later. Also in the picture is a cap that will secure he pulley on the shaft.





Paul.


----------



## gus

One has got to love or hate the Howell engines for its many intricate parts.
Paul. Great job.


----------



## Swifty

Hi Gus, there's a lot more parts yet, I tend to look at the drawings and think "too hard", and go onto something else. But at some stage I have to face these hard parts. I have to order some cast iron for the cylinder liners, as usual, I only have enough material for 2.

Paul.


----------



## gus

I thought it was best to tackle the easy meat----------the small misc. parts and I was wrong. When  there are 4 pcs, they just got to look same when 1 pce went way out, being a sore loser,I just had to make another pce. Ha Ha. Will be back on Friday 22 and work one last small piece---------the exhaust manifolds and the bearing housings,crankshaft etc folllows.

Burnt-Out battery now charging nicely.Ha Ha. Nellie having a great time window shopping. 

Take care.


----------



## Swifty

The past 2 days, I've managed to do a few more parts, I turned up the cam blanks, plus 1 spare. You might look at the picture and wonder how I'm going to hold them for profile milling, I have an idea for a fixture that I hope will make it easy for me. I also have 8 + 1 valve lifters, and the valve push rods, the rods just need a thread on the end, just waiting on the arrival of a 3-48 die.





I also loctited the valve cages in the heads and drilled the inlet and exhaust holes. For those that have made this engine before, you may notice that I haven't machined the exhaust holes for a round gasket, I intend to have a full profile gasket in this area.





Paul.


----------



## Cogsy

Another selection of nice looking parts, especially those impressive heads.

What loctite did you use for the valve cages and are they a press/shrink fit or just snug? I've been mulling over my options for retaining my valve cages and haven't made a decision yet.


----------



## Swifty

Hi Al, I used loctite 601 retaining compound. It's a bottle that I had left over from work, but it's still fine, we used it for retaining pins in holes. I didn't realise that here were so many grades of loctite until I did a Google search, I have a couple of bottles of thread locking and a couple of retaining.

The guides were a light tap fit in the holes.


Paul.


----------



## gus

OuterHeads now growing parts. Thats good. Still in Penang with Nellie doing more than her fair share of shopping.Guess if I am not too tired,I'll start working on two small parts --------exhaust manifolds. 3/4'' x 1/2 x 1/2 .Gus is no good with small parts. Will make 4 to get 2.


----------



## Swifty

Hi Gus, glad you are having a great time with Nellie, on Facebook you seem to be eating all the time  

I'm making spare parts in case I drop one and can't find it.

Paul.


----------



## michael-au

Nice collection of parts you have there Swifty, coming along nicely


----------



## gus

Swifty said:


> Hi Gus, glad you are having a great time with Nellie, on Facebook you seem to be eating all the time
> 
> I'm making spare parts in case I drop one and can't find it.
> 
> Paul.



Good Idea. Some of the parts are so small,you  lose it when parting off.
Some parts gets badly dented when dropped. The rocker arm pins too.Some gets lost or misplaced.Ha ha.

Penang food hawker food is quite unique. Its not Chinese or Malay. Its mixed Chinese,Thai,Malay and Indian. Very unique and authentic. Somehow back in Singapore,we cannot cook as good or near to authentic.

No worry,we did not eat like gluttons. Nellie and Gus would share one bowl of whatever desserts of the streets. Heading home tomorrow and go on diet to trim back.Ha ha.

Bought a AC/DC converter for the Power Mill Table Feed to replace the 12 v battery. Very cost effective. Very favourable currency conversion.OneS$ =2.7 Malaysian $.


----------



## Swifty

michael-au said:


> Nice collection of parts you have there Swifty, coming along nicely



Hi Michael, I have the mill all set up to go for machining the cams, no more work today though. Tomorrow I have the grandson all day to look after, so it looks like Saturday before I can try out my method of cam cutting. I will post lots of pictures.

Paul


----------



## Swifty

I machined one end of the cams tonight, took me a casual hour to machine 5 (one spare), its the intake end. I made a fixture that bolts to my rotary table, fixture was in 2 parts, I bored the location hole all the way through and put a plate underneath, this way I had a nice square corner in the bottom of the hole, when trying to bore a blind hole, it's always a pain to get a sharp corner. The plate was centralised on the rotary table and I tapped a 3/16"hole in the bottom plate to allow me to fasten the cam blanks. Before I did any more, I set the boring head to the correct radius for the cam flank, I used a scrap piece of aluminium and turned the large dia, to suit the size required, and a step the same size as the cam blanks to locate in the fixture. I adjusted the boring head until the tool just scratched the setting piece.





The first cam blank was then set up, I had previously worked out on CAD where the flank rad centre was, so the X axis was set to the correct dimension, and I fed in on the Y axis until the correct reading was showing on the readout.








I then moved the other way and cut the second flank.





All I had to do now was swap over to a cutter and mill the excess away between the flanks.





For the next one, I just left the cutter in the spindle and cut the excess first, then put the boring head back and cut the flanks, this saved a bit of double handling of cutter and boring head.  When I did the CAD drawing, I also drew in the correct angle to blend in the flank. I started with the rotary table set on zero degrees, so just had to rotate in either direction to the correct angle. Here's one end straight off the mill.





I have an idea how I'm going to locate for the other end, 2 of the cams are "left hand"and 2 are "right hand", so I have to be able to rotate the fixture to suit, and also set the first profile in the correct position.

Paul.


----------



## gus

Your cam looks good.

Start work again. The exhaust manifold took 2 hours in the morning and another 1 1/2 in the afternoon with one minor goof.
No extra weight gain and possibly due to the sightseeing and walking.


----------



## michael-au

Nice job on the cams Swifty &#128077;


----------



## Swifty

I've made a new fixture to locate the inlet profile and machine the exhaust profile. The first one I did, I took a bit too much off the flanks, so there goes my spare. After a readjustment, the next one came out fine. I will post the pictures tomorrow.

Paul.


----------



## Swifty

Here is my modified jig to locate the end that has already been machined.  I started off with a hole the same diameter as on the cam, but then I made a sliding location plate that locates the high point on the inlet cam and pushes it against the location dia.








The end that I was machining in this set up is the exhaust cam profile, I had to be careful as 2 are LH and 2 are RH. Just a matter of rotating the rotary table to the correct degrees. Here are the 4 cams, just need blending of the top radius and some polishing, then heat treatment.





Paul.


----------



## Swifty

Just a bit of an update, I made the spacers that go between the rocker arms, as well as the bearings that are inserted in to the pivot holes in the rocker arms. The drawing calls up delrin for these parts, I tried using some plastic that I had, but was not happy with the results, so made the parts out of brass instead. I have started to paint the grooves in the heads and the side pockets of the rocker holders, first off was a coat of etch paint prior to the top coat later.





Paul.


----------



## Swifty

Here are the heads with the final paint colour (color for those in the US).





I made a start on the crankshaft yesterday, and some more work on it today. What is supposed to be free cutting mild steel is a real pain to machine and get any type of good finish, but I have to persevere with it, and it's not to bad so far.





Paul.


----------



## Cogsy

Those are some mighty pretty heads Paul. Nice work indeed.

I don't know what grade of steel you're using for the crank but for my Peewee I imported some 1144 stressproof from the USA via Amazon. Landed price for a 1" x 24" bar was only about $40 Aussie. Might be worth considering getting some for your next engine, especially if you're going to do a 1 piece multi-cyl crank. It machines nicely and doesn't warp. Just a pity it doesn't seem to be available in Australia for some reason.


----------



## Swifty

Thanks Al, when I bought the steel for the crankshaft, it was from a small supplier and he wasn't 100% sure that it was free cutting. But the price was right, especially for cash.

Paul.


----------



## michael-au

Great looking heads Swifty


----------



## Swifty

Thanks Michael, I've just been setting up a chuck in the mill to do some more machining on the cranks.

Paul.


----------



## gus

The outer-heads look great. Day off today-------went fishing. Not a very good day. We lost the one and only biggy. Crankshaft turning tomorrow. Will work out the procedures/steps/details etc. Alignment worries me.


----------



## petertha

Coming along really nice, Swifty. 2 questions:

- did you do any valve seal testing against the cage seats prior to (assume they are now Locktited in) head installation?

- way back to post #33 is a picture of a cool looking boring head. Is that a German Wohlhaupter ?sp? or Czeck Narex or some such euro jewel that go for as much as some people buy entire lathes for?  Reason I ask is I've been looking at (used) ones with finer graduation than my Clunk-O-Matic & through that net surfing came to realize how functionally versatile they are. Is yours on an R8 spindle by chance?


----------



## Swifty

Petertha, in answer to your questions, the valve cages certainly are loctited in position, but I haven't cut the valve seats yet. I plan to make a valve seat cutter with a pilot a bit later. I plan just to lap the valves in and see how they go, I haven't got anything to test the sealing.

The boring head is a "Kuroda", made in Japan, I kept it when I retired from work and closed my toolroom. It's a thing of beauty and a pleasure to use, if I want to take 0.01mm/0.0004" off diameter in a bore, that's all it will take. That's the graduations on the dial, but I can easily split them if I need to. It also has auto feeding for facing parts, but I rarely have to use it. It is on an R8 shank, by memory, we made it at work, but you can buy the different adaptors.

Paul


----------



## Swifty

Some more work on the crankshaft, I've been drilling and reaming holes for the crank pins, machining .020" slots and drilling and tapping for the clamp screws. As you can see, I also milled the relief on the webs, when I was doing the first one, the cutter grabbed on the outside and spun the part in the chuck that I had on the mill table, this left a cutter pattern around the outside of the web. After my heart skipped a few beats, and I was finished using bad language, I decided to clean up the OD and make all parts the same.





There is still some more machining to be done on the webs, but following the build guide, the next step for me is to make the cast iron cylinder liners. Once these are in place, I have to assemble the crankshaft as it is and install it in the block. When this is done, a special home made tool is inserted down the liner to mark the outside dia. of the web, this shows where to remove material. It seems a bit of a long winded approach, maybe I should just lay it out on CAD and work from there. I think that the designer is trying to allow for variations in size of the parts.

Paul.


----------



## Swifty

I made a start on the cylinder liners, I turned the outside dia. to .020"oversize, then drilled 1/2"dia, then 3/4"dia and parted off leaving a bit on the length. This gave me 4 rough blanks.





Next, I set up a boring bar and rough bored all 4, leaving .015" on the ID. After cleaning away all the cast iron chips, I proceeded to finish the bores leaving .002" for honing later. I do have a bigger boring bar, but the one in the picture has a carbide shank and is very rigid. There was no taper at all on the bores.





And here we have 4 liners ready for honing, I will finish the OD on a mandrel.





Paul.


----------



## Swifty

For anyone wondering how I was holding my boring bar in my last post, here are a few pictures. It's being held in a 20mm diameter ER20 collet chuck, which I made a holder for. I also have a few boring bars with 20mm shanks, and for a 16mm one, I use a bush to make it fit.








And here is the collet holder, it's great for holding smaller size boring bars etc. I also have chamfering bits that fit, so I can do outside and inside chamfers on bores.





No mucking around with packers or anything.

Paul.


----------



## petertha

Swifty said:


> For anyone wondering how I was holding my boring bar in my last post, here are a few pictures. It's being held in a 20mm diameter ER20 collet chuck, which I made a holder for. I also have a few boring bars with 20mm No mucking around with packers or anything.


 
That's a nice tooling idea. In another of your pics I noticed you had the typical dovetail toolpost. Is the ER so you can accommodate larger & variable diameter shanks than the tool holder slot? By packing you mean shimming vertical height so tip is on center, or just material protecting the boring bar from toolholder clamping set screws? 

Mine is typical offshore model, 200-series (some refer as B) with max 5/8 tool thickness. So it can clamp most of the typical insert lathe style boring bars. But I also have 0.500" shank cutter tools for mill boring head that just sometimes seem to finish better than inserts now & again. I'm leery of marring the shanks because the boring head holes are a pretty nice, smooth fit. Is that another ER advantage?


----------



## Swifty

Hi petertha, you are quite correct about seeing a QCTP in a previous post, I bought it a few weeks ago, but most of my tooling was too big for it. I also bought a set of turning tools to suit the new holders. Although it's only a couple of minutes to change the tool posts over so I can use the bigger tools, I'm currently awaiting the arrival of a dovetail cutter so I can make some tool holders to suit. By packing, I did mean packing to get the centre height right. I have a lot of very small HSS boring bars that are ground concentric with the shank, this is where the ER collet holder is handy to hold the different diameters, with everything always being on centre.

The tool holders that came with my QCTP look exactly like that in your photo, the only complaint that I have is that the screws are a poor quality, I have just about rounded the hex sockets in most of them, I will source some better quality ones locally.

Paul.


----------



## Swifty

I made some more progress on the cast iron sleeves, first job was to hone all the parts to finished size using a brake cylinder hone. Next I made a mandrel and washer to hold the parts. I drilled and tapped the end M10 and jammed a screw in, after cutting the head off, I centre drilled the end. I then machined it down to suit the bore on the parts, when I took the photo of the mandrel, I had already moved the tailstock out of the way





The parts were then mounted up and machined to size, everything went very quickly using the mandrel. I actually roughed them all down using a carbide tip tool and finished them off with a HSS toolbit.








The head end has a step machined to suit an O ring, but before I do that, I want to number them and put them in the block, then measure how much they stick up, and then machine them down to .001"below the surface of the block. I have left about .005"on the head length to allow for this, my counterbores in the block vary slightly, hence my methods.





Paul.


----------



## jimjam66

Nice to see things moving along at a good pace, Paul!


----------



## gus

There will be a lot more parts to make and seem never ending. The liners look great.
All four pcs look identical.


----------



## Swifty

Hi Gus, when I bought the cast iron, I forgot to get some for the rings, so I better order some more soon. Have to make a lot of rings on this engine.

