Up coming work

I have been working on the Cat 10 and so far this is what I have going. This shows the various stages of the process. First the bearings as they have come out of the engine and cleaned. Next we have the fresh poured bearings in rough castings. Then the back sides of the bearings are cleaned and any babbit splatter is removed. Next all oil delivery holes are drilled. Next the bearings are semi-finished and the partings are scraped by hand to avoid taking any material from the bronze bearing shell, the markings you see are the mapping for the oil grooves to be cut. Next the oil delivery grooves have all been cut and the block is mounted in the line bore machine to line bore the bearings in place. I still have the connecting rods to pour and machine. As I progress along I will be adding more pics to this thread. I hope that this is sparking some interest to you all.
Mike

To me, you've "sparked" more interest than 4th of July fireworks. Thanks for sharing!!! 👍👍👍

Yes, very nice. It's getting harder to find anybody with the tools and skills to do this work. Feel free to post pics like these anytime.👍

I have been listed in the services area for a close to a year now and every now and then I will throw it out there. Since I had some Cat stuff to do I knew if would let you all know that there is someone around that can still do this. The machines I use are all the old machines that were designed just for this kind of work and my pouring outfit was made in 1925. It has turned into a dying art and I am doing what I can to preserve it and to help bring some old engines back to life that might otherwise be scraped out.
Mike

Mike, this is great. Thanks. Too bad you are so far away from upstate New York. I found someone around an hour from here who says he can do it, and there is a company in Syracuse, Babbitt Bearings, Inc that does it. What are the right questions I should ask in order to choose the right guy to do my CAT22 bearings? I have about .125" end float on my crank shaft, sounds like the thrust surfaces on the center main. While I have it apart I figure I might as well have the rod bearings done too. What is the approximate cost I should expect for the three mains and the four rod bearings? Ray

Mike, this is great. Thanks. Too bad you are so far away from upstate New York. I found someone around an hour from here who says he can do it, and there is a company in Syracuse, Babbitt Bearings, Inc that does it. What are the right questions I should ask in order to choose the right guy to do my CAT22 bearings? I have about .125" end float on my crank shaft, sounds like the thrust surfaces on the center main. While I have it apart I figure I might as well have the rod bearings done too. What is the approximate cost I should expect for the three mains and the four rod bearings? Ray

I'm sure Mike will be charging a fair and reasonable price for his services, thanks for sharing the photo's. I had my 2 Ton motor bearings done recently here in Australia after talking to 3 different experienced babbitting guys, one who was wanting "over $2,000", the other 2 guys about 500 miles apart were about the same price, it cost about $110 each, it's roughly $55 to pour, and $55 to then machine to spec., so 7 bearings with line boring the block cost $770 total. My crankshaft bigend bearings were about 3-4 thou out of round and I decided to grind the crankshaft after being told " I should" by the "over $2,000" babbitting guy, and the crankshaft grinding shop quoted me "around $350" to do the job, but when I went to pick it up they wanted $600 because "it was too big for us to grind, so we sent it to the city for another shop to grind".

As a wise old Mechanic said to me later, "Mike, you are a moron, Caterpillar would have been happy as clams if the 2 Ton crankshaft bigend bearings were only 1.5 thou out of round brand new, and with a 22HP motor only spinning at 1,000 RPM flat out you are not talking Formula 1 racing cars, just a big old over engineered slow revving motor with huge bearings swimming in a sea of oil"!!!"😆😆 Interestingly none of the bearing guys were all that interested in using the 12 thou. in shims in the new bearings, as Caterpillar did from new, their reasoning was the 2 Ton will never do 10,000 hours hard work with filthy oil like they did originally, and secondly that the new babbitt materials were infinitely better than the old babbitt metal of 1928.

Keep up the good work Mike, we need more good folks doing old style bearings, magneto's and carburetors.
regards
Mike

Puffer-

My first 22 supposedly had a worn clutch when I got it. Clutch wouldn't release. I drug the thing home, tried adjusting the clutch and noticed I too had >1/8" endplay in the crank. Upon disassembly I found the thrust bearing collar completely worn through and both the crank and block shoulders worn and misshapen.

Daron

As work on this customers job moves along I have more pictures to post up. These are for some valves that he wanted machined down to match the sample he sent in.
Pic 1.) The valves he sent in and the sample. Pic 2.) The heads have been cut down to diameter and the 45 has been re-cut. Pic 3.) Close up of the new grooves. Pic 4.) All valves have been cut to length, ground and polished. Pic 5.0 Iis a close up of the finished stem. [attachment=12787]100_2399.jpg[/attachment][attachment=12788]100_2424.jpg[/attachment][attachment=12789]100_2425.jpg[/attachment][attachment=12790]100_2426.jpg[/attachment][attachment=12791]100_2427.jpg[/attachment]

Enjoy!
Mike