The Germans used ball baring crankshafts in the V-12 Panzer and Tiger engines in WW2. The crankshafts where bolt together design. It took a incredible amount of design, machining and assembly to pull it off but they did. The tank engines ran on gasoline, 7 to 1 compression ratio and 16 litter displacement pumping out around 700hp.

As a mechanic I love your crazy Ideas ! Honda actually build 9000 RPM engines like this for their first cars . I don't know all the details, but you're experts!

Should have used split cage needle roller bearings. You could machine the crankshaft and conrod to suit and with a groove cut in the outer diameter you can still deliver oil to the wrist pin and cylinder walls.

All of this is wonderful, the interactions between gearheads and shade tree engineers. My opinion just to throw one out there is that a multiple crank is possible using a splined press fit. I think where they ran into trouble was in the balancing, vibration caused their welds to crack. Many large industrial machines use splined press fit parts without issue. As far as the bearings go, 2 piece caged needle bearings would work if the conrod and end caps were lipped to keep the needles in and both were harden.

I would have gone with either keyways/ an interference fit to lock the parts together, or using liquid nitrogen/helium to shrink and press the parts together with a really tight tolerance

16:51 So cool to watch people push this kind of backyard engineering this far, man this channel is great!

Motorcycles use a press-fit pin and then you can do the final alignment in a jig with a dial indicator. You might also use a pinned crank, where a hole is drilled and a pin or bolt is inserted to hold alignment rather than welding. On the rods, using a needle bearing would give you thinner bearings to work with, but you need a hard enough surface for them to roll on.

it's insane how talented these guys are

Many dirtbikes, ATVs, lawnmowers, etc use needle bearings for the crankshaft to rod rotary connection. Upon doing some research I found that the typical surface bearings used in vehicles need a consistently high oil pressure to prevent damage. This also means that engines that routinely get tipped over, shook, etc rarely use these bearings as the engine can be oriented such that the oil pump receives no oil (ie. dirtbike wrecked on it's side). The needle bearings can survive this as they operate off the oil mist in the crankcase and do not need a consistent oil pressure supply to prevent wear (the film stays on the bearing much longer). Vehicle engines do not ever undergo random losses of oil pressure so the need to have bearings that can survive without oil does not exist, thus they can use the far cheaper surface bearings.

Props to Sergei for thinking to put some 2 stroke oil in the fuel... That's kind of brilliant👍

You fellows work well together in solving problems. Sticking with a problem until you solve it no matter how many failures is inspirational. Good work!

Hondas in the 60’s when they first started making cars did this on everything, it needed no oil pressure

If they simply just fill the rod end and bearing caps with needle bearings to match the size of the original ones, they could have a “roller bearing” engine that revs like a motorbike, using an original crank and they would receive proper lubrication. Ball bearings will eventually seize without continuous lubrication.

YOUR LADAS REMIND ME OF MY OLD 1965 FORD FALCON, 6 CYLINDER, IT MOVED BUT NOT MUCH ELSE. THANKS FOR THE NOSTALGIA GUYS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What you should do next is to make a crossplane i4 engine by cutting and welding the crank as well as the camshaft for the new timing of the engine. I would love to hear a car with such a unique engine.

The built-up ball or needle bearing motorcycle cranks I've seen have been pressed together.

Don't forget to drill a hole in the bearing race and match it up with the oil feed in the main journals.

I like how you guys tear apart the project afterwards to find the failures.

You are not mechanics. You are engineers and artists. Master craftsmen

These guys are really good fabricators. I absolutely love their experiments and the name of their channel. It's hard to give these guys good ideas. They've got the resources and know how to do almost anything. But it has to be cost sensible and produce a decent amount of content.

5:97 "a bit of fine tuning with a hammer" I love Garage 54

Drill almost right through each lobe of the crank shaft and insert roll pins all the way through, that should hold each section together. You could even tap the hole and cap it off with a set screw, use loctite thread locker for extra security and that way the pin has no chance of working it's way out.

First thing…. Awesome to see you guys! I think you did an awesome job fabricating a new off the bench (literally) crank shaft. I’ve always wanted to do the same thing. I figure machine the crank journals down the thickness of whatever needle bearings you find and then reassemble. That way the con rods and main caps don’t have to be thinner , or at least negligible machining on them. Thanks for sharing guys love your videos!