Paul.


----------



## Swifty

I have now matched the sleeves to their bores and numbered each hole and sleeve. The sleeves sit just below the face of the block, and there is a step for an O ring on each, there is no head gasket, just the O rings for sealing.





Now that I have finished with cast iron for a while, I need to give the lathe a good clean down with some degreaser.

Paul.


----------



## gus

Swifty said:


> Hi Gus, when I bought the cast iron, I forgot to get some for the rings, so I better order some more soon. Have to make a lot of rings on this engine.
> 
> Paul.



Hi Paul.

You beat me .I have 2   x    3  rings to cut. Pistons Rings are about the easiest to make. 

Think I will go for the CI Flywheel and taper lock for show off.  So many choice of items to make. 

Time passed so fast and its week end.


----------



## Swifty

The weeks are flying away Gus, don't know when I will be finished with my engine, all the little bits take time. I prepared some material last night for the conrods, so might start on them soon.

Paul.


----------



## petertha

Swifty, you mentioned using a brake cylinder hone for liner ID's. Is that for 'pretty close' diameter & reserving final lapping/finishing to occur once the liners are in the block? Or are the liners presently 'we are done' to final size & finish? 

Can you give me a typical +/- you are able to achieve between the liners with the hone & about how much material you are removing after the lathe (tool) boring operation?


----------



## Swifty

Petertha, the bores are now finish honed, I left .002" on diameter for honing. They are all well within .0005" of each other, close enough for me. As I got close to size, I slowed the rotation speed down, and increased the back and forth speed with the hone to achieve the nice cross hatch that you need for oil retention. The liners are a slip fit in the block, so will not close down on bore size when fitted.

As the liners are cast iron and I use some WD40 as a lube for honing, it's all very messy, so each time I measure the bore, I have to clean everything. I'm only measuring with a telescopic gauge and micrometer, to get a closer tolerance, I would need better measuring devices and have to clean up more often.

Paul.


----------



## Swifty

Too many other commitments have been impacting on my machining time lately, but I did manage to machine the Crankshaft Center Bearing Holder, this is made out of 2 pieces keyed together. Also done the shaft oil bushing which fits in the bearing holder, the drawing calls up Babbitt, never had any in my life, so I used bronze. It acts more as a guide for oil than a bearing, there are ball bearings on either side of it, so I allowed an easy fit on he shaft. Still a few holes to drill in it yet.








Paul.


----------



## gus

It will be a timely break and come back to gusto and ''GungHo''. It does get a bit frustrating when our project work gets interrupted. For example. Nellie called from her maternal home for Gus to buy her lunch.Stopped work and hour ahead to clean up and she called 30mins later to call off lunch date. 
Nellie is on my black list for a short while.Ha ha

I am taking it easy on the toughest part. Break the 1.6mm drill and I am about done.
Drilling the 1.6mm 35 degrees oil passage scares me. Will do a dry run before I plunge in. Step by step detail written. Will keep you posted.


----------



## Swifty

Hi Gus, I have been drilling more oil holes in the block as well as tapping some holes,very nerve racking at this stage of things. One broken drill or tap could ruin everything.

Paul.


----------



## Cogsy

Swifty said:


> Hi Gus, I have been drilling more oil holes in the block as well as tapping some holes,very nerve racking at this stage of things. One broken drill or tap could ruin everything.
> 
> Paul.


 
I really hope it doesn't happen to you, but if it does go bad you could always use the Alum trick to dissolve the broken piece out of the aluminium block. So now you have a strategy to deal with it, you won't break any!


----------



## gus

Cogsy said:


> I really hope it doesn't happen to you, but if it does go bad you could always use the Alum trick to dissolve the broken piece out of the aluminium block. So now you have a strategy to deal with it, you won't break any!



Hi Cogsy & Paul.
I survived the stress ordeal drilling the oil passages. Any bungle here will be hard to save crankcase.:wall: The mini sensitive drill chuck earned its keep today drilling the 0.018 oil orifice hole on the lathe at 600 rpm.So happy with the outcome ,I bought Nellie ShabuShabu Lunch.


----------



## Cogsy

Gus, you made me Google ShabuShabu - now I want some! Glad you got your holes drilled, I'm thinking about getting a sensitive drill chuck as well.


----------



## Swifty

A little bit more done yesterday, the blanks for the con rods are ready for further machining, I think that it was on Lesgy's build of this engine that I saw the method of putting the bronze in before final machining. I also started on the pistons, they may look strange, but I have allowed a 5/8"dia shank on top of the piston to allow me to hold them for further work, and of course, there is the obligatory spare one as well.








Paul.


----------



## gus

Swifty said:


> Hi Gus, I have been drilling more oil holes in the block as well as tapping some holes,very nerve racking at this stage of things. One broken drill or tap could ruin everything.
> 
> Paul.



Hi Paul,

We shared the same excitement/stress/potential scrap and the joy of making it safe and sound with the last cut/drill/tap. Good reason why I take it very easy with the final details. Part of the deal. Whatever hqppens,we have to move on as life cannot stay still.


----------



## gus

Swifty said:


> A little bit more done yesterday, the blanks for the con rods are ready for further machining, I think that it was on Legsy's build of this engine that I saw the method of putting the bronze in before final machining. I also started on the pistons, they may look strange, but I have allowed a 5/8"dia shank on top of the piston to allow me to hold them for further work, and of course, there is the obligatory spare one as well.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Paul.



Good idea. Will be cutting piston rings,pistons and con rods next week.


----------



## Swifty

I'm jumping between the con rods and pistons at the moment, the con rods have been drilled and reamed, and the relief groove in each side has been done.





I have turned a holder to hold the pistons with their temporary shank, and used a spotting drill to drill a clamping hole in the piston shanks. The tapped hole in the holder is set back .010 further than on the shank, this pulls the piston tight against the face.











The holder worked out well for facing the pistons to length, they all came out identical once I had set the stop. I will also use the holder in the dividing head when I'm drilling the oil return holes in the pistons.

Paul.


----------



## Cogsy

Fantastic idea Paul, again I will shamelessly steal it for my own use.


----------



## jimjam66

So much to learn here!  Paul, my immediate thought on seeing the bronze plugs in the conrod blanks was - how do you keep the bronze concentric?  Then I wondered if I was overthinking - the whole conrod is concentric so does it matter if the bronze isn't?

And all the jigs for repeated operations - marvellous!  Keep it coming, I'm hooked!


----------



## Swifty

Hi David, I also was worried about the bushes being concentric, but then again, am I ever going to replace them. Although I was very careful with positioning when machining, the chances that they are not quite concentric to their outer dia. is fairly high.

I try to think ahead about how I'm going to machine parts, whilst I'm working on something else, my mind is turning around about the next part. I always find that if I study a drawing of a part for a while, I will come up with a reasonable way of machining them a bit later. You have to consider how you are going to hold the part, what happens when I drill holes in it, will I squash it in the vice, what steps do I have to do first, do I have to drill holes before boring a part out etc. a lot of time can be saved by thinking the procedure through.

Al, I'm sure that I'm not the first one to use that idea to hold parts, copy away to your hearts content.

Paul.


----------



## gus

Cogsy said:


> Fantastic idea Paul, again I will shamelessly steal it for my own use.




Hi Paul,

Singapore Ned Kelly Gus about to pounce on your fixture. 
Ned Kelly was quite an infamous guy. Read about his escapades.
Incidently I will be cutting the piston rings now the cylinders were hone today.


----------



## gus

*Piston Ring Gap*

Please advise gap size,you plan to adopt. 3-----5 thou OK??  3 thou per inch piston OD came from Otto Engine Works.
Cutting the rings about now before it gets to hot & humid.


----------



## Swifty

That gap sounds fine Gus, I will use the method of cracking the rings and just cleaning up the ends with a needle file, worked well on other engine.

Paul.


----------



## Swifty

A bit more work on the pistons today, the fixture that I made to hold them is working great. First off, held the fixture in a chuck mounted to the mill table, centered everything, them roughed the slot for the con rod in all first, then finished off with an end mill.





Next, I mounted up the dividing head and set the fixture in it. After picking up the centre and end as reference, I set the boring head to the correct size and bored the clearance for the crankshaft.





Next step was to drill and ream the wrist pin hole in them all, then drill the 1.0mm oil return holes, 8 small holes in each piston. I only had one mishap when the 1.0mm drill broke in a hole, just as well I have a spare piston, maybe now is the time to source some alum and remove the drill.








All that's left to do now is the ring grooves and part off the shank.

Paul


----------



## Swifty

The piston fixture came back into use again for machining the ring grooves in. The width of the grooves is .041", I found a tool that was .042" wide, close enough for me. When I made the fixture, I marked it's position in the 3 jaw chuck before I bored it out, so putting it back in that position had zero run out. I did the top 2 grooves in the same set up, having the saddle locked and just moving the top slide. When all the pistons were done, I moved the top slide back and did the other grooves, the 3 ring grooves are .043"deep, whilst the oil return groove is only .015"deep.





Next step was to part the pistons off from their shank, then hold the pistons in the chuck with a bit of soft drink can wrapped around them to prevent marking, and face to length.





I then went back to work on the con rods, I machined the slot in the 2 thicker "fork" rods, then I used the CAD to work out the positions of the holes when I rotated the part for the tapered sides. I just held a bit of scrap plate in the vice and drilled and reamed hole positions to suit, and using buttons for location and the coordinates from the CAD. One side was milled on each, then the parts flipped and the other side milled, this gave me nice tapered sides on the rods.





Next step was to round the ends, I made use of the plate that I used when milling the tapered sides. I set up the rotary table, zeroed the centre and clamped the location plate down to suit the hole in the big end first. I knew the position that I had to move in to with the cutter, just blending into the sides by eye. After all the big ends were finished, I repositioned the plate to machine the small ends. After deburring, I gave the rods a bit of a polish on the buffing wheel, one of the smaller rods was flung away as it caught, I only heard it bounce once. Realizing that it must have landed somewhere soft, I soon found it laying on top of a rag, undamaged.





Here are the pistons and rods together, just placed there and not held by pins yet.





I may get back to finishing the crankshaft next, will see how motivated I can get.

Paul.


----------



## gus

Thanks for showing finished piston and rod assembly. I get a fair picture of how the piston ring retain the gudgeon pin. Next week locked up to do pistons and rods. Again thanks for showing the way to machine the rods.


Ned Kelly Gus.


----------



## jimjam66

Holy cow! Is that a regular match for scale?  Them's some tiny pistons and conrods!  If I may ask, how did you cut the central slot of the 'Fork'?  I assume (but am prepared to be wrong) that you did it as the final machining operation?  Sorry - just re-read your post and it was the first, not the last.


----------



## Swifty

David, I milled the slot for the forked con rod with a normal end mill, just held the part upright in the vice, picked up the centre, roughed it out, then finished to width. I was going to use a slitting saw with the part lying down, but all my saws would have needed a few cuts as I didn't have a wide one.

It's a normal everyday match, I do have a couple of boxes of longer firelighter matches in my camping gear, maybe I should use one of those to make the parts look even smaller .  The piston diameter is 7/8", so maybe that will give a better idea of scale. One thing that I notice while turning small parts, I think that I need a stronger pair of glasses to see detail properly.

Paul.


----------



## Art K

Paul,
Your piston and rod assembly is looking good!
Art


----------



## Swifty

Managed to finish the crankshaft off over the last couple of days, milled away excess material on the webs to form the counterweights, drilled and tapped oil passages etc. I made the threaded end a bit longer than the drawing calls for, I have an idea of using a one way bearing and electric starter motor for this engine.





Paul.


----------



## Swifty

I just couldn't help myself, I had to do a trial assembly of the main parts. I didn't bother with the cylinder sleeves, pistons or rods, and only one pair of follower guides are there.














Paul.


----------



## Swifty

I meant to mention in the last post, I spent a few hours tapping all the holes in the block. There were 43 holes that needed tapping, with the majority being 2-56 and the rest 4-40, taper tap then bottoming tap. The block was too big to fit under my tapping fixture, so all were done with the use of a guide block with a hole in the middle to suit the taps. I was certainly glad to get then all finished without breaking a tap. The taps were held by a small brass disk with a hole to suit and a grub screw on the side, much less chance of applying too much pressure.

Paul.


----------



## gus

Congrats. No taps broken. 43 tapped holes. Thats a pretty lot of of tapping.I would tap at most 5 max at a time.Take tea break for 15 mins. Very nerve racking. 4-40 is about M4?. M3 not too bad. M2 would be very risky. Trust your 4-40 taps were brand new or still very sharp. Plenty of Tapmatic Fluid used???


----------



## jimjam66

Exciting times!  The end is in sight for that beauty!


----------



## Swifty

Been working on the rocker arm clevis and valve push rods. I'm waiting for a 1/8"slitting saw to arrive so I can mill the slots in the clevis.





Paul.


----------



## Swifty

I've been doing a little bit whenever I have a chance, I have made the distributor drive case and camshaft end cover. At the moment, I'm struggling to get a supplier for the 2 mitre gears for the drive, I will just have to broaden my search.








I'm almost finished with the oil pump, I just have to put a full radius on the ends and do a final assembly. I made the pump from round bar stock, used the 4 jaw chuck to machine the top plate, and did the rest of the work on the mill.








Paul.


----------



## Cogsy

Looking great as always Paul. I've used Stock Drive Products - http://www.sdp-si.com/ - in the past and they were easy to deal with. The shipping is reasonable and was auto-calculated online so I browsed, ordered and paid without ever having to email anyone. They also have a massive range so you should be able to get what you need.


----------



## Swifty

Thanks Cogsy, I have used that site in the past to check gear data, but for some unknown reason I never thought of searching for the gears that I wanted. I always searched for 48 DP mitre (miter for the USA) gears, but I never saw them come up. It certainly looks like they have the gears that I want.

Paul.


