Check out Neutral Drop love their channel too and they also answer any unanswered vehicular type question la by beating on vehicles seeing what they can really take and go through. StuntMan blows alot of motors haha 😄
"Maybe if I restate his possible solutions and account for other glaringly obvious issues, I can convince someone I've seen it happen in real life. Then I'll add my credentials that may or may not be genuine in order to appear as though I speak from authority. What do they know?"
In the old days some of the old hit and miss stationary engines has leather/rawhide bearings, and using leather was a common. Repair for failed babbot bearings
Marcus Cook it worked very well on a SPUN bearing that had burned out all the clearance.... In other words it worked very well for a temporary fix on a knocking Rod! Never would it be used in place of a good Babbitt bearing!
i used the pulp outer shell from a bow d arc tree apple once on a boat trailer bearing that had melted. Found some beside the road, kicked the pulp in with my boot, stopping every mile to repeat. Made it home another 12 miles without burning up the hub nor the axle. Quite a mess to clean up, but did the job...
My grandfather talked about doing this when he worked on a cattle ranch in the 1930's. The cowboys had an old, worn out Model T Ford with leather for bearings. It got them into town once a month to drink and gamble away their pay.
My Grandfather told me that he had a Ford Model T in college in the early 1930s. This was during the Great Depression and he didn't have much money. He told me he did this very thing to his Model T with the main bearings. Leather belt main bearings would last about two weeks and he said he got pretty good at it. Keep in mind that the Model T did not have a pressurized oiling system, only a dipper/slinger setup. Yes, according to my Grandfather, it has been done and it did work. Just didn't have much durability but that car got him through college and on to successful life. Good stuff you crazy guys! Love your channel!
I remember that. Apparently years before they filmed that episode they put the belt in themselves and drove took it on a road trip to the garage they stored and rebuilt (this time properly) it at.
Everyone who thumbs up’d this comment doesn’t know how an engine works! Conrod big end bearings almost never have oil feed holes in them, as the oil feed comes from the main journal.
I remember as a kid my grandpa and dad talking about leather bearings being normal way back in the day when internal combustion engines was a new thing.
I've personally seen this done on a 2001 mack auction dump truck a customer bought. Ran for about 3 miles and then shtt locked up lmao. Tore engine apart and found leather bits inside 2 rod caps.
@@kevincollins2184 Cmon, if u seen it, it was "backyard craft" not well working one. I bet u can find at least one with "mex-bearings" @ any ol' junkyard.
Never thought of that. It's actually a great idea for an experiment. And if they can't start the engine by suction, they can see if they can suck the engine oil out through the headers.... Please, Vlad !!!!
I’d actually like to see what would happen if they filled up with bearing cap area with rollers removed from a few sets of needle roller bearings. In theory it should hold up and potentially allow the engine to rev as fast as the cam will tolerate.
This would make no difference in a pressurized oil system as when the crank and rods do not ride on the bearings but a film/oil between the bearing and the crank/rods. Applications with roller bearings on the rods or mains use splash lubrication like in conventional 2 strokes. Smokey Yanuck went through great trouble and expense in the 60's to convert a SBC to a full roller bearing bottom end when dyno'd it made not 1 HP more or FTLB of more torque.
Love the wrongness. I remember mixing up some bearings, I was rebuilding an mg midget engine, I bought heavy duty bearings, but some how the order got mixed up, I was using pistons and rods out of a newer Austin, seemed like a brilliant idea, but after many rebuilds, it hardly turned over, so i called it a day, the engine with MG I sold, not my finest car fiddling experiment.
In the US, about 1928 to 1938, this was considered a temporary fix. Most of the cars had splash lubrication and not pressured lubrication, so this fix would get you a little farther down the road. This was a time when a wheel barrow full of money wasn't worth anything. In WWII some soldiers used that trick as a temporary fix to get back from the enemy line. Nothing like a connecting rod banging away to give away your position.
Maybe cut an oiling channel (like actual bearings have), and trim the excess off the sides (after installing the rod cap)? It seems promising to me. Since a bearing doesn't contact the journal *IF* oil pressure and clearances are correct.
Years ago when i was a kid.. I read stories about back in the model T days, that, Guys who had a bearing go out while on the road would pull over, Drop the pan, and Replace the spun bearing with a piece of leather or, Even a piece of bacon rind as a temp fix to get the car home.
Between Chrisfix using bread as a tool, mithbusters using eggs as a fix for cooland leaks, and Model T drivers using bacon as bearings, the car comunity will create the weirdest breakfast ever.
There's a wood called lignum vitae that you actually can make bearings out of. It's even self-lubricating to a large extent and they use it for massive ship prop shaft bearings.
I was told a similar story by my grandfather. He said he was driving his Ford Model “T” in a western American desert. He heard a rod knock. He stopped by the side of the road, removed the oil pan and found the loose connecting rod. He removed the cap and “cooked” a piece of his leather belt in oil. Then installed the section of belt in the connecting rod, reinstalled the oil pan and oil and was able to drive some miles to the nearest town where permanent repairs were done. Using the leather belt got him out of a breakdown situation in the desert and possibly saved his life.
Anything is possible in Mother Russia! You might have to drag it around the block until the leather finds its clearance like they did in the days of poured babbitt bearings.
I've made crankshaft and rod bearings from sheet brass. They were for an antique engine new bearings were not available for. The engine was used to drive a generator for a small community in the Philippines. The engine ran fine and year's later found out it was still doing fine.
