Early crankshaft grinder

[Rigmatch]

I designed and built the original MultiMachine which is a machine tool that can do all common machining operations and also can be totally built from scrap vehicle parts. I am also the host of the Yahoo "Multimachine" group.

A group member who is the leader of "Engineers Without Borders" in Kenya, needs a design for a crankshaft grinder. Does anyone know of an antique device or technique that could be "transplanted" to a developing country?

Thanks
Pat Delany

[Craig A]

I SUPPOSE it could be considered ALMOST an antique but we used a crankshaft grinder by the "intheblock" company to grind journals on a 45 Mogul and it worked very well.
We borrowed it and I tried finding one on the net.
FOUND one too---for about $1600!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Rob Charles]

I Suppose if 1 was really hard up with next to nothing to work with you could make a grinder using a reasonably high speed electric hand drill.Rig up some kind of hook to attach to the drill case that will go around the crank pin.Maker it fairly wide to take the side to side wobble out of it when grinding,Chuck up a stone that is wide enough to cover the face of the journal.Make that hook have some way to get closer to the drill body to have some in feed.Really what you would be making is the in the block crank grinder.But if 1 can't be found this may work.Have some turn the engie over by hand slowly.You would be suprised at what you can do with nothing to work with.A friend of mine needed to clean up the faces on some Domestic (before I knew him)Fw's that were 2' in diameter.He jacked up 1 side on his Farmall cub tractor ,took off the wheel,made a stub arbor to adapt the fw to the final drive hub,bolted his atlas lathe compound to the plate on the draw bar,ran the tractor in reverse slowly and cleaned up the fw faces. Sounds crude but it didn't chatter and worked real well. Thanks good ol american ingenuity.. Rob

[Steve Flaherty]

I assume you are looking for yhe prints for such a machine.
That would be difficult since the unit a prior writer wrote of has been out of business for some time. I can try and find a unit for you and i think it would be much less expensive than previously mentioned. Let me know.

Steve

[Elden DuRand]

Guys:

Recently, when I was restoring a 1-1/2 hp 1922 F-M "Z", I found that the cam follower arm was hogged-out due to not being oiled. The follower was a forging (too hard to bore or drill) and, not wanting to go looking for another one (probably in the same shape), I came up a way to machine the hole for a bushing.

It worked pretty well for a cobble job!

In case you ask, the pin was also bad so I pushed it out of the casting and made another one to fit the bushed arm.

Take care - Elden
http://www.oldengine.org/members/durand/

[Steve Flaherty]

On the cranksaft grinder: If you build some 'off set'throw blocks for a suficiently large lathe that off set the crank 1/2 of it's stroke you can grind a rod journal with a cup wheel mounted on a die grinder fastened to the compound of the lathe. You will have to creat a way to raise or lower the die grinder so that the entire journal will be cleaned . Primitive but functional. Main bearings would be much easier as no offset is required. Off set counter weights would be a nice feature also.