My 1981 H-D has needle bearings in the lower end and you can tell when they go bad also. I had 78,000 miles on it and it was shaking like Charo(Latin dancer) and knocking like a diesel. Thanks for sharing the video post, best of luck 🍀to you, your crew and families ❤️

There is a reason for plain bearings instead of ball/needle bearings. The contacting surface of a ball/needle bearing is a tiny spot. Meanwhile the contacting surface of a plain bearing is almost a 180° of the circle.

Vlad has a great mechanical mind. Always enjoyable. Greetings from USA.

I love you guys! There is no other channel that could be compared to yours. Not just mind blowing, and well implemented projects, but expert skills and scientific explanation behind it. Greetings from Hungary! ☺️

A very cool idea and it did work although temporarily. I have seen a roller bearing cam shaft something from the 60's I believe. It had a 2 peace bearing with some type of rollers inside and the halves were held together with a tiny spring like in a seal and allowed oil flow into the center of the bearing to lube the rollers. That's the only one I have ever seen and even a couple hot rod buddies never heard of such a thing. It was purchased in a whole bunch of old circle track car parts from the 50' to the 70's, sadly I don't know what it fits but I assume a Chevrolet. If anyone has ever heard of such a thing I would love to hear about it. But what I was getting at is, that would be the best way I can think of to make a ball bearing crank shaft and would it would definitely free up the crank shaft. Love your videos, you guys rock.

2 strokes have been using roller bearings in the crank, rods and piston wrist pin forever. Of course it’s because they are oiled through the fuel so no oil pump or oil bath for the bearings.

Sergei, always thinking 10 steps ahead.

Needed to be splined together. Some snow mobiles have roller bearing cranks and they use keyways and slines to mechanically connnect the peices.

Hey well done on listening to your subscribers with getting merch 👌 We all love your whacky crazy car channel. I never miss an episode. Thanks for your contribution of awesome content for us all to watch for free 👍

13:31 God damn, this man knows what he is doing. In this stupid idea, the amount of knowledge, theory and physics used shows how great mechanic he is right now, we will see where he will be in 10 years!

On top of welding, maybe drilling and pinning each joint would strengthen it up.

NTN has developed split roller bearings for automotive applications, including camshafts. These look like a great idea for reducing friction. Ball bearings are not good for lateral thrust applications whereas rollers are. Great job getting this done! The belated oil circuit confusion was entertaining. Might have to introduce some oil jets to splash the bottom of the pistons? Perhaps cross-pins through the intersections of the crank might have helped? Maybach and others successfully built tunnel crankshaft engines but these require bearing internal diameters larger than the crank throw. Doubt there is enough room to modify the crankcase for that in a Lada. Ever since owning a couple of Niva 4x4, I have always admired the simplicity and ruggedness of Russian vehicles. The Niva would often go places that vehicles costing 10x more could not. But they would have benefited from a 2 litre engine and maybe 300mm increase in overall length for road use. You could buy them new with a 2L Toyota diesel in New Zealand when Lada cars were taken in exchange for dairy products in the 1980s. A local company converted new Niva’s and they really were much improved by this engine. Love this channel - subscribed! 👍🏻

I'm so impressed that you do such advanced research with simple manual lathes and mills. It shows true genius that you solve complex problems with basic shop equipment.

Finally With ur video my lunch is going to be perfect 👍🏼

I really want to know what Russian phrase translates to "guinea-piggery".

I think if the pins for the bearings were splined to mate with the crank throws and press fit then welded if may be more durable but I think you guys did a fantastic job for your first attempt.

The ingenuity and the fact that you were actually successful only limited was a great step forward. Perhaps one day someone will be able to perfect it and it will be revolutionary for future engines. Great Job!

One day will you put a supercharger where the water pump goes and see if you can air cool a liquid cooled engine finally since we've asked a thousand times now???

Lawn boy mowers were very well known to have a needle bearings in the crankshaft end it was very rare for them to ever have problems and would last as many times as you could get away with rebuilding the engine

I've always wanted to see this done in a 4 cycle motor... you guys really are the best.

i love the madness, the planning and engineering and the work. very good fun. loving the content.

Ball/roller bearing crank has crossed my mind many times thank you for satisfying my curiosity

Ive thought about this forever its amazing to see it done.

I think it's finally time to race build a lada! High performance pistons, rods, lifters, etc.. and also a big fat TURBO! Please please please build one!

Can you try to make a cross-plane crank? Like the YZF R1?

Love garage 54 these guys are epic

It is always entertaining and educational when watching Garage 54 videos. Thank you! Greetings from Ohio, USA.

