| Author |
Message |
    
Joey
Visitor
| | Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2004 - 11:42 pm: | 
|
This double 3 atlantic was fine when I bought her about 4 months ago. I went to take a look at her tonight and she only will turn about a half turn in both directions. I took both ignitors off and both water pumps and I can turn her completely over but she is very hard to turn in certain places, it takes alot effort to make the full revolution. there is lots of oil in on the pistons. Both jackets are attached by one manifold and it is going to be a hard job to get it off. do you think that I will have to take out the pistons to see what the problem is. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I will try and post a picture.
Thanks Joey |
thomas
Senior Member
Username: thomas
Post Number: 230
Registered: 07-2002
| | Posted on Monday, October 04, 2004 - 07:00 pm: |
|
I heard of a similar case on a 2 cycle twin that must have been run in salt water and had lots of
waterjacket deposits: The engine developed a "tight spot" where none had been before. The
results of tearing it down were that one cylinder had split from the salt-rot pressure and was jamming the piston. Hope that's not your problem. Is it possible that a mouse or some such
got into a cylinder and built a nest? |
Ned Lloyd
Visitor
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - 01:10 pm: |
|
Rust build up in the waterjacket (salt water engine?) can be so extreme that it squeezes the cylinder & siezes the piston. Had it happen once, piston was stuck rock solid. Had to cut the water jacket apart, chip the solid rust away & the piston was free. |
richardday
Senior Member
Username: richardday
Post Number: 311
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - 06:39 pm: |
|
The perennial problem!!! Never Never let a salt water cooled cast iron water jacketed cylinder or exhaust manifold dry out. It will crack and once the cracking stops you cannot control it. All my ex salt water cooled engines have straight anti freeze in their jackets so air cannot get at the salt in the iron. When that rust hardens it is almost impossible to get it out. I had one nice ZR cylinder that had not cracked and I managed after days of chipping away the hardened rust to think I had cured the problem. Two months later the cracks appeared. Apparently I had relieved the stresses and the result was cracks. Dammed if you do and Dammed if you don't. Don't try to take it out with acid as that will result in loss of good metal. I don't know of any of the electrolysis approaches that will cure the problem. Better men than me have tried and I have not heard of any really sucessful scheme to cure the hardened rust problem. Hope someone finds the cure. It ain't ROCKET SCIENCE!!!! |
gregoryan
New member
Username: gregoryan
Post Number: 2
Registered: 09-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - 10:19 pm: |
|
It seems as though one of the biggest killers of old marine engines is rust/ sediment expansion under their jackets.
I dont know if this is old news, but, I have mechanically removed loads of shale like material from water jakets.
[I got the idea from my friend at Nth Richmond [Australia] whom builds his own marine steam engines.] He said "Why don't you just drill down through the top to relieve it a bit?, and plug up the holes afterwards?"
Pic Attachment; [Water Jacket Relief 1]
Drilled four 10mm holes in an even stud pattern, then used an extended 6mm masonry bitt which can be easilly angled to drill out all the compressed expanding sediment. I found that an ordinary HSS bit would immediately dull as tho the sediment was rock! It was easy to recognise when the drill hit solid bottom and as the masonry bitt won�t drill iron, it seems verry safe!
Another observation was that there is minimal sediment over the top of the combustion chamber.
With the Blaxland cylinder it was helpful to remove the bottom welch plug for drill access but probably not essential.
Some people will not like the idea of taper plugs in their head, but I don�t like the look of exploded jackets! If you were real fussy you could cut the plugs off flush and putty any trace!? Mabee some chemical methods work but it is hard to see and be sure of the results.
|
george_iv
Senior Member
Username: george_iv
Post Number: 110
Registered: 07-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - 11:52 am: |
|
Does anyone have a salt water cylinder that's past fixing? I'd love to have one to tinker with. If I can fix it or at least remediate the scaling and salt intrusion, it'd be time well spent. At work, we have access to many different processes and equipment. I'd love to try!!!
We fixed an old T&M cylinder that had the side blown out from sediment or freezing, I don't know which. We didn't have much to start with so loosing it was not a big problem. I'll attach pictures of the welding and finished cylinder. The welding is with CAST IRON ROD, not nickel or bronze or JB weld. You really can't tell the new material from the original material.
