I had a friend/customer stop by last night ( he thought hed stump me on this, not what it is, but what was done) I guess Im either showing my age or the knowledge I picked up from some pretty amazing people I worked with in my early yrs. Im not sure how well it shows up ( was pretty dark when I took the pictures) but this is an old Hercules, IXA3 engine out of ( I think) a model GG General tractor and in place of #4 rod bearing there is a piece of leather ( its pretty thin so I think its the tongue of a shoe rather than a belt to hold up someones pants, lol) I know it sounds pretty strange it todays world but this was a more common temperary fix than youd think. These early engines didnt have precision insert bearings, the bearing material, babbit ( a mix of lead , tin and antimony) was poured and machined in the rod. There were shims between the rod and rod cap that could be removed to tighten the clearances back up as the babbit wore, when you ran out of shims, you had the engine rebabbited. If it was in the middle of harvest and you couldnt afford to have the tractor down , then you tried this cheap quick fix, take a hunk of leather, soak it in oil, wrap it around the journal, bolt the rod back together and hope it lasted till the crops were of. Pretty clever when you think of it :-)
Posted on: Wed, 12 Nov 2014 14:06:12 +0000
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