Garage 54 has done so many wild and crazy things. I love to watch your videos.

my 50-cc scooter has needle bearings on the crank and wrist pin. the average rpm is around 6 to 10 grand. granted it is a single cylinder 4 stroke, but maybe using bearings on a small 4 banger might be viable.

I have thought of this for some years now. The solution i came up with for connecting the journals to the crank arms was a light press fit with machined splines, keyway, or some sort of interference rotational wise fit. A flat spot in the circle of both meshing parts. Then secure it together with a decent sized bolt and a beefy washer. I’ve dreamed of designing and building a stackable single cylinder heavy duty industrial engine like this. Design each cylinder so it could be mated to other cylinders either on end or in a v configuration.

Man that 2 stroke oil trick reveal. I love that he solved for the issue he was fishing for already. Awesome work.

They used to use a multi pieced crankshaft in top fuel dragsters . They used splines to aline the pieces then a couple of tack welds to keep them from sliding out .

Is Sergei the son of Vlad? If so, it’s really neat to see them be able to work together. Even if not, they’ve got a great rapport and are a fun team to watch!

Let’s all drop a like for Garage 54’s top notch content.

Even though it didn’t last long this experiment was a success. You got it running. that was the goal. Keep up the good work 👍

A lot of motorcycle crankshafts are press-fit with some being doweled and/or having keyways and use roller bearings on the ends and/or the middle as well. Cool approach to it though!

Wonder if you could spline the ends of the crankshaft sections and eliminate the need for welding. Might even be able to replace only the broke parts when it blew that way.🤔

I would love to see you build a rotary motor .

Good to see you are still doing crazy projects in these crazy times… cheers from a friend in Denmark .

Inspiration would be found from '77 to '83 Japanese motorcycles with built up ball bearing cranks (heavy assembly fit of crank), ect. that stay together and straightened stock engines (with built up cranks) can handle many horsepower. HEAVY ASSEMBLY FIT, straightened and welded can handle greater than 1000hp.

This has been done before by automotive companies. Even with today modern engines there's about 6% of fuel saving with roller bearings. The problem is the assembly is rather expensive and noise and vibration harshness is a big issue with them What Ford will do on their 1.0Ecoboost mild hybrid is to install a roller bearing on the first crankshaft bearing pulley side. So to cover for the bigger loads due to the high torque there because of the belt starter generator. Gives about 2% fuel saving too overall. But they have to go long ways to reduce NVH

The concern I have is it appears that sealed bearings are being used. Would not bode well for lubrication

All this man needs is a budget and we can revolutionise everything, cars, cheese gratets whatever. These guys can do it.

Omg 😆 This guy is great ! He actually is very knowledgeable and is doing a lot of RD which is something early engineers should have been faced with

many years ago a company called SPG made roller bearing crankshafts for VW and Porche... you need a modified oiling system as the roller bearing require a lot more volume

i thought the engine sounded like it needs a higher rpm idle because the crank's rotating mass is a lot less, would need a heavier than stock flywheel to compensate

Fun fact my friend Steve who is between the age of 70 to 90 has made a ball bearing engine that want to go kart race back in like the 50s or 60s and the guy has multiple patents on electric heart pumps and things of that touch but to see you guys do this is awesome much appreciated put my friend Steve in mind

Motorcycle cranks that use roller (not ball) bearings were built up either by straight forward press fitting of journals and webs, or in the case mainly of singles, the big end journal can have a tapered seat which can be drawn into the web with a threaded section and nut. Needle rollers I suspect will self destruct on the big ends and mains.

The webs and pins should have been a press/interference fit, no need to weld. common practice on old multi-cylinder motorcycle engines revving to 10,000 rpm. Suzuki gs1000 to name one.

I would have press-fit and pinned the crank together. Bearings will soon overheat with no oil flow through them.

Back in the 1960s, several Top Fuel dragster teams experimented with roller bearings for their crankshafts. The results were that there was no performance increase over conventional mains. Upon thoughts about the result, it was concluded that the cranks floated on a thin film of oil as it was, thus eliminating drag, and so did the cranks when supported by roller bearings. At most, it was a wash, with the cost of converting to roller bearing mains not offsetting any minimal performance increase.

ball bearings are good and last forever on even rotational forces without major vibrations or temperature variations*. Crankshaft on the other hand have pretty hard rotational forces that depending the work* of the engine, shift dramatically. That's why they use oil pressure. Zero metal to metal contacts, minimum friction, runs cooler and the oil works as a dumping material to absorb any vibrations coming from the rods

Cross plane 4 cylinder Crank should be next! Also, Pressed Interference fit the Crank and rod journals into the webbing / counter weights and then cross pin them. No chance of them moving..no warpage from welding either. Lots of 2 stroke multi cylinder motor bikes use press fit cranks with ball bearing journals..