This may sound like a shameless plug, but if someone has a cylinder they are willing to give it a try on, send it to me. I'll do what I can...
George Coates
 |
george_iv
Senior Member
Username: george_iv
Post Number: 111
Registered: 07-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - 11:54 am: |
|
Welding the Cylinder
 |
george_iv
Senior Member
Username: george_iv
Post Number: 112
Registered: 07-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - 11:58 am: |
|
Finished Cylinder
 |
thomas
Senior Member
Username: thomas
Post Number: 233
Registered: 07-2002
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - 12:14 pm: |
|
I always thought you had to get the whole iron casting way up in temperature before starting any welding so as to stop thermal expansion cracking? I had a cast iron Maytag gas engine gas tank crack just by putting the torch on it.
The "flow" of that stick metal looks fantastic. Is
that stuff a low melt alloy? or is it actual cast iron? |
solarrog
Senior Member
Username: solarrog
Post Number: 136
Registered: 03-2002
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - 12:23 pm: |
|
How about some information about the rod you are using, I see flux in the back ground. Do you use it like brassing rod????
Brand name?? |
george_iv
Senior Member
Username: george_iv
Post Number: 113
Registered: 07-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - 02:38 pm: |
|
Here are some answers in order:
1. Yes - That entire cylinder is a spanking 700 degF!!! Weld some and back in the heat, weld some and back in the heat. That hole took a 8 hour day to weld; and that doesn't include prebakes, cleanings, machining the finished weld.
2. The rod is cast iron. Nothing fancy.
3. Now the flux is some witches brew of stuff. The exact composition may be lost to the ages, but that one pound mix has lasted for over 35 years. Dad bought it back in college when they taught this stuff to M.E.s and through the years he's "adjusted" it by adding other stuff. It's really FOUL!!! I'm guessing it has plenty of those nice flouride compounds in it. Come to think of it, that might explain some of my peculiarities...
4. Like brazing rod? I'm not sure what you mean here. Yes, it's like brazing in that there's flux, but that's about it for similarities. Brazing attaches two separate base metals. Welding fuses two base metals into one homogenous piece. The rod alloys with the base metal, not just sticks it together. Brazing rod is more like high temp super glue...
5. The can is so funked up, the name is gone. It's yellow and red with black lettering.
I would really like to try this on a known salt water engine cylinder. Cleanliness is the key and I am eager to see if the salt does come out. If it doesn't the welding will be impossible.
George Coates |
paulgray
Senior Member
Username: paulgray
Post Number: 114
Registered: 05-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - 06:25 pm: |
|
The Coates man is a master with the torch! He repaired a ARACO 4 HP vertical pumping engine cylinder for me. (see Oilfieldengine.com discussion board search "ARACO" or hit http://www.oilfieldengine.com/oilfield/shop/posts/2009.html)First, he cut out the old snot brazing, repaired where the salt water in the oil well brine rusted through the valve chest and then re-welded it. One cannot even tell it was repaired. It is one of those "handful still around" engines worth saving. He even got all the encrustaions out in the bottom of the water jacket. |
marks
Senior Member
Username: marks
Post Number: 72
Registered: 03-2002
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - 08:14 pm: |
|
Hello George,
Nice Job! I thought I'd share with you what I've been doing in this regard on severely corroded and salt affected castings. I've been researching and playing with this for the last couple of years
I've repaired quite a few castings quite succesfully utilising a number of welding, hard braze and soft solder methods which all have their place. Briefly what I now do is.
1) Cleanliness. I start by leaving the casting in caustic solution for several days.
2) Salt. I use heat. I have a charcoal furnace which we fire up and place the casting in. I'll bring this up to a cherry red for a couple of hours and then cover with pearlite and leave for a day or so. Warning you may exacerbate the cracking.
3) Wire Brush to remove any reduced iron.
4) I then dill and tap holes every 3/8 or so of usually 3/16". I tap them so that when the bolt is screwed in it just protrudes out of the back. I use zinc plated bolts and tighten with a screwdriver. Where the crack is wider use larger bolts. Warning if you drill and tap more than one hole at a time you will find that the once a bolt is screwed in the next one will not. You can move the crack around quite a bit by the pressure of the bolts. Once you start doing it it will make sense. You must start out at each end of the crack working your way into the middle.
