Things That Make Me Go HMMMM.

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As a life long mechanic, looking at this absolute BEHEMOTH of an antique engine, I wonder how in the hell did they torque the huge bolts down on this thing?

Take the connecting rod cap bolts for example.

Did they take a team of horses, hook up a chain to a giant wrench and then have them pull on it until some guy up top yelled CLICK?!

Now I am going to have to look into that when I get home from work because it’s going to bug me all day because I don’t recall ever seeing a twenty foot, three inch drive torque wrench anywhere in my internet travels over the years….

27 thoughts on “Things That Make Me Go HMMMM.”

  1. Torque multiplier tool head. Or a long ass cheater bar. Given a long enough lever and a fulcrum, I’ll move the earth.

  2. Electric bolt heaters down the center for an hour or more. Bolt grows – you may have to heat nuts, too depending on how hot you need the bolt to get the right preload. Spin the nuts down and get on a slug wrench to tighten them with a 16 lb hammer before they cool. Old turbine generators had similar arrangements – first year out of college I was ‘privileged’ to help the mechanics by standing on the wrench – then later taking a few swings. Four to eight inch nuts – wrenches supplied by GE when the TG was installed. Yes – lots of nut jokes.

  4. the gas company had a l engine. top was was the engine part and on the side was the compressor part that ‘pumped” the gas. pistons where 33 inches across. stroke was like 4-5 foot. I think it was. anyway, had a old picture of me standing on a piston with my arms on the “block” part. that was back in 1973-4 I think.
    ALMOST got a job there. but I was the wrong “color” to be hired at that time.
    the whole engine was almost a block long. my neighbor was one of the guys who kept it running back then. a machinist who “fixed things” at the gas company.
    really nice guy who showed and helped me rebuild my first few engines.
    and yeah. they had some really long cheater bars around with a few toque multiplier heads that had ring bolts in them to move them !
    they also had a really neat shop too. I would have loved to get land a job there.
    I remember him doing all sorts of machine work on “his lunch time” there.
    anyway. I just love to watch those big old machine run. kind of like a lost time

  6. I worked for an interstate pipeline company. On the natural gas pipelines much of our horsepower comes from natural gas fueled piston engines. The smallest of these was around a thousand horsepower. Our largest was 10,000 HP at 300 RPM. The associated hardware was HUGE, as one might imagine.

    The mechanics used hammer wrenches and sledgehammers when I first got started. Now they use a battery-powered electric torque gun that can put multiple thousand ft-lbs on the nut or bolt. It’s a hand-held tool.

  7. “A” frame engine. I’d hate to be the oiler trying to squirt oil on some of those piston rod joints.

  8. As others have said, tork multiplier head and 10 ft cheater bar with 4 guys on it pulling. When that wasn’t enough, hooked a come-a-long on the mo-fo and cranked that down. Seen it done several times. Impressive what you can do when the safety guy is out to lunch.

  9. I’d like to see how they cast that flywheel not to mention the bearing housings, rods, pistons, pins, etc.

    • I toured a foundry in college, they made 4 and 5 foot flywheels but they had wooden masters and sand cast them.
      I assume the bigger ones were similar.

  10. Had to torque the 8″ nuts that held down the site batteries, 650 Ft-Lbs IIRC. Darn thing had a handle on it almost 8 feet long, and we did indeed use a cheater and lotsa grunt because the arc was so limited in the Launch Tube. Dial readout.
    Usually took 5-6 Airmen grunting on it to get it up to there. An absolute bitch to get it in place…

    You shoulda seen the socket!

    • “You shoulda seen the socket!” I guess that socket wasn’t as easily misplaced as that infamous and elusive 10mm socket that you boyz are always lamenting about. 😁

  11. Had to torque some nuts on a submarine hatch, took four electricians on a four foot torque wrench. Hardest part was getting an officer to watch gauge, he had to sign off on torque.

  12. The shim stock to set the valve lash had to be as big as garbage cans.. Never mind gapping the plugs….oh, it’s diesel, gapping the glow-plugs….

    • I like how they start it up by opening the diesel valve, right?

      Takes a lot of diesel to run a steam engine.

      • That’s an air valve. Air will operate a couple of cylinders to get the engine rolling the fuel is added to the others. After they fire off the air is shut in, fuel added to the start cylinders, and you throttle up from idle to operating speed.

  13. I’ve never worked on torquing bolts that big, but have worked with people that would have either lost the wrench, or cross-threaded the bolt.

    • If only to be an observer in all the shops where the components were made as well. I have a friend with a lath in his shop of which there are only 5 or so in the US. Measuring instrument and use is interesting.

      • I’ve seen where large precision distances are measured, they use precision-ground bars to make up the distance and also take into account the temperature of the bars! .0001″ can be achieved if you are careful.

  17. On big presses we would use a rosebud and heat up the tie rods and tighten the nuts until the rods started stretching and the let it cool.

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