Gravity bends a crank?

On the floor, forces would be only the crank's own weight pushing down against the fulcrum of whatever lump of crank is resting against the surface, or sag at the journals.
Think about the crank in the car with engine not running...you have the flywheel and clutch, or on some the fluid coupling full of oil, pulling down on the crank hanging off the rear bearing. Clutch and flywheel might approach the weight of the crank itself...why isn't thay worse than flat storage?? Shouldn't we be hanging our cars up by the front bumper, or perhaps building motorized rotisseries to even things out while parked?
 
Yeah Bruce, For example, just think of a Model A sitting in the proverbial barn, motionless for 60-70 years! That heavy flywheel would have that puny crank tied in a knot by now!
 
Bruce Lancaster said:
On the floor, forces would be only the crank's own weight pushing down against the fulcrum of whatever lump of crank is resting against the surface, or sag at the journals.
Think about the crank in the car with engine not running...you have the flywheel and clutch, or on some the fluid coupling full of oil, pulling down on the crank hanging off the rear bearing. Clutch and flywheel might approach the weight of the crank itself...why isn't thay worse than flat storage?? Shouldn't we be hanging our cars up by the front bumper, or perhaps building motorized rotisseries to even things out while parked?
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If we hung our cars by the front bumper then we could fit more cars in our garage, provided the ceiling is high enough.
 

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40 Deluxe said:
Yeah Bruce, For example, just think of a Model A sitting in the proverbial barn, motionless for 60-70 years! That heavy flywheel would have that puny crank tied in a knot by now!
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Is it possible that the rods and pistons and caps provide support to a crank that's been sitting lifeless for a long period of time?

I'm truly asking and not making a joke.
 
Tim Ayers said:
Is it possible that the rods and pistons and caps provide support to a crank that's been sitting lifeless for a long period of time?

I'm truly asking and not making a joke.
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I think there is a great difference between a crank laying on the floor and a crank supported by the mains in a block.
 
A crank in an engine would certainly be supported about as well as possible. But it would still have the very heavy weight of flywheel and clutch hanging off the back, providing I would think a localized bending force much greater than anything the crank could exert on itself if lying on the floor. Maximum of this would be a Model A, with very thin crank and absolutely monstrous flywheel...
On the floor, a crank would have only its own weight in divided spans as force. Seems like it would also have bending forces of its own even hanging...everything heavy on a crank is offset from axis, presumably applying bending forces on the central structure...
 
rheltzel said:
Well, especially since you guys are upside down to begin with. Very hard on crankshafts. I suspect driving on the wrong side of the road doesn't help either. Something to do with the spinning of the Earth on its axis.
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You're onto something here. The forces generated by you left hand drivers must be counterbalanced by us right hand drivers. Just think what would happen if we all drove on the same side, why I imagine the world would become off balance and spin off into space.

You know the planet has a little wobble, right? That's because the Northern hemisphere has more people then the Southern hemisphere. Again, our upsidedowness keeps the world in motion and relatively stable. This is in spite of Ford V8 engines all spinning in the same direction. I suggest the wobble could be removed from our spinning planet by reversing the direction in which V8 crankshafts spin. Just think, we small few, we band of brothers could stabilise the world by reversing our engines.

We could call our endeavour; 'Crankshafts for mankind' one small step for...
 
Fe26 said:
You're onto something here. The forces generated by you left hand drivers must be counterbalanced by us right hand drivers. Just think what would happen if we all drove on the same side, why I imagine the world would become off balance and spin off into space.

You know the planet has a little wobble, right? That's because the Northern hemisphere has more people then the Southern hemisphere. Again, our upsidedowness keeps the world in motion and relatively stable. This is in spite of Ford V8 engines all spinning in the same direction. I suggest the wobble could be removed from our spinning planet by reversing the direction in which V8 crankshafts spin. Just think, we small few, we band of brothers could stabilise the world by reversing our engines.

We could call our endeavour; 'Crankshafts for mankind' one small step for...
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if everyone in the Western Hemisphere pointed their car north and simultaneously dumped the clutch we could adjust the axis and get rid of the miserable winters and introduce a more temperate climate.
 
SofaKing said:
if everyone in the Western Hemisphere pointed their car north and simultaneously dumped the clutch we could adjust the axis and get rid of the miserable winters and introduce a more temperate climate.
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But in so doing, the going price for replacement axles would rise faster than rent in San Francisco.
 