I have heard about this many years ago in Ireland. But I have a Ford Cortina back in the day which had a main bearing rumble when I bought it. Because I did not have the money to replace the main crankshaft bearings this is what I did. I inserted aluminuim file between the the main bearing and the block and main cap. I added and tool out 1 layer at a time so shimmimg it with the ally.file. I did this until each main was tight but could rotate. I did all the mains like this and put the motor back together and in the car. I drove the car for many years with no rumble or other issue. When the rest of the car fell apart with rust I sold the engine to a friend and he also drove it with no issue. The alumininm file acted as a shim and allowed heat transfer and because it had oil holes it allowed normal oil flow to the crankshaft. An old meahanic I worked with said it could be done and when the time came I proved it could and was successful.
This was common back in the early days of the automobile when engines had babbited bearings and didn't have the RPMs of today's engines. My grandfather told me of driving his Model T on the back roads when it chewed up a bearing. He got out the tools and dropped the pan, used a piece of his belt to make a bearing and put it together. It got him back to town and lasted until he got it fixed properly. Another common repair later on, when bearing shells replaced babbit, was shims behind the bearing to tighten the clearances if the crank was worn. One of the main things people carried was a roll of haywire to tie parts back on when they fell off. lol
Heh heh, interesting experiment! Rolls Royce used teak bearings in some of their early engines (dipper style I would imagine), and they were reported to have held up very well. Leather would probably work if the leather was a little thinner to start with, so that the friction wouldn't overheat the bearing and cause it to deteriorate immediately (and end up in the oil pickup).😉
When we were young a mate of mine bought a really cheap Ford Fiesta as his first car. He said it was too cheap to pass up, But personally I felt it was TOO cheap to be any good. The engine started to knock quite badly after about 200 miles. As the scrap yards were piled high with 1.1 Fiestas and Escorts back then we just paid £40 for a known running engine and dropped that in (Once we had the replacment engine over his place it only took us about 3 hours total....... God I miss how simple cars were back then. :) ). A year of so later we were doing something in his parents garage and I noticed that the old engine was still under the workbench. So, Mainly out of curiosity, I suggested we strip it down to see exactly what was wrong with it. We dropped the sump and found REALLY thick oil with blobs of green gunk in the bottom of it. I couldn't work out what the hell it was, So we dug further. When I popped off the main caps it all became clear. The main bearings had been replaced with............... Flattened pieces of copper heating pipe ! Someone had decided that the 20 or so quid (At that time) for a set of main bearings was way too expensive for a car of this ones age, So HAMMERED copper plumbing pipe flat and to about the right thickness, Then wrapped it around the main journals. The finishing touch was to quieten it down by filling the sump with the thickest oil they could find. Looking at how it had been bodged, The impressive thing is that it managed to cover over 200 miles like that before the "Bearings" finally gave up. Surprisingly though, All the cranks journals didn't look in bad condition despite what they'd been through. At the time we could have probably rebuilt it for 50 or so quid.
All the same, this might have worked, after a fashion, on a mid-20th century engine - much wider oilways, lower stress on everything, and so on. Thanks for putting in the time on this one, guys!
My dad did this back in the 30's in a car that wiped an insert bearing while on a trip in the mid-west. As he lost the oil pulling the pan, he filled the c/case with water and made it home! He was a machinist, so he may have spent some time whittling the leather into a better fitting 'bearing'.
Used leather bearings on an old disc plow when I was a kid. Worked great although obviously didn't last as long as metal. I think they'd be fine for low speed, moderate stress situations, which inside an engine clearly isn't either of those things.
This was done in post war Britain! - The humble Austin 7 often suffered the loss of a big-end, which could be replaced with piece of leather belt, but it had to be real leather, not this modern reconstituted rubbish. In plain English, you need 'real hide'. Also, bearing in mind that you were unlikely ever to replace all four bearings, and the Austin 7 was only a 7 horsepower engine, the leather survived rather better than here. You had to be careful to keep the engine revs low, and be frugal with the 'gas pedal'. I heard of one instance where a motorist did this at the roadside, and nursed his car, loaded with family, and their camping gear, about 200 miles (about 300 kilometres?) home. Another little trick that unscrupulous traders used to employ in cases of noisy big ends, was to file off a small amount from one end of the bearing shell, then insert a piece of thin brown paper between the shell and the big end cap. That effected a miraculous cure for a noisy 'bottom end'!
Called Lingum Vitae (tree of life) they used it on the prop shaft where it went through the hull. It's called a gland,and the wood was wedge shaped about 3 inches across and however thick and long it needed to be. Made a thrust type bearing, every so often they would drive the wedges in,until they couldn't,then replace them. I had a boss on a river boat who was a chief engineer in the Merchant Marines and he told me about it. Wood was so dense it didn't even float,and the growth ring/grain was so tight it would shave like soap with a sharp knife. He said when you stained it it was a solid color,without any variations! Would love to get some to carve.
@@lamarzimmermanmennonitefar5269 Those would have been white oak! I've made several white oak parts for old horse drawn implements for some Amish down around Mexico Missouri years ago.
How about putting the bearings back in, and installing zerk fittings on all bearing caps....Give each cap a shot of grease and drive it without the oil pan.
