It is an urban myth that The Society of Civil Engineers once petitioned the makers of "Yellow Pages" concerning the following entry:
"Boring": See "Civil Engineers"..........
Presumably, young, hip, trendy and interesting single Civil Engineers were finding it was having a downward pressure on the number of members of the opposite sex who wanted to go out with them.........
Anyway, that's not what this post is about at all......
But it is about boring.
And being bored....
(And may actually be boring for all I know, but no-one's making you read this rubbish, so you've only got yourselves to blame.......)
Actually, to be precise, it's about "honing", but that word carries with it little in the way of latent comedic potential.
For Roger and I have been honing-out the cylinders of the replacement TA14 engine to plus-10 thou.
This will enable us to fit the new pistons and rings.
Once this is done, reassembling the engine should only be a couple of day's work.
(Something tells me I'm really going to regret typing that...........)
The honing, however, is taking forever.
We are using a Draper honing tool mounted in an electric drill.
The honing stones are 120 grit for the 'rough' hone.
We have, after three days of back-breaking effort, managed to rough-hone two of the four cylinders.
We've got number three cylinder to about plus 6 thou, which means we're half way down the gudgeon pin on the trial piston.
It is a cold, uncomfortable and thoroughly joyless task.
Progress, at times, seems slower than that of vegetable growth, and it is tedious in the extreme....
And when we've finished rough-honing all four cylinders, we'll have to change the stones for the 240 grit ones, and fine-hone the last couple of thou off to allow the pistons to run with the rings set at the correct tolerances.
So there you have it folks!
Two old bores getting bored boring the bores!
Happy Christmas, everyone.
I'm off to straighten my aching spine with a very large gin and tonic and a lie-down.
Back in January.
Covid Lockdown
3 years ago
John
ReplyDelete10 thou is a lot for a hone but what lube are you using. I've found paraffin and engine oil 50/50 works well for roughing going to 20/80 for the fine (if you cant get any honing oil).
Happy xmas to you and all
Chris
Chris, this is Extreme Honing!
DeleteWe've been using neat paraffin as a lube, pausing every few minutes to check progress by cleaning up the bore, checking with an internal micrometer, then seeing how far we can stuff the plus 10 thou piston down the 'ole.
It's at this point that we clean the stones using White Spirit, which seems to work pretty well at removing the carborundum sludge and getting the stones to 'bite' nicely again.
But you are right: 10 thou is a long way.
We would have used a bench-top boring-bar, but the only one we can scrounge is in Bognor Regis, which is even further........
We'll be back to 'The Grind' on Monday!
:-)