winona portable crankshaft grinder

I would have loved to have one of those a few years back for my home shop. In the 1960's I lost a rod bearing in my stock car one Saturday night and a local garage used a unit like that to grind the one journal to get me back on the track that Sunday night.
 
I've heard of them way back in the day...

Never seen it done.

My question, what about all the metal shavings that are circulating through the engine from the failed rod bearing?

And the grinding dust that is added from the attempted repair?

Looks like a temporary repair at best, one of those "sell it quick" repairs.
 
The main problem with that unit is while you can grind a rod journal that is damaged. But a lot of the time when a rod bearing spins the crank will get a slight bend to it. Sometimes I even have to straighten the crank in the press other times a minimal bend of .003 up to .007 I will grind the bend out of it. If the crank is bent it will wipe out the main bearings. So if you verify that the crank isn't bent it could be used to get you up and going. I have stumbled into a few cranks over the years that I suspect someone has used this machine on, one journal would be turned while the others weren't.
 
I was talking about this to a long term repair shop owner in my town, his family has had a repair shop in town since the beginning of time, it seems. I was telling him my 1950 Willys truck has one cylinder bored .060 over, but the engine looks to never have been out. He told me it was a pretty common repair in the 40's and 50's to bore one cylinder in the car, or turn one throw in car, especially on Chevy babitt pounder sixes. He said he and his dad had lots of customers cars on the road with one bigger cylinder, or one smaller throw. One thing you have to remember is oil of the era did not have the detergents it does now, so they kept them as clean as possible while the work was done, but what was left would stay put instead of detergents in the oil picking it up and carrying it. Old engines were also pretty loose tolerance wise. If you tried these repairs on a modern engine, it would be knocking within 20 miles.
 
I haven't used one myself but have watched a local fellow that has one use it a couple times. I have seen a few of them for sale but like this one, they have been missing the portion that uses a belt to rotate the crankshaft while grinding.
 
I?ve also heard stories from the old timers. During WWII when parts were scarce, leather was used for rod bearings. And I?ve even heard stories of simply removing a rod a piston and running with one less cylinder. That generation simply did what they had to do to survive.
Blocking off a leaky wheel cylinder by putting a nail on the brake line was also common.
 
Grandpa told me he sold one of his early Fords with a bad cylinder a family of "Hillbillies" . He told them all the problems and how he thought the car would not make it the ten miles to Bridgman. They dropped the pan and pulls the bad rod/piston out and plugged it with a wooden disk they cut.

He got a postcard from them about a week later from back home in "the Harkies".
 
Way back when.. Buddy of mine cracked the block on a 50 Ford flat head when one of the water pumps quit and ignored the temperature gauge. We were in the Navy trying to go home on a 3 day weekend. It blew 90 miles from the base and 120 miles from home. He had to do something other than leaving the car at the gas station we managed to limp into.

I pulled the right hand head off to assess the damage and we decided to try and make it run on 4 cylinders. Plugged the radiator hoses on that side with a D cell battery and a tire repair kit can. Put cardboard under the intake manifold to block off the ports on that side. Put the head in the trunk and buttoned everything up.

It would fire with the starter but wouldn't keep running with enough power to start off from a dead stop. Got a push from the gas station owner and when we got up to about 40 it would keep going under it's own power. Waved at the gas station owner and headed for the base.

It was drinking gas and about 1/2 way back we had to stop for gas. This was back before self serv gas stations. Pulled up to the pump and said fill it up, before I could stop him the guy pops the hood and turned white as a ghost. He looked at Alex and said "You driving this thing?" "I ain't gonna tell nobody about this they will think I'm crazy". We had a big laugh after Alex told him the story of how we ended up at his station.

Full tank of gas and a couple quarts of oil, it was pumping oil past the pistons of the side with the head off. Gas station attendant gave us a push and off we went. We knew we couldn't stop at the guard shack and get going again so pulled it into a parking lot outside the main entrance to the base and walked in.

I ended up buying that ford for $35.00 and bought a wrecked 49 with a good engine for $25.00. Put it together and drove it for two years.
 

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