A few suggestions: 1) The belt should have been glued to the conrod. If it's just placed in there it can spin in the conrod (the equivalent of a spun metal bearing). Since the oil is coming in at the journal, there would be no oil between the leather and the conrod and so it would be spinning and tearing up. 2) The clearance between the leather and the crank pin needs to be exact. Just throwing in a piece of leather without the correct thickness is the same as throwing in a metal bearing that is too large for the crank (it won't turn over and will fail immediately). This could be done by gluing the leather in and then spinning it in a lathe to get the journal +.002 clearance for instance. 3) It might help to coat the outside of leather with an oil proof coating. The leather expands when saturated with oil and there's no need to lubricate the inside of the leather just the mating surface between the pin and the leather needs oil. Doing all these steps I think it's possible that this leather bearing setup could work for a few hundred miles.
I'm currently restoring a Dacia 1100/Renault 8, and I've found something similar, to some extent: the crankshaft bearings were actually made out of 'slices' of a beer can. So looks like people could makeshift certain parts out of everything. Of course, in my case I haven't found any holes for the oil, but for some reason, when we started it just to see how it works, it had no problems
In the 1930's my uncle raced on the Salt Flats west of Salt Lake City. The engine was a Ford 4-banger. He ran leather main bearings but the rod bearings were OEM.
My parents, as a young married couple in 1950, had a car with the rod bearing knocking. To trade it off for something else, they and my Grandfather butchered a hog and replaced the bearings with hog hide, towed the car to within a block of the dealer and drove in with a quiet happy sounding engine. Ethical ? Not by any means. Effective ? Got them past that problem... 🤷♂️ I enjoy Your channel, thanks for sharing. Best Wishes from State of Wyoming United States.
it has actually been done years ago with slow running low compession engines on one rod in order to get home from my grandfathers era in the 1920s and 30s
We used to run leather bearings on an old 40’s tractor engine we used as a constant rom mill engine.. bearings were obsolete so we used to soak leather in 10w40 for about 2-3 days before we dropped the bearing caps to swap out the leather. It would typically last about a month or so depending on the work load. Did it for years
Here’s a project idea for you. What would happen if you hooked up one automatic transmissible to another automatic transmission. So if you had two 3-speed transmissions connected in series, would you then have a 6-speed? I hope to get a chance to meet you someday. These videos are hilarious and even somewhat educational.
If the belt was submerged and completely absorbed the oil, it may have lasted slightly longer. Maybe try soaking some leather in oil for a week or something, then trying it. Im sure most of the oil will be extruded when tightening it back in, but there has got to be more oil content under those circumstances than these. Tho it may only buy you 5 more minutes. Hahaha. Who knows. Great video guys!
If there's anything I have learned from TH-cam it's that internal combustion engines are FAR more tolerant of horrendous abuse than I ever expected, and even when seriously damaged beyond repair often still technically "run".
Here in sweden, some gents from poland had rod nock in their Vaz, they rolled in to the repair shop, shimmed the bearings with aluminum cuts from a beer can. Worked for a couple of days untill they needed more shim!
this was done regularly on the 3 main model T.. babbit wore down, no replacing bearing easily. they made all kinds of noise even great condition, the lether only helped it. they also had an oil called cosmoline, not like today.
The leather rod bearing trick only works on low power, low RPM motors with splash lubricated bottoms ends without oil pumps and sump screens, like model T's, Briggs Stratton motors, and old tractors. Modern high compression, high RPM engines with oil pumps, sump screens, and pressure lubricated cranks with holes for the oil in them will just eat the leather up.
its from way before the 90's, I've heard it from back in the model T ford days(as in, was an old farmers car/hack/farm vehicle, not as in brand new) durin depression, double checked from someone who did it(now 89 years old), lasted up to a day, it was a quick fix in a babbitt bearing motor(typically 1200-1800 rpm max), typically only 1 bearing, usually the BIG END bearing, they covered the belt piece in oil before installing, and punched holes in the center every CM or so around for the oil passage(leather hole punches were common in toolboxes even up to the 80's on farms, at least where I am from). apparently low speed, correct lubrication, correct application is fairly important to the ability for that to work.
My dad told me that in the 1920s & 30s this was done when they had no money for parts. I think those engines were dip and splash design with no oil pumps,so it may have worked.
superrodder2002 Once my father had a 1949 dump truck with a six cylinder that had dippers. New oil systems work completely different. We took off the pan and he put some raw hide leather in where the rod bearing was knocking. I'm thinking it was still there when he sold it years later.
My uncle opened his garage in 1918 and during the great depression and WW2 they would shim bearings with rawhide not substitute for them. It was only used to decrease clearance on the non-stressed side of the bearings and make it quieter....
Bamboo Guys..during the depression in Oz bamboo was used for main and bigend bearings in landrovers and many old engish cars like Austin etc. When metal ones were unavailable or too expensive
I find it hard to believe leather would ever be a good replacement for babbitt style bearing in any application in any time, (even antique slower RPM motors. What man who has the skill to remove bearing caps, cannot also find some lead and tin to melt and make new bearing material?
When I was in the military 30 years ago we were stationed off grid and the radio's all worked from the generator, the engine failed and a backup generator or parts was a week away and we needed to charge the radio batteries way before then so I replaced the main bearings with leather strips cut from shoes, that generator where still running smoothly 8 months after I was relieved before they finally decided to change over to a new generator. Over a year of running 24hours a day.
I think if you do it right it will work. You can get high quality leather like cordovan and have it cut just slightly oversize. Boil it and then install while hot. It will mould itself exactly to the part and set hard. trim if necessary and it will have many similarities to babbit.. You can't use a material that is cheap and soft and four times as thick as the original, it just can't work. 😸🙈🙉🙊. I don't really know!! But would guess a carefully measured quality bit of leather could last thousands of miles....
