Gas-Powered Pogo Stick Rammer Thingamabob [Restoration]

foreign are you even remotely aware of what you're about to witness here today no you're not because you can't even fully comprehend the insanity that is the Barco br5 rammer. this is an Earth rammer modern equivalent being a tamper to Tamp the ground down and make it nice and hard now in doing extensive research on this tool I have not come across a manual so I must begin with the request for anybody who has ever seen a manual for this thing to immediately contact me because the world needs to know secondly due to the lack of manual I'm completely screwed and I don't know how this works I have seen them run on videos online but I have no idea what is missing what is broken what the tolerances of stuff are what the specifications of certain spark plugs and valves and things like that need to be it is totally a trial and error learn from experience restoration today which horrifies me the second I even begin but it's just too good to even not attempt to touch this and make it work this specific unit was patented in 1949 I believe but it was on the market in 48 I can prove that just from advertisements that I found it could be earlier if those advertisements do exist earlier somewhere else other than online which is totally possible but since that's the patent date it's probably around that date and it ceased production I believe in the late 60s now I don't know for sure because this company Barco was bought and sold a few times and this rammer along with it kind of changed hands so up until 1962 it was made specifically by Barco and then aeroquip purchased Barco in 62. and this became the aeroquip Barco vr5 rammer and then I have seen photos of this exact thing with a skill company tag the skill from Skilsaw company tag on it calling it the model 2900 rammer no idea when skill decided to buy this or at least reproduce this I have no idea and then there's also a pegson Barco rammer version which might be just in the UK it gets a little uh muddy on the on the details even though I can find all those details it still cannot find the manual great sadness regardless I found this specific unit uh through Andrew Alexander of blacksmith tools on Instagram he knew I was looking for one of these for years and he happened to come across one and immediately put me in touch with the man who owned it the guy did not want to let go of it and I only got to have it if I also purchased a another Barco tool which was of a similar design but it is a jackhammer and much smaller that might come up for restoration at some point too but this was fairly expensive for the condition it was in but this and the other rammer slash Jackhammer thing uh was fifteen hundred dollars American to get to my door so uh thank you to the patrons for making this possible because this is just too ridiculous not to share with the world now on to the actual tool itself everything is stuck pretty much everything is stuck there's too many things are stuck and it's driving me absolutely nuts the main thing that stuck is the top piston the handle is meant to move up and down and the Springs obviously help that handle to turn upwards I don't really understand how something that doesn't look that horrendous ends up being just so horrendously stuck everywhere and it's just the nature of it the guy I bought this from didn't have a lot of details on its previous use or the last time it was ever used and he just had it in his barn for the last you know 30 years so it's just set and done nothing so to bring this back to life is going to be a whole other insane process yeah just because if something is completely missing or broken and I just don't notice and I reassemble and then it doesn't work I will never know why so when I tackle a ancient tool even though this isn't that old when I tackle any tool really I like to find as much information as humanly possible and the gold standard is either the patent or a manual with a parts diagram in it and the pattern that exists for this specific tool is in my opinion a little too different from the actual production version so that horrifies me because who knows what was changed to make it you know a production version there's so many unknowns and it scares me even this bolt that I'm undoing right now maybe this nut needs to be at a certain thread level down on that Rod so as to impart some gapping that might be needed for the specific running of this machine and because I can't just infer what any of these specific specifications or tolerances are supposed to be due to the lack of manual and also the fact that this is incredibly confusing to anybody that has ever worked on small engines so this is technically a two-stroke engine okay and how can a two-stroke engine exist if there is no rotation if you walk up on the street and say hey I have a two-stroke motor but there's no rotation they'll just tell you it's broken that's not how this works and they're not wrong in the sense that this is insane but that's how it was designed okay this top piston that I'm taking off right now moves up and down on those Springs and within that cylinder and on the up stroke it sucks in the gasoline and Air and at the top of that upstroke which you have induced with your hands the Magneto is tripped and a spark forms igniting the delicious Fuel and air mixture and an explosion happens now since the upper piston is already at the top there is nowhere for that explosion to push that rod and the Piston anywhere further so the explosion pushes the other piston which is attached to the foot as I'll call it the heavy foot at the base of this machine launching the machine