small /little end bush bearing

[scotlew]

Hi All

Has anyone had problems after fitting small end bush/ bearing
just fitted them from James Paddock part number vandervell VPS 96217 Now unable to fit gudgeon pin outside diameter is 22.20mm internal diameter of bush is 21.67mm has anyone had to ream them out or have I been sent the wrong part
checked up and they are listed as triumph spitfire acording to there forum

any ideas

thanks

[Guest]

reaming small end bushes to size these days is de rigeur (then sometimes you find out the thing is not centred properly, has inadequate wall thickness or some other howling nightmare)...

Good luck.

[flying farmer]

I had the same problem rebuilding the 3 cylinder Perkins diesel engine in my Massey Ferguson 135 about 15 years ago, found out they had to be reamed to size. I had fitted them because they came with the rebuild kit, ended up pressing the old ones back in.

I did wonder if the same problem would occur with the Stag items. Fortunately I have never had to change the bushes, but I have got a spare set of rods with knackered bushes in the shed that might need doing at some point in the future.

[Motorsport Micky]

Any good engineering shop will hone them to fit for you, should be more accurate than reaming avoiding leaning the pin. Obviously supply them with a gudgeon pin to size to and hone to a slide fit with no rock.

Micky

[Guest]

Any good engineering shop ..

That's the problem there aren't any..

A customer bought a set of "recon" rods for a Spitfire from Rimmer and I have seen such a load of cr..p in my life.
None of the overall lengths was remotely the same, the weights were rubbish, and I ended up throwing them away.

Had someone else do something similar and the pins were not even going square so they cocked over the skirts of the pistons so badly to one side it would have immediately burnt them out.
Never seen such a band of muppets as that.

Finding a company that can actually get that tolerance right of a "light press fit at room temperature" either means,-
a) it's way too loose and the pin rattles in the conrod bush ("don't worry mate it's gotta have lots of clearance" excuse)
or
b) it's so damn tight, you practically have to hammer the gudgeon pin through the bush, and no way the thing is ever gonna turn in the bush, - (which is what it's for), instead the pin is gonna be solid in the bush and turn in the piston...

Now I got the message, unless I stand over someone like a Gendarme the job never will get done right, and certainly never ever on time...
I am sooooo tired of doing it.

By contrast:-
I bought a set of original NOS rods, from the USA, everything fitted perfect first time, they were within 1-2g end for end and required almost no change to make them perfect, + the pins push fitted straight in, once everything was at 25-30C.

rod_1200.jpg

I don't believe anyone any more which is why only Andy touches them now.... and even then..

rods3a.jpg

(with the more and more widespread use of this totally !&!!@~ tin-aluminium bearings from County etc, when they fail - totally wreck the rods, make the rods go blue, completely wrecking the structure and metal of the rod...

..... practically one out of every set of 4 or 6 rods which comes in, in an engine these days, either has the small end bush loose destroying the rod or the big end exploded meaning scrapping the entire set of rods.
Then there's the huge damage done to the thrust side of the rods done when the thrusts drop out....wrecks them pretty thoroughly it does..
..usually you end up throwing the whole set away, meaning that engine has a scrap crank, block, and the rods..all in the bin!

then,-
...because you can't match ONE buckshee rod from a parts bin to the vast differences of end to end weights of a set of 3 or a set of 5 with one duff rod....

You see the photo where I made some rod sets up?
It took me 3-4 years to collect that lot up, get them balanced up, then repurpose the rods to make "eventual" sets again which we could hope had the same deck height and overall lengths...
See how much he had to take off them to get them to match.....!!@!!#@!~

The rest of the stock were binned, must have been at least 60 rods went that way which other people would have reused..

I lost count of the number of TR6 engines where not all the rods had numbers 1-6 marked on them but all sorts of numbers..

..2 x rod number 4, 1 rod number 6, 2 x rod number 2 etc, -people stamping them with centre punches and all sorts of other ugly stuff, main caps for No 1 and no 2 main in the wrong places..
...or the wrong main caps altogether or missing, meaning you have to spend 250 quid to line bore the mains line using a "spare set of caps from another scrap block, cos the thrusts dropped out and both the crank & the block were wrecked....

I kid you not!

Or maybe it's just me refusing to let engines out with rods weighing 35g difference, which other people are quite happy to sell?)
I have been told to stop using expletives here, but can you see why?