crack

[rotorwrench]

A friend of mine worked for his father and they repaired irrigation engines like the 549 International since it was a favorite. They pinned more heads and blocks than I can remember and were very successful at keeping those engines running. It was not uncommon for these engines to run for near a week without shutting them down. They became more rare after International was bought out and production of castings was terminated, these type of shops did what ever they could to keep them running.

The lock & stitch process it really good for long cracks that have good access but sometimes just plain old cast iron pins work just fine in some of the tight applications where various angles have to be drilled in order to be able to set the pins. They are available in all sorts of diameters and lengths/shapes. The locks for lock & stitch are too big to go into the small confines of the valve seat areas on the old flathead blocks. Sleeving the cylinder isn't a mandatory thing but it does help to keep things around the repair more stable in high temp environments. Many of these old engines will end up with sleeves anyway.

Fusion welding is still the best way to repair since they use cast iron to weld cast iron but those guys are expensive and there aren't too many of them out there.

[GOSFAST]

Just did a "stitch" job on a SBC, numbers-matching build,we we're asked to "save" the block if possible, worked out very well.

There were a pair of cracks, one directly under the deck surface (this one the "stitching" is apparent) the other down lower, slghtly harder to see but it's there!

Thanks, Gary in N.Y.

P.S. We made no "guarantee's" but ended being fine through all the dyno testing! Not a single "drip" from anywhere!

[flatheadmurre]

Running a needle/scale gun over it to get it back to sandcast finish hides the job very well and will give the engine an original look after paint.