Source for the Cup washers on the SU Air cleaner Wing Bolts

[zKars]

I have a decent little collection of the long wing bolts and the mating long “nuts” they thread into, but the one part of this assembly that I am lacking in is the little cup washer with the rubber grommet underneath. Been hunting for a replacement in the generic hardware world and have come up virtually empty handed. 

About the only thing close is from RedLine Performance in Auzzie land. Many of you may have touched these over the years if you’ve done side draft carb installations.

Redline 52-110K

Those cup washers lower right are perfect, well, they are 3/4” diameter while the real ones are 7/8”. There is one in the first picture top right.

I contacted Red line and they do sell the cup washers separately, in fact they make them in-house! The Sku is 52-571B $2.58

I even asked them to please make them 7/8” See what they say.

I had previously found a plumbing washer that duplicates the rubber washer in the stock cup washer so that part is easy.

Now this leads to three things.

First, everyone go search the interweb and see if YOU can find a supplier of cup washers. 

Second, Caption Obvious, machine me up a die to press flat 1” washers into lovely 7/8” cup washers! Simple.

Third: You hoarders with a thousand of these already, contact me. I need a dozen.....

 

 

 

Edited March 6, 2020 by zKars

[Captain Obvious]

Making a set of dies to produce a suitable replacement for that cup washer should be an easy task on the lathe. Without heat treat, I don't know how many shots you would get out of it, but certainly enough to get you through the task at hand.

But wait a minute..... Don't you have a lathe?  

Brain isn't able to pull the details from the corners right now, but someone here on the forum did some cold metal forming recently. Made some dimples in something or made some sort of formed washer? Don't remember who and I couldn't turn it up with a quick search. @ConVerTT  ,  @grannyknot  ?

[zKars]

16 minutes ago, Captain Obvious said:

Making a set of dies to produce a suitable replacement for that cup washer should be an easy task on the lathe. Without heat treat, I don't know how many shots you would get out of it, but certainly enough to get you through the task at hand.

But wait a minute..... Don't you have a lathe?  

[zKars]

19 minutes ago, Captain Obvious said:

Making a set of dies to produce a suitable replacement for that cup washer should be an easy task on the lathe. Without heat treat, I don't know how many shots you would get out of it, but certainly enough to get you through the task at hand.

But wait a minute..... Don't you have a lathe?  

Sure, but I’d like you to show me how, not so much do it for me.  I really need to stop getting distracted with fun little projects like this and get the next 510 in the shop and finish it’s resurrection.

Heat treating. Heat until yellow, then plunge in oil right? Then call 911.  I’ve been watching those knife maker shows....

[Captain Obvious]

Haha! Ok, I think I have enough "stuff" laying around the shop that I can at least mock something up quickly and show you what I'm thinking of.

And as for the heat treating, it's not quite like that.

First - Make sure you know what type of steel you're working with. Not all steels have a composition that will react favorably to a heat treatment process, and even the ones that do, will have a different process depending on the composition. For example, above, you referenced an oil quench... Well that works great for "oil hardening steels", but not so good for "air hardening" or "water hardening".

The three most common ubiquitous categories available everywhere are Oil, Water, and Air hardening varieties. I've got a bunch of "O1"  (Oil hardening) laying around here and that's what I would use, but it's probably not the best choice for a die like that either. Would be OK, but not great.

However, you've got no idea what you've got laying around, so I would just skip the heat treat process completely unless you're sure what you're working with or just want to experiment and see what happens.

Second - The temperature you described above is not high enough. Needs to be full cherry red. One simple way to determine if you're hot enough is to use a magnet. The steel will actually lose it's magnetic characteristic when it's hot enough. It will be glowing red and it won't be magnetic. Then quench (using the appropriate method).

Third - If the heat treat was successful, the part will be hard. Like real hard. Glass hard. File skates across the surface hard. Problem now is that the part is TOO hard. Too brittle. So you need to "temper" the part to draw back the hardness some. For that you re-heat the part but not as hot. "Straw color" is a term thrown around a lot. Heat the part "to straw color" and then let it cool slowly. After that, the part won't be hard brittle anymore and won't shatter like glass when you put in the press to make your washers.

