Comments by "mpetersen6" (@mpetersen6) on "driving 4 answers" channel.

  1. The shear strength sucks too. In terms of machining a lot depends on the tooling. The worst stuff I've worked with is nearly pure copper. In fact most metal in a nearly pure state machine like horse dung. Soft and gummy.
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  2. I share your pain. I used to work as a Tool Marker and later i worked for a company that builds centrifuges for waste treatment plants. The number of times i heard people expouse that stainless steel is some kind of wonder material. They think if they use stainless screws they are much stronger.
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  3. Ah, the Jeremy Clarkson rock target
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  4.  @Dave5843-d9m  Possibly, but I question the cost effectiveness. In a production vehicle the currently used scintered and forged rods are perfectly serviceable for threat use. The rod is actually larger when it comes out of the sintering process and when forged ir reduces the volume and increases the density. Another option might be 3D printing using laser sintering of metal powders. This would actually allow the use of two different alloys. Hard and tough on the outside while softer on the inside. People are already doing 3D printer non load bearing components such as intake manifolds. Just how long before we see aftermarket aluminum 3D printed heads and blocks. These would still require a certain amount of machining but IMO would be cost effective in comparision to billet. I suspect that the engine manufacturers are already doing this. Originally 3D printing allowed for rapid production of patterns for casting prototype parts*. *One of the early 3D printing or stereo lithography techniques used paper rolled out on a platen with a laser cutting out the cross section. Glue on the next layer and tra e the cross section. Rinse and repeat until done. This technique is still around to some degree. There is a company in Ireland that was showing a desktop 3D printer that was combined with an inkjet. The idea is to produce fully colored and finished items https://newatlas.com/mcor-iris-paper-3d-printer/32903/
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  5. Free Valve engines have been around for a long time. Only the valve is only free in one direction when the keepers come off of the valve spring.
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  6. What about rotary valve heads. I know there's been a few engines built with them. In the early 80s (1982 to percise) I saw a V-6 in the garage area at Indianapolis that featured dual rotary valves per cylinder. I imagine that sealing as well as expansion issues due to temperature would be a problem. Of course the ultimate solution for street engines is either the camless engine with electronically controlled valves or if one gets really extreme a direct injection two stroke with no intake ports that uses fuel and an oxidizer injected directly into the cylinder. This could be either sprak or compression ignition. Barney Navarro actually messed around with oxygen fed cylinders in his days racing on the dry lakes of California. In that case the oxygen was just feed either into the intake manifold or somewhere else upstream of the intake valve.
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  7. ​ @invertedpolarity6890  And l remember when it was just coolant pumps. Maybe they think they are still building engines for fighters. The aircraft will never survive long enough to reach Time Before Overhaul. AKA as the driver is going to total it anyway
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  8.  @soundautomatic1  We didnt see any of those. AMPCO-14 & 21, D-2 and S-7 are bad enough. Later we switched AMPCO-18 and that's actually not bad. Copper Nickel alloys can really suck
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  9. ​ @vincentlopez1350  Depending on where you are you have interesting options. Australia, JDM inline or the Barra. Europe, BMW or Jag (1). North America, just about any inline. People have been cutting and welding together V-8 heads to put on top of inline sixes for a long time. Chevy OHV I6 and Small Block have the same bore centers. The AMC/Jeep matches the Ford small blocks and is only .020”/.5mm less than the SBC/LS. Then there is the GM Atlas. Calvin on Nivlac57 has been getting obscene power out of them.
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  10.  @ObservationofLimits  Nodular cast iron cranks and rods were and are more than strong enough for most factory applications in reality. Scintered con rods are more than adequate for most applications as well. The higher output factory motors (Hellcats etc) are probably still using forged rods. Forged and billet rods in a high volume production run involve extra machining steps versus scintered rods (I used to work in an automotive engine facility). Cast iron rods require the same steps. The production process runs 1) Rough grind both faces 2) Rough and possibly semi finish the pin bore 3) Run the rod through a slitting operation to seperate the cap end. This may include roughing the bearing diameter depending on the operation used. 4) Perform all of the drilling and tapping operations along with cutting the bearing lock notch. 5) Finish grind or machine the mating faces 6) Assemble the rod and cap. At this point who knows were the original halves are. 7) Finish grind to width grinding both faces. 8) Semi Finish and finish the pin and bearing bore 9) Press in the pin bearing if a floating rod. 10) Bore and or hone pin bearing 11) Machine rod ends to match weight specs A scintered rod for a production engine has several production advantages 1) The rod and cap are never separated in that from the time the come out of the sintering process they are always a set. 2) A cracked scintered rod after cracking only requires a wire brushing of the mating faces and the rod can be re-assembled without any machining processes to the mating faces. The micro fractures of the surfaces provide a much better register surface. The facility I worked at over the years produced cast, forged and scintered rods. The cast and forged rods were labor intensive to produce. The scintered rods required maybe 10% or less man hours per part with less scrap. The reason the man hours were less was that the scintered rod once it entered the machining process never had to be handled until it was used on the engine assembly line. The cast or forged rods required handling for multiple operations. 3) The uniformity of the rods from one to another is such that the balance operation can pretty much be eliminated. Rods are checked for weight tolerance. Out of tolerance rods are scrapped. Eliminating operations reduces cost by eliminating handling, initial production machine tools cost and lower cutting tool costs
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  11.  @martinfidel7086  I spent 40 plus years rebuilding industrial machinery, machining and doing Tool work. We had a guy who wanted to make his own trailer hitch balls in order to learn programming CNC lathes. The boss told him he could do it on one condition. That he throw the finished part in the scrap precisely because of liability issues.