----------



## gbritnell

Outstanding work Paul. I have seen several of these engines running over the years and they are great performers. I'm sure you'll be very happy when you get to that point. 
gbritnell


----------



## Gerhardvienna

Hi Paul
Great work!
Just fell over your method to do the gears, this is phantasitc! I`ve never seen it that way before, this is the way I was looking forThm:
Gerhard


----------



## Swifty

Some may be wondering, why don't I just make the mitre gears. Well, I would have to buy a cutter for them, and they are not cheap in DP size, each tooth on the gears requires 3 passes with the cutter, but the biggest problem is that they would be darn hard to see to cut. So, best to buy what I need rather than pay for a cutter for a one off job.

Paul.


----------



## jimjam66

Did you make the oil pump gears, Paul?  The scale makes my eyes water ...


----------



## Swifty

Hi David, yes I made the gears, but I had to make a hob style cutter first, post 95 onwards shows a few pictures of the process. The gears are 13T, 48DP, .312" OD x .150" thick with a .125" hole in the centre. I made them as a bar length and parted them off very carefully, the biggest problem was removing burrs from the teeth after I parted them off.

I will lap the mating faces of the gear pump prior to assembly to avoid any oil leaks. I'm quite happy that all went well, the gears have to be a neat fit in the bores in order to work properly.

Paul.


----------



## ruzzie

Have you tried these guys for gears 
http://www.smallparts.com.au/store/categories/gears+mitre/
http://www.hobbyparts.com.au/store/partslist/kitsgears90degree/kitsgears90degree/a/1/


Paul


----------



## Swifty

Thanks Ruzzie, I will check them out today, the main problem is that they have to be DP imperial gears. 
Module gears just are not the right dimensions. 

Paul.


----------



## Swifty

I managed to finish the oil pump today, as suggested on the drawing, I used some carbide shafting for the pins on the gears. They were broken cutter shanks that I had kept, the long shaft runs on 2 bearings and also 2 "O" rings, "O"rings can be very hard on shafting and wear it away. The smaller carbide pin came out of a longer piece, I just used the corner of the diamond cup wheel to score the outside as much as I could, then snapped it with a pair of pliers. The ends were cleaned up to size in my cutter grinder.





One gear has been loctited to the long shaft, and the short shaft has been loctited in the top plate. I'll give it 24 hours to cure properly and then do the final assembly.





Just for something different for a change, I cut up the brass bar that will be the radiator fins, bored a hole in a scrap block and tapped M8 in the side to hold the bars for facing. The brass is all out of the same bar, and very consistent in size across corners, the sides are all within .001" of centre, I'm not sure if I will use the same fixture to cut the fins, I already have another idea forming in my mind, will see what happens.





Paul.


----------



## Charles Lamont

That is some very fiddly work. But, and I am probably being daft here, it looks to me as though the inlet and outlet ports in the pump body are drilled right through. If so, surely it will just recirculate?


----------



## Swifty

Hi Charles, I can only assume that the oil pump is a tried and tested design, there is a hole drilled through the bottom half of the pump right where the 2 gears mesh. Part of the hole is left in the bottom as you will see in the picture. The gears are a very close fit in the bores, so I assume that the oil takes the path of least resistance, I'm led to believe that they get good oil pressure with this pump.

I did some more work on the radiator fins, I'm fortunate that I have a cutter grinder that takes a 3/8"square 5C collet, so I can hold the HSS toolbits to accurately grind them to size. So, I made my .040"wide grooving tool with all the correct relief angles, then mounted it in the lathe toolpost and indicated the side so it was perfectly square, after picking up the edge, I started to cut a few grooves. One thing that became immediately apparent, was that the fin that was left pushed over as I was cutting the groove. I had started from the tailstock end, working my way along towards the headstock. After several fins did this, I moved along as far as I could towards the headstock, and started to work my way back to the other end, this did improve things a lot, not perfect, but much better. Maybe its stresses in the material causing this. I did find out something else whilst cutting the fins, I don't have a readout on the lathe, so I'm going to have to clamp down a digital vernier to the bed to get correct pitching between the grooves. the hand wheel is just not good enough. There was a recent thread on doing this, so I will look it up.

Here's a photo of the test fins, I had straightened up most of the fins using a feeler gauge. It may be just as well that I have 3 meters of brass for the fins, I may need it all.





Paul.


----------



## wirralcnc

Paul
When I did this radiator I had the same problem with fins bending.
I actually used two 1/16" blades. Ground each blade to give me width of one groove and half a fin. Then ground the front to .040" wide and stuck the blades back to back in a holder. Works perfect. One blade cuts the other just supports the previous fin.
Robbie


----------



## GailInNM

Paul,
A "T" type cutoff tool works very well for this as it has a greater side relief angle. If you can grind a concave in the top of the tool this also helps. Both items help reduce the side pressure by curling the chips away from the sides of the cut.

For your application a standard P1N cutoff blade works well as it is 0.040 wide. Occasionally you will find a manufacturer who grinds the concave in the top of these blades, but most are a flat grind top.  You do have to shim the bottom side of the blade to make it stand vertical in a regular blade holder or make up a stepped blade holder. 

I recently cut 0.03 wide fins with 0.03 grooves in 6061 square alumnium. 5 pieces with 30 fins on each piece with no bending.  I was using a P1N blade that I had ground down to 0.030 wide and a flat top.
Gail in NM


----------



## Swifty

Thanks for the advice Robbie and Gail, I will play around with it a bit more soon. I don't think that the chips are causing the problem, as its brass that I'm turning and I am getting typical hard brass fine swarf coming off.

Paul.


----------



## Charles Lamont

Swifty said:


> I can only assume that the oil pump is a tried and tested design, there is a hole drilled through the bottom half of the pump right where the 2 gears mesh. Part of the hole is left in the bottom as you will see in the picture.



I thought that was what I could see and it means the inlet and outlet sides of the pump are directly connected, which is 'wrong'.



> The gears are a very close fit in the bores, so I assume that the oil takes the path of least resistance,


That is precisely what worries me. The oil will be carried round from the inlet in the gear tooth spaces and squeezed out into the outlet by the meshing of the gears, good so far, but then it will do as you say -  and go along the channel behind the gears back to the inlet.



> I'm led to believe that they get good oil pressure with this pump.


Well if it works, it works, and so much for the logic.


----------



## bigrigbri

For the miter gears have you tried HPC gears here in the UK.
If you did machine them yourself a running in oeriod in a jig at the set depths using a little metal polish to allow each gear to bed into each other.


----------



## wirralcnc

Paul
Few photos of the tool I made and the radiator it produced.
Robbie 

View attachment 1435479241808.jpg


View attachment 1435479253883.jpg


View attachment 1435479267385.jpg


View attachment 1435479280918.jpg


----------



## Swifty

Thanks for all the advice guys, I'm away from home at the moment and accessing the forum with my phone, I will respond more in a couple of days. 

Paul.


----------



## Gerhardvienna

Hi Robbie
Nice job, well doneThm:
What material did you use for the cutters?
Regards
Gerhard


----------



## wirralcnc

Two hss 1/16" blades from ebay. 
Robbie


----------



## Lesgsy

Charles Lamont said:


> I thought that was what I could see and it means the inlet and outlet sides of the pump are directly connected, which is 'wrong'.
> 
> That is precisely what worries me. The oil will be carried round from the inlet in the gear tooth spaces and squeezed out into the outlet by the meshing of the gears, good so far, but then it will do as you say -  and go along the channel behind the gears back to the inlet.
> 
> Well if it works, it works, and so much for the logic.



Once drilled 
I had to fill the centre with soft solder to get mine to  Give a good pressure !


----------



## Gerhardvienna

wirralcnc said:


> Two hss 1/16" blades from ebay.
> Robbie


 
Thank you, must look for this in Ebay Austria or Germany! The fins look really good, I need that for my Saurer-engine oil and water cooler.
Regards
Gerhard


----------



## wirralcnc

Gerhard
They were actually german made hss blades.  Think they were around £5 for the two.  tried alsorts to stop fins bending.  But only the two blade tool did a quality job.
Robbie


----------



## Swifty

I'm back from a couple of days break, first job was to order the miter gears for the distributor drive. Ordered them from SDP/SI in the US, just on A$50 the pair delivered. Now I have to concentrate on the fins for the radiator.

Paul.


----------



## Swifty

Thought that I would do an easy part, so chose the pulley, collet and nut for the oil pump. The thread on the collet is 1/4 - 32, I have a tap to suit for the nut, but had to screw cut the collet thread. All was straight forward, the 5C collet blocks came in handy for the nut flats and for holding the collet for slitting.

The hole circle function on the readout makes it very easy to pitch out the holes in the pulley. The drawing calls for these holes to be reamed, no reason for it, so I just drilled to size.








Paul.


----------



## gus

Your workmanship is top class. The Oil Pump looks great. I am still struggling with mine.


----------



## Swifty

Just be patient Gus, rushing makes mistakes, just think about things before you act and you will be OK. 

Paul.


----------



## jimjam66

That's an interesting approach to holding the pulley - seems more complex than necessary?  Still, you made a fantastic job of it!


----------



## ICEpeter

Hello Swifty,
Going back a little to the point raised by Charles Lamont regarding the through hole that connects the oil pump inlet with the oil pump outlet, I am afraid but Charles was correct in saying the oil pump will just circulate the oil between the inlet and outlet and not develop pressure.

It appears you and some other people building the Howell V4 made a booboo there.

I just checked the Howell V4 oil pump drawing and noticed on the drawing that the inlet and outlet ports are only supposed to be drilled 0.26" deep from each side. With the oil pump housing being 0.67" wide and drilling the two ports 0.26" deep would leave a center section of 0.15" which serves as the barrier / seal between the inlet and outlet port.

I have not build the Howell V4 yet but plan to do so. At this point I only have the set of drawings to look at and digest.

Have been following your build thread and like what I see especially the high quality of your workmanship. Will follow your thread to get an education in how to build the V4.

Peter J.


----------



## Swifty

Peter, thank you, you are absolutely correct in what you say. Looks like I'm not the only one to fall for that, I will either fill it up with solder or 2 part aluminium epoxy.

Paul.


----------



## Swifty

Another day and a couple of more small parts done, if I keep pecking away at it, I will eventually get it all done. I machined up the fan shaft and pulley, I don't always do a step by step for each part, but decided to take a few pictures today.

First job was to turn the outside to size, then drill and ream a 5/16"hole in the middle.




Next step was to line up my pulley grooving tool that I had made for the oil pump pulley, and machine the grooves.




After that, I relieved the centre portion.




And then, parted off and trimmed to length.




Next, I held it in my 5C collet block and drilled the holes ready for tapping.








Paul.


----------



## Swifty

Next on the list was to machine the fan hub, all straight forward turning, drilling and boring as per drawing. The drawing allows for optional scallops between where the fan blades are attached, no dimensions were given for position, just said a .250 dia. cutter. I always try to think ahead when machining parts, and I thought that those scallops may be handy locations for when I machine the slots for the fan blades to fit in. So a quick draw up in CAD and I had the positions for the scallops, which I made 8mm dia. So off to the mill, and held the bar in a V block sitting in the vice, couldn't be bothered to set up a chuck, and machined the scallops as well as some mounting holes. Back into the lathe to part off, next problem, how to hold a 5 sided part in a 3 jaw chuck to face the part to size. Another quick fixture with a screw in the side solved that problem.










I also machined up the fan shaft post and fan post bracket which eventually holds all the parts.





Paul.


----------



## Gerhardvienna

Hi Paul
Nice work, it`s a piece of art! Silly me is just at the PC drawings all the time I expected to do real work....................:wall::wall::wall:
Regards
Gerhard


----------



## petertha

Your radius profile tool caught my eye. I cant quite tell if its an insert or integrally ground on a rectangular tool. Can you elaborate? 

(After some so-so results profiling the trumpet shape of my SS valves with home ground HSS, I ended up getting a circular insert type holder).


----------



## Swifty

Petertha, it is an insert tool, they are called "Top Notch" inserts. I kept it when I retired from work and closed my toolroom, I had one packet of radius inserts as shown in the picture, as well as quite a few straight ones that can be ground to any shape you want. I also have some 60 deg profile ones for threading. They are double ended inserts, I'll take a photo next time I'm in the workshop.

Paul.


----------



## Swifty

Petertha, here are some pictures of the tool and inserts. The insert in the tool has a 45 deg chamfer.





Radius insert, they are double ended, have to flip them.





And some other inserts, radius, thread cutting, full width and one ground down.





I also have a few internal ones, the top groove is the opposite hand, but no holder.

Paul.


----------



## Swifty

Well that all went well, I made a fixture for the fan hub to enable me to cut the slots for the blades. A block of scrap aluminium, a couple of dowel holes and a tapped hole.





I just tilted the fixture at the required angle, lined up the saw, and cut the slots.








Paul.


----------



## Swifty

I drew up the fan blades in CAD and printed them out actual size, next step was to use some spray adhesive and stick the drawing onto a piece of brass sheet. Now all I need to do is buy a jewelers saw to cut them out, not so easy it seems, local hardware stores no longer stock them, there is a lapidary shop 30 minutes away, I will be passing them tomorrow, so will call in to see if they can help, otherwise it's another wait for Ebay delivery.





Also managed to get the oil dipstick sub assembly done, quite pleased with the results.








Paul.


----------



## V22

Swifty, just a quick note to say I'm really enjoying the work-holding photos your posting in this thread. I can see your experience in a tool room shining. It's one thing seeing a beautiful part, but the lasting value is in the knowledge you're sharing of the process to get that part. 

I can see with your fan fins, your jig is design to keep the correct index for each cut. Then the jig for facing the irregular shaped part on the lathe. Swifty magic!


----------



## Swifty

V22, I'm glad that your enjoying the build, it's nice to share things. I also pick up tips from other builds as well. I probably should take more pictures of the machining operations, I tend to think that it's pretty straight forward, but there are those who don't have the experience who could hopefully benefit.

