Setback #00001 did clarify one big question. There was no longer any indecisiveness about whether the governor shaft would have to be completely disassembled. Since the base gearbox casting was cracked the entire shaft and all its components will need to come off. This includes of the intricate sub-assemblies including the air distributor, governor and fuel injection systems. I estimate about 1300 unique part numbers on the entire engine and about half of them are on this shaft. And I have exactly one grainy drawing showing how they all go together.
Because of a broken seal ring on the front of the crankshaft, the flywheel and flywheel hub need to come off. I don’t know the weight of the cast iron flywheel but guessing it’s 300-400 pounds. Skylar’s metal shop project (engine lift) comes to the rescue. The flywheel came off relatively easily. If only I had removed the flywheel BEFORE I started moving the engine…
The next trick is the flywheel hub. The hub is mounted on the crankshaft end on a shallow taper with a gib key. After being unsuccessful in locating a large hub puller I made one. It also doubles as a slide hammer to (in theory) remove the gib key. No amount of pulling and pounding has budged the key which is essentially a 7/8″ square rod pounded into the keyway to hold the hub in place. I’ve since discovered that the tapered hub is an interference mating (meaning the hub is probably .001″ smaller than the shaft it sits on) and is installed at the factory by heating the hub (probably in an oil bath to around 300 degrees) which expands the hub enough to slide it onto the shaft. That means I will have to heat the hub quickly but evenly with a big torch to get it off, not an idea I like at all. I really don’t want to crack or weaken this hub. It’s a big piece of steel holding on a really big piece of cast iron that spins at 375rpm. Skip this for now.
Next I began the dismantling of the governor shaft. The air distributor easily came off intact giving me false confidence. The fuel injector timing cams run in an oil bath. The drain plug refused to come out so I just pulled off the cover expecting a few cups of oil to run out. Instead it was about one cup of oil with about a quart of water.
The governor control is the rusty flying-saucer looking thing below the air distributor. Inside is a spring, flyweights and linkage. It is sealed to keep dirt out of the bronze bearings. So I take off the cover and guess what comes out. Water.
The governor works kinda like the Polaris P-85 clutch that I am familiar with! But instead of 38 gram weights these are cast iron and weigh about 5 pounds apiece.
Hmmm. I wonder if these weights could be profiled to get a little better acceleration…