Old iron tinkering question - tapered pins

[Michaely]

Hi all,

I'm working on a gearless olds which has an exhaust valve which has two collars fixed to the stem which are part of the spring retainer and governor latching/unlatching action. (kind of hard to explain - not even sure I understand myself). The collars are held on with tapered pins. The whole lot has to be remade due to severe rust. Its no trouble to get the pins either bought or made but I have no idea how to drill a itty bitty tapered hole for the pins to lock into. Any ideas - 'specially those that work - would be much appreciated. I could cheat and press fit in a straight pin in or one of those modern rolled steel pins. Kind of prefer to try the old method though. Thanks - Mike in Orange, NSW, Australia

[Oldsiron]

Hi Michael,
My early 5A Olds has tapered small lock pins on the valves.
We made new valves out of CAT v12 inlet valves(nice and soft), the exhaust ones are to hard to machine,
the tapered holes were drilled to the small end diameter of the spring retainer hole, then we used a tapered reamer to taper the hole.
hope this makes sence

[Tom Martin]

Any large machine supply outfit should have the taper pin reamers and pins. Try MSC http://www1.mscdirect.com; McMaster-Carr http://www.mcmaster.com/ or ENCO http://www.use-enco.com/. Those are all in the US, but I'm sure there are outfits in Oz that have the same stuff.

[Michaely]

Thanks guys - wasnt sure if tapered pins were in use these days, but seems they are.

Mike

[Oldsiron]

Hit N Miss have taper pins in their parts catalogue.
I bought some parts of them, with excellent and fast service
http://www.hitnmiss.com/

regards Chris