Storm Vulcan 15A operation

My brother Bill and I were wrenches, Earl Howard was the driver. We had an early on, rear engine dragster, that was about 92" long and super squirely. Our ages now are from 82 to 86 years old, so. young fella, you have to speak loud when you are talking to (or cursing at) us.

I get the concept of rotating the table to counter a tapered rod journal.
At this point I have turned two test surfaces on my test shaft in the headstock surfaces are 6" apart, which are .001" difference in diameter, larger diameter is the surface closer to the tailstock. Next step is to grind a test surface on the tailstock.

What was the name of this famous dragster from 1962 ?

Dave

So if understand things correctly, in order to correct the wear on the headstock / tailstock "table" it would first involve a large milling machine or grinder followed by hand scraping. As long as the surface is uniform from one end or the other, my concern with ensuring that the upper surface is parallel with ways is not such a concern as the table can pivot on the center bolt.
The magic I would think is to make sure the profile of the bed is the correct shape of the headstock/ tailstock mount.

Dave123 said:

So if understand things correctly, in order to correct the wear on the headstock / tailstock "table" it would first involve a large milling machine or grinder followed by hand scraping. As long as the surface is uniform from one end or the other, my concern with ensuring that the upper surface is parallel with ways is not such a concern as the table can pivot on the center bolt.The magic I would think is to make sure the profile of the bed is the correct shape of the headstock/ tailstock mount.

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In this real world, I wouldn't even consider trying to find someone with a gigantic plane to redo my ways. John Wayne would not have, So, man up. The tail stock part of the table's ways AND the bottom of the tail stock are both worn away. To fix:
(1) pop for a five to six foot long, one inch plus wide, cast iron arch top(or bridge top--terminology?) straight edge. Few thousands (thou) off probably won't hurt your INITIAL work. I think I saw a six footer on Ebay that might be had for a couple hundred. (And the real, old time machinists used to scrape two or three straight edges together to make their own "damn straight" straight edges. Something about "averaging errors." Bit beyond me.)
Coat the bottom of your straight edge with bluing, using a nearly dry, small paint roller, then lay the straight edge down on top of the ways to transfer some bluing from the straight edge to the table's ways (don't flood it with drippy bluing). If a feeler gauge shows the way's wear to be immense, I would think about using some electric flat belt sander to get rid of the worst of the excess on the ways under the HEAD STOCK. You have to give your head stock a new location which will be further into the mass of the unworn portion of the table's ways. By some judicious power sanding, you will be STARTING to correct the error in head stock/tailstock's centerlines, and will be getting back to one straight centerline the whole length of the Storm Vulcan. Do not be too heavy handed with the electric belt sander. Just give it lots of little touches. I don't think your or mine puny hand scraping can or should be expected to move the required amount of iron off the unworn ways as I think will required to match the iron already scratched off the worn portion of your Storm machine. I think I read about how much iron could be machined off by one horsepower. Us old folks don't amount to much of a horse no matter what our beer goggles tell us But think to yourself that every thou gone off the unworn portion of the head stock's side of the table's ways, makes your Storm Vulcan that much more accurate. Just quickly get some dimension gone off the unworn portions of the ways. Then you can slowly (and it will be slow) hand finish by scraping away any transferred bluing off the ways. Recently one blogger made the gentle brag that he could scrape the whole table (for dimension -not oil holding finish) in one day. If he could get it dimensionally straight in one day, he probably get the recommended 21 contact points per square inch in what - like three days?? Your hand scraping could save you thousands of dollars against you paying for shipping both directions, and you paying a pro shop to plane your ways. Looks cost effective to me.

(2) Clamp the big grinding stone to the carriage with something gentle - C-clamps? Then rig dial indicators to the stone, so that you can determine the vertical distance from the tail stock's centerline, AND the vertical distance of the head stock's centerline from whatever spot the C-clamp is attached to the grind stone. You can use this difference in vertical distances, to machine the bottom of HEADSTOCK (not tailstock as the tailstock has already worn away from use). That should leave with the "up and down" way wear marginalized, and leave you with the important job of scraping the ways under the headstock to align with the worn area under the tailstock. A crank grinder works in three dimensions, whereas my eye and brain works more in two dimensions. So I always work in one plane, then mentally spin that plane ninety degrees, and think about the problem from the new beginning.

