I do crank balance for General Motors prototype engines. I put heavy metal in radially but, instead of a press fit, I tap the hole and thread the metal. Then, one tiny tack weld adds no significant amount of heat to the crank but it keeps the screw from rotating and locks it in forever.
I've been doing track day road racing stuff for a good many years now, and there are several GM engineers involved in it also, that I've gotten to know, I've been trying to talk those guys at the track into making sure GM never stops making the NA push rod V8, so I'm thinkin maybe I can get you in on that also, yeah, call me old fashioned, you can make all that other crap also, and we need a replacement for the Camaro soon, can you handle all that.
Chrysler also installs the thrust bearing in the center main. I thought GM , Chevrolet in particular, (I’m not sure about BOP) placed it at the rear so the crankshaft would be isolated from forces imposed by the clutch fork and throw out bearing. If the main concern is axial location of the crankshaft, then center main is where I would choose.
I have built a number of SBC,s over the years, 383's for road racing, have been using your cranks for many years, a couple years ago when they had covid in full swing I was building one, an LT1 383, and they said I couldn't get a Callies or Howards because things were as good as shut down, that you were just trying to keep up with Harly Davidson, long story short, I bought a Crower crank, when you named top crank makers I didn't hear Crower mentioned, so far so good, still running smooth.
John would like to set oil pump flow and not pressure, but with the pump being driven by the crank the pump speed changes with RPM which effects flow. Also oil viscosity effects flow, so it's not easy to control oil flow rate.
I have a few 1990 taurus 3.0 liter sho in looking for custom main bearing on that engine can they be custom made? If yes who can make them specifically number 1 and number 4 there larger thank in hoping to hear from you
the reason you drill a hole in the crankshaft is for strength. it was first used in the developing of the crankshaft for the Merlin Rolls-Royce during ww2
FALSE. You can NEVER increase the strength of a component by removing material! That is basic knowledge that comes from Material Science and Strength of Materials classes that every Mechanical Engineering student learns in their Bachelor of Science degree curriculum. What you can do is remove material that isn't necessary and / or won't affect the strength of the component according to the loads it will see in service. The crankshaft drilling by RR would've been done to make adjustments to the crankshaft that affect it's torsional stiffness. There are large torsional vibration modes that affect crankshafts, especially in propeller driven aircraft, that need to be calculated and adjusted for to extend the life of the crankshaft.
@johnnywilson3132 Hello, I got that from David Vizard. I went back and read. The merlin crankshaft had harmonic issues. So Drilling it solved the problem. Just because the crankshaft is as thick as it is doesn't mean taking out center mass would hurt it. It doesn't do anything except to add weight. I mean a machine shop with relive a part by cutting a relive in it to relive stress. My friend new ideas are often discarded and laughed at. It is said heat treating strengthens metals and they have done it for years. We please see article on Cryogenic stabilization. It says there wrong. If I'm out of line or something I just have a lot of conviction and want to learn thanks Happy New 😊
@@Jeffery-yo4vk This is why I almost never write comments on UA-cam. You don't want to learn, you want to pontificate about things you know nothing about. I'm a Mechanical Engineer with 3 degrees and over 30 years of experience in automotive and aerospace engineering. 1) The Merlin's "harmonic issues" are exactly what I already stated in my first comment: TORSIONAL VIBRATION MODES. 2) Again, you just repeated another statement I already made: yes, it is possible to remove material from a component and maintain the same strength, BUT it depends on the geometric shape of the component and the type of loads it will encounter. And as I stated before, removing material can NEVER increase the strength of a component. 3) Machinists are NOT engineers and they do NOT know anything about engineering, including about stress relieving features. They are manufacturers / fabricators, NOT Engineers. 4) Heat Treating DOES affect metal alloys in a variety of ways, which can include strengthening them. Heat Treating INCLUDES cooling processes like quenching and air cooling. So cryogenic processing can be considered a part of that and it can have some benefits depending on the material, but it cannot and does not replace Heat Treating. Heat Treatment has been PROVEN to work for a thousand plus years since the first blacksmith plunged a red hot sword into water to provide rapid cooling (known as Quenching) and then reheated it to a low to moderate temperature and then let it air cool (known as Tempering). 5) Having a lot of conviction with very little knowledge and experience is a bad combination and a bad attitude that won't help you to actually learn. I recommend removing the "conviction" part. Good luck.