into the air and allowing gravity to slam its 210 pound massiveness back onto the ground tamping it down until the next explosion happens and here you can see the second piston and you see the foot that it's attached to it's just insane I don't know who came up with this it's mind-blowing I know that the only thing I've ever seen remotely similar to this is called a hop rod and it's a gas powered pogo stick from the exact same area the 60s that uses essentially the same principles to get your body into the air here you can very clearly see the Piston directly attached to the foot and I'm trying to get it off because I want to see everything my goal is always but using the most powerful Tools in my specific disposal and also being a little concerned on breaking something that in my opinion is borderline Irreplaceable at this point due to how rare this tool is I'm not exactly sure whether I should go forth with the disassembly maybe it's not meant to come apart in any specific way that I'm trying and I'm just going into breaking something so you have to make uh calls once in a while and after rust removal I'll give it another shot now spark plug is obviously broken great sadness I don't know what spark plug is supposed to be used at this point luckily I do figure it out but in in the worst way possible in the sense that there is a Barco website run by somebody that has all the information that's ever been found on not only this specific rammer but the other jackhammers and other tools that Barco made and uh unfortunately the manual and things like that aren't there for this specific unit But I contacted the guy that runs it and asked him what spark plug we use and uh he doesn't know he literally doesn't know and through my own research I found that these spark plugs were Mica spark plugs not ceramic spark plugs due to the fact that the old ceramic spark plugs would crack from the sheer force of constantly being attached to a rammer so um those don't really exist anymore incredibly hard to find and I'm just going to hope that the modern equivalents are strong enough to hold up to the raminess of this tool maybe the ceramic uh has changed in some better way because it's obviously not the best when the previous ceramic spark plug that you just took off this machine is already broken so that's another whole investigation that needs to happen now taking apart the car very interesting card there's a needle valve congrats to the needle valve hopefully that seats appropriately when we put it back together but there are valves in here and not just any standard valves like engine four-stroke valves and why are there engine four-stroke valves in a two-stroke motor please explain this to me please also explain this hole here no need to exist it's capped off the immediate thought is that this was also used by Barco on something different or larger and they just made it work for cost savings totally possible I don't know because this to me is the largest thing that they made and I have not found anything else that's even remotely as close to as large as this from Barco very uh also the valves could just be repurposed car valves from a 60s car that they happen to order from you know the valve making factory to fit their carburetor I don't know another cost savings measure for sure but uh it's very odd very very odd once I twist the nipples of these nuts off uh I'm investigating the leadness which is probably very high but it's all over my bench now so that's fine this actually needed a mechanical Power to remove there's all the white leadiness uh don't eat that please this piece here is the exhaust valve quote-unquote and I still I'm not entirely sure on its function I think it's like more of a safety valve because there are already exhaust ports that exist in the cylinder that are separate from this specific unit here and in a different location I don't know if this is a safety exhaust port for let's say if you accidentally suck in too much gas into the cylinder before the spark actually Sparks and ignites and then you have a giant explosion in your tool that's one foot from your body that might be its purpose the patent did not help unfortunately uh it just says it's an exhaust thing now on to the Magneto so immediately crack it open look at the points extra crusty remove the crust then clean with the file or some sandpaper blow on it exquisitely and then rewire it and see if it works now this is once again a very odd Magneto in the sense that it doesn't turn over 360 degrees in any way it just trips lightly and executes like two-thirds of a turn maybe half a turn in order to create that spark so I'm assuming it's fairly powerful I don't specifically know yet if it's even going to work if this doesn't work we gotta touch way too much stuff way too much stuff in order to even think about making this work because I'm not going to find a replacement for this so I got to make it work now I noticed little rust in the corners here under this uh aluminum base and I must investigate because I cannot have rust exist within my tools after restoration even though this housing and everything is aluminum the internal magnet parts are obviously not foreign we got some corrosion or water crustiness this should be totally fine I'll clean it up by hand and just scrape and wash off camera to get it all out of there because it's it's not actually the aluminum that is Rusty obviously now the spark test it's looking good that's a sizable Gap that I have there from that wire but it's also spinning at an insane speed that create uh More Voltage I believe or current and that might help and make that Gap I don't know what