👍 you learn somet new every time viewing the videos from you fellas 😁 all ways injoy garage 54 👍 From Notts modified car channel
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As far as I remmember, that was solution for old type engines with no oil pump. Those used splash lubrication instead of pressure, so oil was delivered from outside the bearings and there was nothing to clog up. I don't even know what engine you can get like that besides small engines for lawn mower or some generators.
My Grandfather was a tenant farmer. They were very poor when m6 mom grew up. My Grandfather talked about using leather to keep his model T running. He said it worked fairly well. But these engines didn’t make a lot of horsepower, so it’s possible. They might need to put a longer rod bolt in it, and double nut it to keep it in place. Then we could see it die dramatically!
We used to cut the strip out of old shoes or cut up a tobbaco can and use these to shim bearings it worked but for only a short time and worked best on engines with pressed in bearings I believe they called them babbeted rod bearings.
One of our local dodgy repair shops was caught shimming the backside of the bearing shells with Coke can aluminium, and they at least the poked a hole in it to let the oil through.The shimmed bearings were just a tiny part of what really went on, they did every dirty trick in the book.
When I tore an old tractor engine down that belonged to my grandfather it had one rod with a piece of leather in a rod bearing. It was an old Farmall c. Probably main reason I was tearing it apart. But I was told by neighbor down the road , it was temporary just to get it home to do correct repairs there. My grandfather passed before repair was made. It was a temporary fix at best.
ive put leather in a spun crank bearing its a band-aid tho high revs are a big no and belt must be same dimensions as bearings u also should soak the belts in oil overnight before installing them
Try wrapping the crank with lead/tin solder wire and then tightening the rod caps down. Obviously the diameter of the solder wire will have to be slightly larger than the thickness of the bearing insert to allow for the crushing of the solder.
As soon as you lost pressure I knew that pump was clogged with chunks of leather lol Also, I was thinking this method would be more effective for a worn out bearings. If the crank shaft is in good shape, it’s not quite the same.
I have heard a similiar story from Soviet era Estonia. A DT-14 tractor had blown conrod bearing and then driven to workshop with leather belt piece as a makeshift bearing.
This channel is the summation of every curious question I’ve had regarding car destruction and I love it
Check out Neutral Drop love their channel too and they also answer any unanswered vehicular type question la by beating on vehicles seeing what they can really take and go through. StuntMan blows alot of motors haha 😄
Garage54: does something insane
Also Garage54 (with confused look): this doesn't seem to work very well...
Love these guys
"Maybe if I restate his possible solutions and account for other glaringly obvious issues, I can convince someone I've seen it happen in real life. Then I'll add my credentials that may or may not be genuine in order to appear as though I speak from authority. What do they know?"
In the old days some of the old hit and miss stationary engines has leather/rawhide bearings, and using leather was a common. Repair for failed babbot bearings
Probably worked when running really low RPMs.
They also used grease instead of oil.
Marcus Cook it worked very well on a SPUN bearing that had burned out all the clearance.... In other words it worked very well for a temporary fix on a knocking Rod! Never would it be used in place of a good Babbitt bearing!
i used the pulp outer shell from a bow d arc tree apple once on a boat trailer bearing that had melted. Found some beside the road, kicked the pulp in with my boot, stopping every mile to repeat. Made it home another 12 miles without burning up the hub nor the axle. Quite a mess to clean up, but did the job...
rbmk 1999 - I posted the same comment, took it away when I saw yours (old boat motors too)
Next episode: Can you replace your leather belt with crankshaft bearings?
Yeah but it’s not very comfortable.
You'll blow your rod if you try
In Soviet Russia..
@@Asstronut bearing replace YOU
well, as a bracelets, it could be really cool😁
My grandfather talked about doing this when he worked on a cattle ranch in the 1930's. The cowboys had an old, worn out Model T Ford with leather for bearings. It got them into town once a month to drink and gamble away their pay.
1st. time he did't say "This experiment has been a massive success". I'm in shock! : D
7:44 "We are definately breaking something today" that's the spirit :D
Wonder what happened during that "5 minutes later" part
Vodka shots.
My Grandfather told me that he had a Ford Model T in college in the early 1930s. This was during the Great Depression and he didn't have much money. He told me he did this very thing to his Model T with the main bearings. Leather belt main bearings would last about two weeks and he said he got pretty good at it. Keep in mind that the Model T did not have a pressurized oiling system, only a dipper/slinger setup. Yes, according to my Grandfather, it has been done and it did work. Just didn't have much durability but that car got him through college and on to successful life. Good stuff you crazy guys! Love your channel!
There is an old episode from Roadkill,where they had an old Jeep with an engine with leather bearings. They opened the engine and it was a mess.
I remember that. Apparently years before they filmed that episode they put the belt in themselves and drove took it on a road trip to the garage they stored and rebuilt (this time properly) it at.
I remember an episode of that. Worked for awhile but not super long. Didn't see the episode leading to it cause I think it was MTOD only
I remember that episode, it was the first thing that came to my mind and immediately knew how this was going to end
Didn't the jeep engine start to knock very bad even after the rebuild?
I know i remembered a seeing a jeep with leather bearings, glad someone else remembers.
Put some holes in the belts so the oil can flow through them. It will make a HUGE difference.
This! Why didn't he cut holes for the oil passageways? No oil will flow into the rod journals the way he did it.