@@johnnywilson3132 Never say never again, to quote Roger Moore. Things can be wrong for a thousand years and even up to three thousand. We should not repeat things twice; only once, max. We should not have such conviction in what we think that we know that we think that we know more than too little. We all know too little, and all know littler than others. We all have a loose conviction that we know more or less than, or the same as, others, yet, we do not know yet what we know. If we waited until we knew more than too little to speak, only God would speak and we would only listen. What do you and I know?
@influentialgurning Are you related to Donald Rumsfeld ? "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."
With a 4¾ inch stroke and an assumed diameter of 10 inches for metric cohesiveness the counterweight tangential mph at 8000 RPM would be 10 x pi x 8000 / 12 = 20944 feet per minute / 88 = 237.999 MPH oil pan contact slug velocity or slightly above adios amigo mass.
Just (1) question.. There is a inherent problem in the traditional Small Chevy oiling system he doesn't mention and i wish to know if "CALLIES CRANKS" ever produced or is producing a "FIXED CRANKSHAFT" to address this? On a traditional SBC GEN 1 Engine, the upper saddles are what produces the oil feed from the main passages in the lifter valley where pressurized oil comes down around cam then through to the mains into each main journals to be then fed to the rods.. Problem is the main "SADDLES" have no oil being fed to them, and traditional SBC Crankshafts have only (1) oil feed hole on each main journal, thus as soon as the crank journal enters into the "SADDLE PORTION" of the mains each revolution, it is removed from pressurized oil thus cutting off the oil flow to the rods 180* of the crank rotation... The solution is a relative easy fix... By having (2) oil feed holes on each main journal 180* out from each other with generous chamfered, thus fixing the issue and providing the rods with pressurized oil flow that is constant for the entire 360* duration of rotation of said main journals thus the rods are constantly fed as the engine runs. Does Callies use (2) oiling feed holes on each main journal?
For whatever reason i cannot reply to the reply made here. So i will say i disagree, and Callies can be the 1st to either cross drill the mains so that the rods have 100% of the time pressurized oil or not. You're not gonna lose any pressure, and can only get greater durability.
This isn't a bad video, but it's very basic and he should be more precise with his wording and specific describing what type of crankshaft and application he is talking about and how features could vary accordingly. One example is him saying "tenths" when he really means "ten thousandths". Some people may be very confused by that. Two tenths of an inch is 0.2" but two ten thousands of an inch is 0.0002". Another example is he doesn't state the fact that he's talking about a big bore, long stroke crankshaft in this video and that some of the features of that type of crankshaft may not apply to a different application like for example, a small bore, short stroke crankshaft with good overlap where you can remove the center counterweights without any problems.
I thought that when Rolls Royce developed Merlin engine, drilling crank improved service life rather than weakened crankshaft? Wouldn't drilling a V-8 crank do the same thing if hole sizes were optimised?
Yes it potentially can, but it depends on many factors. His point is that there are people who are removing too much material to save weight. Removing material can NEVER strengthen a component. That is impossible. But it is possible to remove material from a component that isn't necessary and / or won't affect it's strength according to the loads it will see in service. The crankshaft drilling by RR was done to make adjustments to the crankshaft that affect it's torsional stiffness. There are large torsional vibration modes that affect crankshafts, especially in propeller driven aircraft, that need to be calculated and adjusted for to extend the life of the crankshaft. Since reciprocating IC aircraft engines spend almost their entire life at constant RPM, you can calculate the frequencies, modes and amplitude at those RPM (in the Merlin it was typically 2600-3000 RPM) and adjust the stiffness of the crankshaft to avoid having a resonant frequency that coincides with those frequencies and modes at those specific RPM. That's also why most reciprocating IC engines utilize crankshaft dampers either built into the crankshaft itself, or external dampers that are attached to the crankshaft outside the block.