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  12. Nash used twin plugs for years
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  13. ​ @EbenBransome  The harmonic range is usually somewhere in the 6k rpm range iirc. But inline sides will spin higher. People have even spun the Jeep 4.0 to 9k. And that's with the inefficient now non crossflow head. In Argentina they use a modified 4.0 with a twin cam 24v head for race purposes. Along with Chevy and Ford I6s.
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  14. Let's be honest. Just how often do high RPM engines really get to wind out. Aside from sport bikes. Plus how often do they need to. In normal driving even on the highway frankly the need for high output does not happen very often. Don't misunderstand. I like this stuff too. There was a couple of things that GM tied but did not use. One was stacked camshafts. One for the intake. One for exhaust. One thing I think I would have tried Twin Cams. One for each cylinder block. Mount the cams high up along the bank and really shorten the valve train up
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  15. One advantage the inline has is that the same machining lines can be used to build four or five cylinder inlines.
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  16. In the golden age of piston aero engines this was common practice.
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  17. An inline 8 is even smoother than an inline six. But it suffers from being even longer unless it is designed to be very undersquare. Plus they tend to be RPM limited unless certain things are done such as having a gear cut into the center of the crankshaft so that the power is taken off at the center of the engine. Mercedes did this with their race cars in the 50s. This is also why you tend not to see V-16s. One of the only V-16s I can think of was the Chrysler V-2250 aircraft engine they were developing during WWII. It took the power of the engine from a central reduction gear.
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  18.  @martinfidel7086  One of the early 3D print technologies was layers of paper where the layer would be profile cut and the waste cross cut. Then the next layer would be glued on and cut. The finished pieces were tough enough to be drill and tapped. I know the manufacturers were using them for prototype castings as it speeded up the prototyping a lot. You skip the pattern making process. Now flip this around. Design your finished part with shrinkage allowance. Now take your finished part and determine where your parting line is. Now do a slicing operation to mach your paper and glue layers. Cut out the layers with one of those crafting cutting machines like a Cricut. Now laminate the layers. Paint the finished lamination. Congratulations. Now you have your finished master casting for making your own Copes, Drags and Cores. I think that is just about the cheapest way one could do custom castings. There's actually a company (or was) that offers a 3D printer that uses regular paper where it produces the finished part in color. https://www.google.com/search?q=3d+paper+printer&oq=3d+paper+printer&aqs=chrome..69i57j0j0i22i30l3.13251j0j4&client=tablet-android-samsung&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#
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  19. France can also be credited with the first car. Unfortunately it was a Renault
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  20.  @fastinradfordable  Of course it is along with mostly Nitrogen (about 75%), CO2, Water vapor, some noble gases, Neon, Xenon etc. Think of it like Nitrous Oxide. The Nitrous breaks down and provide more oxygen for the combustion process. Imagine a cylinder with a set of exhaust ports around the bottom. As the piston reaches the bottom of the stroke the exhaust gases exit the ports into an expansion chamber. As the piston rises injectors open to inject a fuel and an oxidizer. No valve train. No parasitic losses from camshafts, valve springs etc. For sure the damn thing would go through oxidizer like mad. Although injecting nearly pure Hydrogen Peroxide would provide both the fuel and oxidizer in one. The H2O2 is so unstable the heat of the compression would break it down resulting in combustion with H2O being the primary exhaust gas. Basically a rocket engine working with a piston instead of an expansion bell
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  21. Ah, 2.7 Sludge-o-Matic. The sludge problem is actually caused by the small draon holes the head gasket
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  22. In automotive engines the wrist pin is typically offset 1 to 1.5 mm with the offset trailing the crankshaft direction of rotation. As I understand it this is done to 1) help the piston to begin the downward stroke. And 2) to reduce piston slap. Piston slap can also be reduced with tighter clearances between the piston and cylinder walls.
