by Donnie Hurt | Aug 1, 2015 | CRANKSHAFTS & CONNECTING RODS
Apply Pressure Here I recently found myself without a welder to remove a check ball staked into the end of an oil passage of a crankshaft. So I applied a different technique to remove it to clean the crank. I clamped some pieces of steel together to form some “caps.”...
by Donnie Hurt | Aug 1, 2015 | DISASSEMBLY & CLEANING
Hollow Dowel Removal Tips To keep hollow dowels from collapsing, insert a short bolt or stud, either an American or a metric, before clamping the pullers collet on to it, or just use a pipe wrench or locking pliers to twist it loose. We sometimes just thread the...
by Donnie Hurt | Jul 1, 2015 | PISTONS & RINGS
Piston Ring Squaring Tool I made a quick and accurate piston ring aligner for checking end gaps out of a .030 over, 454 Chevy flat top piston. Just chuck the piston in a lathe and turn the ring lands down to a little under 4.000 ̋. (Mine is 3.995 ̋.) The bottom of the...
by Donnie Hurt | Jul 1, 2015 | CYLINDER HEADS
Dead Lifters and Cylinders We had an interesting issue with Cadillac Northstar heads. We did a normal blast, dye check, valve job, stem height adjustment, and surface as requested. We also did our normal vacuum test before sending the heads back. We were then...
by Donnie Hurt | Jul 1, 2015 | OPERATIONS
Thinking Outside the Book Is your business up to date on your Yellow Pages listing? I hope not! In the good ol’ days if someone in your area needed machine work they would turn to the yellow pages. How do DIYers find your shop today? – According to Yelp, 85...
