On to the rods and crank. The rods are a red bronze cast. but are offset. By that I mean the cylinders are inline, but the crank is offset. This I imagine was to keep the motor shorter in height and easier for casting parts, who knows. The issue is that over time the small end of the rod will crack, as one of mine was. Back to Penns, got a crank case with rods for $25.00. One rod good, one cracked. Now to resize the big end. They used shims from factory, so when the rod got sloppy, pull a thin shim and, Vola! back in business. I pulled the shims and reamed the journal. But, was tired and didn't notice that I did not re-bevel the rod for the radius on the crank. Idiot! Well I had some good really old (probly super toxic) silver solder and built them up and got them to about's .005" - .006" slip. Perfect, as this motor runs at 16:1 - 20:1. The crank cleaned up good with some 600 grit and a lathe. The main shaft was rusted in, so a torch and slide hammer freed it up.
Crankcase has bronze bushings in it, they are sorta loose, but within guesstimate reason tolerance. To help the old thing out I modified the case to accept modern seals. To do that I turned down a bar in the lathe that was .0005" larger than the ID of the bushing. Then tapped it on with a rubber hammer and that ensured it was true and centered to bore it out for the seals. Worked like a jiffy! I sand blasted the top end parts and to prime coats and two top coats with Rust-Oleum silver wrinkle paint. Fasteners were all 5/16, 3/8 & 1/2 fine thread, so I made a few orders to McMaster-Carr for stainless acorn nuts to dress it up. Looks sharp now!