You must have a hole in your brain
Everyone who thumbs up’d this comment doesn’t know how an engine works! Conrod big end bearings almost never have oil feed holes in them, as the oil feed comes from the main journal.
crxtodd16 wrong. The oil feed comes from the mains and into the big end journal. Conrod bearings almost never have oil feed holes on them.
@@BajamanCam why wouldnt oil holes help it? better to run them dry?
Auto part store : sorry we dont have the bearings
Military guy : where the hell is my belt
Garage 54 : 🤷🏽♂️ dont know
I remember as a kid my grandpa and dad talking about leather bearings being normal way back in the day when internal combustion engines was a new thing.
I've personally seen this done on a 2001 mack auction dump truck a customer bought. Ran for about 3 miles and then shtt locked up lmao. Tore engine apart and found leather bits inside 2 rod caps.
One guy from Dallas called it once "World famous mex-bearing" :)
I've seen flathead Ford's with belt for bearing
@@kevincollins2184 Cmon, if u seen it, it was "backyard craft" not well working one. I bet u can find at least one with "mex-bearings" @ any ol' junkyard.
@@elmatroso7125 no it wasn't running well I never said it did I just stated I had seen done. I guess when desperate any port in a storm though
What mack engine?
How about suck starting a engine from the exhaust
I knew a ol gal who could suck start two harley's at the same time.
@@sh3lbot her dad must be proud lol
I had a friend who could blow start a Ford. He had gotten a dui
Will you guys make a drive shaft out of a cable? I think you'll get off the line better with less burnout
Never thought of that. It's actually a great idea for an experiment. And if they can't start the engine by suction, they can see if they can suck the engine oil out through the headers....
Please, Vlad !!!!
I’d actually like to see what would happen if they filled up with bearing cap area with rollers removed from a few sets of needle roller bearings. In theory it should hold up and potentially allow the engine to rev as fast as the cam will tolerate.
Some Small engines have this type of setup my chainsaw is like that
@Halsey Walter the ones in mine were at the ends but that was it in the middle were regular bearings like in a car not sure if that normal or not
Jesus. That's a good idea.
This would make no difference in a pressurized oil system as when the crank and rods do not ride on the bearings but a film/oil between the bearing and the crank/rods.
Applications with roller bearings on the rods or mains use splash lubrication like in conventional 2 strokes.
Smokey Yanuck went through great trouble and expense in the 60's to convert a SBC to a full roller bearing bottom end when dyno'd it made not 1 HP more or FTLB of more torque.
@@matthewq4b my bike isn't a splash type its pressure oiled four stoke 4 cylinderits got rollers on the outer parts of the crank
Love the wrongness.
I remember mixing up some bearings, I was rebuilding an mg midget engine, I bought heavy duty bearings, but some how the order got mixed up, I was using pistons and rods out of a newer Austin, seemed like a brilliant idea, but after many rebuilds, it hardly turned over, so i called it a day, the engine with MG I sold, not my finest car fiddling experiment.
Been a number of young folks who learned about matched rod caps, after having that issue.
In the US, about 1928 to 1938, this was considered a temporary fix. Most of the cars had splash lubrication and not pressured lubrication, so this fix would get you a little farther down the road. This was a time when a wheel barrow full of money wasn't worth anything. In WWII some soldiers used that trick as a temporary fix to get back from the enemy line. Nothing like a connecting rod banging away to give away your position.
Maybe cut an oiling channel (like actual bearings have), and trim the excess off the sides (after installing the rod cap)?
It seems promising to me. Since a bearing doesn't contact the journal *IF* oil pressure and clearances are correct.
When I was a young lad, a friend replaced his bearings with pieces cut from a baked beans can. It worked for a long time!
I look at that notification and I'm just shaking my head.
Only because you didn't think of it sooner. Lol
Same here
I love how this channel being more crazy every day
Years ago when i was a kid.. I read stories about back in the model T days, that, Guys who had a bearing go out while on the road would pull over, Drop the pan, and Replace the spun bearing with a piece of leather or, Even a piece of bacon rind as a temp fix to get the car home.
Between Chrisfix using bread as a tool, mithbusters using eggs as a fix for cooland leaks, and Model T drivers using bacon as bearings, the car comunity will create the weirdest breakfast ever.
Could you use teflon for bearings?
There's a wood called lignum vitae that you actually can make bearings out of. It's even self-lubricating to a large extent and they use it for massive ship prop shaft bearings.
I was told a similar story by my grandfather. He said he was driving his Ford Model “T” in a western American desert. He heard a rod knock. He stopped by the side of the road, removed the oil pan and found the loose connecting rod. He removed the cap and “cooked” a piece of his leather belt in oil. Then installed the section of belt in the connecting rod, reinstalled the oil pan and oil and was able to drive some miles to the nearest town where permanent repairs were done. Using the leather belt got him out of a breakdown situation in the desert and possibly saved his life.
Good to see proper craftmanship in car building. No reason this should not work for a short time as long as the oil is kept up.
Remember this car right we drove the car until the transfer took a shit 🤣
Anything is possible in Mother Russia!
You might have to drag it around the block until the leather finds its clearance like they did in the days of poured babbitt bearings.
I've made crankshaft and rod bearings from sheet brass. They were for an antique engine new bearings were not available for. The engine was used to drive a generator for a small community in the Philippines. The engine ran fine and year's later found out it was still doing fine.
30 weight motor oil in the transmission and transmission fluid in the motor.