Paul.


----------



## petertha

Swifty said:


> I drew up the fan blades in CAD and printed them out actual size, next step was to use some spray adhesive and stick the drawing onto a piece of brass sheet.


 
Really enjoying your work. Re the brass cut-outs, how thick is the metal itself? Are you using a hand jewelers saw or powered scroll saw? What kind of blade?

Reason I ask is I had so-so results on my Dewalt scroll saw despite playing with blade TPIs & rpm. What improved matters was tack glueing the brass onto scrap 1/8" mdf backing board. But this brass was quite thin, maybe 0.020" & not actually sure the alloy. Maybe a shim stock cut-off. I've seen people do intricate brass scroll cutouts like clock gear wheels even 1/4" thick. I'm kind of intrigued with that because my aluminum experiments were very slow going.


----------



## Swifty

Petertha, I deviated from the drawing slightly with the blade thickness. The drawing calls for .032" thick, but I had some .040" sheet so I am using that, it worked out well as I had a 1mm (.040") saw to suit. I will be using a hand held jewellers saw and file on the blades, I had a scroll saw years ago, but sold it as I was no longer using it. Not sure of the grade of brass that I have, but it is fairly stiff, so should suit it well. I may well use your method of sticking the sheet to a thin wood base, it should support things better.

I often wish that I was making engines when I had a toolroom, the wire cutter would have made short work of the blades, but I was so busy making a living and keeping the work flow going that I had no spare time.

Paul.


----------



## gus

Paul is correct.At knock time we are about exhausted and heading home .


----------



## Swifty

I'm probably a bit impatient, but I didn't want to wait 3 weeks for a jewelers saw to come from China, so I barged ahead with machining the fan blades. Fist step was to drill some clamping holes at each end of the blades, then cut out the rough blanks on my bandsaw. With a M3 screw and nut in each end, the blanks made a solid bundle. I used a scriber on a surface gauge to pick up the printed line, and machined away carefully until the line was reached. I then clamped the stack down and machined the ends as best I could. The small toolmakers clamps on the end are only to stop the excess from pushing away.








I cut the clamped ends off with a hacksaw and filed the ends to shape, I had a few spare blades clamped as well. After deburring with a needle file, the parts were ready for bending. I was pleasantly surprised when I checked the size of the blades to drawing dimensions, they were within .005" of true size, not bad for working to a printed line.





For the bending jig, I set up a scrap piece of aluminium in the mill, then set the boring head to the required radius and machined enough to cover the blade length. The other part of the bending jig was easy, just turned up a diameter to suit and tapped a hole to suit a rod that I had. With the bottom part of the die clamped in the vice and centered, and the top located on a shank in the mill, it was an easy job to bend the blades.





The drawing calls for the blades to be loctited in and then pinned, but I decided to solder the blades in. I dipped the end of each blade in paste flux and inserted them into the hub, once set up, gently warming the hub with my MAP torch until the flux melted and it was hot enough to melt the silver solder. Everything flowed well, gently heating is the best approach. I polished off some of the heat marks, but I intend to buy a sand blaster shortly, so that will give a nice matt finish to the fan.





Paul.


----------



## oneKone

These Howell engines seem to be popular! Great work on the build so far


----------



## Swifty

Thanks Chris001, I'm just dawdling along making parts when I have a chance. The Howell engines are certainly not for the novice or feint hearted. There are a few parts that I'm not looking forward to making, like the water pump for one example.

Paul.


----------



## oneKone

I totally agree with you, I would love to make one but unfortunately I'm too inexperienced to make one. I'm happy people on this forum make them so I can see how much work goes into one.


----------



## gus

Swifty said:


> Thanks Chris001, I'm just dawdling along making parts when I have a chance. The Howell engines are certainly not for the novice or feint hearted. There are a few parts that I'm not looking forward to making, like the water pump for one example.
> 
> Paul.




Chris001.

Paul is correct. I spent more two week with the Gear Type Oil Pump and not getting anywhere. Scrapped two pump covers and two pump body.
However I am getting somewhere with good practice. Every time you scrap a piece, you learnt from the mistakes and its usually related to impatience with these very small parts.:rant::wall:


----------



## Gerhardvienna

Hi Paul
Well done, there are so many things I can copy on my Saurer-Engine! The fan looks great, I would have done it the same way. 
Regards
Gerhard


----------



## Swifty

I made a start on the fuel inlet manifold, also included in the manifold is the coolant return to the radiator. Castings were once available for this, but I don't think that you can get them now. Another member posted a couple of drawings a while ago, showing how they made one from scratch, so I'm using a similar method to make mine. First off, I made a few measurements where the manifold will sit between the heads on the engine, I then drew it up on Cad and dimensioned enough to get me going. I used a piece of 1"round brass and machined it to the sizes required.




The manifold is hollow inside, so to machine this, the inside is milled to suit and eventually a side is silver soldered on to enclose things. In the next photo, the shallow bores that I am pointing to with the pen are tooling marks for later machining the 45 degree angles on the ends. I will mill the ends until these marks disappear. 




I machined the ends at 45 deg, and then thought about how I was going to enclose the side. I initially was going to mill a pocket to suit an insert, but decided to mill the whole side down and solder on a piece that overlapped everywhere. Every time I silver solder, I think about the German toolmaker who instructed me when I was a first year apprentice in 1970, he always told me "An die spitze sitze der hitze", not quite sure about the spelling, but it means that the heat is on the point, so only use the end of the flame.




I then trimmed the excess off and also did a bit more machining to the profile. Next step, I will have to solder on some flanges to either end and machine them to suit.




If it's any consolation to Gus, I scrapped 2 parts before I even started to machine the inside, dumb mistakes, I was working off pencil sketches and looking at the wrong sizes.

Paul.


----------



## Swifty

PI managed to put quite a few hours into finishing the manifold today. Carrying on from where I left off yesterday, I drilled 3mm dia holes in the ends where the flanges are going to be attached, then turned up 2 flanges with a 3mm locating spigot on them.







I planned to use lead solder to hold these flanges on, I didn't want to apply too much heat and melt the silver solder on the side plate. First thing I did was to put some soldering paste on the face of the flanges, applied some solder until the face had a good coverage, and then placed the manifold on top, making sure that the solder was flowing well. I held the manifold with a pair of vice grips, and held the parts until they started to cool down, repeated on the other end. I cleaned the excess solder and flux off.




Next step was to hold the manifold and start to machine the flanges, drilling the fuel inlet and some fastening holes. The flange thickness was left oversize at this stage so I could do a trial fit to see how much to take off.




Paul.


----------



## Swifty

I sat the manifold on the engine block with the flanges touching the heads, then measured the gap under the centre portion that sits on the block. A bit of a calculation told me how much material to remove from the flanges to get the correct seating. I was very cautious at this stage, as I didn't want to ruin anything, so I removed only about half of what I calculated, then repeated the measuring. Next step was to finished size, and all came out well. There are O rings on the base as well as the flanges, so all should seal well. The hole in the base is where the water exits to the radiator.













And here's the manifold resting on the block, you may notice that the holes on top are offset, this is correct, as this matches the offset on the carby.




Paul.


----------



## gus

Great job on the inlet manifold. The Howell V Engines have so many miniature and intricate parts to make.In full size engines, these manifolds would be big and machining done easily on production jigs/fixtures. Nowadays the CNC Machine Centre or FMCs comes in. With this miniature parts, HomeModelEngineMachinist would have to painstakingly/manually turn/mill/dill/file. All along the way with the risk of making fatal mistakes. You just got to love and enjoy doing it. When the V Engines are built and running.All our pains and anxiety is forgotten.

Paul. We landed 15 pcs today. See FB.


----------



## Art K

Swifty,
The manifold looks great. I appreciate seeing how you set up the different parts.
Art


----------



## Swifty

I started work on the water pump, the impeller first. I turned up a piece of brass to the correct diameter, and leaving it attached to the rest of the bar, I mounted it in the 3 jaw chuck on my rotary table. I then machined the 5 slots that will pump the water and also drilled and reamed the 5 holes that will hold the magnets that provide the drive. The pump is a sealed unit that is driven by magnets in 2 of the parts, the magnets on the outside are mounted in the pulley and attract the magnets on the sealed impeller.








Paul.


----------



## gus

Very interesting pump and impeller and magnetic coupling. Will follow post.


----------



## Swifty

Not a lot of work being done lately, I have a groin strain, just like the pro footballers get, but mine was from walking at a brisk pace. It only reinforces my thoughts that exercise isn't good for you, people can die from it,  so I'm hobbling around with a walking stick these past 4 days, I can stand all right, it's just getting between machines that is difficult.

Despite this, I managed to do a bit more work on the water pump, the pulley with magnet holes. I have ordered the magnets, just awaiting there arrival.








I also made a start on the inlet and outlet tubes. The piece in the foreground hasn't got the tube retaining bump on it yet as I'm going to hold it by this end for machining the radius to match the pump body. Both parts will have further machining on them later.




Just after first posting this, my wife said "did you see the parcel that came today for you", well there were the magnets that I was waiting for.

Paul.


----------



## jimjam66

Too much good stuff will kill you, Paul!  Take it easy, parts are looking good!


----------



## Swifty

Some more progress on the water pump, I made the wedge piece that fits inside the water pump housing. First off was to hold the piece in the rotary table and machine a couple of flats and the outside diameter.




For the inside diameter, I was lucky enough to find a cutter the right size to machine this, otherwise I would have had to set up the boring head, I should have mentioned that the centres of the inside and outside rad's are offset. Pictures a bit out of focus.




And then parted off with a slitting saw.




Next, I finished off the radius on the water outlet, and the rest of the machining on the inlet and outlet.







Paul.


----------



## Swifty

Started work on the main body, this has an undercut on the inside and an offset threaded hole on the front. I worked out how big a hole I could put in first before having to offset the part later, I bored a plain hole and turned the outside to size, I couldn't find any tool suitable to machine the undercut, so I had to think of another approach. I decided on a 2 piece approach, silver soldering the parts together. So I parted off a piece that I could use for the front, and machined a deeper recess in the back part to the finished diameter, then parted it off. I reversed the front part in the chuck, faced it to length and machined a small location shoulder.




The parts could be clamped tight together, but I allowed a .005"gap for the solder to flow around.







The parts silver soldered great, the solder flowed well around the joint. It gave me a part that had no excess solder inside and cleaned up well on the outside, I forgot to take a picture after soldering. Next step was to hold that part in the 4 jaw chuck to machine the offset threaded hole, .064"offset meant a .128" reading on the dial indicator. This is where things started to go bad, whilst aligning the part in the chuck, I managed to slightly squash the body with the jaws,   I forgot how thin the wall was, so scrap one part. Now I have to wait a couple of days before I can get some brass big enough to machine another piece. I think that I will still make it in 2 pieces as it worked so well, I will just use another method of holding the part for the offset hole.

Paul.


----------



## gus

Take your aweet time. There must be a long list of teeny weeny itsy bitsy parts to make. I am having my fair share and trying to enjoy it as there is no delivery date line.;D


----------



## jimjam66

Sorry about the oopsie, Paul.  Your work is magnificent overall, though.  I wondered how it might feel if that little tiny crescent-shaped thing had pinged off the table while it was being parted with the slitting saw - that's the sort of thing that happens to me, leading to me being arse-up for 20 minutes hunting for the durned thing on the floor.


----------



## Swifty

Hi David, when I look at that picture, I feel that a cutter with more teeth would have been better, but I wanted one that was not going to flex. I cut the crescent until it was hanging on by a thread, then just broke it off, didn't want a lost part. However, I was making an oil fitting using a small piece of brass and some .125" tubing, I polished the tubing a bit in the lathe, then used a tubing cutter to cut a piece off, you guessed it, the piece fell into the swarf tray that was full of brass swarf, took about 5 minutes to find it.

Paul.


----------



## Swifty

Whilst waiting to get some more brass, I have carried on with the oil galley, this item joins the oil hole that comes out of the front of the block, to the oil pump, there is also a bleeding hole with cap.  First thing to do after fly cutting a block to size was to drill an oil way in the edge of the block, then insert a shallow plug to block the end off.




Next step after the loctite on the plug had time to cure, was to drill 2 small clearance holes for the fastening screws, and 3 x 3mm dia. holes that are tooling holes for me to machine to. Rather than relying on measurements from edges etc, it was easier to draw the part in CAD and work out where the tooling holes go, I will machine these faces until the tooling hole disappears.




Here is the easy milling done with the part held in the milling vice, the angle is 45deg. If you look at the previous picture of the block with the tooling holes, you can see how I have milled down to them. I can't help thinking that the piece looks like a little scottie dog,




A bit more straight forward milling.







Next step was to set up the rotary table to mill a radius that matches a part on the block. I clamped a dummy aluminium plate on the table and drilled and tapped 2 holes that suit the block, these holes are my locations for the block.




And here we have the radius machined.




I also machined a couple of straight faces whilst in this setup.

Paul.


----------



## Swifty

After a lot of juggling at various angles, I finished off the remaining faces and oil holes with counterbores for O rings.




The hole on the left hand face mates with the oil pump, while the hole on the right hand is the bleed hole where a cap will be fitted.




Here is the face that clamps to the engine block, the second hole from the right mates up with the oil hole in the block, there is an O ring in the block.





Once I get a sand blaster, the part will have a nice matt finish.

Paul.


----------



## jimjam66

Nice work, Paul!


----------



## gus

Paul.

This is very very tough piece to make but you did it.th_wav


----------



## michael-au

Nice work Swifty

Will be a Good looking engine when it is finished   

Michael


----------



## Swifty

Finished off by making the brass plug for the bleeder hole. Its 2 pieces, I made the head part and drilled and tapped a hole in it, then threaded a piece of brass for the screw section, the two parts were assembled with loctite. A short part of the threaded section was left protruding from the top of the screw so I could gently pein it to make sure that it wouldn't come out, this also has the benefit of making sure that there are no gaps to be seen between the thread and the body. Making these small parts 2 piece allows the thread to go all the way to the end, something that is impossible to do with a die.





