ill look in my parts bin. pm me your address and i'll get them shipped out at some point

 

Those chamfers are usually just there as an artifact of the manufacturing process from being deburred on a belt sander. There is not likely any prior thinking as to the final product, or how it will be used.

Dowels like this are usually shipped in long annealed rods that we call drill rods. Now, you can buy pre-ground drill rod or drill rod that needs to be ground.

If it’s a non standard length:

They take the long rod, and place it into a CNC lathe with a bar feeder, probably a small machine like a citizen or something. The machine pulls the rod through a collet chuck to a set length, parts it off, and kicks it out into a parts catcher. They run thousands of them at one time in usually a lights out shop. People only go inside to empty parts catchers, and change cutting edges. Then they reload the bar feeders.

After all of the parts are cut in the lathe, they are heat treated, quenched and tempered to the required hardness, then fed through a centerless grinder, which are scary as f*ck. The centerless grinder will grind the pins very quickly to the finished diameter. They are then sold by the ton to companies like Hydraulik Ring.

If my car needed them, I would be jumping up and down with my hands in the air. When my car needs them, this is what they will get.

Hell with it, If it works out, I’ll do it myself in my car. I plan on changing out my buckets as a preventive measure in the next year anyway.

There will be many pictures of the finished product before reassembly, so the person who wants to try it can judge for themselves. Worst case scenario, the pin is locked in too tight and won’t release, leaving the adjuster unable to adjust. That can be fixed easily with a small drum sander on the repaired bore. However, I don’t think it’ll be an issue as I will be doing my best to make the repair as dimensionally correct to original as I can.

As it is, I am currently sourcing parts to install an Accusump to pre lube the engine before starting it to prolong the life of my adjusters before they are junk.

As I’ve said before I used to daily drive an S4, and it needs cam adjusters (also made by Hydraulik Ring) in a bad way. After I installed my Accusump it never had a noisy start again.

 

Done.

 

By the way, if anyone was thinking about looking up “centerless grinder accident video”, just don’t. Trust me on this.

 

Lol. Good advice.

Definitely don’t look up surface grinder accident video either.




The wheel on my big grinder.


This is the wheel that I use on my big grinder. It is 24” in diameter, 3” thick, and mounted on the hub, weighs about 300 pounds.

It spins with a peripheral speed of 8000 feet per minute, driven by a 30HP 3 phase motor on a VFD. That is one scary son of a ***** when she spools up.

And just because I haven’t whored pictures of my A8 in years. There is Mercedes content.

 

PM’d. So I’ve got a whole set of intake exhaust with minimal damage. PM’d you.

Maybe send the 4 adjusters out to different cars that can commit to getting them checked at regular intervals for R&D?

 

solid taste in vehicles.

 

sounds good to me.

the first step will be to dimension the worn parts thoroughly, I’ll use the CMM to do that.

Im going to test the hardness of the parts that interact to confirm my suspicions.

I’ll order the bushings to complete the repair as soon as I get all of that done.

My intention is to do this with as little specialized equipment as possible just to prove that it can be done anywhere. I’ll do the milling with a Bridgeport and a rotary table, and I’ll have to do the finish grinding with the surface grinder.

 

Well if that’s the case, I’ll fix mine for cheap when they wear out and all the haters can go fry ice.

Most of the threads that I have seen deteriorate start with posts like this, and someone getting triggered.

That being said, let’s carry on, shall we?


For anyone keeping score: Ive looked into putting some machines in my home shop and they can be had cheaper than I thought. So that’s good news. The big surprise was that there are some badass old school small surface grinders out there for less than it will cost to ship them (or less than the cost of a single adjuster lol).

 

solid first post when you just joined. Keep up the research op. I’m interested to see the results.

 

I plan on it. I’ve got a game plan, and a couple “plan b’s” if that doesn’t work.

I’m currently at work on overtime, watching my big grinder run parts, and window shopping on eBay for machine tools.

The biggest problem with buying machine tools is how ****ing heavy they are. That little surface grinder that I want weighs 900 pounds.

Bridgeport type knee mills are probably 4-5000 pounds fully loaded for the larger size.

 

I am inching closer to effecting a repair for these.

I was surfing the internet and I saw this:


This Old Tony is a machinist, and I enjoy watching his videos for machinist reasons. Here he talks about something I did not know existed. Tool Steel filler rod that is in the mid 50’s Rc.


Someone was asking me about using an EDM machine to put another lock slot in the part by clocking the thing 72 degrees. Yes it’s possible, but more work I feel than repairing the existing part. If I had an EDM machine, I’d just make them from scratch.

For those not in the know, an EDM machine has nothing to do with club music, but rather uses electrical discharge to erode hard to machine alloys away very precisely. I have very little experience with EDM machines other than that I know with the right operator, they can do some beautiful work that is impossible with traditional methods.

 

This is the company that makes the tool steel filler rod.:

https://www.weldmold.com/toolDieAllo...Materials.html

They seem to be geared towards the injection molding industry for repairing molds. FYI: molten plastic at 6500PSI is very abrasive.

where I am going with this is that on badly worn plates, they could potentially be welded up with this and machined with a carbide end mill to restore the dimensions of the lock bore, then surface ground flat and parallel again.

Further up in this thread someone posted a link to a video where someone had welded up a set of these for an E63 and it ended up working.

I will still pursue the drill bushing method as I feel it a good way to permanently bulletproof these with minimal heat introduction.


Also still taking donations of worn out cam adjusters for experimentation. I’ll pay shipping.