A crank gets bent laying on a floor just about like a battery goes dead because it sits on a cement floor.
 
Fe26 said:
You're onto something here. The forces generated by you left hand drivers must be counterbalanced by us right hand drivers. Just think what would happen if we all drove on the same side, why I imagine the world would become off balance and spin off into space.

You know the planet has a little wobble, right? That's because the Northern hemisphere has more people then the Southern hemisphere. Again, our upsidedowness keeps the world in motion and relatively stable. This is in spite of Ford V8 engines all spinning in the same direction. I suggest the wobble could be removed from our spinning planet by reversing the direction in which V8 crankshafts spin. Just think, we small few, we band of brothers could stabilise the world by reversing our engines.

We could call our endeavour; 'Crankshafts for mankind' one small step for...
Click to expand...

Excellent points. If you guys who drive on the left side of the road would only agree to change the direction of your crankshaft rotation, we can solve global warming. Of course, that means you'd all have three reverse gears and only one forward gear. Are you okay with that? I mean, really, when you think about it, it's a small price to pay to stop global warming.
 
Bruce Lancaster said:
A crank in an engine would certainly be supported about as well as possible. But it would still have the very heavy weight of flywheel and clutch hanging off the back, providing I would think a localized bending force much greater than anything the crank could exert on itself if lying on the floor. Maximum of this would be a Model A, with very thin crank and absolutely monstrous flywheel...
On the floor, a crank would have only its own weight in divided spans as force. Seems like it would also have bending forces of its own even hanging...everything heavy on a crank is offset from axis, presumably applying bending forces on the central structure...
Click to expand...

Of course the central journal of th crank is equal to th opposing ends there fore spreading out th pull of gravity on th crank. Thusly the flywheel vs the counter weight distributes an unequal force at both ends. If left in the engine to long that unequal force would eventually rip the crank in half! That is of course unless you parked north to south one day and east to west the next then south to north........uhhhh.... Wait a minute....... That would be west to east, THEN, south to ......... Oh never mind......
 
I heard somewhere back in the Apollo days of space flight, one of the many top secret missions into space was to test this theory of "Crank bending". Many scientists agreed that outside the Earth's gravitational pull, the effects were drastically diminished. This of course led to the Skylab project and eventually the International Space Station. Many of the Countries who historically had Ford manufacturing signed on. Since the payload to get a reasonable amount of cranks into space was high, NASA deployed the Space Shuttle to ferry the cranks into space where a cache of cranks currently are stored and unbent for future V8 hobbyist needs. Shortly thereafter as we all know,the Space Shuttle program was retired.
 
I've heard that in Ireland the Government is considering a change making all roads one-way, so that all traffic will travel in the same direction. This should drastically cut down the chances of head-on collisions' and perhaps aid in reducing crankshaft wear. Unfortunately the down side of this is if you drive a couple of hundred yards down to your corner store for some groceries, it may be several days before you arrive back home again.
 
actually SwoopNZ, I haven't been to Berkeley, CA. for a while but in the early 1980's, I would visit my future wife at CAL Berkeley. While driving, I could see my destination but I could not get there directly. I had to drive this-a-way and that-a-way to get there as some of the streets were blocked off. I guess they wanted the streets to wear evenly(Who knows?!). As a young man, I thought it was absolutely the dumbest thing I had EVER seen.
 
A very simple solution would be develop an app for your smart phone to remind you to rotate your crank every month or for you younger married guys use your wife's monthly cycle as a reminder. Problem solved!
 
Once a month would be the absolute minimum. Since the young guys have more energy and stamina, perhaps they should rotate their crank more frequently.
 
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My previous employer, who manufactured medium-to-large industrial stationary type engines (up to 30,000 horsepower), had a policy to always store their crankshafts vertically as lying them down would "permanently" distort the throws even with the main bearing surfaces supported properly. So they were stored vertically with the flange end supporting it. No doubt the design and length of the crankthrows, between the mains, contributed to the flexibility of the shaft. These were one-piece forged steel crankshafts and could stand up under the rigors of almost continuous operation for many years, but they had to meet certain requirements on what was termed "crankshaft web deflections". Service conditions as well as how they were stored all affected "deflections".
Considering the shortness, and "apparent stiffness", of the Ford's crankshafts, I would not think method of storing would be important - as long as they were stored without supporting something heavy!
 
This Thread has been like a bad accident on the interstate / while you really don't want to look at it by the time you get up to it you JUST HAVE TO LOOK. " LOL "
 
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