@@johnnywilson3132 .................. I always thought the holes were to prevent stress fractures from the torsional vibrations, stress has a 'longer path' around the component instead of any flexing being able to go 'straight through' on a solid bar. When you bend pipe, it always deforms unless you have internal support. Solid bar deforms less. I'm not an engineer so I'm not explaining things very well, ultimate strength is lower but service life is higher
Been mechanic and in speedway (midgets) all my life. Still can't work out why cranks need counter-weights. I've seen midget engines with ZERO counter-weights and when I did a Datsun1200 motor for my juniour midget I spent 2 days cutting away at the crank with 2 grinders. Zero weights and more (or should that be less). Man, would that thing buzz and rev.
No one does it better than the Germans, back in the 70s in the Old Country Palestine I used to work on Mercedes-Benz diesel trucks, some of the crankshafts had the counterweights bolted on, so we have to pay close attention when we dismantle them, some of the crankshaft had a gear on the back of it instead of a rear crankshaft seal, as the crankshaft rotates all the oil that drops on the back of the crankshaft onto the gear will be send back into the oil pan using centrifugal force .
Quite interesting , you say drilling the big ends does not contribute to crank strength. I surely has no compareable experience , but nearly all who does , say it will improove the crank. Now.. i can see why and how it could make a crank stronger. Simply less force due to less mass affecting thenweakpoint of the crank. That i figured but could be wrong. Now , if you would explain why its bad , I would be very interested. People who have no idea like me , are stupid. That simple. But those who don't ask , stay stupid. I do not want to be stupid. Help Me.
People who ask stupid questions don’t stay stupid. Great observation! And often it’s the stupid question that gets overlooked by the crowd. And the answer to the stupid question enlightens everyone and leads to a breakthrough. A lot of times, I preface a question like that by saying I’m going to bring up something “irreverent”, because stupid questions often focus on practices that are applied because that’s just how things have been done, in dogmatic fashion. I’m all for religion, and faith has its important place. But in religion, inquiry can open the windows of heaven. Good on you, mate! Keep asking stupid questions!
Sometimes it's not how people talk but how they back it up, I've been using his cranks for many years, and I have never had a failure, I bought an engine from a person partially done, he had Scat crank and rods, I finished the engine, the crank took a ton of weight then the crank broke into 3 pieces that summer.
John is the MAN.
Thanks for this great video!
Couldn't agree more!
I could listen to this man tell racing stories all day. Good sense of humor too
Fascinating stuff! Especially the oiling considerations.
I do crank balance for General Motors prototype engines. I put heavy metal in radially but, instead of a press fit, I tap the hole and thread the metal. Then, one tiny tack weld adds no significant amount of heat to the crank but it keeps the screw from rotating and locks it in forever.
I've been doing track day road racing stuff for a good many years now, and there are several GM engineers involved in it also, that I've gotten to know, I've been trying to talk those guys at the track into making sure GM never stops making the NA push rod V8, so I'm thinkin maybe I can get you in on that also, yeah, call me old fashioned, you can make all that other crap also, and we need a replacement for the Camaro soon, can you handle all that.
Best explanation ever. Thankyou sir
Thanks for watching!
Chrysler also installs the thrust bearing in the center main. I thought GM , Chevrolet in particular, (I’m not sure about BOP) placed it at the rear so the crankshaft would be isolated from forces imposed by the clutch fork and throw out bearing. If the main concern is axial location of the crankshaft, then center main is where I would choose.
Thanks John.
Great Crankshaft Tech.
Very good video.
Great explanations.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience.
