See How Babbitt Bearing Are Poured

Part III of our posts on rebabbitting engines is now up on The Old Motor with many photos showing how this dying art is done.

The photo at the top shows cement used to fill the oil hole drying on the shop wood stove.

The photo just below shows the insert being heated to melt out the old babbitt.
The photo at the bottom shows a new insert being heated before pouring.

 

Wow, that is very impressive, all HAMBERS show check this out as the original hot rods all had babbitt bearings. Thanks for sharing it with us, you always do a great job. Fred

 

Thanks, I don't know if most H.A.M.B. members know that Hot Rod may have originated from the babbitt melting out of a connecting rod.

 

Always wanted to see that being done, thanks.

 

In the last photo showing the babbit being poured, how do you make sure the thickness of the babbit is the same as what is needed for the crankshaft? Is it machined after pouring?

 

Fordy, this is just the pouring part. Keep watching as the next part will show them being semi-finished and then align-bored in our line boring machine seen below.

 

So cool! Thanks for posting!!

 

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Thanks T head, that is a question that I have always had about babbitt bearings and here is the answer plain and simple. This is the way questions should be answered, plain and concise, with pictures. Great job. Going to put a link to your site.

 

One of the first things that I ever posted on the HAMB was this link showing babbitt bearings being poured in a Model T block and rods.

http://www.nwo-modelt.org/blocks.html

Your post shows a slightly different approach, relining a bearing shell. I hadn't considered that you could re-babbitt a removeable bearing like that. I'd like to see that process in person sometime.

Here's my original post with some more information from some fellow HANBers.

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=250009

 

Like I really needed to see that agian after about 40 someodd years of doing all that! Hahaha....well, sometimes you can get away with not machining, just depends on how much prep and detail that you put into your mold!
Everyone in machineshop and toolmaking ought to have the pleasure to do at least 3 sets, and do them right, to be called a machinist....

 

I should of included these photos and the links that show how we make our own inserts.

The link to how we make our own insert bearings starts here with the lathe work on theoldmotor.com

The link to the post on how we cut the new inserts shown below is here at theoldmotor.com

 

Hey T-Head.....Thanks for showing us how this is done......It is incredibly interesting, I will keep looking for the next part.

 

Its almost a lost art, I'm glad to hear that there are some kids that are interested in learning it. When I got into it, Thats what I wanted to do, and have carried the ball since the 60's.
Well, casting babbitt bearings ranks high on my list of things to know. Metal working, in the OLD art form, is probably gonna disappear with us. I hope it doesn't though.

Peening, is another area, that goes hand in hand, with the bearings. Brass and Bronze work. And shimming. Just to hear those terms, you don't think much about them. As machines and autos used to be used, you could remove shims to tighten things back up.

I love the days of standing by the melting pot on a cold day, drinking a cup of coffee, waiting for the babbitt to melt, all the preheating that goes along with it, getting it just right, pouring slowly, tapping on the mold to make sure all the air bubbles are out, any spillage is cleaned and tossed back into the pot.

Those were the days when you felt a sense of pride when someone came from a couple of hundred miles away, because they knew you could do the job correctly. This was way before the internet....it was all word of mouth. It was called being a Craftsman!

My hat is off to you, my friend, teaching the younger ones that want to learn. I started out in redoing older machines in the Ships and in the mines, large diesels, oilcups on the rockerarms, babbitt rod, cam and main bearings, got into hotrods and into performance, spent alot of years in racing, even top fuel, and I'm fixing to retire, back into to oldschool performance.
The Harley Knuckleheads had exposed rockerarms. Some of the old WWII motors were really low compression to run on Kerosene. Babbitt bearings were in the gearboxes and transmissions.
People don't even remember setting the dwell on a dual-point distributor, changing the pills on the old Crower injectors in the Gas Classes, flame trenching the piston tops for better flame travel. CC'ing the piston tops, theres a blast from the past!

Thanks my friend for teaching our lost art!

 

Hey Screamin' Metal....Thanks for sharing your experiences as it is hard to find anybody today that has done it will also share.

I picked up a tip from you that I had never thought of.....The tapping on the mold to get any bubbles out.... simple but brilliant.....Thanks so much.

 

Thanks to all for the sharing of this...its priceless. But with all this talk of babbitt can any of you tell me more about the material and what kinds of it there are and what is it made out of??

 

Garage Dog, Good question there are two basic types, tin based and lead based. Tin has aways been thought of as being the better of the two but Chevrolet and others used lead based babbitt for years.

Most people use a tin based or a tin based babbitt with nickel added to it. Here is a good link that tells you much more.

 

This is great! I always wondered about the process. Back in the 80's I sent out a 1934 Chevy motor to have all new bearings poured. It wasn't cheap and now I know why.

I have the ultimate respect for old time craftsmanship.

 

Thanks for posting how it is done. Much respect to you guys, you are real craftsmen!

 

As a Tinsmith I am intrigued by the kettle on the stove. Do you pour cold water into the funnel to displace the hot water? It obviously won't come out of the vents on the top.

 

We pour in about a gallon of water a day to take the place of what boils off as steam. On The Old Motor post it explains how we use it as a shop dehumidifier.

 

Thanks for that, never seen anything like it. I will look up the post.

 

I think some of the early Miller and Offenhauser racing engines had poured babbit bearings, The modern steel backed insert bearings have a very thin bearing material plated on them like a few thousands of an inch. Vendervell in England was an early manufacturer of insert bearings. Ford started using them in there Flathead V8 around 1936. Chevrolet had them still in 6cyls. in the early 50s.


Ago

 

You can read part two of this continuing story with many other photos on The Old Motor. This post covers some of the machining operations.

 

babbit bearings are still widely used in high speed industrial gear reducers. many thousands of horsepower and thousands of rpm's. regular roller bearings can't handle the surface speeds, so babbit bearings are the choice.