it's going to do when I just flick in half a turn like it's supposed to at least I think Now You See Me wearing a mask I wear a mask for almost the entire disassembly of this just because this had a bunch of exposed asbestos gaskets the paint on it was not Letty at all even the aluminum parts were painted aluminum color for some reason I think they just assembled this and spray painted it and fully assembled but regardless I don't want that as best as life so I'm just keeping the gaskets wet with oil and then wearing the mask when I when I can the handle came out really nice and there's almost nothing to do with that one they seemed to have like a little maybe nickel or chromy-ish finish but really we got to get to this exhaust valve okay fighting me greatly and I hate it so this looks like Roberto from Futurama um I'm really trying everything here I can't get these threaded studs out unless I break this stuff off because there's such a small amount of threading exposed beyond the cast top lid piece that I can't double nutted so uh I ended up through sheer Four's breaking off the ends which is like the worst I've ever done at anything breaking the ends off unthreading them using the jam nut scenarios and using Mega town heat and an extensive amount of Vice gripping to pull this piece at which exposes a valve and why I don't know it makes my brain hurt it really makes my brain hurt so this valve apparently closes when the exhaust needs to go out and opens to maybe allow air in when you do the suction even though there's already air coming in from the carburetor so it's potentially a purpose like that it's very odd um there's also another valve stuck in here of dubious quality and a very odd Steel valve touching a bronze car body uh I I don't know who designed this not my problem except when it specifically is in the moment we're like this you could see it flexing just a little bit so I've got some movement Happening Here which excites me I want to add some heat but not too much because there's this spring ring thing um around near the top of that carburetor piece and the valve if it is hardened in any way I don't want to ruin plus it's just bronze I don't want to get it too hot and do something dumb and ruin something so now the actual like sheath or the bushing that holds the valve stem is moving instead of the valve of course uh but it eventually comes loose and I can just tap it off now this valve like the other one I think is completely toast there's there's no way it's sealing anything so that's going to be something that needs to be fully recreated on the ghetto lathe 5000. there you can see the extensive fitting it's just totally corroded the the bronze is fine though now I'm using 1144 Steel only because first off it's what I used to make these screwdrivers so it's easily available for me to just go and get secondly it is incredibly unlikely to move after heat treatment there's almost no warping at all it's fantastic and uh thirdly it's hardenable if I need to I don't think I need to harden this especially one of them is seating into a bronze body and the other one a cast iron body I don't think it's it's providing the same function as a valve and valve stem in a four-stroke motor this is literally acting as just a valve to let something in or out and doesn't need to be at a mega insane tolerance level at least in my opinion that's how they decided to design the carburetor on this foreign a bad day after this video uh I ended up really diving into what's going on with my lathe here and why is it it's so loud and vibration obviously speeds and feeds play into that massively but there's some movement that I really don't appreciate I don't know what happened um but it it saddens me you can really see it at the end of the stem of the valve here when I start to make the cuts it moves up and down in like a massively inappropriate way and it's possibly the tool height um but that should be right on the money and also my Carriage might not be very uh rigid but to have the actual the actual Chuck move up and down is horrifying so essentially and unfortunately everything is fine and concentric to thousands of an inch like one thousandth of an inch um but the second you take it out of its original Chuck position and move it into something like this new Chuck position it uh is no longer concentric through the center of the shaft which is great sadness but luckily does not matter in this specific case because I'm just facing off the front and then drilling a little hole that needs to be just generally centered um for the exhaust valve upper stem thing which you will see soon to seat in and uh if it's oversized it's totally fine too so this luckily does not matter in any specific way as long as my outside of the valve is nice and and sensually concentric now I need to put slots in this valve and the other valve obviously in order for me to lap the valves in at high speed I don't have one of those little suctiony valve uh handle tools for lapping so I might as well just kind of slot into it like the original and it comes out great beautifully here's the second valve also looking very nice I matched it as close as I humanly could because that little spring goes uh right over and around the little slot raised area there and I am actually very happy with how these turned out it's obviously something at least in this case that I've never done before the first time ever making valves the stems luckily do not matter at all they just need to ride up and down in the little valve thing I obviously got it as close as I could but they're not at a level of you know a race car engines sensual precisionness