Take care, Ed.
Outstanding talk. Much appreciated!
excellent vídeo, regards from buenos Aires Argentina
What a great video.. Concise and to the point.. no fluff..
18:58 "Take a file & drill it & see how much fun you have" LOL. I have a Callies 4-3/4 crank in my KB-600, it's a beautiful thing!
A EDM would be handy.
Very informative presentation! I'd like to learn more about proper versus improper oil hole chamfering.
Thanks for sharing !!!
Wow!! So much to know.
appreciate the very informational presentation John
I have built a number of SBC,s over the years, 383's for road racing, have been using your cranks for many years, a couple years ago when they had covid in full swing I was building one, an LT1 383, and they said I couldn't get a Callies or Howards because things were as good as shut down, that you were just trying to keep up with Harly Davidson, long story short, I bought a Crower crank, when you named top crank makers I didn't hear Crower mentioned, so far so good, still running smooth.
My 2000hp viper has pistons cooling jets and nitrited journals , cooling jets are a must !
Top Man thanks from UK.
Now you can have the best prepared crank in the UK for your little, oil leaking, four cylinder, piece of trash.
Get to it!
@@YouCantSawSawdust Yes indeed. Oh for a big 6 or 8 diesel.
Love the info, thank you.
I learned a lot. Thanks! 😊
Thanks a Mint , Mr.Callies !!!
When men like John talk, We listen
Super informative! Thanks!
FYI... Shaftech listed website on that slide is incorrect. Its missing an "h".
Good stuff
Great video! Thank you John Callies!
Glad you enjoyed it!
You are a genius. AG
Very Smart, man. God bless you
A lot went over my head but these old stock engines hold up pretty good considering .
Very good vídeo.
John would like to set oil pump flow and not pressure, but with the pump being driven by the crank the pump speed changes with RPM which effects flow. Also oil viscosity effects flow, so it's not easy to control oil flow rate.
I need hours of that.
I have a few 1990 taurus 3.0 liter sho in looking for custom main bearing on that engine can they be custom made? If yes who can make them specifically number 1 and number 4 there larger thank in hoping to hear from you
What is a "fuel crank"? and "fuel racing"? is it topfuel drag racing?
Yes.
Does Scat or Eagle have these capabilities
Just amazing on today's engines people are getting 1,000 Horsepower on stock bottom ends. Unheard back in the muscle car era
the reason you drill a hole in the crankshaft is for strength. it was first used in the developing of the crankshaft for the Merlin Rolls-Royce during ww2
FALSE. You can NEVER increase the strength of a component by removing material! That is basic knowledge that comes from Material Science and Strength of Materials classes that every Mechanical Engineering student learns in their Bachelor of Science degree curriculum. What you can do is remove material that isn't necessary and / or won't affect the strength of the component according to the loads it will see in service. The crankshaft drilling by RR would've been done to make adjustments to the crankshaft that affect it's torsional stiffness. There are large torsional vibration modes that affect crankshafts, especially in propeller driven aircraft, that need to be calculated and adjusted for to extend the life of the crankshaft.