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  23. @EbenBransome  A lighter crank can allow faster rpm increase. After all it takes energy to spin the mass up. And the 4.0s getting spun up to 9k. That was on a 6 cylinder dragster with a thoroughly modified 4.0. Definitely not the stock drive train. Or extended time periods.
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  24. The only way I can think they can do this is with an eccentric sleeve between the rod and journal on the crank. The trick is to get the sleeve to maintain proper orientation relative to crank rotation.
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  25. The oil that feeds the crankpin first has to lubricate the pin and pin bearing in the slider. The it gets to lubricate the slider top and bottom. All this after the inevitable looses of oil from the main and pin bearings. If this is a better system overall it would have been in use by some automotive manufacturer
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  26.  @embalmed  Toxic too as I recall
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  27.  @michaelweston4738  I used to rebuild seam welding heads. High copper content spindle. The bearing mou ring diameters and the area where the conta t shoes ran all had to be ground. Copper grinds like poop.
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  28. The Lycoming R-7755 aircraft radial of the mid 1940s had camshafts with two lobe for each valve. One for cruise. The other for maximum power https://oldmachinepress.com/2018/05/20/lycoming-xr-7755-35-cylinder-aircraft-engine/
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  29. One thing i can see wtong with this design. Any Scotch Yoke one piece piston/rod assembly will have to be installed from the crankcase side of the engine. This means that the block, crankshaft and camshaft will have to be much longer. For an example a Ford Windsor V-8 has a bore center of 4.380" and a bore of 4.000". With a Scotch Yoke setup this would only leave .380" of an inch (1) for the main bearing. 1) for metric you do the math.
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  30. When the Wrangler got redsigned around 2006 the 4.0 didnt fit anything. Plus the engine needed a major redesign, new head etc.
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  31.  @wanyelewis9667  There are a couple of other factors why the inline 8 is dead. One is the are "out-of-fashion". Another compared to let's say an inline 6 of the same displacement or even a V-8 of equal displacement is their is more machining operations involved to a certain extent. Granted any OHC V-has more operations than an inline would. Depending on design the OHC can also require two seperate sets of head and cam machining equipment. As far as inline 6s today to the best of my knowledge only BMW has stuck with the layout. Partly I think because it is part of their corporate indentity. As far as a modern inline 8 for a sporting application the best place two start might be one of the inline four motorcycle engines with the power takeoff at the center
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  32. Came close to buying one of these in 73. But I took a look at some 70 cars in the the area. These were not a car that held up well in winters were road salt is used.
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  33. The three most machinery intensive parts of an IC engine are the Block, Cank and Heads in that order. For a normal street engine nodular cast iron is just fine. I worked at an engine manufacturing facility for 30+ years. We built 4s, 6s (v & inline) and v8s. Cast iron and forged. One of the V-6s actually was pre balanced as its first operation. Which was drilling the central holes. Plus on both V-6s we built the pins were offset for smooth running purposes. The cranks were forge flat and then twisted and their centerline to get the angular offset needed. As to the strength of cast crankshaft. In the 60s there was an AMC 199 sleeved down to meet USAC Indy rules that made a reported 800 HP as max boost. Another thing with flat plane cranks in V-8s. Using a flat plane actually makes it easier to build a V-8 with an angle other than 90° between the banks. Such an engine is effectively two 4 cylinder engines on a common crankcase
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  34. The turbosupercharging system in the P-47 is the primary reason that the aircraft was so large. A lot of the fuselage between the engine and the turbo was taken up with ducting and the intercooler. On the P-38 the landing gear in the booms was basically behind the engine and its accessory drives. The only place for the turbos was behind the gear. Along with the radiators. The intercoolers where actually in the outer wings. The P-38 actually had a lot of parasitic drag.
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  35.  @BarryAllen-no9nj  I know. The recommended torque ratings for A4-70 and A4-80 are around 50 to 55% of a grade 12.8. Plus over tighten SS in a SS tapped hole you've got a significant change of gauling and sizing the screw. In the industry I was working in normal procedure called for chucking the screws if they were used more than 3 times
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  36.  @BarryAllen-no9nj  Fortunately the major components for the centrifuges we built (bowls, headwalls and scrolls) are all a magnetic stainless alloy that are cast centrifugally. https://www.centrisys-cnp.com/ https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=centrisys&&view=detail&mid=B57FF007809EE2311266B57FF007809EE2311266&&FORM=VRDGAR
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  37.  @martinfidel7086  that's an option too. No matter what you do there's going to be significant machining involved. Plus there's always the option of a two piece layered cylinder head machined from solid.