so they can stay like that after sandblasting everything I can go on to lapping this exhaust valve here and after a little while I got it pretty dialed in I checked afterwards if these all held gas or if you know I blew air through this specifically if they wouldn't seal in any way and they're all completely fine so I don't I don't match it with you uh it to like go to a level of insanity with hardening and all the chain and all that stuff I don't think it's necessary we will find out when this doesn't work or doesn't seal uh when I put it all together if I'm dumb so this is weird I've never lapped something into bronze so I'm just leaving it as is and we'll see now I notice this looks like a valve very much looks like a valve and it finally perfectly fits my large screwdriver but I can't get it to move and I also don't even know if it's supposed to move I don't know do you know nobody knows there's no manual who the hell is so I did that until I broke the drag link so I'm a genius and then I thought hey what if the Piston moves around the valve which in my head I'm like no it's it's not that doesn't make sense why would that and why would that even do anything and it doesn't seem it just seems Mega stuck until shabam excuse me why is there a valve in the piston and how loose is it supposed to is it just free floating is there like a spring that keeps it closed it's just gravity keeps it closed how does it work I don't know so I dump in the lapping compound because I at this point can't figure out how to get this weird ring thing off the back and I don't even know if it's supposed to come off and uh just quickly lap some stuff and then check if it holds the WD-40 and it does came back you know a few minutes later it's completely good so somehow after being Mega Town seized the valve is is okay so with that in mind I said okay let's try to get this off here because uh it seems like there's a pin that's holding um maybe the valve stem in place and I can take the valve stem out and then we can investigate and make a new one if we have to maybe it's supposed to move or not move I don't really know the Piston itself definitely moves massively and potentially on purpose I don't know yet now with excessive heat applications this ring comes off and we can investigate and lo and behold the valve is the entire piston rod that's not pressed on or screwed on or anything and it looks bad the wear looks horrendous or the pitting but if I move it to where it isn't pitted where the ring used to sit there's even more play than down near the bottom and even though they are very close to the same diameter so I'm thinking we just leave it I'm thinking the piston and head is supposed to free float so it doesn't really matter that tolerance there as long as it seals so we will leave that and moving on to other more broken issues the heat fins on this cylinder have broken portions off of it and that is obviously great sadness I contemplated heating the casting off and doing some brazing but I was very nervous of the fact that I only have one of these cylinders okay I'm not going to find another cylinder if I keep Heating and Cooling and reheating and welding and brazing I may induce some sort of correct and the thought of that horrifies me not only in the sense that this Restorations uh potentially over but also the fact that it's extremely dangerous to have explosions in correct metal so I decided to use this insane metal Putty from Loctite that was suggested and it seems to hold very well so far which is fantastic and I use some spot plastic metal spot putty to blend in the cast look so it still looks like it was you know cast in sand and not some smooth out super insanely reflective surface so we're going to hope that that works they are pinned in place to Little Broken segments that have been reattached so that should not only locate them properly but at the very least keep them in place while the glue slash epoxy thing hardens now we must prepare my grave error and this was a part that was already in horrible shape uh even right out of the rust remover so I am concerned about how nicely I can get this back together and if I got this spacing and the angle of the holes for the threaded rods appropriate and not angled in some way that when I go to put it on it just cracks or just something ridiculous I don't know I'm always uh nervous when you heat metal up and Brace stuff anyways I'll leave the Barco br ief five label on it untouched and I will just spot putty the kind of little gaps that happen to exist and fix a little areas that have been damaged over the years with some other spot putty touch-ups now I'm using filler primer and I'll sand that down and make it just a little bit smooth very much not smooth but just a little bit more smooth and then hit it with this uh technically titanium silver as they call it but this is very close to aluminum now we have entered the zone of another problem a massive problem okay this foot on the bottom of this machine is solid magnesium which dissolves entirely into powder in evapo rest so because I can't get these parts apart I can't put this in the evaporist okay and you might say hey just put the parts that aren't magnesium in the evaporest no okay because evapor rust needs material that is fully submerged in order to not create a massive etching line at the contact point of the surface of the evaporus and the air so we don't want to do that so I have to use an angle grinder but as you see here magnesium dust is incredibly flammable so when I'm using the angle grinder if I happen to hit even lightly a little bit of the steel instead of the magnesium and create a little