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Author Topic: Back to the Beast .... Big Sipp Problems  (Read 548 times)

Stoker

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Re: Back to the Beast .... Big Sipp Problems
« on: April 19, 2021, 12:03:46 am »
Now to jump from the piston/cylinder end back down to the flywheel/crankshaft to hopefully wrap this tale of woe up until actual restorations get underway.

Upon opening up the crankshaft bearing caps, I was immediately presented with a host of odd shaped and multi-layered oily gasket and brass shims on both sides and top.

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While it all seems to work okay, I think it may be wise to try to make a new set of shims that allow for only one in each position, and possibly even mill the bearing blocks themselves slightly to reduce the total thickness of shims required. But at this point all I did was to punch stamp each of the bearing halves, so as to assure that they would remain in proper pairs and properly oriented.

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Next to be considered was the attachments of the crank arm and flywheel, where a very ugly situation was discovered, in that there is no keyway milled into the crankshaft for the attachment of either of these features, which appear to be gripped by more of an undersized key caming action, than by anything else.

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So clearly when I do manage to get the flywheel and crank arm off of the crankshaft, I will be wanting to mill a keyway into the shaft of a size to properly accept a whole key to secure these critical features.

And finally .... now onto the truly "Fatal Flaw", that makes this engine essentially irredeemable ...

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To wit, three of the adjacent spokes exhibit hairline cracks showing through the paint, which likely suggests that these spokes are in fact cracked all the way through from some former drop, or sideways blow to the flywheel. This is likely the source of the flywheel wobble noted in my earlier posting, and I can think of no practical way of making such a repair, so if any of you out there know the whereabouts of any spare half horse Sipp flywheels, I'd sure like to hear about it!!!
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