Paul.


----------



## bmac2

Hi Paul. Im really enjoying this build and thank you for going to such a level of detail in your posts. Its builds like this where I learn new tips and techniques. Its amazing the amount of work that goes into a part like your oil galley. 

And I don't think it looked like a Scottie dog . . . . . . . much . . . . . never mind. ;D

Excellent engine and build


----------



## Swifty

Good one Bob, all that part was missing was the tail. 

Paul.


----------



## Swifty

Carrying on from where I left off in post 292 where I squashed the water pump body, I now have a new body soldered together. So, the next step was to hold it in the 4 Jaw chuck without squashing the new part, I turned up a holder out of aluminium with a couple of screws on the side to hold the part. The bore is offset .064" which translates to a total indicator reading of .128"when offset in the chuck.




This made turning the part easy, it was later counter bored and screw cut.




The cap that screws on to the body is made out of delrin, however that didn't go too well when it decided to break. What to do next? I thought as long as the material is non magnetic, some thing else will be ok, so I used some brass. It has to be non magnetic to allow the magnetic drive to work on the impeller. 




Next step was to glue the magnets into the impeller and pulley, I used another piece of 1/8" dia carbide for the pivot on the impeller.







I soldered the inlet onto the back of the main body, then set it up in the mill at the correct angle and machined the outlet hole in the side. I decided to align the outlet in the hole with a piece of 1/4" dia carbide, reasoning that the solder wont stick to the shank. I made sure that the solder was flowing between the parts before holding it down while it cooled.




Here is the main body with the circular insert fitted inside, it's loctited in as well as held with a pin from the back, there's also an assembled picture.







All that's left now is to make a clamping bracket that screws on the back, as well as clean it all up a bit.

Paul.


----------



## gus

Your pump looks great but wickedly small and tough to make . Should pump water.

( Bad Day. Only three fish)


----------



## jimjam66

Fantastic work, Paul!  Not long now and it should be roaring.


----------



## Swifty

Thanks Gus and David, I might hook up the battery drill and some tubing to see if the pump actually works.

Paul.


----------



## Gerhardvienna

Hi Paul
Great job so far!
I`m just waiting for my materials to start the real work, can only use spare aluminium at the time...........
Regards
Gerhard


----------



## Swifty

Not a lot of progress the last few days, other things seem to interfere too much, although I did make a nylon gear for a friend, it fits in a commercial coffee machine. Instead of making a hob, I made a single point tool that worked great, 20 deg sides, main cut on centre line and by dropping and raising the cutter by the correct pitch, I was able to do the cuts that a hob would have done. The biggest problem was the 4 mm square hole in the centre, I made a rough broach which sort of worked, will do a trial fit today.

Paul.


----------



## bmac2

Good stuff Paul. Gear cutting is one of the daemons I am soon going to have to tackle.


----------



## Swifty

bmac2 said:


> Good stuff Paul. Gear cutting is one of the daemons I am soon going to have to tackle.



There is no mystery about spur gears Bob, once you have sorted out the method it's all straight forward. There will be plenty of advice given when the time comes to cut one.

Paul.


----------



## Gerhardvienna

Hi Paul
That is what I`m waiting for too! I`ve seen so many different ways to do it, until now I buy gears at the Mädler Webshop, but not sure if they deliver in the USA! http://www.maedler.de/
Regards
Gerhard


----------



## Swifty

Hi Gerhard, post 95 onwards will show you how I made my gear hob, although you can buy a gear cutter. I use a dividing head for indexing the blanks when gear cutting, but there are other methods to do this.

Paul.


----------



## Gerhardvienna

Hi Paul
Just learned something again, THANK YOU!
Saved a copy for later use, even this will help.........
Regards
Gerhard


----------



## Swifty

I decided to start on the engine mounting rails, I fly cut the material to size and marked out with the height gauge. I held the two together in the vice, and after picking up the edges, roughed them out with a 6mm cutter, I finished off the pockets with a 5mm cutter and used the digital readout to get the correct positions, I had previously worked out the cutter positions allowing for the radius of the cutter. I drilled some mounting holes and now only have to tap them.








Paul.


----------



## Swifty

While I was in the milling mode, I decided to machine the radiator supports as well, After a bit of juggling the pieces in the vice I ended up with 2 very light supports, still have to drill a couple of holes in each part to finish them.





Paul.


----------



## Swifty

As a little side job, I thought that I might give my 3 jaw chuck a slight bit of clearance on the back plate in order to allow me to tap it to get a job running perfectly true. At the moment there is about .002" runout, not that much, but a pain at times. I undid the 6 screws holding the cam lock back plate on, then used two of the screws in the jacking holes supplied. After much grunting and tapping with a soft hammer, the backplate refused to budge, so I mounted the chuck on the spindle again, minus the 6 screws, and tried to knock it loose with a soft hammer, still no luck. They must have mounted the backing plate with a 50 ton press, it's stuck on and going to stay there, I tried the chuck in three different positions until I found the one with the least amount of runout, .001" reading on the indicator will have to be good enough, I marked the position on the spindle and chuck for next time. It was worth the effort, as before, I never bothered to check which holes on the cam lock gave the best runout.

Paul.


----------



## gus

Gerhardvienna said:


> Hi Paul
> That is what I`m waiting for too! I`ve seen so many different ways to do it, until now I buy gears at the Mädler Webshop, but not sure if they deliver in the USA! http://www.maedler.de/
> Regards
> Gerhard



Hi Gerhard,

Welcome to the Gear Cutting Club. To my knowledge there is a dozen of us.
We have good collection of gears with 1/2 tooth which is part of learning curve.
Ivan Law's Book on Gear Cutting and Harold Hall's book on DIY Dividing Head. Timing Gears for Webster and Brian Rupnow's Hit and Miss engine were all DIY cut. DIY Dividing Head etc to cut these gears. Also cut DIY Mitre Gears too. No worry . There will be lotsa expert advice. Paul Swifty is very good gear cutter.


----------



## michael-au

Nice work on the rails Paul

Michael


----------



## Gerhardvienna

Hi Paul
Rails are looking fine, I like that (c)lean look! Will they be painted?

Hi Gus
As I wrote above, I`ve seen a many of different ways to cut the gears, Paul`s method seems to be simple and effective. Think I`ll try this as an exercise!
Nothing is worth more than practice!
Regards 
Gerhard


----------



## gus

Gerhardvienna said:


> Hi Paul
> Rails are looking fine, I like that (c)lean look! Will they be painted?
> 
> Hi Gus
> As I wrote above, I`ve seen a many of different ways to cut the gears, Paul`s method seems to be simple and effective. Think I`ll try this as an exercise!
> Nothing is worth more than practice!
> Regards
> Gerhard




Hi Gerhad.
Paul gave me a 48 Pitch Hob to cut all the timing gears for the Howell V-2.


----------



## Gerhardvienna

gus said:


> Hi Gerhad.
> Paul gave me a 48 Pitch Hob to cut all the timing gears for the Howell V-2.



I will have to make my own tool for that job, but Paul`s advice gives good hints for such work! Will be a form of try and error:hDe::wall:
Regards
Gerhard


----------



## Swifty

I will paint the pockets in the rails as others have done.

Paul.


----------



## Swifty

It's all be a bit busy lately, although I did manage to buy a benchtop sandblaster and get that assembled, and also got some black paint for the pockets in the engine skids. My wife has just had a total knee replacement, so in between visiting her, doing domestic duties, and instead of having dialysis at home, I now have to go to hospital for it while my wife is away, there is not much workshop time. I will see what I can manage this weekend, I need some of that workshop therapy.

Paul.


----------



## Gerhardvienna

Hi Paul
Take both your time to recover a bit, dont hurry! 
The Best to your wife & you, a friend had the same knee surgery, took him out for months! Hope it`s not too painful for her.
Regards
Gerhard


----------



## Swifty

Thanks Gerhard, she had the other knee done about 3 years ago, so we know all about the recovery time, it's a long road.

Paul.


----------



## Swifty

I did manage to assemble the camshafts today, used the method shown in the Jerry Howell web site, using a dividing head. The 2 sets of cams are easy to set up 180 degrees apart, but the gears on the end have to be set at their correct angle relative to a timing mark on the gear. After I figured out how to get 3.4 and 6.9 degrees using the dividing plates, it was easy after that.

Here is a picture showing how the gear was located with a pin that fits in the correct gap, everything was loctited together.




And the 2 camshafts, the one with the bevel gear will drive the distributor rotor. There are 10 components in each cam assembly, when I checked the overall length it was within .001", close enough.




Paul.


----------



## bmac2

Paul Ill keep a good thought for your wife and yourself. At least you wont have to fight the heat for a while yet.
Those are some very pretty cams too bad there hidden in the engine. Nice work as always.


----------



## jimjam66

Love your work, Paul.  My mom-in-law has been referred to a specialist for a knee replacement.  She's scared witless as she is a very active lady and doesn't want to stop.  Best wishes for your wife's speedy recovery.


----------



## gus

Hi Paul,

Speedy recovery for Barbara. Trust she will be 100% recovered long before I drop by Mount Martha in November. 
My old boss had hip joint redone and his wife knee done. Both are OK now in Bandanoon,NSW. Gus having wee bitty knee problem too from long distance running. Now taking a break after the week break in Thailand. Sure hard to get back into gear to finish up V-2.
Take Care.


----------



## Swifty

Bugger, well that was the least offensive word that I used, when I had just spent several hours machining the carburettor body, including 2 set ups in the 4 jaw chuck, several setups in the milling vice, being extra careful drilling all the holes only to ruin it when milling the side profile. While I calmed down, I fly cut another block to size to begin again shortly, I think I need a stiff drink now.

Paul.


----------



## Swifty

As always, the second one doesn't take as long as the first to make. I got stuck into the new body and finished it, just have to tap a few holes. Next I will make all the bits that go in it.








Paul.


----------



## gus

Swifty said:


> Bugger, well that was the least offensive word that I used, when I had just spent several hours machining the carburettor body, including 2 set ups in the 4 jaw chuck, several setups in the milling vice, being extra careful drilling all the holes only to ruin it when milling the side profile. While I calmed down, I fly cut another block to size to begin again shortly, I think I need a stiff drink now.
> 
> Paul.



Hi Paul, 

Part & parcel of engine building. One unlucky cut and job is gone. Take it easy.

I have a good half day to cut the first timing gear but I chose to do nothing till after 19 Aug. Now in Fukuoka for our 44 th Anniversary.


----------



## Swifty

It's been a bit quiet on this build lately, my wife is now home from hospital but not able to do much, so I'm still kept busy. I have done a couple of more parts that go in the carburettor, I ended up buying a sensitive drill attachment to hold the small drills that are required for these parts, makes it a lot easier to drill the small holes.

Paul.


----------



## jimjam66

Glad there's progress, both with SWMBO's knee and with the V4.  Looking forward to your next instalment.


----------



## gus

Swifty said:


> It's been a bit quiet on this build lately, my wife is now home from hospital but not able to do much, so I'm still kept busy. I have done a couple of more parts that go in the carburettor, I ended up buying a sensitive drill attachment to hold the small drills that are required for these parts, makes it a lot easier to drill the small holes.
> 
> Paul.





Well Done. No more drill breaks and heart breaks.th_wav

So user friendly and you have total control.


----------



## Art K

Paul,
Still following along, hope all's well with your wife. The small drill gadgets are handy, I have one but it needs lubrication or replacement. It gets quite warm while in use.
Art


----------



## Swifty

Thanks guys, my wife is getting along quite well and will start more physio and hydrotherapy this week. The small drill attachment is working great, although I had to use some WD40 on the sliding shank to get it to slide nicely. 

I better go and make my wife a cup of tea and give her a foot massage and some ice packs for her knee , or better still, I think that I will disappear out to the workshop and work on the engine.

Paul.


----------



## Swifty

Here is some more progress on the carburetor bits.








Paul.


----------



## gus

Your carb barrel looks better than mine. I goofed on the groove width and dept. Now in Thailand on Biz.


----------



## michael-au

Nice work on the carb, I like the way the barrel is made


----------



## Swifty

I'm finally getting a bit more workshop time, the carburetor is virtually finished now. I had a bit of trouble with the lever on the end of the barrel, the lever is soldered on to a hub, that's where all my problems came in. I used silver solder, lead type solder would have been much better, too much heat, problems with alignment etc led me to scrap it. I made the new one out of one piece.











With that out of the way, it's time to start on the piston rings. When the rings are finished, I can start with final assembly of the main parts.

Paul.


----------



## gus

The Carb and manifold looks great.


----------



## Swifty

Thanks Gus, and by the way, Happy Birthday! 

Paul.


----------



## RiekieRhino

It looks awesome


----------



## Art K

Paul,
I'm with the rest of them the build looks awesome.
Art


----------



## Swifty

I got stuck into making the piston rings, roughed out some cast iron on the outside and inside, and then proceeded to finish turn the bore first and then the outside so it just started to slide into the liners. I used a 1mm wide tool to part off the rings to get as many as I could out of the turned piece.




Ended up with 19 rings, I only need 12, so the rest will be spares.




Next step was to crack the rings, I use the method of putting them on a taper and tapping them down until they break at the weakest point. I have used a morse taper in the past, but these rings were too big for a #2 and too small for a #3, so I turned a bar to suit and also bored a scrap piece of aluminium to use when tapping them down on the taper. I find that this method works well, and they were done in no time, with no scrapped parts. They open up slightly due to internal stress, but will be opened up more soon and heat treated to keep the proper gap.







Paul.


----------



## bmac2

I love this build. Im sure that carburetor is more complex to machine than most of the engines I made. 
And Paul thank you for posting the build. I can appreciate the amount of work that goes into this.