Sparky boy we have the potential to ignite the entire air and dust that I've created around it in a very quick and fiery explosion one that is so bright it blinds me for all time so I am a little bit nervous about that and I ended up you know like massively suiting up with that dust mask and have the class D fire extinguisher which is the one you need for magnesium fires right on hand I cleared the space I got the fans going and the suction and the air filters everything was going just for that uh magnesium foot cleanup because it's it's just not something I need especially in my workshop where a giant bowl of oil and a bunch of gasoline exists you know five feet away from where I'm grinding magnesium nobody needs it anyways this top portion which is technically the cylinder head a little corner broken off of it maybe when it fell so I replaced that and I'll just leave it as is and this is the air filter quote unquote which as far as I know is literally just that and not some like nice clothy filter who knows this spring was damaged somehow not only is this flat portion unscrewed but the spring was bent outwards and inappropriately so I just use my Vise to bend as close to original as possible now I'm not going to paint this chunk of aluminum aluminum color I'm just gonna get it as close as I can with the sander and and I'm happy with that I'm just going through all the little tiny fixes that need to happen before we reassemble here and this part is the tiny portion that goes on the carburetor valve specifically and it holds the other end of the spring that goes right onto the valve okay and you'll see that soon when I reassemble but it was corroded off and needs some new love nice so the tool gods have provided Exquisite gaskets for me to use which have been replaced by a glorious paper alternative that isn't a disgusting as best as death type of gasket hopefully it's fine I don't know this bottom one don't know if this is going to be an appropriate gasket using that liquid gasket it's usually fine but I don't know do you know nobody knows so I just let that sit and Harden overnight and then I'll clamp it actually down um when I reassemble the next day see the handle not too like pretty shiny pretty nice almost too nice but not you know perfect but just nice you can also see the aluminum paint colored aluminum which is just in my opinion like horrifying well like what are you doing with your life when you're painting aluminum aluminum color foreign so just looking at these piston ring tolerances here it is really not the greatest of tolerances and when I do discover a little bit more information I find that the gas mixture being a two-stroke gas and oil mixture is ten to one so like heavy oil and it tells you to use 40 weight oil so I'm assuming the amount of oil and the thickness of the oil play into ceiling the the Pistons from the rest of the cylinder during an explosion I'm assuming we don't know yet but do you know no you don't nobody knows now when I can I try to use the original Fasteners because they're always more sexy they have like the high top bolts and glorious thicker nuts on them which and I love thick nuts I'm a huge thick nut guy so I I do it when I can but you know when you need new nuts or bolts you need new nuts now I'm actually applying anti-seize which I rarely do honestly because I don't like to take away the fun of removing stuck Nuts and Bolts from somebody else in the future it's actually way too much fun but in this case I feel like it is warranted in the sense that this was so stuck that it was almost ripping the aluminum uh around the head of this long Bolt and that is obviously no bueno and no fun for anybody so I'm going to in this case use some anti-seize these guides as I've only learned during reassembly when it finally made sense are used to position the handle left and right and from not moving back and forth in any significant way and they just ride exquisitely up and down see that nice guide rail so you would oil that guide rail and the handle can just nicely ride up and down without it twisting in place and causing some sort of damage it also factors into how the Magneto trips if that handle moves to one side it may not reach enough to trip the Magneto which we do not want these white washers which I found everywhere all over this machine and I'm putting back but new ones we're either dried out plastic or some sort of ceramic and I'm not really sure why I feel like Ceramics the opposite you would want for high impact scenarios and like why would you not want like a rubber like rubber gaskets or rubber washers in between here for vibration reduction I have no idea so I just purchased new uh plastic white washers and and and that's it we'll see how that does everything gets some nice gas resistant thread tape and that just ensures that I'm not a complete failure and the paint doesn't start dissolving off of this tool which obviously would make me very sad at this moment in time you could see how I'm just lock nutting the lock washers on those golden ones in the back there you can never lock enough with this type of tool now one of the final pieces that needs some love is the little stem that holds the tongue let's say that engages the Magneto trip lever the other one is completely toast and it needs some new love so that it actually just functions appropriately at least I hope because once again I don't know what position this is supposed to be in now interestingly enough which you might be able to notice by the end of this video but that whole that I just shoved the golden brass grew into um was essentially in the wrong spot for the level of tension