5) Cut off the bolt heads flush and vee the crack out. I prefer a shallow trough rather than a deep sided vee.
At this point you can weld or braze whatever.
I have a few methods of doing this. At the moment my favourite is arc welding probaly because it is the quickest. I use one of the new cast iron rods(3.2mm from AWI in OZ) I don't preheat with this rod. I back hand weld starting at each end of the crack from the second last bolt to the last then the third last to the second last and so on. This is a fairly low amp rod. For larger cracks I will aim to do more than one pass.
Even though the rod is fluxed I will also flux liberally with a zinc chloride type flux.
I will then finish the weld by filing(the weld is soft and the low heat input minimises the formation of hard cast iron). A few minutes work with a scabble gun or quite abit longer with a small ball peen hammer will finish the surface nicely.
This method seems to avoid cracking becasue the bolts tend to force the crack apart. When the crack is welded the zinc coating will melt allowing a little give in the joint for contraction.
It is possible to end with an invisible repair. As such we are stamping the repaired items as being repaired.
I hope this is of some assistance.
BTW If you have a large section missing as you did I cut a patch out of my ever growing collection of garage sale brought cast iron cookware etc and bolt the patch in and then weld.
Best regards
Mark S. |
george_iv
Senior Member
Username: george_iv
Post Number: 114
Registered: 07-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - 10:17 pm: |
|
Great Ideas!!! What function does the caustic bath serve? If you heat the casting to dull red, the oil and slime are way gone, so does the caustic help with inorganic intrusions?
The drill and tap idea is very interesting. I hadn't thought of doing it that way. As a cold process(no preheat) I can understand why it works.
When you say "charcoal furnace", do you mean a furnace fired with charcoal or a furnace used to make charcoal? The lack of oxygen in the production of charcoal will definity aid in reducing the iron oxide, or removing the oxide from the iron. When we heat cast iron, we find that a reducing atmosphere will produce a much different result in the finished part.
Thanks for the great post!!!
George Coates |
marks
Senior Member
Username: marks
Post Number: 73
Registered: 03-2002
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - 11:46 pm: |
|
Hello George,
There are some fairly sound reasons for the way in which I do things. The caustic I always do even if no repairs are required because:
1) I'm basically lazy. It removes grease paint etc as well as some of the loose corrosion without hard work and mess.
2) A 5% caustic solution by weight will definitely stop any further corrosion whilst immersed. It is a "passivating" solution. I store all of my parts in this solution from the start of restoration, inbetween work sessions and up until completion. Iron only though and definitely not zinc plated bolts.
I heat the castings for several reasons also:
1) Salt(sodium chloride) melts at around 800C(1470F) or so. You will sometimes find that the salt collects on the surface looking like I suppose loose balls of cruchy salt. This helps the hard inclusions as they contain salt. Heating often converts a large portion of these to a fine dust. It also seems to help soften the other deposits which I suspect are mostly calcium carbonate. Unfortunately what I call the critical point of iron is not much more than this(I think yellow heat is well into it). At this critical point it is entirely possible to convert your gray iron to say white iron with inappropriate handling. This and other unpleasant side affects can be avoided by carefult temp control, hence slow cooldown under pearlite as well as close attention to the temp of the furnace.
2) Heating by using charcoal produces a reducing environment ie an excess of carbon monoxide. This atmosphere reduces some of the corrosion back to elemental iron which basically is a much more stable form of the various oxides. Magnetite is one such form. It is also reasonably physically tough.
3) Heating for this period of time and to this temp goes a long way to stress relieving the casting.
My furnace is fired with charcoal. The store brought stuff(complete with sand and binder) is fine for the temps mentioned. In fact it is probably good because it is very difficult to get things too hot with. If you need higher temps you can make your own from hardwood.
George when I mentioned dull red by my definition that is outdoors in good light. In poor light or indoors is is quite bright probably red too orange.
Insofar as the chemical removal of hard deposits go I have exhausted most of my lines of inquiry with no real luck. There are a couple of areas still to investigate. There is at least one process which should work but the equipment and facilities reqd are way out of reach logistically. As well as there are some critical safety aspects that would have to be resolved.
Cheers,
Mark Ss. |
holes to drill-out jackets
