Posted by Sherman in Idaho [24.32.202.166] on Sunday, March 17, 2013 at 23:38:51 :
In Reply to: Re: broken piston "jeep" posted by pw58 [204.112.129.88] on Sunday, March 17, 2013 at 23:18:12 :
I think an aluminum piston would melt before a copper wire would. Maybe it just was soft enough to get chewed up without hurting anything. I bet they put the pistons in from the top, though. It's easy to pull a head on a flathead, and they'd probably just re-use the gasket. The old copper foil ones with no sealer on them or fiber in them usually come off intact. I don't know that a guy would absolutely have to have a ridge reamer. If the new piston went in before the cylinder wore, the worn piston ought to come out the same way. If the rings were still intact and springy enough to hang up on the ridge, I can't see it would hurt much to just knock it up from the bottom. The rights might break, but you're tossing them anyway, and if the ridge part of the cylinder gets gouged, it doesn't matter because the rings don't have to seal against it. Going back in, assuming he's using the same size piston that came out, the rings ought to slip past the ridge and then spring out. Tom Joad probably wasn't miking the bores in four different places or using a hone to put a nice cross-hatch on the old cylinders.
A rod and main bearing job on his truck probably meant pouring babbitt. If the guy who poured them the last time put a few shims, hopefully of different thicknesses, between the bearing caps, just removing shims might be enough to cure a rod knock for a few more miles. Once the shims were all out, if the bearing was still lose, a fellow in straightened circumstances might start filing down the bearing caps to tighten up the bearing a little while longer.
One old-timer I knew said he'd gotten an out-of-round rod journal in one of his work trucks back into a round condition by putting beer can metal inside the bearing shells, tightening the caps down until it started to bind, and then re-tightening and if needed replacing the beer can metal every few days until he thought he had the rod journal "ground" back into a round enough condition to be worth investing a pair of factory-made oversized bearing shells in it.
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