20 - Engine Casings

 I got one half of the engine casings back from John at Anvil Engineering. He was welding over a small hole in the gearbox for me. The damage looked to have been caused by someone trying to tighten up a screw that was too long for the hole. It had burst through into the gearbox and had been repaired with araldite. The repair was good and would probably have lasted another 40 years but I wanted it welded. 

 We looked over the cracks on the frame and discussed repairing, and came to the agreement that if I did all the fitting work he would do the welding. This suits me fine as my welding is nothing special, John however has years of experience welding tube. 

 With the casing back I tried cleaning the interiors a bit more by soda blasting. I saw some videos on You Tube of guys making their own set up so I gave it a try. Pretty simple really. Just an air line inserted into the top of another pipe to create a venturi effect that lifts powder from a bag of ordinary baking soda, £2 for a kilo in the supermarket.

It worked ok but it's messy. Definately don't do this inside your shed. Everything gets covered including yourself. It does however clean things, a little slowly, but for me it was enough. I washed off the baking soda with the garden hose and left them to dry in the sun.

 Later I ran a tap down all the threaded holes and put the casings in the oven while I got the bearings ready.

About 20 minutes at 170c and all the bearings just dropped into the engine without even a tap.