Inline VS Bent engines

Nice bird bath rocKWiz, similar rear mount to this one, maybe it’s a Transit 4 speed here?

Possibly from one of those Holden powered Bedford vans from the 70s.

The box has a Bedford look to it,laid on its side .........i recall going into a Holden place for a part,and they had on sale brand new gearboxes for $50......not Holden boxes,the counter guy didnt know ...anyway ,I grabbed one as the price was right.

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Alrigrhty then ................
Take a comparable size diesel inline 4 stroke crank and the same in a 2 stroke crank...............
Which would cost the most to grind, .and why.............

What about the same in a vee configuration ..................

...................Billy.................

No hard and fast answer.............which is why I scrapped my big Repco crank grinder........there are so many kinds of special hardening on cranks,where a touch with the wrong wheel will heat check the crank and start cracks..........on top of which ,no one gets cranks ground anymore,motors last too long....................if I was to get another crank grinder,I would try to find a pommy made Prince grinder........on these the crank is set up on centers ,and the wheel follows the journal around...just one setup on centres ...........same principal as the old Chev grinder that hung off the journal on two hooks.

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.All righty...........I shall word that a little differently...............
Lets say you have an in line 6 cylinder 4 stroke crank .....and an inline 6 cylinder 2 stroke crank..........
How many setups are required for each crank.....( this will effect the costs of each shaft grind i suppose )..............

Now you have , say, a V6 4 stroke crank , and a V6 2 stroke crank...........
How many setups are required on either of these...........
..................Billy...................
P/S ...... A first it sounded like a good question , but i suppose it depends on the actual grinding machine...........
I was thinking of the grinding wheel being in a fixed position .............
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Even with the Repco ,once you get the crank set up for one throw ,then its just a matter of rotating the crank to the next notch in the disc on the head.......the discs come with 2/3/4/4/6/8 notches......for common cranks there are also spacer bars to set the grinding wheel in the correct position for the journals...............I havent seen a CNC grinder,but imagine like the Prince,the wheel follows the journal back and forth.........If you do a crank you havent done before,you will need to form a correct radius on the wheel to suit the crank,and this is generally where the time and cost comes in,because you are basically cutting a 1/4" of abrasive off a $500 wheel.............a lot of the cheap ngrinders like Donvilles didnt bother with a radius ,and used what came,,,,,,leaving nasty double radii on crank journals......Donville also used to leave blue spots all over journals ,and paper them off to hide them......couldnt hide the surface cracks tho.

I know what you mean Billy.
Back a ways I took my V6 Ecotel commodore crank into old mate for a regrind.
When I picked it up he was spewing. Ecotel had a different crank to the early V6 engine and he’d had to do set up for each throw.
He’s a retired engine machinist so perhaps his gear isn’t as flash as yours John.
Re the harmonics of various cylinder combinations, firing order must also play a part. The 4000 series locos had V12 EMD engines of about 3300hp and they regularly broke cranks. A different crank with altered firing order fixed the problem.

My gear isnt flash any more.....i scrapped it.

jeffo wrote:

I know what you mean Billy.
Re the harmonics of various cylinder combinations, firing order must also play a part. The 4000 series locos had V12 EMD engines of about 3300hp and they regularly broke cranks. A different crank with altered firing order fixed the problem.

Do you know if they kept the same crank and just changed the camshafts?