@johnnywilson3132 Hello, I got that from David Vizard. I went back and read. The merlin crankshaft had harmonic issues. So Drilling it solved the problem. Just because the crankshaft is as thick as it is doesn't mean taking out center mass would hurt it. It doesn't do anything except to add weight. I mean a machine shop with relive a part by cutting a relive in it to relive stress. My friend new ideas are often discarded and laughed at. It is said heat treating strengthens metals and they have done it for years. We please see article on Cryogenic stabilization. It says there wrong. If I'm out of line or something I just have a lot of conviction and want to learn thanks Happy New 😊
@@Jeffery-yo4vk This is why I almost never write comments on UA-cam. You don't want to learn, you want to pontificate about things you know nothing about. I'm a Mechanical Engineer with 3 degrees and over 30 years of experience in automotive and aerospace engineering. 1) The Merlin's "harmonic issues" are exactly what I already stated in my first comment: TORSIONAL VIBRATION MODES. 2) Again, you just repeated another statement I already made: yes, it is possible to remove material from a component and maintain the same strength, BUT it depends on the geometric shape of the component and the type of loads it will encounter. And as I stated before, removing material can NEVER increase the strength of a component. 3) Machinists are NOT engineers and they do NOT know anything about engineering, including about stress relieving features. They are manufacturers / fabricators, NOT Engineers. 4) Heat Treating DOES affect metal alloys in a variety of ways, which can include strengthening them. Heat Treating INCLUDES cooling processes like quenching and air cooling. So cryogenic processing can be considered a part of that and it can have some benefits depending on the material, but it cannot and does not replace Heat Treating. Heat Treatment has been PROVEN to work for a thousand plus years since the first blacksmith plunged a red hot sword into water to provide rapid cooling (known as Quenching) and then reheated it to a low to moderate temperature and then let it air cool (known as Tempering). 5) Having a lot of conviction with very little knowledge and experience is a bad combination and a bad attitude that won't help you to actually learn. I recommend removing the "conviction" part. Good luck.
@@johnnywilson3132 Never say never again, to quote Roger Moore.
Things can be wrong for a thousand years and even up to three thousand. We should not repeat things twice; only once, max. We should not have such conviction in what we think that we know that we think that we know more than too little. We all know too little, and all know littler than others. We all have a loose conviction that we know more or less than, or the same as, others, yet, we do not know yet what we know. If we waited until we knew more than too little to speak, only God would speak and we would only listen.
What do you and I know?
@influentialgurning Are you related to Donald Rumsfeld ? "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."
When I started with crankshafts there was no computers.
Zoom in on the display to help us better understand what you are speaking about. The camera is too far away.
With a 4¾ inch stroke and an assumed diameter of 10 inches for metric cohesiveness the counterweight tangential mph at 8000 RPM would be 10 x pi x 8000 / 12 = 20944 feet per minute / 88 = 237.999 MPH oil pan contact slug velocity or slightly above adios amigo mass.
Just (1) question..
There is a inherent problem in the traditional Small Chevy oiling system he doesn't mention and i wish to know if "CALLIES CRANKS" ever produced or is producing a "FIXED CRANKSHAFT" to address this?
On a traditional SBC GEN 1 Engine, the upper saddles are what produces the oil feed from the main passages in the lifter valley where pressurized oil comes down around cam then through to the mains into each main journals to be then fed to the rods..
Problem is the main "SADDLES" have no oil being fed to them, and traditional SBC Crankshafts have only (1) oil feed hole on each main journal, thus as soon as the crank journal enters into the "SADDLE PORTION" of the mains each revolution, it is removed from pressurized oil thus cutting off the oil flow to the rods 180* of the crank rotation...
The solution is a relative easy fix... By having (2) oil feed holes on each main journal 180* out from each other with generous chamfered, thus fixing the issue and providing the rods with pressurized oil flow that is constant for the entire 360* duration of rotation of said main journals thus the rods are constantly fed as the engine runs.
Does Callies use (2) oiling feed holes on each main journal?
For whatever reason i cannot reply to the reply made here.
So i will say i disagree, and Callies can be the 1st to either cross drill the mains so that the rods have 100% of the time pressurized oil or not.
You're not gonna lose any pressure, and can only get greater durability.
This isn't a bad video, but it's very basic and he should be more precise with his wording and specific describing what type of crankshaft and application he is talking about and how features could vary accordingly. One example is him saying "tenths" when he really means "ten thousandths". Some people may be very confused by that. Two tenths of an inch is 0.2" but two ten thousands of an inch is 0.0002". Another example is he doesn't state the fact that he's talking about a big bore, long stroke crankshaft in this video and that some of the features of that type of crankshaft may not apply to a different application like for example, a small bore, short stroke crankshaft with good overlap where you can remove the center counterweights without any problems.
