A
Anonymous
Guest
I'm sure y'all have had the experience of learning of a technique or tool for engine-building, tuning, fabrication, etc., useful yet simple in concept that you smack your forehead and say, "I should have been doing that years ago!"
It has happened to me dismayingly often, although occasionally I get in on one of these wrinkles before it becomes widely-known. One of these was baked-on moly-disulfide coatings for piston skirts (and other things) which I learned about from a Boeing lubrication specialist and started appying to my outboards and other engines in 1967. By about ten years later there was a company, Kal-Gard, selling heat-curable dry-lubes in spraycans. Now you can buy aftermarket automotive pistons already coated.
Another technique I learned early was hot-honing, warming up the block to, we hoped, more closely approximate the shape it would take while running before passing the hone through the bores. Some 2-stroke engines have a bridge in the exhaust port to keep the rings from hanging up, and these bridges get vey hot. Did they bulge into the cylinder?; hard to be sure, so my personal dodge when hot-honing was to get the bridge exra hot with a propane torch before stroking my Sunnen Junior through the cylinder. I didn't hear about anybody else hot-honing until maybe twenty years later when I read that some of the NASCAR teams were doing it. Nowdays they not only hot-hone, but they circulate coolant through the block at the same time to approach running conditions even more closely. We had talked about doing that, all those years ago, but thought it not worth the effort.
But (slapping my head), while I was hot-honing, I never thought of . . . TORQUE PLATES!!! That's an even better technique, and the plates are dead-simple to make for a little 2-stroke. By the time I heard of them (mid-70s?), I'd had enough experience machining to know how flexible metal really is, and as soon as I saw the first photo of a torque plate, I said . . . well, you know.
Even though I did the last of my racing long ago, I like to keep up with the latest ideas, or anyway, the most recent ideas to get into print. One of the better sources I've found is Circle Track magazine, which features tech articles aimed at low-buck do-it-yourself racers with some skills and tech-savvy. Check it out.
I'm getting to the point (!!!), but I'm out of time on this library computer. Drat and blast!! I'll be back in an hour, I hope, for Part Deux. I just hope it isn't old news.
It has happened to me dismayingly often, although occasionally I get in on one of these wrinkles before it becomes widely-known. One of these was baked-on moly-disulfide coatings for piston skirts (and other things) which I learned about from a Boeing lubrication specialist and started appying to my outboards and other engines in 1967. By about ten years later there was a company, Kal-Gard, selling heat-curable dry-lubes in spraycans. Now you can buy aftermarket automotive pistons already coated.
Another technique I learned early was hot-honing, warming up the block to, we hoped, more closely approximate the shape it would take while running before passing the hone through the bores. Some 2-stroke engines have a bridge in the exhaust port to keep the rings from hanging up, and these bridges get vey hot. Did they bulge into the cylinder?; hard to be sure, so my personal dodge when hot-honing was to get the bridge exra hot with a propane torch before stroking my Sunnen Junior through the cylinder. I didn't hear about anybody else hot-honing until maybe twenty years later when I read that some of the NASCAR teams were doing it. Nowdays they not only hot-hone, but they circulate coolant through the block at the same time to approach running conditions even more closely. We had talked about doing that, all those years ago, but thought it not worth the effort.
But (slapping my head), while I was hot-honing, I never thought of . . . TORQUE PLATES!!! That's an even better technique, and the plates are dead-simple to make for a little 2-stroke. By the time I heard of them (mid-70s?), I'd had enough experience machining to know how flexible metal really is, and as soon as I saw the first photo of a torque plate, I said . . . well, you know.
Even though I did the last of my racing long ago, I like to keep up with the latest ideas, or anyway, the most recent ideas to get into print. One of the better sources I've found is Circle Track magazine, which features tech articles aimed at low-buck do-it-yourself racers with some skills and tech-savvy. Check it out.
I'm getting to the point (!!!), but I'm out of time on this library computer. Drat and blast!! I'll be back in an hour, I hope, for Part Deux. I just hope it isn't old news.