Oh! yes Happy Birthday Gus  ;D


----------



## michael-au

Next step was to crack the rings, I use the method of putting them on a taper and tapping them down until they break at the weakest point. I have used a morse taper in the past, but these rings were too big for a #2 and too small for a #3, so I turned a bar to suit and also bored a scrap piece of aluminium to use when tapping them down on the taper. I find that this method works well, and they were done in no time, with no scrapped parts. They open up slightly due to internal stress, but will be opened up more soon and heat treated to keep the proper gap.


Paul.[/quote]


Great job, this will be a fantastic looking engine when you are finished
I used the same method to crack the rings, works really well

Michael


----------



## Swifty

Thanks for the great comments guys, Bob, that cake looks fantastic. I turned up the holder for heat treating the rings, the holder diameter is turned to get the correct free gap in the rings when they are mounted on it. I managed to break one ring checking out the correct holder diameter. Once all the rings are mounted and clamped down, I heated the lot up with my Map torch to a dull red for a while and left them to cool.




I managed to ruin a second ring by stretching it while removing it from the holder, that still leaves me with 5 spare rings. I did get a bit of closing up of the gaps when I removed all the rings, but I can get them on the pistons OK. Next step is to get a needle file and take a couple of thou off each side of the gap so I eventually have a .003"- .004" working gap in the rings once inserted into the bores.




Paul.


----------



## gus

bmac2 said:


> I love this build. Im sure that carburetor is more complex to machine than most of the engines I made.
> And Paul thank you for posting the build. I can appreciate the amount of work that goes into this.
> 
> Oh! yes Happy Birthday Gus  ;D


Thanks . Bob for the good intention.
Just took a peek at Rong Fu Mill . Now budgetting to buy it. Will have to stinge like crazy for 3-----months.
Just came back from another short trip and I have too many lazy bones to dig out before going on to mill 15 gears and finish up the gear case and engine.


----------



## Swifty

A few more bits finished, at the top of the photo below is the crankcase oil pick up tube, and the rest is the oil pressure relief valve and adjusting parts.




I now have a slight problem with my lathe, I had the gear lever on the head stock in a neutral position so I could spin the chuck by hand when threading a piece. When I went to start it up next time I realised that the gears weren't engaged, so I turned it off and started to engage the gear lever, however the gears were still spinning in the head stock and I crunched them a bit. There is now a bit of gear noise, so I took the top of the head stock off to have a look, all looks fine, no missing teeth or visible damage, however I must have made a burr on some of the teeth and this is creating the noise. I will have to get more light in there and look with a magnifying glass to see if I can find the burrs.

Paul.


----------



## jimjam66

Ouch!  Not good.  I did that with my mini-lathe a while back and stripped teeth on the sacrificial plastic gears.  Fantastic progress on the V4.


----------



## Swifty

I managed to get out and purchase some 1/16"thick brass sheet for the crankcase floor, so I soon made that up. I also made the oil drain fittings that were then soldered onto the floor. I still have to solder one piece on, this is for the oil pressure adjuster, I just have to check the final position closer to assembly.




Paul.


----------



## Swifty

One part that I had been putting off till near the end was the Rocker Arm End Pins. There are 16 of these pins required, with the small dia .1245", and the groove for the E clip only .019"wide. Fiddly little parts to make, but I got there in the end.





Paul.


----------



## Swifty

Next step in the small parts machining was to slot the clevis's that the push rods screw into. A quick clamping fixture was knocked up and worked really well. The slot is supposed to be .125", I ordered a 1/8"slitting saw off Ebay, buy when it finally arrived they obviously thought that 3,5mm was near enough to 1/8", I used it anyway as it just gave me a bit more clearance.







I then assembled everything to avoid losing all the tiny parts. A small bearing that pushes on the valve on one end of the rocker, and the clevis at the other end. The parts are held in by a small E clip.







I think that I can now concentrate on the painting of the block prior to assembly.

Paul.


----------



## gus

I like your clavis slotting jig. Make do very well with the 3.5 end mill.

We have General Election Campaign going on now and very much distracted by the Forums and feedbacks.Looks like they made lose 10---15 seats to main opposition party but yet have the majority.

Will next Monday when Gus goes back to his machineshop. Can't wait to see your V-4 with war paint out on. Fishing been good for last two weekends. Live fish baits is fantastic. We get instant strikes.


----------



## Swifty

Started on painting the block, first off I gave it a light sandblast then masked certain areas. One coat of etch primer followed by 2 coats of top colour. I have a 500ml can of the red paint, it looks like every future model will be red.







While I am waiting for the paint to harden up a bit I am making some of the parts for the radiator. One of the last main bits to be made is the distributor, I purchased the distributor cap from Howells, but will have to make up the rest.

Paul.


----------



## gus

Paul,
You are making great progress and I am lagging behind. Plus distracted by the canvassing for the General Election 11 Sept. Promise .Will go back to engine building. Ha Ha  .Fishing been extremely good. After casting my vote,its fiiiiishiiiiing .


----------



## Swifty

I have now started assembly, I played around for quite a while fitting the internal O rings where the bottom of the cylinder sleeves fit, one was giving me a lot of trouble until I realised that particular groove was not deep enough. So back to the lathe with the face plate and whole set up again just to bore that single groove to correct depth. After loosing one O ring somewhere in the workshop, I eventually found it in a corner, I managed to get all the sleeves in, crankshaft and pistons fitted, at this stage I decided to call it a night and sit down and have a well earned drink.








Paul.


----------



## Swifty

Before I assembled the camshafts and gear train, I had to make a small screw that bleeds oil onto the gears. The drawing calls up to use a 2-56 brass hex screw and drill a .006"hole through the centre, I have all the fasteners purchased from Howells, but there is no allowance for this screw. The next best thing was to make one from scratch, so made one from some brass stock with a round head and cut a slot for tightening purposes. The other problem was that I had no drills anywhere near .006"dia, I would even find it hard to see them, so for the time being I used the smallest drill that I had, .020"dia. This will provide a lot more oil, but it all drains back into the crankcase anyway, if it has an adverse effect on the oil pressure, I can always make a new one after obtaining the correct drill, although this is about the smallest screw that I ever want to make.




Paul.


----------



## gus

Jerry Howell has many surprises for us. 

Paul,
SOS SOS SOS.
I am all roaring to go hob first gear. Please advise how to align gear hob.


----------



## Swifty

gus said:


> Jerry Howell has many surprises for us.
> 
> Paul,
> SOS SOS SOS.
> I am all roaring to go hob first gear. Please advise how to align gear hob.



This is how I aligned the gear hob.




You can actually get it fairly accurate this way, depends on how good your eyesight is. 

Paul.


----------



## Swifty

A bit more assembly has been going on, I also made a jig for bending the oil pick up pipe.











Paul.


----------



## gus

Swifty said:


> This is how I aligned the gear hob.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> You can actually get it fairly accurate this way, depends on how good your eyesight is.
> 
> Paul.




Thanks .Maestro.

Gear hobbing can proceed tomorrow.


----------



## jimjam66

That's looking wonderful, Paul!  Can't wait for the video.


----------



## RonGinger

I was trying to make a gas jet for a boiler and saw a good way to make very tiny holes. You make a tapered end on the jet, drill the smallest hole you can, then make a hardened steel female cone. This is run in over the pointed jet and swedges the jet down to a smaller size. I had modest luck with this.


----------



## ozzie46

Swifty said:


> Before I assembled the camshafts and gear train, I had to make a small screw that bleeds oil onto the gears. The drawing calls up to use a 2-56 brass hex screw and drill a .006"hole through the centre, I have all the fasteners purchased from Howells, but there is no allowance for this screw. The next best thing was to make one from scratch, so made one from some brass stock with a round head and cut a slot for tightening purposes. The other problem was that I had no drills anywhere near .006"dia, I would even find it hard to see them, so for the time being I used the smallest drill that I had, .020"dia. This will provide a lot more oil, but it all drains back into the crankcase anyway, if it has an adverse effect on the oil pressure, I can always make a new one after obtaining the correct drill, although this is about the smallest screw that I ever want to make.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Paul.




Well done. Don't sneeze.  

 I have plans for this engine. Don't know when I'll get started though. I'll need to make the gear hob for the gears also.

 Ron


----------



## Swifty

Been a bit short of workshop time the last few days, however, today I managed to make a valve seat cutter. A short off-cut of silver steel was held in the chuck and drilled and reamed in the centre to take a 1/8"pilot, the same size as the valve stems. I then turned the end down at a 45 deg angle to suit the seat required.




Next, I held it in a collet block and machined the tooth form.




Then it was heat treated, a sandblast to clean up the scale, and the teeth ground. I'm lucky that I have a small cutter grinder where I can hold parts in a collet, rotate at the required angle and index the part around to grind the teeth, as well as grind some back clearance.




Here's the finished cutter with the pilot in place, I didn't bother with a locking screw for the pilot, as it's a good fit in the hole.




2 rotations of the cutter by hand in each valve guide gave plenty of seat area. Now I just have to lap the valves.




It only took about 90 minutes from start to finish to make the valve seat cutter and put it to use, well worth the effort.

Paul.


----------



## gus

Well done on the valve seat cutters. th_wav
Did the valve lapping manually on my Howell V-2.

SOS SOS.  Please advise tooth height/depth for the 48 Pitch Gears. Been doing it by eye ball judgement that is trial and error. Now using 1000 rpm spindle speed.


----------



## Swifty

Drawing states .045" depth of cut, I would have stuck to this. I seem to recall that I included a note of how deep when I sent you the cutter 

Paul.


----------



## gus

Swifty said:


> Drawing states .045" depth of cut, I would have stuck to this. I seem to recall that I included a note of how deep when I sent you the cutter
> 
> Paul.




Thanks for info. You have great memory. Cross Feed Dial Broke into pcs. Will bush engineer a way to get 45 thou depth. Believe I am 5 thou too deep.


----------



## Swifty

I have now lapped the valves to their seats. I numbered the heads 1 and 2, and then engraved on the valves 1 through to 8, so they are always matched to their individual seats. I held the end of the valve with my micro drill chuck and used diamond lapping paste on the valve seat, I was able to press down on the valve with my finger whilst rotating the valve to get it to lap in.





And here we have everything fitted to the heads, I just have to make some nuts for the push rods and then I can screw the heads to the block.





Paul.


----------



## gus

Micro drill chuck now become micro valve lapper. Many thanks for this tip.   th_wav                                          I cheated ,using a mini cordless drill.


----------



## jimjam66

It constantly amazes me how many tiny 'bits' it takes to make a running engine!  Magnificent work, Paul, I'm on the edge of my seat.


----------



## Swifty

If I keep on pecking away at it, I gradually get a little bit closer. Time has been at a premium lately, in between running my wife around to therapy due to her knee replacement (although she is allowed to drive now), and the birth of 2 more grandchildren during the last 4 weeks, I have been kept occupied with other things. I managed to get the heads on, with the rockers properly adjusted for correct clearance, I don't think that I would be any good at making ships in bottles, I find this engine fiddly enough to deal with.





Paul.


----------



## ICEpeter

Hello Swifty,
That is a good looking engine and it shows the great workmanship done by you. Have a question though: being curious about what you use for sealing the flat surfaces on the engine; for example the cylinder head to the engine main body, etc. Are you using gaskets or a sealant without gasket? Looking forward to hear the engine popping soon! Thanks.

Peter J.


----------



## Swifty

Hi Peter, it's all sealed with O rings. If you look at posting #364, you will see that there is an O ring groove around the cylinder liners. This sealed the cylinder gasses, as well as stops coolant from leaking (hopefully).

Paul.


----------



## michael-au

Beautiful engine Paul, fantastic workmanship 
 will be nice to see it running

Michael


----------



## gus

Good looking Engine by a Master Tool Maker!!!


----------



## Brian Rupnow

Paul--I am still following and enormously impressed with your work. The engine looks great!! I am in "stasis" here, not really ready to build anything more at the moment, but still thinking very seriously of buying a new lathe. We are just finishing up a gorgeous September here, the kind that people write songs about---Warm, dry, a continuation of summer, which seems to happen about once every 30 years in Canada. Cooler, rainier weather is being called for next week. Carry on---I am watching both your post on this engine and Guss's build as well.----Brian


----------



## Swifty

Hi Brian, thanks for following, and thanks to everyone for their comments. Of course, the seasons are reversed down here, we are in spring now with some lovely warm days, then some still a bit cooler. This coming weekend is the start of a few days starting at 25C and leading to 30C, looking forward to it.

Paul.


----------



## Swifty

I decided to make something relatively easy, the flywheel. I had a piece of rusty 3/4"mild steel plate, so my recently acquired 6 x 4 bandsaw came into good use to cut off a piece of the plate just over 3"square.




A centre punch in the middle, then off to the 4 jaw chuck in the lathe. You can see that I used a centre in the tail stock pushing against the block, which was backed up by a couple of parallels, the jaws were tightened in this position.




I don't know what grade of mild steel it is, but it was certainly difficult to machine and get a reasonable finish. Anyway, I managed to machine one half and put a pilot hole in the centre.




Then changed over to the 3 jaw chuck to machine the other side.




Next step was to recess one side, turn a taper in the bore and then recess the other side.




I have a dislike of flywheels that don't run true, so I turned up a short stub taper on a piece of scrap and mounted the flywheel on it to finish the outside true.




A bit of work with some emery helped with the surface finish, the recess will be painted later.










Next I will have to turn the taper collet that the flywheel locks on to.

Paul.


----------



## gus

The taper boring will be fun and matching the taper hub will be very challenging.


----------



## Swifty

gus said:


> The taper boring will be fun and matching the taper hub will be very challenging.



Not a problem Gus, I will post on how it's done. The flywheel is already bored with a taper in the centre. 

Paul.