This is anather reson why I prefer ford engines. They thought of this 70 years ago.
I thought that when Rolls Royce developed Merlin engine, drilling crank improved service life rather than weakened crankshaft?
Wouldn't drilling a V-8 crank do the same thing if hole sizes were optimised?
Yes it potentially can, but it depends on many factors. His point is that there are people who are removing too much material to save weight. Removing material can NEVER strengthen a component. That is impossible. But it is possible to remove material from a component that isn't necessary and / or won't affect it's strength according to the loads it will see in service. The crankshaft drilling by RR was done to make adjustments to the crankshaft that affect it's torsional stiffness. There are large torsional vibration modes that affect crankshafts, especially in propeller driven aircraft, that need to be calculated and adjusted for to extend the life of the crankshaft. Since reciprocating IC aircraft engines spend almost their entire life at constant RPM, you can calculate the frequencies, modes and amplitude at those RPM (in the Merlin it was typically 2600-3000 RPM) and adjust the stiffness of the crankshaft to avoid having a resonant frequency that coincides with those frequencies and modes at those specific RPM. That's also why most reciprocating IC engines utilize crankshaft dampers either built into the crankshaft itself, or external dampers that are attached to the crankshaft outside the block.
@@johnnywilson3132 .................. I always thought the holes were to prevent stress fractures from the torsional vibrations, stress has a 'longer path' around the component instead of any flexing being able to go 'straight through' on a solid bar.
When you bend pipe, it always deforms unless you have internal support.
Solid bar deforms less.
I'm not an engineer so I'm not explaining things very well, ultimate strength is lower but service life is higher
Been mechanic and in speedway (midgets) all my life. Still can't work out why cranks need counter-weights. I've seen midget engines with ZERO counter-weights and when I did a Datsun1200 motor for my juniour midget I spent 2 days cutting away at the crank with 2 grinders. Zero weights and more (or should that be less). Man, would that thing buzz and rev.
No one does it better than the Germans, back in the 70s in the Old Country Palestine I used to work on Mercedes-Benz diesel trucks, some of the crankshafts had the counterweights bolted on, so we have to pay close attention when we dismantle them, some of the crankshaft had a gear on the back of it instead of a rear crankshaft seal, as the crankshaft rotates all the oil that drops on the back of the crankshaft onto the gear will be send back into the oil pan using centrifugal force .
F💡RD
Quite interesting , you say drilling the big ends does not contribute to crank strength. I surely has no compareable experience , but nearly all who does , say it will improove the crank.
Now.. i can see why and how it could make a crank stronger. Simply less force due to less mass affecting thenweakpoint of the crank.
That i figured but could be wrong.
Now , if you would explain why its bad , I would be very interested. People who have no idea like me , are stupid. That simple. But those who don't ask , stay stupid.
I do not want to be stupid.
Help
Me.
People who ask stupid questions don’t stay stupid. Great observation! And often it’s the stupid question that gets overlooked by the crowd. And the answer to the stupid question enlightens everyone and leads to a breakthrough. A lot of times, I preface a question like that by saying I’m going to bring up something “irreverent”, because stupid questions often focus on practices that are applied because that’s just how things have been done, in dogmatic fashion. I’m all for religion, and faith has its important place. But in religion, inquiry can open the windows of heaven. Good on you, mate! Keep asking stupid questions!
@maxenielsen it was irony. It does make the crank keep up whit more load. It makes it stronger. That simple.
His understanding and explanation is outdated. Factory v8 cranks have 8 counterweights. They stopped talking imperial 50 years ago also.
Sometimes it's not how people talk but how they back it up, I've been using his cranks for many years, and I have never had a failure, I bought an engine from a person partially done, he had Scat crank and rods, I finished the engine, the crank took a ton of weight then the crank broke into 3 pieces that summer.
Dude. Your opinion means so little, apparently disrespectful behavior persist at any age ..