62 Falcon - $5k challenge, how will it rise from the ranger's ashes?

[BBR]

And you check the pistons afterwards to make sure you have no skirt collapse? Not being argumentative, just want to know your procedure.

Never thought or worried about it. Haha!! This ain't brain surgery! It's just a bunch of metal thingys flopping around!

I mean I took care to press square and not visibly damage the piston, but the last 302 I did this to (with used stock TRW's!) is currently living a happy life in a friend's 79 Mustang and has run in the 11's on spray. It now has a single turbo on it.

The pin is press fit in the rod, so as long as you come up with a way to support the area of the piston around the pin bore in the press, like with chunk of wood with a hole in it for the pin to drop through, I personally would not worry about it. But that's just me. A torch might be handy if you have one that is particularly stubborn, but I have never found one necessary.

Your mileage may vary.

[STINEY]

I'm quite likely over thinking this - but oldmachinist is an old machinist after all - and made some good points... and if damage never happened to pistons while pressing the pins out - why did the dude at the machine shop mention it was a risk?

Quite likely for the same reason our local locksmith first told me he probably couldn't make a key for a lockbox lockset I brought in this morning............

I said really? He said Yeah, it looks like it pressed together, no way to get it apart.

So I took it from him, and turned it over so the screws were face up. Suddenly he could do it - seriously? You're a locksmith dude, and the accountant has to show you how a lock comes apart?

I run into this crap all the time, and its getting old. All I can figure is money is SO easy to come by that most people in business can afford to turn away everyone that comes in the door. Its pathetic.

Hope this disease isn't heading your way!

(And I was serious about the steel-on-steel floating pin. It might sound wonky, but I have proof and can take pictures of a setup like this with 40,000 miles on the steel-on-steel setup. Convinced me!)

[milner351]

I hear ya - I'm quite good at coming up with failure modes instead of solutions some times....

[SuperBuickGuy]

failure becomes somebody else's problem.... aka as an "SEP" in Douglas Adams parlance

[OldMachinist]

Steel on steel pins will work if you stay on top of changing your oil frequently. I don't recommend it but the best success I have seen is with .001 clearance and drill about a 1/8th" hole down into the pin bore and drill a large countersink. This helps keep more oil on the pin.
Some rods have enough material to bore the pin end for a bushing if the machine shop has a pin boring machine.

[Beagle]

I went looking and seem to have mislocated it, but I have an old (50's) hone set for pin bores. I would be interested in how to cut the retainer grooves in stock pistons if I were to hone a set of rods for a floating pin setup. Buttons seemed like a pain and great way to hork a cylinder wall.

I'm pretty sure you could bush a 302 rod without killing it's integrity at 6k or so, but after all that work and decent rod bolts... the cost gets way into new rod territory, and at that point, make the rods match your new stroker crank?

I love the make it fit, make it work.. please don't get me wrong. A 302, however, has way too many easy to get easy to pay for parts to really sweat old stuff too much. Which is exactly why I like to mess with the old junk.

I have asked about the steel on steel before with no bushings, for the stuff I'm doing, it seems like it would work fine? .001 seems like a bunch though?

[OldMachinist]

With steel against steel you need to prevent galling so you need plenty of oil so .001 is appropiate. You are right about the cost.
Aftermarket rods are so inexpensive that by the time you pay for ARP bolts, reconditioning the brg. end and honing the pin end if you want full floaters you might as well buy new and have bushed pin end. Of course if you have cast rods like for instance Pontiac you wouldn't want to run them in anything except a stock engine so you need new rods anyway.

[milner351]

Thanks for all the thoughts guys - yea - I've already looked at the 331 or 347 possibility, but keep trying to keep this thing in budget.

The Mahle pistons don't have a groove for full floating pin retainers - so - they will stay press fit.

I have some rods that are comparable - I will get the torch out and push some of those pins out as there's zero risk for me - I may never use the pistons - with another rod to use for weight, and a complete assembly - the crank balancer should be able to figure out his bob weights on an average basis and do at least as good of a job as the factory did.

The rods on the mahle pistons already have good bolts, I got the block, pistons and rods free, I'm using one of the cranks I had on hand - getting it balanced and buying bearings. I may have to get the block zero decked to provide good compression with the 6.6cc valve reliefs in the pistons. Time will tell on that.

[milner351]

Today was one of those days.....

while finishing the modifications to the plasma cart to hold the mig, there was a little miss-hap.... sometimes I can be a real idiot.



You can guess what happened there, which required a longer than I would have liked shopping trip to find one of these so I could get back to welding this thing together...






As I was finishing up that... I started to hear a horrible noise coming from the furnace...
I ran across the shop to shut off the breaker, then went up to investigate, after pulling the fan off the back of the furnace, I found this:


Thankfully the set screw just loosened up, easy fix, but still a pita.

[TheSilverBuick]

Ouch and ouch. At least neither was catastrophic.

[Bob Holmes]

Fixing alll the things you gotta fix so you can fix the things you wanta fix. Yep.

[pintoboy77]

Good thing they were easy fixes,but they do take alot of time away of the project at hand. I seem to run into that same problem alot try to fix something simple and it turns into an all day project.

[SuperBuickGuy]

yet now you're back in business.

like the stand

[milner351]

well I can't figure out why when I import these pictures they are rotated from the way I have them saved. Sorry.

The car lost all it's suspension and steering today.

I made up an internal spring compressor with some threaded rod, a piece of angle for the top and flat bar I bent in the vice to capture the bottom - if you've ever doubted the energy of a coil spring - take a look at the bar stock - that was flat and straight across when I started compressing that spring - I will have to come up with something to re-inforce that piece without making it too cumbersome to get between coils.

The last pic shows the front leaf spring mount location - outside the frame rail. The rear rails start narrow and get wider as they go back up over the axle - the rear of the spring stradles the rear section of frame rail.

I think I will drill out the spot welds and move the front hangers inside the frame and come up with a mount for the rear - crites sells a kit, but I think I can come up with something that will work.

[pintoboy77]

I don't know if you have a Harbor Freight near you ,but for about $20.00 bucks you can buy a set of coil spring compressors.