Here's another one of my off-the-wall ideas- - - -most people think that once a crankshaft gets reground to .030" undersize or so, it's junk. "T'aint necessarily so!" How about finding a smaller-diameter bearing to adapt to the undersized crankshaft? I've been kicking around the idea of adapting Babbit bearing 216/235 rods to a more available, less expensive bearing than the one that's being used now, and I believe this idea would also useful for salvaging some crankshafts that might be discarded otherwise.
A Federal-Mogul 2015 CPA rod bearing that fits several Massey-Ferguson tractor engines can be fitted to a bored-out 216/235 Babbit rod, and actually requires slightly less material to be removed from the rod than the regular insert conversion requires. Here's "the rest of the story" as Paul Harvey used to say- - - - -The M-F rod journal is approximately 1/16" smaller diameter than the Stovebolt crankshaft, so those "trash" crankshafts that have been scrapped before can now be reground to -.060" and run a standard-diameter Massey-Ferguson rod bearing! 600+ HP NASCAR Chevy V8's run Honda rod bearings that are much smaller diameter than Chevy OEM bearings and stay together, so why wouldn't a low-speed, low torque stovebolt six be able to do the same thing? As soon as I get my rod reboring equipment up and running, I just might offer somebody a resized crankshaft/rod setup as a test bed.
Jerry