the spring now has after 60 years so I ended up drilling a hole just beside that so that there was even more tension on the spring in order to create an even larger spark because it really wasn't doing it for me the spark level it made me sad let's say nothing like a little quick mod in order to crease your chance of deadly explosions I'm using the same studs no need to replace these These are hidden under a giant chunk of asbestos or Micarta I don't know everything's poison all the time so as long as they thread together I'm happy with that I'm not going to sand the Magneto down to some level of sensuality that doesn't need to exist because it's it's so damaged I don't want to like take more material away from it in the in fear of further cracking because some of the walls are really thin already it's not the best casting on Earth foreign foreign gasket on we can oil the valve and put it in place eventually and now for the spring so when taking apart this portion the spring just exploded cracked in three pieces I think and uh it's totally toast obviously now being a safety exhaust valve potentially who knows nobody knows I was concerned about the springiness of this valve because obviously too strong and this thing can never close and too weakened it's always closed so there had to be some level of strength that I needed to achieve and who knows what that was but weirdly in the patent it mentions how that spring needs to be specifically 7 PSI for optimal results and I went with that even though the patent is not necessarily the production version of anything and we're just going to hope that that's uh the right Force I don't know do you know nobody knows there's a little piece that I've raised together and now you see what it does it just holds itself and this spring down against that uh valve and this valve obviously lets in the gas from the needle valve and the tank and only allows it to suck gas on the upstroke and not explode on the down stroke because nobody wants that this valve is completely fine and does not need to be touched for some reason it is glorious and seals and I'm very happy with it so that one's fine all the other ones were just murdered very odd and you can kind of see here more than uh before the bent damage of the air filter hole on the bronze carburetor and the actual carburetor itself is bent like the housing the bronze housing I'm not going to touch that I'm not even going to attempt to bend that back into place this intricate piece of Machining and casting is in no way worth risking a massive amount of damage just to have a straight line there it is too essential to the function of this machine that its form does not get surpassed by its function in this case now I don't know if there was a bottom ring of whatever on this to keep the little brass netting down but I feel like it was just the most basic of air filters like you know so your entire shirt doesn't get sucked in or something I put the white washers back exactly where I found them their locations make no sense but whatever this whole machine doesn't make any sense new fuel line added a fuel shut off valve because there's no actual off valve for this I found someone online that graciously works for Champion spark plugs and found an old manual that informed me on the exact spark plug to be used I recreated these using extensive research and Photoshop you can pause and read all you want but you're here for the main show open that gas valve let it flow oh yes that's right that's right this 200 pound machine explodes foreign I'm having it may not be apparent but it's it is way too much fun illegal amounts of fun and the sound is incredibly unique and nothing's breaking up nothing's leaking everything's Sealing oh so how do you move it back and forth left or right you tilt it so it explodes towards your body so it lands a few inches to the left or right it's just ridiculous so in slow motion you can really kind of see how this thing works even little exhaust valve exhausting itself the Magneto trips and the explosion happens at the exact same time that you are sucking in that air and fuel and then it launches itself in the air some of the exhaust Vapors blast out through the foot area some blast through the side where the fins end and then you have another exhaust Port from the guy that looks like Roberto from Futurama well there's three places for the exhaust to come out I'm assuming for safety reasons uh and you just enjoy once you get a real handle of it so to speak uh it's pretty effortless to use so effortless you can do this you don't even need to actually do anything it'll just go crazy and to stop it you pull up on the handle or push all the way down hard as a rock impressive now my lawn's ruined anyways I hope you enjoyed this it's just too amazing I will keep it forever and uh thank you all for watching and I'll see you in the next video later

Channel: Hand Tool Rescue

Views: 886,120

Keywords: barco, rammer, hoprod, diresta, my mechanics, machining, thingamajig, thingamabob, engine, motor, will it run

Id: JW3bfYrK8oY

Length: 54min 55sec (3295 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 06 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/J_J_R]

A contribution of a dollar a month to his patreon gets you narrated versions of all his videos. It is absolutely fantastic, super interesting, and well worth it.

[u/lotsarocks]

That was such a huge job! He was able to work through so many details without getting bogged down. The video was no small thing either. Great work!

[u/climb-it-ographer]

That thing looks like it's designed to break your jaw and knock out all of your teeth.