Keith Perry what’s the point doesn’t even get oil regardless
@ nono
- he means sae 30, which is commonly referred to as 30 weight
I have heard about this many years ago in Ireland. But I have a Ford Cortina back in the day which had a main bearing rumble when I bought it. Because I did not have the money to replace the main crankshaft bearings this is what I did. I inserted aluminuim file between the the main bearing and the block and main cap. I added and tool out 1 layer at a time so shimmimg it with the ally.file. I did this until each main was tight but could rotate. I did all the mains like this and put the motor back together and in the car. I drove the car for many years with no rumble or other issue. When the rest of the car fell apart with rust I sold the engine to a friend and he also drove it with no issue. The alumininm file acted as a shim and allowed heat transfer and because it had oil holes it allowed normal oil flow to the crankshaft. An old meahanic I worked with said it could be done and when the time came I proved it could and was successful.
You sure do come up with some crazy ideas.
This is an old tale that soldiers would replace the rod bearings on the original Willy's Jeep with their belts.
In the early 70s I replaced a bearing with a piece of leather on a Renault Dauphine. Drove it for two years with no issues.
This was common back in the early days of the automobile when engines had babbited bearings and didn't have the RPMs of today's engines.
My grandfather told me of driving his Model T on the back roads when it chewed up a bearing. He got out the tools and dropped the pan, used a piece of his belt to make a bearing and put it together. It got him back to town and lasted until he got it fixed properly.
Another common repair later on, when bearing shells replaced babbit, was shims behind the bearing to tighten the clearances if the crank was worn.
One of the main things people carried was a roll of haywire to tie parts back on when they fell off. lol
Heh heh, interesting experiment! Rolls Royce used teak bearings in some of their early engines (dipper style I would imagine), and they were reported to have held up very well. Leather would probably work if the leather was a little thinner to start with, so that the friction wouldn't overheat the bearing and cause it to deteriorate immediately (and end up in the oil pickup).😉
Some of the early model T Fords had leather bearings. But those engines were at a far less hp and compression. Thanks for this yall
When we were young a mate of mine bought a really cheap Ford Fiesta as his first car. He said it was too cheap to pass up, But personally I felt it was TOO cheap to be any good.
The engine started to knock quite badly after about 200 miles. As the scrap yards were piled high with 1.1 Fiestas and Escorts back then we just paid £40 for a known running engine and dropped that in (Once we had the replacment engine over his place it only took us about 3 hours total....... God I miss how simple cars were back then. :) ).
A year of so later we were doing something in his parents garage and I noticed that the old engine was still under the workbench. So, Mainly out of curiosity, I suggested we strip it down to see exactly what was wrong with it. We dropped the sump and found REALLY thick oil with blobs of green gunk in the bottom of it. I couldn't work out what the hell it was, So we dug further. When I popped off the main caps it all became clear. The main bearings had been replaced with............... Flattened pieces of copper heating pipe !
Someone had decided that the 20 or so quid (At that time) for a set of main bearings was way too expensive for a car of this ones age, So HAMMERED copper plumbing pipe flat and to about the right thickness, Then wrapped it around the main journals. The finishing touch was to quieten it down by filling the sump with the thickest oil they could find.
Looking at how it had been bodged, The impressive thing is that it managed to cover over 200 miles like that before the "Bearings" finally gave up. Surprisingly though, All the cranks journals didn't look in bad condition despite what they'd been through. At the time we could have probably rebuilt it for 50 or so quid.
All the same, this might have worked, after a fashion, on a mid-20th century engine - much wider oilways, lower stress on everything, and so on. Thanks for putting in the time on this one, guys!
My dad did this back in the 30's in a car that wiped an insert bearing while on a trip in the mid-west. As he lost the oil pulling the pan, he filled the c/case with water and made it home! He was a machinist, so he may have spent some time whittling the leather into a better fitting 'bearing'.
Used leather bearings on an old disc plow when I was a kid. Worked great although obviously didn't last as long as metal.
I think they'd be fine for low speed, moderate stress situations, which inside an engine clearly isn't either of those things.
This was done in post war Britain! - The humble Austin 7 often suffered the loss of a big-end, which could be replaced with piece of leather belt, but it had to be real leather, not this modern reconstituted rubbish. In plain English, you need 'real hide'. Also, bearing in mind that you were unlikely ever to replace all four bearings, and the Austin 7 was only a 7 horsepower engine, the leather survived rather better than here. You had to be careful to keep the engine revs low, and be frugal with the 'gas pedal'. I heard of one instance where a motorist did this at the roadside, and nursed his car, loaded with family, and their camping gear, about 200 miles (about 300 kilometres?) home.
Another little trick that unscrupulous traders used to employ in cases of noisy big ends, was to file off a small amount from one end of the bearing shell, then insert a piece of thin brown paper between the shell and the big end cap. That effected a miraculous cure for a noisy 'bottom end'!
I don't know anyone that likes a noisy "bottom end"! Lol🤪🤣
I know that they used a certain kind of wood for bearings in ships engines and or driveshafts.
Maybe you can try that.
Called Lingum Vitae (tree of life) they used it on the prop shaft where it went through the hull. It's called a gland,and the wood was wedge shaped about 3 inches across and however thick and long it needed to be. Made a thrust type bearing, every so often they would drive the wedges in,until they couldn't,then replace them. I had a boss on a river boat who was a chief engineer in the Merchant Marines and he told me about it. Wood was so dense it didn't even float,and the growth ring/grain was so tight it would shave like soap with a sharp knife. He said when you stained it it was a solid color,without any variations! Would love to get some to carve.