----------



## Swifty

Next I went to work on the collet that will clamp on the crankshaft when the fly wheel is tightened. First off was to set the top slide over at the same angle as the bore in the flywheel. I held the flywheel in the chuck, and after making sure that it ran true, I swung the topslide over at the correct angle and using an indicator, I checked to make sure the angle matched.




Next, I rough turned the outside, drilled the bore and using a boring bar, took the hole out to reaming size. After that, I ran a reamer into the hole, boring the hole first ensured that the ID and OD will be concentric.




A small step on the back and then it was parted off.




Next step was to machine 3 slots not quite through, and a fourth slot all the way through. I decided to make a holder for the collet so that I could utlilise my square 5C collet block to get the slots positioned. I turned a piece of material down so the collet just slid on, next I drilled and tapped an M6 hole, and then used a hacksaw to split the holder. As I tighten the screw, it will tighten up the holder on the collet.




I then set it up in the mill with a slitting saw and cut the slots.




A bit of a deburr and we have one split collet.




Paul.


----------



## Swifty

The next part to make was the cord start pulley, although I don't like my chances of starting it with a cord pull. I also made the crankshaft 10mm longer to allow for a future one way bearing with an electric starter, so in the mean time I made up a 10mm thick washer to take it's place so that I could tighten up the fly wheel.





Paul.


----------



## michael-au

Nice work Paul


----------



## Swifty

The last couple of days I have been working on the fan shroud whenever I had a chance. Started off by cutting a  1 1/8" slice off a thicker piece of aluminium, marking the centre and holding it in my 4 jaw chuck.





I roughed out a lot first, then had to readjust to get it to stick further out in the chuck, then I finished machining one side. I have an idea brewing in the back of my head about how I'm going to hold it to machine the rest, I just hope that it will work. The straight sided part of the shroud has very thin walls, so small cuts with a fine touch will be called for.





Paul.


----------



## Swifty

Some further work on the fan shroud, I ended up holding it in the vice to mill the other side out, I initially thought of clamping it to the mill table, but took the easier way out. There is still material on the outside to mill off, but that will be easy, although the wall thickness will only be .040".











Paul.


----------



## Swifty

Just touching base, I've been in hospital for a few days for a minor operation, now that I'm home I have to take it easy for a few days before I can get back to work on the engine. So hang in there, I'm glad that people are following and I appreciate your comments and feedback.

Paul.


----------



## Brian Rupnow

Paul--Best wishes for a speedy recovery.----Brian


----------



## michael-au

Hope you are better soon Paul


----------



## Roboguy

Hi Paul, very best wishes for a quick recovery and a speedy return to your workshop. 

I also want to say thanks so much for sharing your builds in such a detailed and engaging manner. I am a complete novice, about to start on my first simple engine build, and I have learnt so much about work holding and other techniques just from this thread. 

I have literally just finished reading this complete thread from beginning to end and am just starting on your Lynx build. 

Hope to see you posting here again soon. 

 Cheers 
James


----------



## Swifty

Thanks for all your wishes guys, I have mentioned in the past that I am on dialysis every second day, and although very healthy apart from that, there are always things that crop up due to my kidney failure, that requires a stay in hospital. But I'm positive, and eager to get back to the engine, and always in the back of my mind I am thinking about the next project.

James, it's very easy for me to skim through making parts, thinking that it's fairly straight forward machining and everyone knows how it's done, but of course that isn't the case. I must endeavour to show a bit more of the simple things as well, planning the method of approach to a part is half the battle won.

Paul.


----------



## gus

Welcome back. Fishing been good today. Landed to Finger Mark Snappers. 2kg and 1.5 kg.

Take care. Best to have 100% recovery before resume V-4.


----------



## dsage

WOW !!

I just spent all afternoon and this evening reading this whole build log.
Great work Paul ! It brings back memories of all the issues I ran into building the V8 (version of the V4). It's nice to see how you tackled some of the things I too had trouble with.

http://davesage.ca/

I have been following Gus' V2 build but I hadn't caught on to this one. It's fun to see you and Gus back and for the with comments on your build.
I hope things are well with you as I note nothing has been posted for a month.

If I can make a couple of suggestion on your water pump.

1. Coat the magnets with something water proof and durable like a coat of epoxy or at least a thick dab of paint. The super magnets will corrode and decompose if they get wet. Even though they are plated the plating is usually poor.

2. Mount the pump on the engine temporarily and mark, drill and tap a 2-56 or smaller hole at the highest point. 
The way the pump is mounted it will get air trapped in it that is VERY hard to remove and it will not pump with the slightest bit of air in it. (Gerry suggests you have to turn the engine rad up (or something) to try to get the air out but then you have the crankcase oil all over the place. The small screw will allow you to let the air out as you fill the rad. Then you tighten it up perhaps with a bit of sealant on the threads. Be careful the screw must be VERY short so it does not contact the impeller.

I think as already mentioned you will need to go back and build up the divider inside your oil pump. !!! Use soft solder not epoxy !!!. You wouldn't want it coming off inside the pump. It should be a quick job. I would also suggest making the pressure gauge adapter suggested by Gerry. I found this gauge to fit exactly to the adapter the way Gerry designed it. You can see it on my engine in my link above.

http://www.pmmodelengines.com/shop/boiler-accessories/miniature-pressure-gauge/ 

Fantastic work !! Looking forward to the conclusion and to hear it run.

Thanks

Sage


----------



## Swifty

Hi Sage, well it's been 4 weeks since my kidney transplant, which followed shortly after having my parathyroid glands removed. I'm certainly itching to get back to the engine build, although I have to be careful of lifting heavy items. I'm down to hospital visits 3 days per week now, so I have the time to get back and do something, that's when I'm not rushing off and having a pee. My bladder is not use to holding so much and when I stand up the pressure sure builds up.

I recall reading somewhere about the bleed screw in the pump, I will put one in. One thing that's holding me up is the radiator cores, I had planned to put readouts on the lathe longitudinal and cross slide to help with the fin spacing, but that involves moving the lathe away from the wall so I can access the back of it, at the moment that's out due to the transplant, maybe I will just have to mount a digital vernier on the topslide or saddle for the time being.

Paul.


----------



## gus

Hi Paul,

Great to have you back. I got worried. Been having too much distraction and slightly burnt out. Now back on the lathe and work bench putting the gear case and gears together. Pinion shaft and main cam gears meshed but sticky. Will put the cams tomorrow and hopefully the oil pump.

Take care.


----------



## dsage

Holy Smokes Paul:
I didn't know you were going through all that !! I'm glad your back (so soon).
Take your time by all means.
I guess I lucked out on the radiator fins. I used whatever brass my local metal supplier had in square. But is was fairly soft. Someone posted earlier their solution to stopping the fins from bending. Give it a try. Whatever works..
  Again, I guess I just lucked out but I just used a regular front cutoff tool the correct width for a single pass. But I do remember making sure it was VERY sharp and with a lot of top rake and stuck it out only enough. Then I just took it slow. I also used a square collett and had it supported with the tail stock with only an inch or so protruding. 
 I had a DRO but a dial indicator on a magnetic base should be fine to just slip it along. I do remember writing down a series of readings to stop at to avoid the mental math hundreds of times.
 An odd thing though. After completing all the fins on all the pieces, quite some time later I thought it might be useful to make a short sample to show people at shows how it is made since they always ask. On that sample the fins bent a bit. Can't explain it.

Glad you're back. 

Sage


----------



## Swifty

I'm going to try annealing the brass to see if it stops the fins from bending as I machine them.

Paul.


----------



## dsage

Good idea That will probably help. Keep some cutting fluid on it too so the (now soft) brass doesn't stick to your tool. You'll need to clean it with solvent - like brake clean - after if you follow the advice below.
Good luck.


Before I forget. When it comes to soldering the rad together get yourself some solder paste that they use for soldering surface mount chips. Its a bit expensive but does an amazing job.
It's un-believable how nice that stuff makes the job dead easy. Clean everything really well. Put the paste in and on all the joints liberally but make a nice neat job of it. This is the nice thing about using the paste. You can work while it's cold and get all the joints nice and neat with just enough solder exactly where you need it. Wiping it off where you don't. A lot of the joints are not accessible using regular solder.
Then the most important part - I think Gerry mentioned it somewhere or the guys at Sherline thought it up - mount the whole rad on an aluminum plate and clamp it to the plate with everything just so. Heat the whole aluminum plate (not so much the rad itself). Put a small dot of the paste on the rad about as far away from the heat as possible and heat the whole thing until that spot of solder melts. I used a couple of torches to get the whole plate and rad heated evenly. All of a sudden the solder paste will melt and flow and - voila- your done. You can keep some thin 60/40 rosin core electronics solder nearby for any place that seems like it may be deficient in solder. When it's all done you can barely see the joints as the solder flows into the joints.
That's how I did it. Perfect first time.
I know someone who has a plating business. He plated the top tank in chrome and the fins in something he calls antique brass - a sort of brown color for the fins. But that isn't necessary. All chrome would be cool though.


Sage



Sage


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## mayhugh1

There's lots of brass alloys and some are more easily machined than others. I use 360 brass for general purpose non-bearing parts and it machines beautifully. I made the radiator (and nearly all the rest of the brass parts) for my Howell V-4 out of 360 and had absolutely no problems with the fins. I've also turned washers as thin as .008" (I think) from it with no problems or special tools. It's available at most metal suppliers in rounds, hexes, and squares. Even Enco sells it which is where I purchased while they had a 30% discount and free shipping promotion going on.
http://www.use-enco.com/CGI/INPDFF?PMPAGE=839&PARTPG=INLMK32

 - Terry

By the way, annealing might the wrong direction to go. You might want it harder instead of softer.


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## Swifty

Looks like I will have to do a test piece again to see how it behaves. The first test piece moved a lot when machining, it was some unknown grade of 1/2" square brass from a scrap merchant.

Paul.


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## ELM6061

As always Paul, informative from front to end, backed up with quality workmanship, always a pleasure to follow one of your builds.
Best news of all was your operation and to here you are doing so well, couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Say hi to Barbs and hope her knee is doing well.
Ed


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## Swifty

I've decided that it's about time I got back to work on the V4 after having my kidney transplant. I have been taking the opportunity lately to catch up on a few small jobs at home, some of them even involving machining. My next step is to finish the radiator, to do a good job of the fins I really need to fit a readout to my lathe, it's on the "to do" list but I haven't ordered one yet, in the mean time I have followed a few others and made a clamp set up so I can fit a digital vernier on the saddle.





The temperature yesterday was 40C, too hot to work, but today its only 19C, a much better temperature to get to work and try out the latest modification.

Paul.


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## bmac2

Hi Paul
Im glad to hear you and your wife on the mend. Were having a bit of a hot spell here too. Might not sound like much but it hit +1 today and for Alberta in mid-January Ill take.Thm:
One of the reasons I chose this caliper for hacking up was that it eats button batteries for breakfast. Digging around on the internet I found that with some of the Chinese calipers when you turn them off all that shuts down is the display. With this one the difference between on and off was around 5 milliamps so if I forgot to remove the battery it would be dead in under a week. This past weekends mod was to add a small on/off switch and a AAA battery holder.
Im looking forward to following along with the radiator.


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## Swifty

Hi Bob, I have no problems with the battery in my caliper, each battery seems to last for ages. A quick spreadsheet and I had all the positions for the grooves, however on the second fin, I broke the tool. So it's back to making a new one tomorrow.

Paul.


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## Swifty

After grinding up a new grooving tool, a lot of trial and error on test pieces and setting up the tool spot on with an indicator in all planes, I finally figured out the best approach. For some reason, if I put the grooves in from the tail stock end towards the chuck, the fins bent over, so the approach was to start off at the chuck end and work towards the tail stock. It took about 40 minutes for the first one, only 7 more to go. It's just as well that I bought 3 metres of brass bar to allow for plenty of trials.





Paul.


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## Roboguy

Looking great Paul. I am loving following this build. Good to see you making progress again. 

Cheers, 
James


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## gus

Great to know you back in the machineshop. (My V-2 Oil pump won't auto prime and put,have to re-do). After the fishing trip,I have too many lazy bones to remove.Ha Ha.)


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## gus

bmac2 said:


> Hi Paul
> Im glad to hear you and your wife on the mend. Were having a bit of a hot spell here too. Might not sound like much but it hit +1 today and for Alberta in mid-January Ill take.Thm:
> One of the reasons I chose this caliper for hacking up was that it eats button batteries for breakfast. Digging around on the internet I found that with some of the Chinese calipers when you turn them off all that shuts down is the display. With this one the difference between on and off was around 5 milliamps so if I forgot to remove the battery it would be dead in under a week. This past weekends mod was to add a small on/off switch and a AAA battery holder.
> Im looking forward to following along with the radiator.



Its true some M.I.C. Callipers eat batteries. In the early 90s when MIC Calipers first appear in the Singapore Market,nobody would buy them as after a while the display became Christmas Tree Lights. Batteries on Mitutoyo will last a very long time. However its S$25 v/s S$180. The replacement MIC Calipers bought lately did last. When you drop Caliper the inside prongs get damaged.Replacement is not painful. Normally I would drag aside the sales assistant and ask for his honest advice. His best advice would be avoid the cheaper caliber. Ha Ha.


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## Swifty

Been working on and off on the radiator cores the last few days, and now have all 8 finished and also drilled through the centre. My desktop computer is playing up at the moment, so it's away being looked at, so can't post progress photo's. It's too hard trying to attach photo's from photo bucket using my iPad.

Paul.


