Automite: Be happy that you didn't win this one

When I saw this sellers picture in an ebay ad bells should have went off but they didn't.  Well they did, sorta.  So the flywheel is off  the axle I thought, we can fix anything.  Trouble is, the other half of the engines crank shaft is broken off up inside the axle.  



This thing was a disaster from the beginning.  Instead of the nice smooth plastic finish of my first Automite, this one is crazed like someone wiped it off with a solvent unfriendly to plastic.  The engine was so gummed up that aggressive use of a heat gun was necessary to free it.  I have never seen an engine this bad.  The user must have filled the tank with fuel, then filled the venturi flooding the crankcase housing.  This picture is after I had cleaned most of the gunk out of the housing.

 

When I unscrewed the cylinder the goo inside it held the piston and rotated it off the connecting rod.

The combination of dried fuel and the neoprene residue of the fuel line made a major mess that no detergent or solvent could remove.  It had to be dug out.



Media blasting (aluminum oxide) cleaned everything up.  But it did nothing for the broken crankshaft.  I have a spare engine, but I still have to deal with the axle with the broken half of the crank inside.  I can make one with the proper size steel rod, but it's drilling the hole in the rod that presents alignment problems.  I don't have a lathe, but maybe if I'm careful I could do it with my drill press.  Tapping the hole isn't a problem or cutting threads on the other end for the axle nut, but drilling that hole is.



Any suggestions?