Re: Heavy Engineering

In communiqué <1j1wp32.h9kj2wgxrtzoN%alan@darkroom.+.com>, A.Lee <alan@darkroom.+.com> cast forth these pearls of wisdom
Andy Bonwick <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:22:24 +0100, "Hog" <hogSPAM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

>JB <nil@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> WUN will appreciate this I reckon.
>> http://www.shipsnostalgia.com/guides/William_Doxford_and_Sons#The_Manuf
>> acturing_Process Non of yer fancy CNC machines hereabouts...
>
>Wonderful.
>The flame cutting of the crankshaft webs in particular. I'm amazed they were
>not cast parts but I guess heavy rolled steel is tougher.
>
Forged is the strongest. You really wouldn't want a cast crankshaft.

We used to make thousands of cast iron cranks for Vauxhall in the 80's.
S.G. Iron - far superior to the usual grey iron that people think is
cast iron. We could make it have 25% elasticity before it broke.
Production stopped as we couldnt make the hard skin surface deep enough
- they needed to be chilled quickly to get the properties required for
machining, and some were too soft, so it turned out that more were being
rejected than were passed.


Interesting. AMC switched to nodular iron for the cranks of their infamous twins in 62 IIRC. The early 650 models gad been breaking cranks. However, the 'noddy crank' was reckoned by some to suffer more wear on the journals than the earlier cast cranks. The Achilles heel was the centre main bearing. Any wear on that and the oil pressure to the big ends was fubar. They introduced double capacity oil pumps and restrictors in the oil ways up to the rocker gear to try and help but it was not very successful. TBF, the relatively primitive nature of lubrication oils at the time combined with a primitive felt filter which collapsed if allowed to get too bunged up didn't help.

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