My old International disc harrow had greased wooden bearing blocks
@@lamarzimmermanmennonitefar5269 Those would have been white oak! I've made several white oak parts for old horse drawn implements for some Amish down around Mexico Missouri years ago.
@@tomcline5631 The original seagull pistons were supposed to be made of lignum vitie.
@@gringoanon4550 I'm sorry I don't know what the original seagull is.
That was fun , thanks for debunking this old tale !
Good too see DR. EVIL working again
I've heard that ground beef works
I would never tried it, but you are the right guys for the job
Paint a glow in the dark car and drive around at night.
They did that
How about putting the bearings back in, and installing zerk fittings on all bearing caps....Give each cap a shot of grease and drive it without the oil pan.
Making custom bearings from bronze and useing grease fittings would definately work
oil-less engine would be cool but the sleeves and rings need oil
you have to remember the first engines produced with babbitt bearings don't have oil pumps, they just splash oil around with pickups
A few suggestions:
1) The belt should have been glued to the conrod. If it's just placed in there it can spin in the conrod (the equivalent of a spun metal bearing). Since the oil is coming in at the journal, there would be no oil between the leather and the conrod and so it would be spinning and tearing up.
2) The clearance between the leather and the crank pin needs to be exact. Just throwing in a piece of leather without the correct thickness is the same as throwing in a metal bearing that is too large for the crank (it won't turn over and will fail immediately). This could be done by gluing the leather in and then spinning it in a lathe to get the journal +.002 clearance for instance.
3) It might help to coat the outside of leather with an oil proof coating. The leather expands when saturated with oil and there's no need to lubricate the inside of the leather just the mating surface between the pin and the leather needs oil.
Doing all these steps I think it's possible that this leather bearing setup could work for a few hundred miles.
I'm currently restoring a Dacia 1100/Renault 8, and I've found something similar, to some extent: the crankshaft bearings were actually made out of 'slices' of a beer can. So looks like people could makeshift certain parts out of everything. Of course, in my case I haven't found any holes for the oil, but for some reason, when we started it just to see how it works, it had no problems
In the 1930's my uncle raced on the Salt Flats west of Salt Lake City. The engine was a Ford 4-banger. He ran leather main bearings but the rod bearings were OEM.
My parents, as a young married couple in 1950, had a car with the rod bearing knocking. To trade it off for something else, they and my Grandfather butchered a hog and replaced the bearings with hog hide, towed the car to within a block of the dealer and drove in with a quiet happy sounding engine. Ethical ? Not by any means. Effective ? Got them past that problem... 🤷♂️ I enjoy Your channel, thanks for sharing. Best Wishes from State of Wyoming United States.
it has actually been done years ago with slow running low compession engines on one rod in order to get home from my grandfathers era in the 1920s and 30s
Try using leather from shoes. I remember that is what my old man used
Thanks for the video guys. I appreciate it
We used to run leather bearings on an old 40’s tractor engine we used as a constant rom mill engine.. bearings were obsolete so we used to soak leather in 10w40 for about 2-3 days before we dropped the bearing caps to swap out the leather. It would typically last about a month or so depending on the work load. Did it for years
Here’s a project idea for you. What would happen if you hooked up one automatic transmissible to another automatic transmission. So if you had two 3-speed transmissions connected in series, would you then have a 6-speed? I hope to get a chance to meet you someday. These videos are hilarious and even somewhat educational.
Greetings from Greece...!! Have you ever imagined a four wheel steering Lada??
i rember in late 60's when i first started working on engines , some of the older stuff used leather as bearings and seals , seemed to work back then
If the belt was submerged and completely absorbed the oil, it may have lasted slightly longer. Maybe try soaking some leather in oil for a week or something, then trying it. Im sure most of the oil will be extruded when tightening it back in, but there has got to be more oil content under those circumstances than these. Tho it may only buy you 5 more minutes. Hahaha. Who knows. Great video guys!
Damn you guys a riot! I have a Russian Army belt, Never thought about using it to fix a car, but then Im not Russian!😂
Whoohoo, a genuine Cybertruck! ;)
If there's anything I have learned from TH-cam it's that internal combustion engines are FAR more tolerant of horrendous abuse than I ever expected, and even when seriously damaged beyond repair often still technically "run".
Here in sweden, some gents from poland had rod nock in their Vaz, they rolled in to the repair shop, shimmed the bearings with aluminum cuts from a beer can. Worked for a couple of days untill they needed more shim!
Farmers did this to their old tractors and model T Fords and it worked to get them by back during the 30's and 40's in America.
this was done regularly on the 3 main model T.. babbit wore down, no replacing bearing easily. they made all kinds of noise even great condition, the lether only helped it. they also had an oil called cosmoline, not like today.
barry g73 this. It worked with babbits, not plain bearing
The leather rod bearing trick only works on low power, low RPM motors with splash lubricated bottoms ends without oil pumps and sump screens, like model T's, Briggs Stratton motors, and old tractors. Modern high compression, high RPM engines with oil pumps, sump screens, and pressure lubricated cranks with holes for the oil in them will just eat the leather up.
its from way before the 90's, I've heard it from back in the model T ford days(as in, was an old farmers car/hack/farm vehicle, not as in brand new) durin depression, double checked from someone who did it(now 89 years old), lasted up to a day, it was a quick fix in a babbitt bearing motor(typically 1200-1800 rpm max), typically only 1 bearing, usually the BIG END bearing, they covered the belt piece in oil before installing, and punched holes in the center every CM or so around for the oil passage(leather hole punches were common in toolboxes even up to the 80's on farms, at least where I am from).
apparently low speed, correct lubrication, correct application is fairly important to the ability for that to work.
