The Bucket Foundry

[Yow Ling]

Remembering the adage there is no such thing as a stupid question...........
with a horozonally split crankcase (like a yamaha rz250 rd250 etc)without a cnc how do you machine a crankcase cavity accurately and easily i guess Honda and Yamaha with their pressure diecast would not need to.

Use a boring and facing head in a mill if you want to just trench the cases, could spark erode the crankcases, maybe a horzontal boring machine to line bore the bearing cavities, probably a hundred ways to skin this cat

[husaberg]

Use a boring and facing head in a mill if you want to just trench the cases, could spark erode the crankcases, maybe a horzontal boring machine to line bore the bearing cavities, probably a hundred ways to skin this cat

Yes i can understand what the line boring and the trenching, but what i am meaning is the actual cavity that that surrounds the crank checks. Easy to mill on a vertical split case. I never considered how it would be done.....

[mr bucketracer]

Yes i can understand what the line boring and the trenching, but what i am meaning is the actual cavity that that surrounds the crank checks. Easy to mill on a vertical split case. I never considered how it would be done.....

you would use a mill with a horizontal arber

[WilDun]

Yes i can understand what the line boring and the trenching, but what i am meaning is the actual cavity that that surrounds the crank checks. Easy to mill on a vertical split case. I never considered how it would be done.....

As you say, the manufacturers would probably have used good accurate casting practice with no machining necessary, but if you had heavily skimmed the case mating surfaces and actually had to skim the cavities.......
that might just be opening a can of worms and depending on how much you had skimmed off the mating faces, you'd get problems like fitting side covers and a host of other things!
If you really decided to go ahead and do it, using basic machines, then a mill with a fly cutter might do the trick, also could be used for line boring the bearing housings. - personally I'd try to avoid doing it at all!

[F5 Dave]

Here's my RZ for 7mm crank

[WilDun]

Question for Neill,(Flettner),

In those photos you posted in the ESE thread I noticed that you used gravity instead of a pump for the oil supply to your furnace burner.- Were you using diesel or waste oil?

Also was it a burner you made yourself, or did you use a commercially available one?

I have made a propane burner (because of living in close proximity to neighbours) but when testing it, it would appear that it might need quite a bit of cash to run!
How clean do these oil burners run? (ie smoke and fumes) - of course, I haven't got access to height like you do for the delivery of fuel, so some sort of pump may be necessary.

Got a pile of that ceramic wool given to me but I think I'll use it in conjunction with a hard castable ceramic "hotface" in my furnace.
I won't be doing anything spectacular or big to begin with of course and progress is and will be slow, but thanks for sharing the details of your experiments - very inspirational!

Will.

[Flettner]

Question for Neill,(Flettner),

In those photos you posted in the ESE thread I noticed that you used gravity instead of a pump for the oil supply to your furnace burner.- Were you using diesel or waste oil?

Also was it a burner you made yourself, or did you use a commercially available one?

I have made a propane burner (because of living in close proximity to neighbours) but when testing it, it would appear that it might need quite a bit of cash to run!
How clean do these oil burners run? (ie smoke and fumes) - of course, I haven't got access to height like you do for the delivery of fuel, so some sort of pump may be necessary.

Got a pile of that ceramic wool given to me but I think I'll use it in conjunction with a hard castable ceramic "hotface" in my furnace.
I won't be doing anything spectacular or big to begin with of course and progress is and will be slow, but thanks for sharing the details of your experiments - very inspirational!

Will.

I used Ethanol ( because I had a 200 L drum of it ), mostly mixed with castor, ( old ) fuel for the F9. It smelt Goooood. I'm sure your neighbours would approve. Burner was just a bit of old pipe with a small tube fitted to the side poking in and down stream. Used a small valve to control fuel flow and a vacume cleaner plugged in. I rested a steel plate over the vacume cleaner intake to control air flow, once tuned it worked well.
You could seal the fuel tank and put a light air pressure in it to force the fuel out, like the old tilly lamps, maybe?

[Flettner]

It's not so much as the burner but the pooring of the metal that creates a lot of smoke. Thats why I live out of town now as the neighbours in town did not like their washing covered in casting smoke on the weekends. It came to a head, I moved!