It is really special to observe g54 undertaking versions of viewers comments. Crankshaft rolling between triangulated ball bearings would be interesting to see if it helps diminish the flexing and imbalances

Great content! Needle bearing would have been a better option but it would loose a lot of oil pressure but overall it would be easier to assemble, there would be no needed to cut the crankshaft, but the bearings would have to be made from scratch for them to be split in 2 to replace the original bearings, this is a very good idea!

I've done this before, you need to make each part of the crankshaft mate using a square or keyed end that inserts into an equivalent recess on the other, this way, they "lock" into place, then you put a bolt through to tighten them. :)

Take heart, your crankshaft was still stronger than a new Landrover crank.. similar lifespan too. Rather than welding, just make the journals and crankpins a press fit. That makes it much easier to assemble and correct any misalignment. You could also drill spit holes to cover the oiling problem.

Really enjoy watching the shenanigans. Keep it up.

My 2 stroke boat engines use a roller Bearing on the cranks and mains. Slick set ups.

This has been done decades ago. An entry into the INDY races, it proved to be less reliable than plain bearings. Rollers just don't tolerate oil contamination or debris. But their solution was a split type bearing, like a clam shell bearing so the crank is forged and not welded. It's very entertaining and interesting to see it done in this video.

Love this guy also you are awesome one of the best channel ever been watching for over 2 years now and the way you love to customize and tinker with cars is awesome

Awesome job! If you try again, I would bore and counter sink some holes through the webbing and pins, then either pin them in place, or bolt. Or pin and weld. That way you have extra strength!

Guinea Piggery. LOL My vocabulary never stops growing watching this crazy bunch. Love it.

I think this concept is worth further investigation. Everyone knows that roller-bearings are far superior to bushed bearings. If you can get the welds right and the angles right, I think this thing would rev it's head off and be much smoother to drive. I want to see you guys do it!

You could use woodruff keys to hold everything in place, then weld it together. You could also drill the main bearings to get more oil to them. The rod bearing aren’t going to get oiled though.

I think splined pins might have lasted a little longer then weld them where you can reach or use set screws so the bearings could be servicable. Great content, guys! I really enjoy your videos! You guys do the things I just get to think about.

What a blast , funny as guys 👍obviously there are better solutions but to have a go with limited machinery! I think you did rather well . In an ideal world maybe spline and shrink fit the crank and have a one piece rod with needle roller bearings , this would then need hardened journals etc . There will always be an issue with crank flex and balance really . The other ideal solution would be to have roller bearings with split hardened shells with the joint at an angle so the rollers don’t hit a joint square . Nothings easy unless you have access to quality machinery. Love stuff like this , can’t wait till you decide to build an aircraft 😇🇬🇧👍👍👍

This is cool, I love to watch hou guys do all this. My concern with bearings on the crankshaft would be pitting from the constant pounding. Especially if pre-ignition occurs.

Plane bearings (shells) are going to provide much better thrust load capacity and much less friction. But this is fun to watch !

Thank you for your content and experiments

I was wondering how this would work for years..this is exciting!!

I've been thinking about how to create the crank shaft a little differently. Use a solid milled bar for the center and make keyway notches in it. The material for the counterweights, cut the ends in the appropriate place, drill and tap for bolts like the connecting rod caps. For the bearings, prepare the inside dimensions to fit the solid center rod, and press fit them into place. Balance the entire crank shaft. My idea means there will be weak points to break on the shaft like there were by welding individual sections with the bearings.

Lots of motorcycles have roller bearing crankshafts on the conrod big ends, sometimes even on the little ends at the piston pin. My old 1976 yamaha 650 had full roller bearings on both big and little ends, such a well designed engine. 👍

Admirable ambition. Don't give up.

Multiple pieces crankshafts are used in two stroke engines. And they are not welded but are strongly press fit. And they seem to be holding pretty well.

My GS850 had a roller bearing crank. ( ball bearing on the right hand side to act as a thrust bearing) and it was a work of art. 84000 miles and no wear, the rest of the bike fell apart.

I am genuinely amazed at your ability to weld a crankshaft back together and keep it balanced. What is your secret? I MUST KNOW.