And don't forget that all the while, the glowing part has been oxidizing on the surface and by the time you grind the scale off, what's left is now the wrong size....... So you add to your long bucket list of projects, an argon purged heat treat furnace.........

I would skip the heat treat and just make a new set of dies when the first one wears out. 

[Captain Obvious]

And then call 911.

[grannyknot]

Bruce, is this what you are thinking about?

 

 

[Captain Obvious]

2 hours ago, grannyknot said:

Bruce, is this what you are thinking about?

Yes! Yes!! That's the one! Thanks! I was pretty sure it was you or convertt, but finer details continue to slip. They say it won't get any better... 

So I guess now that you've already answered the process question, that half an hour I spent in the shop this morning doesn't add much more to the discussion. But for the record...

For the female portion, I used an old bearing race because its what I had laying here, and it's hardened. For the male portion, I used a previously machined drop of 12L14 steel because it was already machined to close to the size I wanted. For a real product, 12L14 is definitely NOT what you would want to use as pretty much it's only claim to fame is it's ease of machinability. Doesn't heat treat, doesn't weld well, isn't particularly strong, but boy it sure does machine nice.

Anyway, hardened race with .625 inch ID. 12L14 male mandrel with .555 inch diameter, and .032 thick steel sheet. It took two tries to get the mandrel diameter correct, and I suspect this is where all the skill and experience comes in. You need the correct clearance between the mandrel and the die for the thickness material you're working with. Not enough clearance and it acts like a hole punch. That's what my first try did. So I took ten thousandths off the mandrel and things got a lot better.

And by the way, this forming process is known as "drawing". I assume there's oodles of info on the web if you want to research.

On the hydraulic press. My 2 ton arbor press wasn't enough and I didn't want to rip a shoulder out of the socket:

Here's the result. Note the tear through on the first attempt and the better draw on the second (lower) form:

Trim the excess material off and put a hole in the middle just for show:

 

 

[zKars]

Well that was too easy. A lesson on hardening, a lesson on materials, a lesson on drawing, what more can a guy ask? Thanks!

Now I have to go try. I got the project car in the garage easy, parts gathered, getting all gung ho. Gotta slow down and turn a little stuff on the lathe first and take my time.

Think I’ll use 5/16 fender washers as the raw materia (assuming they are 1” or more in diameter)l and put a 5/16 nose on the male side of the press and a matching 5/16 hole in the FM side of the pocket to guide the process. Need to make a nice flat bottom 7/8 hole for the FM side to get started. Hope the radius of the corner is nice and tight like the originals. Should be able to press hard enough with my 15 ton press. Fun! 

Looking for hardware, I even found some nice metric wing nuts with the right kind of “mickey mouse” ears that look like the originals. Apparently they are “German” style... Maybe I can work toward making replacement for the whole bolt assembly. 

Edited March 6, 2020 by zKars

[Captain Obvious]

Excellent. Glad to help.

I did a quick web search on the process and quickly came up with the following. This should help you get it right with fewer iterations:

http://thelibraryofmanufacturing.com/deep_drawing.html

Lots of good pictures and helpful rules of thumb. I should have looked first!

 

[grannyknot]

That's a great site! Thanks

[ConVerTT]

12 hours ago, Captain Obvious said:

Making a set of dies to produce a suitable replacement for that cup washer should be an easy task on the lathe. Without heat treat, I don't know how many shots you would get out of it, but certainly enough to get you through the task at hand.

But wait a minute..... Don't you have a lathe?  

Brain isn't able to pull the details from the corners right now, but someone here on the forum did some cold metal forming recently. Made some dimples in something or made some sort of formed washer? Don't remember who and I couldn't turn it up with a quick search. @ConVerTT  ,  @grannyknot  ?

Yup.  It was @grannyknot.  I used a similar technique to your home-made die experiment to punch and replicate the dimple radius for my rad support repair.  Neat how metal behaves if you are stubborn enough ?
 

Cheap home made dies 

 

Edited March 7, 2020 by ConVerTT