What kind of tolerances were you able to hold (runout)in the headstock?

I was keeping rods and mains within .00015" I believe the steady rest pressure, the sharpness of the grinding stone, and the rate of operator plunging the stone makes the finished job more accurate than the head stock or tail stock bearings. In truth, if you removed all steady rests, then tried to grind a center main on a spinning crank, the crank will flop all over the place, and certainly not grind round. Again, and with the steady rests off, put an indicator on a center main, then using just one finger, push the crank back towards the stone. It moves many thousands - scary when you see how mush a crank will bend with very little pressure. The things that controls the roundness of the grind job, are the contact pressures of the interfaces of steady rest to crank, and interface of the grind stone to crank. Use a dull stone and you get out of roundness. Miss on steady rest pressure and you get out of roundness. Hate to say it but a couple of thou slop in the head stock bearings does not really matter on crank grinding nearly as much as it would if you were working on some really precision jet engine shafts.

Spend 4 hrs yesterday with a crank grinder operator (same machine as mine), except his has live centres while mine has chucks, this was time well spent.
I realized on my machine traversing the head /tailstock table left or right takes a lot more pressure than it should, so I am going to pull the table and have a look. I also have an issue with the drive for the head stock,....mine bounces around when is use....apparently this is not normal.

So I have sourced a company that is going to resurface the head and tailstock bed along with the head and tailstock wear plates.
One point that came up was the fact that any material removed will affect the height of the work,...in this case, crankshaft in relation to the centre line of the grinding wheel.
My thoughts are that this "should" not affect much in the way of performance. One thing that will be an issue is the contact point of the rack and pinion gears used to move the head and tailstock. I think this can be cured by adding a spaced (shimstock) under the rack gear.

Dave

Turnaround007 said:

When you start grinding cranks, one of the tools you should place where you can grab it quickly is a GOOD flashlight. And if you are anywhere near as old as I am, get a eye doctor's prescription for a pair of glasses that have the correct focal length for the distance between where your eye is (while standing in front of the Storm), and where the stone is touching the crank. You have to use the flashlight (and good glasses) to see how close the side of the stone is to the side of the crank to avoid banging into the cheek (or whatever) and causing the stone to "ring". If you experience a crash like this, you will most likely have to go to the next undersize to fix the mess.
Another lesson that you probably have no concept about, is to believe the Arnold gauge, and to continue grinding to the Arnold gauge's zero mark, without stopping and miking at a thou or so before your finished size. I can see a person wanting to double check before final size, but that is a mistake in this case. The Arnold gauge accumulates a film of sludge on the indicator's surfaces, and will give a slightly undersize journal, but will repeat time after time, If you stop to check before final size, you disturb the sludge, and it "game over" for the Arnold gauge giving a good accurate reading. Do remember to grind about .0003" large, because that is about how much sludge will be under the Arnold gauge thimbles. Otherwise, when you get through grinding to the Arnold gauge's zero, and when you wipe the finished journal off to mike it, you will be undersize by about .0003"
You should be getting the feeling by now, that crank grinding is an art and not a science, at least for us guys that do not have the super deluxe grinders. We can still produce good work though, so go for it.

As a credential, our shop's raggy old Storm and Van Norman grinders, did the crank for our own fuel dragster, which went out and became the World's fastest Chevy powered dragster in 1961-2-3, some where in there, I can't remember exactly when, but it was a 327" small block, stroked 1/4" and running 40% nitromethane and a stock GMC 671 blower, First Chevy to go 180 MPH in the quarter mile. We were famous for two weeks before someone else went faster. My, isn't fame fleeting?

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It’s been awhile for sure but I am wondering if you guys did welding on cranks? Must have if you built stoker engines.
What I am thinking of there are a ton of model T cranks out there, most of them are cracked. Some say that is unlikely that Henry Ford would have magnefluxed them back in the day, if magnefluxing was even around.
Some also say that some of the cracks that show up may be from the casting process
A new SCAT crank for a T will cost $1350.00.
If a guy was to magnuflux a crack, grind it out until no crank is shown, weld it up peen it and grind it.

Dave Eddie