Serious press fit

In the case of our Intrepid and Dakota, we get the best of both worlds. They're easy to work on (aside from a few gaffes like that damned press-fit pulley), and almost never need anything beyond routine maintenance.

If you were to maintain the high pressure oil in the cavity (with a relief valve) while pressing the part in with even higher pressure, wouldn't the oil pressure tend to expand the opening as well as lubricating it as the higher pressure press forced some oil back through the relief valve? A bit like blowing pressure into a rubber hose to keep it open while pressing a shaft into it. We tend not to think of big hunks of metal being flexible, but if the pressure is high enough...

They're not very big, but they're a lot bigger than those of the average Asian woman, I suspect.

They don't have nearly enough joints to do the job, either. I think you need about five in each finger, and they have to bend in all axes.

BTW, I can change a bulb in the left headlamp in roughly 2 minutes. In the right headlamp, it's a half-hour plus. And I need bent-tip needle-nose pliers to release the spring clamp. I've had to replace the right bulb twice, and my blood pressure probably jumped 20 points each time.

There's usually a solution. Sometimes it requires re-design.

Practice makes perfect. A friend of mine just sold his car service shop and retired; he was very good, and would tackle anything. I used to spend an hour or two every once in a while talking to him and watching him work (he was also very sociable and tolerant ). The thing that amazed me was the way he could cut through all of the stuff and get right to the part that needed work. Since he worked on my cars and I always used to own at least two manuals for each, one the factory manual, and had studied most jobs before I decided to turn them over to him, I knew he wasn't following the manuals at all.

I concluded that if I wasn't having fun, I wouldn't do the jobs myself. Thinking about how an experienced mechanic could do the job in 1/10th the time it took me gave me a shot of reality about saving money by doing it myself.

But some of it is still fun -- or it would be, if I had a car that was fun to work on. Sports cars were fun.

SNIP

Hey Jag,

Jeeessssuuuussss !!!!!!!!!! A 500 horse, ten thousand RPM, ANYTHING is kinda a sight to see, but on a 2-1/2" shaft?!?! Wow !!!!

Scary!!

Brian Lawson, Bothwell, Ontario.

I've heard that they are very flexible.

Joe Gwinn

I know the feeling. I'm getting really good at rebuilding a series of 165 - 460 GPM pumps semi submerged. I really don't like plumbing that takes forklifts, chains and booms to work on.

When you see something broken and grab *ALL* the tools you need from your box in one trip, you have been working on it way too many times.

Wes

How do these couplings work? I've having problems visualizing.

Thanks,

Wes

Is that the Intrepid where your spark plug wires are run under the intake manifold? I seem to remember a cow-orker bitching about that.

Wes

-- "Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller

Go find a FilterQueen and take it apart - you'll feel much better. Oughta take you all of five minutes to pout it back together.

On Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:16:36 -0500, the infamous Brian Lawson scrawled the following:

Sounds sorta like the li'l 4-cyl Indy engines made by Offenhauser. Remember their high-pitched whine as they shot past TV cameras? Wunnerful memory, that.

From the Offy wiki: "When Ford came on to the scene in 1963, the Offy lost its dominion over Indy car racing, although it remained competitive through the mid

1970s even with the advent of turbocharging. Before turbo boost limits, over 1,000 bhp (750 kW) could be attained using around 120 in Hg (44.3 psi) pressure. The final 2.65 litre 4 cyl Offy, restricted to 80 in Hg (24.6 psi) turbo pressure, gave 770 bhp (570 kW) at 9,000 rpm. However, the Ford Cosworth DFX soon proved to be unbeatable and the Offy's last victory came at Trenton in 1978, in the hands of Gordon Johncock's Wildcat. The last time an Offy-powered car raced was at Pocono in 1982 for the Domino's Pizza Pocono 500, in an Eagle chassis driven by Jim McElreath, although two Vollstedt chassis with Offenhauser engines failed to qualify for the 1983 Indianapolis 500."

--============================================-- Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional. ---

ToolyRoo(tm) and Possum(tm) Handy Pouches NOW AVAILABLE!

Yes, and I've seen other people complain they're impossible. The thing is, the car uses coil-on-plug ignition, so I have yet to need to replace them. We'll see when the time comes....

(I'll just note that on the Toyota I complained about recently, access to the PCV valve is blocked by the intake manifold plenum, and over a dozen hoses are bolted to the underside of that plenum)

Hey Karl - When you get *that* good at doing the repair, it's time for you to stop tilting at windmills and make some wholesale changes.

That's the time I would get frustrated, call the local Case or John Deere dealer and see if they did it any better. See about trading in one of the old Ford tractors, where someone who only plans to pull a gang-mower and not pound on the PTO can get a lot more use out of it.

Me, when they changed to the new emissions gas with the MTBE and Acetone and other mystery chemistry added, and that blew through the old diaphragm material in a few weeks... I got my Corvair Fuel Pump swaps down to five minutes (and always on the way in to work, never on the way home...)

Then I finally got smart and installed an electric fuel pump, bypassed the factory mechanical pump... Problem solved.

(NOW they make the diaphragm sheeting for the fuel pump kits with the proper modern rubber blends that will hold up to the fuel. Where the heck were they in the 1980's?)

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Ya, its just a math problem for me. I got a new Deere for $40 K. I can rebuild a clutch for about $250. You do the math, I need four.

Karl

Shelburne Falls, MA, same as they are now, as you well know if you have a Corvair. I'm not really missing the '65 turbo convertible body with the 4-carb 140 motor swapped in I had for a few years. It was interesting, but needed a great deal I didn't have time or money to give it to be good. Especially in the salt-fest that is the northeastern US in winter.

Was that a John Fitch conversion on the Corvair? That's what I had in my Monza convertible. In fact, I had the full Fitch treatment, except for the Michelin tires and the short-stroke shift-lever riser.

I doubt it - I think/suspect it was just a motor swapped in when the turbo motor got swapped out, well before my time.

First order of business - Does the Deere clutch design hold up to the work loads any better?

Second: Can you redesign the implement to lessen the load on the PTO Clutches? Or redesign the clutch to handle the load better - someone might have developed a retrofit kit to use a more robust clutch.

If it's a hydraulic load, you can put the pump off the crankshaft instead of the PTO? Or you have a split hydraulic/driveshaft load, you split the hydraulics to the crank and only leave the brush-hog drive on the PTO clutch, or....

I don't know what you are doing or how, but if you think it through there is often more than one way to skin a problem. Feel free to elaborate, and we (the collective newsgroup) might be able to come up with an elegant solution.

And of course you don't swap out all four tractors at once - you wait for the Deere dealer to get a bit hungry (or wants to do the model-year changeover) and offer a nice deal. Then pick the Ford that is oldest and/or highest hours on the engine, and trade it off. And in a few years, you do it again.

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Been a bit since I read about it, but one racing engine manufacturer used to make up crankshafts the same way, I believe they had roller bearing lowers on the rods. I believe it was SKF that came up with that method. Had to have the factory jig to get the crank back together, too. Seemed like a whole lot of effort to avoid having a decent oil system and plain bearings. One backfire and the whole crank was trash, no keys to retain angular positioning. A triumph of engineering over common sense.

Stan