Did it on a 36 Austin Ruby but the leather of rear seat ,worked just fine.
My dad told me that in the 1920s & 30s this was done when they had no money for parts. I think those engines were dip and splash design with no oil pumps,so it may have worked.
superrodder2002 Once my father had a 1949 dump truck with a six cylinder that had dippers. New oil systems work completely different. We took off the pan and he put some raw hide leather in where the rod bearing was knocking. I'm thinking it was still there when he sold it years later.
I'm just impressed that car came with an oil pressure light and it still works
My uncle opened his garage in 1918 and during the great depression and WW2 they would shim bearings with rawhide not substitute for them. It was only used to decrease clearance on the non-stressed side of the bearings and make it quieter....
Bamboo Guys..during the depression in Oz bamboo was used for main and bigend bearings in landrovers and many old engish cars like Austin etc. When metal ones were unavailable or too expensive
I once used a leather rod bearing on a Buick 455 demolition derby racecar engine. It lasted the entire remaining life of the car that day!
I find it hard to believe leather would ever be a good replacement for babbitt style bearing in any application in any time, (even antique slower RPM motors.
What man who has the skill to remove bearing caps, cannot also find some lead and tin to melt and make new bearing material?
When I was in the military 30 years ago we were stationed off grid and the radio's all worked from the generator, the engine failed and a backup generator or parts was a week away and we needed to charge the radio batteries way before then so I replaced the main bearings with leather strips cut from shoes, that generator where still running smoothly 8 months after I was relieved before they finally decided to change over to a new generator. Over a year of running 24hours a day.
David Frieburger did that to a flat fender jeep back in the day. Same exact result. They rebuilt that engine on Roadkill.
I think if you do it right it will work. You can get high quality leather like cordovan and have it cut just slightly oversize. Boil it and then install while hot. It will mould itself exactly to the part and set hard. trim if necessary and it will have many similarities to babbit.. You can't use a material that is cheap and soft and four times as thick as the original, it just can't work. 😸🙈🙉🙊. I don't really know!! But would guess a carefully measured quality bit of leather could last thousands of miles....
👍 you learn somet new every time viewing the videos from you fellas 😁 all ways injoy garage 54 👍
From
Notts modified car channel
As far as I remmember, that was solution for old type engines with no oil pump. Those used splash lubrication instead of pressure, so oil was delivered from outside the bearings and there was nothing to clog up. I don't even know what engine you can get like that besides small engines for lawn mower or some generators.
You guys are pretty awesome! Love your content!
My Grandfather was a tenant farmer. They were very poor when m6 mom grew up. My Grandfather talked about using leather to keep his model T running. He said it worked fairly well. But these engines didn’t make a lot of horsepower, so it’s possible.
They might need to put a longer rod bolt in it, and double nut it to keep it in place. Then we could see it die dramatically!
The car still tells war stories in therapy about what happened during those 5 minutes
We used to cut the strip out of old shoes or cut up a tobbaco can and use these to shim bearings it worked but for only a short time and worked best on engines with pressed in bearings I believe they called them babbeted rod bearings.
Please try pressing brass sheets in as new crankshaft bearings. Id love to see how that would go.
One of our local dodgy repair shops was caught shimming the backside of the bearing shells with Coke can aluminium, and
they at least the poked a hole in it to let the oil through.The shimmed bearings were just a tiny part of what really went on, they did
every dirty trick in the book.
You're amazing 👌
Any1 remember Roadkill ?
Top gear I believe as well.
BiloFil was just thinking of that lol
The unkilable Toyota hilux from top gear
YEP, paywall now. Good luck to them !!!!!
@@miguelfuentes6627 did they use leather bearing trick for unkillable hilux?
Did you punch a hole in it for oil to come from the oil gallery?
I noticed that also.
Oil hole is on the crank, main journals have holes.
Best mechanichs. If i have problems with my car I will come to Russia.
0:03 Oh boy, this is gonna be good.
When I tore an old tractor engine down that belonged to my grandfather it had one rod with a piece of leather in a rod bearing. It was an old Farmall c. Probably main reason I was tearing it apart. But I was told by neighbor down the road , it was temporary just to get it home to do correct repairs there. My grandfather passed before repair was made. It was a temporary fix at best.
Try making the crankshaft bearings with glazed ceramic tile style rings that have a couple of holes in it for oil flow.
“I’d love to read your stories.”
lol
ive put leather in a spun crank bearing its a band-aid tho high revs are a big no and belt must be same dimensions as bearings u also should soak the belts in oil overnight before installing them
Try wrapping the crank with lead/tin solder wire and then tightening the rod caps down. Obviously the diameter of the solder wire will have to be slightly larger than the thickness of the bearing insert to allow for the crushing of the solder.
God I love this channel so much
As soon as you lost pressure I knew that pump was clogged with chunks of leather lol
Also, I was thinking this method would be more effective for a worn out bearings. If the crank shaft is in good shape, it’s not quite the same.
This is a trick for small lawnmower engines that doesn’t rely on a pick up for oil but a dipper
I have heard a similiar story from Soviet era Estonia. A DT-14 tractor had blown conrod bearing and then driven to workshop with leather belt piece as a makeshift bearing.
Geech! What's the worst that can happen by replacing the bearing sleeves for leather belt ones!?👋😂👍
I see smoke! Thats nice 😂