The "Ask Nathan a Question" Thread

Nathan the Machinist said:
We cut up one piece of it today. It's pretty blah. It's a high quality material. Nice, old school, high density micarta. Back when the micarta name meant something. When you can sever a peace with an old skill saw and the cut is not fuzzy, you know they did a pretty good job getting the resin fully infused into the textiles, and I can look at the sheet and tell you it was not a rolled pulltrusion, this was pressed between plates. But it's not the beautiful streaky freaky stuff we have with the antique Westinghouse.

We're going to offer it as a scales option for people who want a material that's probably a little better than you can get today, and don't need the beauty of the antique Westinghouse material for their use. That stack of material was only 17 grand, I don't need to charge an arm and a leg for it, so this might be a good option for people who want the performance and feel of the old micarta without the high price tag associated with it.
Click to expand...

Well…. 17 grand and a DEK1. 😂

I’m glad that material ended up being decent. I’d love to see a pic of your cutoff. I wouldn’t be surprised to find fairly drastic differences in patina from slab to slab.

International Paper made some phenomenal Micarta in the 90’s. Westinghouse, GE textolite, and International Paper phenolics tend to be the more sought after vintage material these days.
 
Fixall said:
Well…. 17 grand and a DEK1. 😂

I’m glad that material ended up being decent. I’d love to see a pic of your cutoff. I wouldn’t be surprised to find fairly drastic differences in patina from slab to slab.

International Paper made some phenomenal Micarta in the 90’s. Westinghouse, GE textolite, and International Paper phenolics tend to be the more sought after vintage material these days.
Click to expand...

20230208_121909.jpg
 
Nathan, I’ve been looking around for other work vehicles because my stock 2006 Ford 6.0l diesel scares me without a few thousand dollars invested to bulletproof it. In my searching I recently came across a 1993 Ford 7.3l diesel. It’s single owner with only about 65K miles on it. My 6.0l has just shy of 100k. Should I go for the 7.3?
 
Cap’n Smudge said:
Nathan, I’ve been looking around for other work vehicles because my stock 2006 Ford 6.0l diesel scares me without a few thousand dollars invested to bulletproof it. In my searching I recently came across a 1993 Ford 7.3l diesel. It’s single owner with only about 65K miles on it. My 6.0l has just shy of 100k. Should I go for the 7.3?
Click to expand...

No, probably not. That might not be the 7.3 that you were thinking of. That's going to be the old indirect injection. That is not the legendary 7.3 that you're probably thinking of

I think you're going to want the direct injection turbo diesel that International harvester made that was available from about 94 to about 2002 I think.

If you get one built on the new body style, it will have an intercooler which means it can tolerate bigger injectors without risk of burning and exhaust valve. There's more easy horsepower there.

The advantage to the old body style, they have forged piston rods rather than MIM and can tolerate horsepower above 450. Which is moot if you don't put an intercooler on it.

Or you can run it bone stock. It was plenty of horsepower for the day although it is weak by modern standards. I'm running 160 injectors, which is quite a bit larger than Ford put in but it's the size the engine was designed for. People go way bigger but I think it's a good size. That and a mild tune and you have about 350 horsepower which is plenty.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top