Kwik Way H6177 Piston Turning & Grindin Machine worth

Joe Michaels said:

Same here- if it were local...

The Kwikway H series piston turning and grinding machine is a husky little machine tool on its own cast iron pedestal. Shipping alone from Missouri to Rhode Island or NY is the deal breaker. My buddy does restorations of antique and classic cars, rebuilds the engines including boring of cylinders, and works on anything and everything from Model T'a and A's to Rolls Royces, as well as tractors, industrial engines... He has quite a collection of oldtime automotive rebuilding machinery, much of which he still uses. He actually planes cylinder heads on a ca 1919 planer, even doing modern high end car heads from Mercedes and BMW's. The old planer saw little use over its life, so is a nice tight machine. With a broad nose tool, it produces a flatness on heads that is better than what the local automotive machine shops can deliver.

I am sure that if that piston turning and grinding machine were in close reach, he'd be on it.

Truth to tell, when he does need a piston for something old or odd, he orders it from Egge or some other firms. The days of getting piston blanks are likely long past. I remember years ago, the old Marquette Auto Parts machine shop in Marquette, Michigan had a complete automotive machine shop. It went back long enough to have a babbitting bench and line boring machine for boring babbitted bearings on old auto and industrial engines. There were two other interesting machines. One was a "piston grinder" which "cam ground" the piston skirts. "Cam grinding" produced a geometry that was not a true cylinder at ambient temperature. This was to allow for the uneven expansion of the heavier areas at the wrist pin bosses, vs the thinner areas of the skirt. As the piston reached operating temperature, the differences in outer diameter done by the cam grinding would cause the piston to expand so it was a true cylinder. I believe the manufacturer of the piston "cam grinder" was "tobin Arp". There was another little machine for knurling piston skirts. This was a simple machine, using compressed air to press a set of knurls against the piston, which was supported on a set of rollers. The piston was manually turned through a partial revolution to put knurling on the areas of the skirt at 90 degrees to the wrist pin bosses. These areas saw the side thrust loads from the wrist pin and connecting rod. The story was this machine saw a lot of use during WWII when auto parts were non-existent for civilian vehicles, so rebuilding or coaxing more life out of worn parts was the name of the game. After WWII, the piston knurler saw use with hot rodders, who liked to loosen the clearances in an engine and knurl the pistons to hold oil. The other use was also to coax more life out of worn pistons. People nursing along some old beater of a vehicle, or having a woods truck or old tractor would be the main customers for this kind of work in later years.

The shop had an ancient Reed & Prentice geared head lathe which had come out of a steam locomotive roundhouse. This was used for refacing flywheels as well as roughing down piston blanks and making valve guides. There was a van Norman crankshaft grinder, made to take the straight-8 crankshafts from the 20's and 30's, and there was a van Norman boring bar for boring cylinders, along with a variety of Sunnen hones.

By comparison, a few years back, my wife's Chevy Blazer had a "check engine" light that would not clear. No codes came up on the computer diagnostic tests. A few mechanics advanced various theories, all of which had expensive- and not guaranteed- repairs. We took the Blazer to an oldtime mechanic with a shop behind his house. This guy was said to be the best troubleshooter and diagnostician in our area. He did a compression test. It showed a weak cylinder and from the flutter of the gauge, he was pretty sure the problem was a bad valve on that cylinder. The Blazer was still under warranty. We took it to the dealer and told them the situation. Apparently, doing compression tests is not all that common anymore. If a "technician" can't plug a vehicle into a computer and get a diagnosis, they are often at a loss and go no further, or take wild stabs at things that are outside the realm of what the computer diagnostics look at. Compression tests are quite basic, but in this day and age, few mechanics do them. I told the dealer's service manager that there was a weak cylinder, which cylinder it was, and left it at that. I got a phone call: bad valve confirmed when they pulled the head. The Blazer engine had overhead cams, variable valve timing, and was a complex cylinder head. I expected the dealer to tell me there would be a core exchange and they'd be putting on a remanufactured head. Instead, I was told the heads are "non rebuildable" and the head went into the scrap dumpster, a new head went onto the Blazer.... which we traded a year later against a Toyota Camry.

The old days of rebuilding engines in local shops, other than for performance work or for something like an antique or classic car, is pretty well done with. When I was a young fellow in the 60's, if a person's car engine topped 100,000 miles without having to be pulled down and rebuilt, this was something to brag about. Now, car engines running for around 200,000 miles is not uncommon. Repairing of parts like alternators or waterpumps or starters just is not done in the local garages as it once was, nor are there the specialty rebuilding shops (ignition/electric shops, carburetor shops, automotive machine shops) the way there used to be. The new engines are built to much tighter tolerances than a local rebuild shop could hope to maintain with the old style rebuild machine tools. The reliability and service life of the new generations of engines has pretty much wiped out the need for this sort of shop.

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Joe Michaels said:

Same here- if it were local...


The old days of rebuilding engines in local shops, other than for performance work or for something like an antique or classic car, is pretty well done with. When I was a young fellow in the 60's, if a person's car engine topped 100,000 miles without having to be pulled down and rebuilt, this was something to brag about. Now, car engines running for around 200,000 miles is not uncommon. Repairing of parts like alternators or waterpumps or starters just is not done in the local garages as it once was, nor are there the specialty rebuilding shops (ignition/electric shops, carburetor shops, automotive machine shops) the way there used to be. The new engines are built to much tighter tolerances than a local rebuild shop could hope to maintain with the old style rebuild machine tools. The reliability and service life of the new generations of engines has pretty much wiped out the need for this sort of shop.

Click to expand...