[WilDun]

It's not so much as the burner but the pooring of the metal that creates a lot of smoke. Thats why I live out of town now as the neighbours in town did not like their washing covered in casting smoke on the weekends. It came to a head, I moved!

I grew up in the country on a farm and I sure wish I still lived there! However, I moved a couple of years ago from a quarter acre after 30 years living there to a place which is really more suited to elderly people who like gardening and that sort of stuff, ie the things most of the sane elderly people do (not like me).

I won't be moving again and I have been considering making my foundry portable and taking it on a trailer to somewhere far far away when I am melting and pouring! (Best remedy for my situation I guess!), otherwise I just won't be able to look the neighbours in the eye and say G'day!

No doubt I'll be asking you some questions about pattern making etc. in the future - it'll be a while before I start that, but I'm getting there, .......... albeit slowly.

Thanks, Will.

PS I grew up with the smell of Castrol R - Divine Smell! but nowadays, the people (who have been deprived of these simple pleasures) just don't seem to understand!.

[Flettner]

Portable might be the way to go.

Kennith Steadman ( some will know from old days of bucket racing ) used to have a dyno for testing his home cast cylinders ( to fit a TZ 250 ). The testing was a VERY noisy affair so it was decided to fit the dyno into the back of his Thames van. He would drive out of town to some secluded location ( different every time ) and proceed to do dyno runs for about twenty minutes, shut the doors and motor off before someone got pissed off. Worked well!

Could you imagine what passing drivers would think seeing some old guy boiling up alloy on the side of the road somewhere, probably round you up thinking you were manufacturing P or something.

[WilDun]

Portable might be the way to go.
Could you imagine what passing drivers would think seeing some old guy boiling up alloy on the side of the road somewhere, probably round you up thinking you were manufacturing P or something.

Yeah, I know - first thought would be "P lab" followed by "moonshine,", "burning a body" to get rid of the evidence, always a conspiracy theory first - ( says something about society! ). Then finally, "old lunatic", actually the last one might not be too far out! however that's probably what I'll do, although I may find someone in the countryside around here who will accomodate me on their property.
Just experimenting with various versions of my furnace burner at the moment and fine tuning it, - got a fairly decent flame coming from it now, - one or two little refinements to try, just like tuning a bike for optimum performance.! - Next move is making the furnace itself, should be fun!

BTW, The German guy, Helmut Fath of sidecar fame in the sixties, developed his 4 cylinder racing engine in his garage in the suburbs, had it mounted on a trailer and when he dyno tested it he took it out into the forest so he wouldn't annoy the neighbours.
When asked what his wife thought about his exploits, he said "I dunno, I never asked her" - way to go!



Will.

[F5 Dave]

Portable might be the way to go.

Kennith Steadman ( some will know from old days of bucket racing ) used to have a dyno for testing his home cast cylinders ( to fit a TZ 250 ). The testing was a VERY noisy affair so it was decided to fit the dyno into the back of his Thames van. He would drive out of town to some secluded location ( different every time ) and proceed to do dyno runs for about twenty minutes, shut the doors and motor off before someone got pissed off. Worked well!

Could you imagine what passing drivers would think seeing some old guy boiling up alloy on the side of the road somewhere, probably round you up thinking you were manufacturing P or something.

Yes we might. Good story.

[Flettner]

Same said, Kennith Steadman has I understand bought much of what's left of Thames Foundry.
Will be relocated to Tokoroa, good news indeed!

[WilDun]

Same said, Kennith Steadman has I understand bought much of what's left of Thames Foundry.
Will be relocated to Tokoroa, good news indeed!

Sounds good, hope it works out for him, a lot of people ( bucket etc.) will be interested in someone like him, ie someone who is possibly prepared do jobbing work for locals, as well as bigger orders.

I'm really sorry for the guy in Thames though, also for Thames itself, which was a leading edge "state of the art" engineering town in the goldmining and steam era.

Will.

[Flettner]

Finally got the Gyro running nice and starting ok. After running for a minute or two ( more like ten seconds )one carb would not stop leaking ( pissing ) fuel out of the over flow pipes. So after stopping the engine and investigating, you could imagine my surprise on taking the float bowl off to find no floats! I was a bit tired when I cleaned and reassembled them last night. Sure enough the floats are sitting right where I left them, on the bench! Carb seems to work a lot better with the floats installed and the engine runs even better.
EFI dosen't have floats.