Chainsaw Repair

Say what now 2" of stroke on a WC Allis .Just so you know I've turned a few wrenchs on the old orange tractors .If I recall correctly a WC is a square engine ,4" bore 4" stroke .Now just where pray tell did you put the other two inches because it won't fit .There isn't two inchs left even with stroke 6 to one pistons .Plus there's not enough meat on the crank to add two inchs .Plus two inchs the crank throw  would hit the bottom the the cylinder .What rod did you use  to weld the crank throw ?

If that thing would have two inchs left to play with and a 4 inch stroke it would only have a compression ratio of 2 to 1 and stoke it's 6 or 6.5 to 1 .Standard high comp domed pistons raise  to 8.5 to 1 .Some flat top high comps  will bump it to 9 to 1.Those are rare to find . 

Now just explain how you did that .Now are you pulling my leg per chance ?

Holman and Moody speed shop out of Indainapolis built one up that was dynoing over 200 HP .I only managed to get 45 myself but that's a lot more than the original 23 HP .

I will say this though a WC is by far the best puller in the under 3,000 Lb class .

Well get some pictures is all I can say .

They used to somehow use a d-17 crank or the whole d-17 engine in a WC .Of course that was when you could buy them for scrap prices .

The D-17 was a 4.25 stroke as oppossed to 4" on the WC .Over bore piston went out to 4.125 as oppossed to 4" stock .They reground the cam and used larger valves out of something ,dunno myself .They used a either a WD or WD 45 manifold as oppossed to the side exit under the hood disstilate manifold the WC came with .Ported polished head of course .Drilled out carb and all that stuff .

High comp pistons because Allis used a d shaped combustion chamber and milling the head really wouldn't work so well .

All that then they ran only about half the water in the radiator and took every bit of weight off they could to get it below 3,000 pounds with the driver on them .I've even seen 100 pound teenage girls run them because their 250 pound father would put it over weight .No crank, no starter they had to pull start them and only carry about 2 gallons of fuel .

Sanctioned pulls you could only run 20 percent over on RPMs and 20 over dynoed HP for the winner .They had sneaky ways of last minute detuning though .

Money pulls they actually had a "protest  " rule just like NHRA had at the drag strips ."hot farm stock " you could get away with about any thing put pure stock they really got anal about .

You know it really doesn't make any diff if the thing put out 500 HP  if you can't put the power on the ground it doesn't do you any good .

Take a hundred dollar WC ,put 3 grand in it and pull 200 feet after driving three states away .Didn't make sense then,doesn't make sense now .

The whole thing became such a pain in the behind listening to cry babys I just gave it up for a lost cause .--and it was John-Deeres not AC ,that was my old friends then 67 years old .I built it he ran it ,only local though .

D-17 is a 4.5" stroke. And they don't have a combustion chamber built in to the head, only a small spark plug pocket. They are a simple head to cc to figure static compression ratios. You could be thinking of the LeRoi line of engines that AC bought. A lot of those parts were interchangeable-including the heads. The D-17 is usually the block of choice when building a stroker WC. That or a Gleaner combine engine. The biggest crank I've ever welded up for a WC puller was a 6.25". Need to add about 1 inch of pure weld to one side of the rod journal to gain almost 2" of stroke.
My wife's WC puller is a very small engine by today's standards. It started out as a 226 combine engine. It's now a 4.53 bore and a 5.57 stroke(359 cubes), and about 110-115 hp @ 540 pto rpm.
If you care to see what's going on in the antique tractor pulling world, go to Yesterdays Tractors.com and scroll down until you find the tractor pulling discussion forum. Sounds like you've been away from it for a long time, and things certainly have changed. We used to follow the national circuit(NATPA.com) for about 7 or 8 years, but we stopped two years ago when my in-laws decided they were getting too old for all the work involved. It has became painfully obvious to us that it was a huge waste of money chasing points to win a jacket- and thats saying you win. My wife has two national championship jackets over the years, one in Division 2, and one in Division 3. I have one from Division 3, and one from Division 4(open class). We figured between fuel,entry fees,missed time from work,motels,broken parts,racing fuel,etc., we would spend 12-15 k every year in our travels.