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## bmac2

Excellent cant wait to see them.Thm:


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## geo

Paul your thread regarding   dp cutters I realise I'm a bit out of date but millers tooling in Brisbane have purchased all of an old supplier in melbournes gear and spline cutters .i purchased my 48 cutters from millers tooling a year or so back wasn't cheap but good gear came from same supplier
His name was kyp vatis


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## Swifty

I've been very busy lately and haven't had much of a chance to work on the engine. In the last update, I was machining all the cooling fins for the radiator, here is a photo of a rough assembly prior to setup for soldering. A few days later I tackled the job of soldering it all together, I decided to use a paste lead type solder that I bought from an electronics shop. I cleaned all the joints and applied a bit of flux followed with a light application of paste solder. The solder comes in a 15 gram syringe, at the time I thought that it was fairly dear to buy, but you don't need much, so the cost is worth it. I clamped it together lightly and applied gentle heat to the joints, I was very surprised at how great it worked. It flows well with hardly any clean up after.





Paul.


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## gbritnell

Great looking radiator. I have built one of Jerry's style rads and it works well.
Gbritnell


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## Brian Rupnow

Paul--that radiator is GORGEOUS, what a great job!!!---Brian


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## michael-au

Nice job on the radiator Paul
Looks fantastic

Michael


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## ELM6061

Gday Paul, mate that radiator look magnificent. Hope all is going well with your self and hi to the better half, hope the leg has healed up ok.


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## Swifty

Haven't had a lot of time to work on the engine, but I thought that I would do a part assembly to see how it looks with the radiator. I didn't attach the fan as I have to trim a bit off the OD of the blades. I still have quite a few parts to machine yet, I may even tackle making the spark plugs.








Paul.


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## 10K Pete

Beautiful engine, Paul! Simply stunning. Can't wait to see and hear it run.

Pete


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## Swifty

Thanks Pete, I'm keen to get it finished, but too many things interfere with workshop time.

Paul.


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## michael-au

Very nice Paul

You have done a fantastic job, should be very proud &#128077;&#128512;


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## canadianhorsepower

Beautiful engine and setup , stunning.Thm:Thm:

 How long before  we  see and hear it run.


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## Swifty

canadianhorsepower said:


> Beautiful engine and setup , stunning.Thm:Thm:
> 
> How long before  we  see and hear it run.



Thanks Luc, at the moment I'm trying to fit in too many things into my day, life sure is busy. I seem to be able to get more things done during our colder months when outdoor activities are less. Right now we are at the end of summer, perfect weather for using our camping trailer and getting out into the Australian bush for some relaxing breaks.

I hope to have it finished in a couple of months and then see what other project I can build.

Paul.


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## Swifty

I thought that I better check in, I'm still alive and well, my hospital visits are now 2 weeks apart so that gives me more time to do other things. I've been having a bit of a break from machining, apart from a few things friends wanted me to do. We seem to be past the good weather now and into the windy and rainy weather, so that means it's time to put in more effort into finishing the engine. I've recently started machining the last pieces of the distributor and will post some photos when I have a few bits to show.

Paul.


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## roxwellmax

Hello,

I've been trying to make the 48DP gear cutting hob you describe in your post relating to the Howell V2 build. I have managed to make a reasonable tool following your instructions, which produces quite good gears of 21 teeth and above, anything smaller and the tooth form is not as good as it should be. Do I need a different form cutter for smaller tooth sizes? I'm not an engineer just a self taught enthusiast with limited ability, which seem to suggest my limited skills are to blame. Any help you can give will be greatly appreciated. I hope you don't mind me contacting you. Many thanks.

Kind regards,

Max


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## AlbertdeWitte

Paul

I have been so busy lately building the Red Wing I was not even looking around what others are building.

I did not read all your pages but I can simply say you are doing a great job on this little beauty!!

I might one day convince myself to attempt this project, but for now I dont think I have the tools to even think about it.

Admiring your workth_wav

Albert


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## Cogsy

roxwellmax said:


> Hello,
> 
> I've been trying to make the 48DP gear cutting hob


 
Lots of info at THIS LINK on how to make them. I've made down to 20 tooth gears and they work fine, haven't tried smaller but I believe they should be possible.


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## Swifty

roxwellmax said:


> Hello,
> 
> I've been trying to make the 48DP gear cutting hob you describe in your post relating to the Howell V2 build. I have managed to make a reasonable tool following your instructions, which produces quite good gears of 21 teeth and above, anything smaller and the tooth form is not as good as it should be. Do I need a different form cutter for smaller tooth sizes? I'm not an engineer just a self taught enthusiast with limited ability, which seem to suggest my limited skills are to blame. Any help you can give will be greatly appreciated. I hope you don't mind me contacting you. Many thanks.
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Max



Hi Max,
At the moment I can't think of any reason why the cutter should not work on gears with smaller teeth, so long as your gear blanks are the right size. If the blanks are not correct for the number of teeth you will get funny looking teeth, might be worth checking.

Paul.


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## roxwellmax

Paul,

Thanks for your reply. I'll check everything and retry.


Max


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## roxwellmax

Paul,

I noticed a mention of your method of milling a cam, in Gus thread on Howells V2 build. I'll be very grateful if you could let me know where I can find details. I'm trying to build this engine and need all the help I can get.

Many thanks 

Max.


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## Swifty

Hi Max, post 175 onwards shows a bit about the way I machined my cams. I have used other methods in the past, but decided to give this way a go. I redrew the cams on my computer from the dimensions on the drawing, and then obtained the correct offsets to allow me to use the boring head to machine the flanks of the cams. I'm sorry that there is not a lot more information on it, but it may be of some help.

Paul.


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## gus

Swifty said:


> Hi Max, post 175 onwards shows a bit about the way I machined my cams. I have used other methods in the past, but decided to give this way a go. I redrew the cams on my computer from the dimensions on the drawing, and then obtained the correct offsets to allow me to use the boring head to machine the flanks of the cams. I'm sorry that there is not a lot more information on it, but it may be of some help.
> 
> Paul.



Hi Max.best

No worries. I used Paul's method to mill cams.His method was the best I ever come across.Paul DHLed the Gear Hob to me and using this I had all the gears hobbed. No worries.  

Hi Paul,

Looks like the Howell Twins(Paul & Gus) are back at work on the V-4 and V-2.

Fishing been good.


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## Swifty

Gus, I'm back at work, but slowly at the moment. I've been doing a bit of promotion work for kidney health, as well as taking part in a few discussion groups with my transplant hospital regarding their way forward in the future.

Paul.


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## gus

Swifty said:


> Gus, I'm back at work, but slowly at the moment. I've been doing a bit of promotion work for kidney health, as well as taking part in a few discussion groups with my transplant hospital regarding their way forward in the future.
> 
> Paul.




Thats good. Voluntary work. Giving first hand advice to fellow patients.Dr Cox is doing well and back to work fixing dogs and cats in USA.
I gave thanks to the Good Lord for your recovery. Are there ways and means to prevent kidneys going bad. I like the term Kidney Health best.
I am making good progress on the V-2 and taking my sweet time. The Gear Case Assembly is  a like a bbee hive with too many details. No rush.


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## Swifty

gus said:


> Thats good. Voluntary work. Giving first hand advice to fellow patients.Dr Cox is doing well and back to work fixing dogs and cats in USA.
> I gave thanks to the Good Lord for your recovery. Are there ways and means to prevent kidneys going bad. I like the term Kidney Health best.
> I am making good progress on the V-2 and taking my sweet time. The Gear Case Assembly is  a like a bbee hive with too many details. No rush.



Hi Gus, I'm just a bit slow to get fully motivated to finish off the V4, although I am working on it slowly. The weather is getting colder here now, so will have to use the heater in the workshop.

There are ways and means to prevent kidney disease, healthy living, low salt, watch blood pressure etc, but in my case the problem was hereditary so I was always going to end up having problems. Attended a briefing today at the Hospital regarding a much larger conference in 4 days time, will get free breakfast and lunch there, that's enough motivation for me to go 

Paul.


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## johnstij

deleted posted in error. See next post.


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## johnstij

Hello.
I have just stumbled across this build thread and finding it very helpful as I've just started to build the V4 to Jerry's plans.
 I've made a start on the engine block and am at the point of boring the cylinder bores. In the build notes Jerry suggest mounting the block on a rotary table with the bottom face at the top and then rotating it 135* degrees and machine the first cylinder bank then rotate 90* and machine the second . Bit of a silly question but is this the same as having the top face at the top and rotate the table 45* for one bank and then back 90* for the second? Also I don't understand the 1.546" measurement on sheet 8 it's to/from a point in thresh air?
Thank you
Ian


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## dsage

As shown if you extend the face of the one cylinder bank out (perhaps with a flat plate or something) it's giving you the measurement to the corner of the other bank. This will be important when you fit the intake manifold on the top of the block. If it's not correct the monifold won't fit properly.
I guess if you do everything else correct this measurement will be automatic. But it can / should be used as a double check and probably should be laid out on the end of the block as a guide to be sure you hit it right on doing the other machining.
        Not sure about his orientation suggestion. Whatever way you choose to get everything at the correct angles is the right way.


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## bluejets

johnstij said:


> Bit of a silly question but is this the same as having the top face at the top and rotate the table 45* for one bank and then back 90* for the second?
> Ian



There may have been some concern with backlash.


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## johnstij

Can anybody tell me the size of the O rings at the bottom of the cylinders.
In fact is there a list of all the O ring sizes used any where.
Thank you
Ian


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## lantain1982

Hi Ian,    The "O" rings for the bottom of the cylinder bores are 1/16th section by 1" ID.
                 I have the complete "O" chart as supplied in the Howell kit if you require
                 any more info.
Bill.


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## johnstij

Hi Bill.
Thanks for your reply.
Is it possible for you to send me the list ? Also is there a list of bearings used? 
I'm not sure how you sent a personal message to a member on this forum.
Ian


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## johnstij

Hello.I'm making progress in  building the Jerry Howell V4 from the plans I purchased.I'm at the cam shaft stage and have managed to confuse my self ( nothing unusual about that !) I have made the cam pairs as the plans> ie "handed" for cylinders 1,2 and 3,4 and assembled them on the shafts as per Jerry's method and they look the same as his.. My question is are both Cam shafts (cylinders 1 & 3 and cylinders 2 & 4) identical because I've seen photos on the internet which would suggest they are "handed" ? Attached is a photo of my Cam shafts. I would appreciate your comments/advise on this.
>
> Regards Ian


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## Lister4

johnstij said:


> View attachment 112297
> View attachment 112298
> Hello.I'm making progress in  building the Jerry Howell V4 from the plans I purchased.I'm at the cam shaft stage and have managed to confuse my self ( nothing unusual about that !) I have made the cam pairs as the plans> ie "handed" for cylinders 1,2 and 3,4 and assembled them on the shafts as per Jerry's method and they look the same as his.. My question is are both Cam shafts (cylinders 1 & 3 and cylinders 2 & 4) identical because I've seen photos on the internet which would suggest they are "handed" ? Attached is a photo of my Cam shafts. I would appreciate your comments/advise on this.
> >
> > Regards Ian


The 3 and 4 cams are supposed to be reversed on the shafts from what the 1 and 2 are.
Regards,
Bob


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## Lister4

Meant to write 1 and 3, 2 and 4

Sorry
Bob


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## johnstij

Hi Bob
 Thanks for your reply, I'm not sure I understand what you mean by reversed ?
Ian


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## Lister4

The cam pairs are mounted so the exhaust lobes are facing the ends of the shaft.
Hope this helps!
Regards,
Bob


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## johnstij

Thanks for that Bob, I understand that the exhaust lobes face the ends of the shaft. It's the orientation of the two cam pairs on each shafts I'm not sure about. As you can see on my photos both cam shafts are the same, is this correct?
Ian


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## Lister4

Hi Ian,
Yes both shafts are the same. Do you have the cam gear timing info? If not, it is available on the Howell V4 web site.
Regards,
Bob


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## johnstij

Hi Bob. 
Thanks for that conformation I can sleep easy tonight 

Regards Ian


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## Swifty

Hi all,

I know that I haven’t posted for years now, but just to fill everyone in, due to my ongoing health problems my wife and I moved to a retirement village just over 3 1/2 years ago. It was not possible to relocate my machines so everything was sold as a whole to a friend, at that stage the engine was about 95% finished. Boy, do I miss not having those machines. 

So currently the engine is making a great display on my bookcase, even got the spark plugs ready to go. It’s only the internals of the distributor that remained to be made. I’ve been thinking lately that I may mount it on a box with a 12 volt drill motor hidden away so at least I can turn it over easy.

I’m toying with the idea of writing some technical articles, it’s a shame to waste all those years of being a toolmaker without sharing. Will see how it goes.

Regards to all,

Paul.  (Swifty)


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## G54AUST

G'day Paul.

     Was wondering about you and your engine.   Haven't heard of for a while.   Good to know your still around.

     I have a few friends who,  due to health reasons,  had to dismantle their workshops (all tradies/toolies) and downsize.   Must have been very frustrating for you as it was for them.

      I too have purchased the Howell V4 plans,  so t'would be nice to see your engine finished and running.   Probably stink your unit out with oil and petrol smells (_drool,  slobber,  drool_).  

     Yourself,  being a retired toolmaker,  would probably have so many tips and tricks up your sleeve.   Would be terrific to read some of your antidotes,  both from your working life and model making.   The little things we tradies do by second nature would be good reading for the rest of us and especially for "Joe Bloggs Junior" setting us his workshop and trying to learn machining and techniques.


Kind Regards,
Stay safe,


Trevor,
Melbourne,  AU


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## minh-thanh

*Swifty !*

A great engine !
I hope to see your engine running .


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## lantain1982

Hello Swifty,
Great to hear from you again.  During my build of the Howell V4 I readily admit to referring to your manufacturing progress both from your concepts and description.      Bit sad about the outcome but one must do for the best.   Your idea of technical articles would be appreciated by all.
Thank you, 
Bill.    South Aus


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## propclock

As someone said talent not shared is talent wasted. 
Please share!


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## johnmcc69

I would love to read any kind of experiences you could share, especially any tips or wisdom. I'm sorry to hear about the V4, you did more with that than most people dream about.

 Please share anything you would like, I know I'll be reading it.

 John


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