Studebaker Home Foundry Project

[R5 Lark]

That's the purpose of the second chimney. To provide backup molten metal to reduce shrinkage hopefully under 2 %. A bigger problem is securing the piece in the mill and finding true vertical and horizontal on it. This is a very complex bracket with odd angles and offset sections.

[R5 Lark]

Finished machining the casting. All the critical points fell into place. Final weight was 1.33 lbs. from a 3.34 lb iron bracket. From concept to finish was about 3 dedicated weeks. Not lightly to be repeated but I learned alot of what not to do. It machined up fine and has a nice solid tuning fork sound on the "strike test." So don't believe there will be a structural problem. The majority of the metal came from an alloy casting. Could have trimmed it down more but left some areas for added buttress and triangulate support(tom c)

[Jeff Rice]

Looks positively awesome!
Great work!

[Bill Van Alstyne]

Very nice! Impressed with the whole project. So are R3 heads next? LOL It's really neat to see the whole process from start to finish, thanks for showing us. Bill

[SilverHawkDan]

That is very nice work. I am impressed. Since it is on a drag car every ounce counts. Looking forward to your next casting show. Thanks for inspiring us.
Dan

[R5 Lark]

Thanks. I went for a test drive and everything seems ok with a few short bursts. No movement or falling apart so believe it will be fine. Haven't nailed down what may be next. Was thinking of a water pump casting but lost the core on the first arber press effort on getting the shaft out. The impeller is ok but I was after the core.

[Alan]

Tom, first you remove the hub. Then you should have a support ring for the casting, to support it when you push the impeller, seal and bearing out the back.
The bearing and shaft are made so you have to destroy it to get the bearing off.

[R5 Lark]

So the front hub comes off first. I have another bad spare so I will try again. I believe S.I. has the repair kit. But first have to study casting the housing core if its possible.

[R5 Lark]

Have put the water pump on the back burner for now. Have to locate a NOS repair kit. Made this casting Monday evening. Took all day to get the pattern correct after several sand failures. Made the pour right at dark. It was the largest melt yet at 3.4 lbs. Knew I had enough but wasn't sure how the flow will make certain turns and angles and didn't want an early freeze or right angle turn problems. Broke it open in the dark after supper and it was near perfect. Now working on the machining it and should be finishing it up tomorrow. This is actual "foundry sand and binder" ordered off ebay. 48 lbs of super fine sand. I made the casting boxes. (tom c)

[Alan]

Tom, After looking at those pics of your pump, it was one that gets pushed out the front. But you still have to remove the hub first, the impeller second and make a support ring to support the nose of the pump. For when you push the bearing and shaft out. Or do like I do. Take a block of aluminum and turn it down. I was going to put a pic. up but Photo bucket is being a dick tonight.

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[R5 Lark]

Ahh! Nice work Alan. Really looks great. I have located a repair kit so will place an order.

I finished the machining and clean up on the bracket arm. Got it mounted and it lined up perfect and is functioning fine after a test road blast. I couldn't detect any shrinkage. The critical points all came in where they needed to be.

[Jeff Rice]

Looks great, Tom!
Hope you are feeling better.

[63larkr1]

Even when your sick you get more done than I do. Good work as usual.
Richard

[R5 Lark]

Working and making dry run studies to see if the upper water manifold section can be cast. Have had a lot of failures getting the pattern and core stable. Here is a water passage core that may just work. It has a wire splice to repair a break that occured. The core has been oven baked. The mold pattern had some errors. The core is now out and the sand has been dumped. Hope to experiment some more tomorrow.

[R5 Lark]

Success followed by Failure Discovery. Made the cast melt and the pour looked nice on opening the first box. Got all excited but when busting open the top box I saw the core exposure. Ruined my day and the week.

Several mistakes were noticed. First, not enough metal in the pour. Thought 3.4 lbs would be adequate but was short a good 1-2 lbs. Should have made a 5 lb pour. That would have added the pressure on the two chimineys to keep the metal flowing. Other error was the top box when making the pattern didn't pull clean off the bottom end runs. A void was created and this sucked up metal that wasn't suspose to go there if sand had stayed in the end areas. I knew this might be a problem but excess could have been cut and smoothed away. Lost a good half lb here for sure. Third mistake is I didn't take into account the iron cut from the zig saw. The blade dropped the top hat pattern a good .060" and this affected the spacing between the core and the pattern. So 3 big mistakes discovered. The rest of the effort went well. Didn't burn up my boxes and didn't have any metal weeping through the two box halfs. The parting line looked good with only a slight casting flash. Setting up the parting line was hard because nothing is flat and the pattern halfs turn deep into the sand box when trying to establish the lines.

Will hold on to the positive lessons and trash the ideas that failed. This was the first casting that requires two split patterns with a core insert. Will try again another day. (tom c)