Just what she says on the tin.
Pistons are getting expensive, and motors are getting pretty doggone cheap. Every ALH I take apart has a bent #2 and 3 from being hydrolocked after cleaning out the intake schmutz. Maybe the "weak" alh rods are just because they were already bent to begin with. We'll see.
So, round up two sets of rods to put together a passable set, stick a bent rod in your bench vise as a fixture to hold your nicer pistons, find you a $20 craigslist wood router and go to town.
Edge trim bit, for laminate countertops. This'll delip the pistons nicely.
An ALH piston appears, lonely, scared, unaware of what is about to happen
Boop, goes quick.
Leaves a knife edge of flash down in the bottom where the bearing can't ride flat on the radius, but a carpenter's knife whittles out the alu just fine so the roundover bit's bearing will ride where it needs to.
Some turn out nice, when you spend some time and hold it tight
Others turn out pretty nasty, when the router rocks over and takes it out further than the guide bearing should allow. Totally my fault, didn't have near the care that I did when I did my ARLs a while back, those turned out nice...
You'll notice some got the poke cut off, one didn't. I weighed them before and after cutting, so that all would get their combustion chambers increased in size the same amount, for an even compression ratio. Since I did a crap job at cutting them on the guide bearing, I had to enlarge the ones I did a nicer job at not wallowing out badly. All are within a gram (which is a surprisingly large amount of aluminum) as that's all my scale's resolution's good for.
Going to reuse the rod bolts, because they look fairly okay with a moment's inspection. Likely well within safety margin for a second use, but not a third or fourth.
Block's been honed out for .004" piston/wall clearance, so the pistons can expand as they get hot. Plan is a 4T65E set up for 2.55:1 final drive with a torsen from a 5hp19fla, an HX40 QSV'd, 12mm/de110 pump and likely another set of DSS-r .360s because then I can get a calibrated pump voltage map worked up for both my engines at once. Got the trans mostly sorted, adapter plate partially drawn up and partially cut out, flexplate mostly cut up... Slow going, but that's life now that I'm working full time.
Pistons are getting expensive, and motors are getting pretty doggone cheap. Every ALH I take apart has a bent #2 and 3 from being hydrolocked after cleaning out the intake schmutz. Maybe the "weak" alh rods are just because they were already bent to begin with. We'll see.
So, round up two sets of rods to put together a passable set, stick a bent rod in your bench vise as a fixture to hold your nicer pistons, find you a $20 craigslist wood router and go to town.
Edge trim bit, for laminate countertops. This'll delip the pistons nicely.
An ALH piston appears, lonely, scared, unaware of what is about to happen
Boop, goes quick.
Leaves a knife edge of flash down in the bottom where the bearing can't ride flat on the radius, but a carpenter's knife whittles out the alu just fine so the roundover bit's bearing will ride where it needs to.
Some turn out nice, when you spend some time and hold it tight
Others turn out pretty nasty, when the router rocks over and takes it out further than the guide bearing should allow. Totally my fault, didn't have near the care that I did when I did my ARLs a while back, those turned out nice...
You'll notice some got the poke cut off, one didn't. I weighed them before and after cutting, so that all would get their combustion chambers increased in size the same amount, for an even compression ratio. Since I did a crap job at cutting them on the guide bearing, I had to enlarge the ones I did a nicer job at not wallowing out badly. All are within a gram (which is a surprisingly large amount of aluminum) as that's all my scale's resolution's good for.
Going to reuse the rod bolts, because they look fairly okay with a moment's inspection. Likely well within safety margin for a second use, but not a third or fourth.
Block's been honed out for .004" piston/wall clearance, so the pistons can expand as they get hot. Plan is a 4T65E set up for 2.55:1 final drive with a torsen from a 5hp19fla, an HX40 QSV'd, 12mm/de110 pump and likely another set of DSS-r .360s because then I can get a calibrated pump voltage map worked up for both my engines at once. Got the trans mostly sorted, adapter plate partially drawn up and partially cut out, flexplate mostly cut up... Slow going, but that's life now that I'm working full time.