The lightest WC I've ever seen pull weighed 2750, and it was a huge waste of time because there was no weight left over for balance. Most clubs limit a WC to no lighter than 3500#. My wife pulls hers in the 3750, 4000, and 4250# classes.

As far as the big "M" motors, a fella by the name of Gary Baker from Manchester,Mi builds the biggest ones in the country. Some people aren't impressed when you tell them that a 700 ci engine only makes 270 hp, until you tell them that it makes it at 1400 rpm and they start to figure the torque at that rpm. Do the math(I'll do it-it's over 1000pounds of torque). It's quite Impressive to say the least! These engines cost in excess of 20k!!

As far as pictures go, how many do you want? We have hundreds, as well as hours of videos.

Edit: Almost forgot. We still pull dead weight- only not like you did. The blocks(usually 500 lbs.) are added one at a time, and we try to see who can pull the highest percentage of their combined(3500 lb tractor plus operator pulling 7000 lbs =200%). My beautiful bride pulls a '38 JD "A" . I usually pull our E-3 Co Op.

And you are right about the crybabies. It gets much,much worse at a National level

Alright, Al, here goes:

The easiest way to weld two rod halves together that I've found is to use an old disc brake rotor with the center cut out. I turn down a piece of round stock to the big end diameter(1.995 for a SB Chevy) and drill a hole through it and the rotor, mount the rod half to it, and using my mill to digitally measure, bolt it directly to the rotor, then use an old wrist pin for the the small end and fasten it where it needs to be to get the correct length. Then I am able to weld both sides, as well as box it in for extra strength. Very simple to do. You use two rods cut strategically and welded together to make one longer one.

Before welding a crank, we weld in boat loads of bracing anywhere we think it could possibly move. And remember, we are only welding one side of the journal, not all the way around, and for every 1 inch of weld applied, you gain 2" of stroke, and as far as I know and have seen, all old IHC and Allis cranks are steel, not cast iron. And as far as internal stresses added after welding goes, well, they are there for sure. I've never worried about them, and not one of my cranks has ever broke. I have had one rod failure, but thankfully it was on my own tractor. Most of the guys who build antique pulling motors for a living send their welded components in to either have them normalized or cryogenically(don't have spell check for that one) treated. 

Remember what those old pistons looked like? The CD(compression Distance) on some of them were more than 3". We use either custom pistons or find automotive ones that have the CD we want. When you add 2" of stroke, the piston is going up 1" higher and down 1" lower.

Getting that extra mass to swing sometimes means grinding big pockets out of the inside of the crankcase. On the WC blocks the inside measures a little narrower than the 17's, so much over 5.5" stroke and 2" rods requires cuts all the way through on the manifold side of the block. The hardest item to clear in an antique stroker is usually the cam. We end up with two flat spots where all 4 rods swing, and sometimes the cam gets ground pretty thin.

And back to the crank, we weld a short piece of thick walled 1/4"ductile iron pipe right on top of the oil hole, which also acts as a guide when applying the build up of weld. Remember Al, one inch of weld translates into 2" of stroke. And obviously, we use a wire feed. I use Spool Arc 83 wire.

As a rule, all stock reciprocating items are usually not used in antique stroker applications. You gotta wrap your head around that one first. Forget what the old pistons looked like and picture what the newer, modern ones look like.

Any more questions feel free to shoot away. Better yet, the next time you're going to be in central Mi, pm me,pop over, and I'll be happy to pull the access panel off from the side of my MM 335 and show you what an old school stroked motor looks like. That one is 4.125 bore and 6.5 stroke and 110 hp @ 540. It was around 30 hp in it's stock form.