Crankcase support arm removal update...

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Model T Ford Forum: Forum 2012: Crankcase support arm removal update...
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Marshall V. Daut on Thursday, August 30, 2012 - 10:04 am:

Last week I posted a question about removing the
$%@#&* arms from the crankcase, noting I had drilled out the rivets and was trying to separate a broken arm from one oil pan and one good one from another pan so that a repair could be made. No luck budging either. You guys posted to heat the snot out of the arms, which Gene Nelson and I did yesterday with his welding tank rig and a rosebud tip. Still no luck. Those arms are about 1/4 inch thick, so we just couldn't get them red hot enough to melt the brass between the arms and the pans. Gene called his son, who is much more experienced in welding than we two and asked for advice. He actually came over in the middle of the day from a neighboring town, although I had never met him before! Wow!
In the hands of someone who knows what he's doing, it only took about 10 minutes with the torch to get both arms off the two crankcases without creating any damage to pans. Here's what son Tony did that Gene and I didn't do to achieve this success. Gene and I had heated the arms directly to separate them from pan. Tony instead heated the pan from the INSIDE behind where the arms were positioned, and THEN he moved to heating the arms themselves. Whereas Gene and I were trying to separate the arms from the pans, Tony was separating the pans from arms! Follow the difference? Apparently because the arms are so thick, we weren't getting enough heat to the backsides to melt the factory-applied brass behind the arms. Applying heat to the inside of the much thinner pans, however, melted the brass enough so that we could pry behind the arms as Tony moved the torch flame to the arms themselves. They peeled off like butter with a little pressure from a pry bar and hammer! All in all, if Gene and I had used this approach, removing the arms would have been a snap. Instead of being the horror story we had both heard about removing these arms, it was a fairly simple procedure.
Hopefully this information will help someone else facing the problem of removing a broken crankcase arm. It ain't all that big of a deal when Gene's son Tony is around! Thanks, Guys! I owe you both a six-pack!
Marshall


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Mark Gregush Portland Oregon on Thursday, August 30, 2012 - 11:54 am:

When I did a snout and was trying the first time I could not get it to budge. What I was told was you have to have the oxygen and gas for the rosebud cranked way up and to lift as the brass melts. If you didn't get the arms to get hot enough you were still not getting enough heat from the rosebud. 1/4 inch? :-) Before you put the arm back one make sure it fits as tight to the pan as you can. Don't pry too hard your pan will be heated and is easy to bend out of shape.


Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Dan Treace, North FL on Thursday, August 30, 2012 - 12:26 pm:

There's a lot of brass brazed on to those parts on the pan....this is the set up from 1914. Lots of heat from those torches :-)


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