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  38. No engine is indistructable. Fail to do your maintenance. The engine will fail.
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  39. Chevrolet built V-8s before Ford.
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  40. A lot also has to do with the machining processes being used by the manufacture. If an engine block is going to be broached as its initial operation its has to be cast iron* and is most likely better to be a closed deck design. Aluminum blocks are better suited to milling operations. * At least I've never heard of an aluminum block being broached. This puts an incredible amount of load on the block due to the clamping forces required and the tool pressure. The machining is being done with what basically amount to a huge file that is cutting the full width of the head face with the finish cutting tools. On the bottom end the top half of the bearing diameter is getting cut across it's full radius.
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  41. Its also a good idea to start with a block that has enough rigidity designed in. A block that was never designed with higher horsepower/kw output in mind is not going to take well to forced induction. One good reason for align honing the main bearing bores is to ensure that they have a common centerline. Your bearing bores may be in spec size wise but there is also a tolerance for alignment.
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  42. The non crossflow head wasn't that unusual in inline 6 sorts cars at the time. The TR-6 had one and the Pontiac OHC was also a non crossflow. The Tr-6 was a pushrod iirc while the Po tiac had a lot of potential it was never properly developed. Infact looking at the Pontiac it bears a startling resemblance to the Vega 4. Not a relationship one would admit to
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  43. The biggest "modern"* inline 4 I can think of in a gasoline engined passenger vehicle was Pontiacs 3.3 liter from the early 60s. But then that was basically a 389 with one bank lopped off. This really does sound like smoke and mirrors to a point. The only way I can think of to get the piston at 50% of the stroke at 90° of crank rotation is if there's some sort of eccentric sleeve that fits between the crank and the connecting rod. The trick is to maintain the relationship of the sleeve to crank angle. The reason for the eccentric is to allow the connecting rod to get longer and shorter for each engine rotation. Over the years there have been a lot of unusual engine layouts. After WWII there was a company in Milwaukee that built and sold 11 and twelve cylinder radial stationary engines. All of these engines had no master rod. The 11 cylinder was a geared rod carrier. The 12 cylinder had a completely novel arrangement that used two link rods. Once Freevalve engines begin to hit the market place expect to see aftermarket heads begin to appear that will allow the conversion of older engine designs to more modern valve train layouts. * By modern I mean any engine produced in mass volume after WWII irregardless of whether it is iron or aluminum, OHV or OHC. https://oldmachinepress.com/2014/01/12/nordberg-stationary-radial-engine/
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  44. One thing to keep in mind here. The F1 examples. These are typically engines that are using bore to stroke ratios that can approach 2:1. In the past I have heard the ideal stroke to rod ratio is around 1.75. Looking at data on the Stan Weiss engine data site the only engine I can find that hits that is an AMC 232. Looking at V-8s the Ford Boss 302 had R/S ratio of 1.7162. The Chevy DZ 302 was 1.8968. Two engines with essentially the same bore and stroke. The other Ford 302 was in the 1.6's. One reason the Fords had the lower ration was the significantly shorter deck height of the Fords
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  45.  @anthonyxuereb792  Or sleeve valves 😁 It was learned in the 1930s that once a cylinder got so large normal poppet valves just didn't do the job. This mainly affects aircraft and large stationary engines. Hence engines such as the Napier Sabre, the Rolls Royce Eagle, the Bristol Centaurus. US manufacturers aside from Pratt & Whitney tended to avoid them. They involve increased manufacturing problems. P & W was developing two H-24 cylinder sleeve valve liquid cooled engines for the Navy and Air Corps. These where dropped in favor of the R-4360 28 cylinder radial. A true Hemi with the valves rotated around the axis of the cylinder to improve cooling. Not a bad idea on a 4 row radial
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  46.  @nerd1000ify  Yes I know about the limitations of sleeve valves in automotive use. Between variable lift, valve timing, intake management, direct injection etc today's automotive engine is far superior to the engines of 40 years ago. In aircraft engines it was found that once you get above a certain bore size poppet valves simply cannot provide enough fuel/air mixture into the cylinder. Plus with larger valves you get into the problem of higher and higher spring rates and other issues. And yes I know about the centerless grinder issue. Although I thought they were Nortons. The Sabre may have been a fantastic engine but was it really more effective than a Griffon. I am of the opinion the best A/C engines of the period were the Merlin, the DB-601, the BMW 804 (?) And the P&W R-2800.
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  47.  @carllinden533  Side load wear and piston slap are two different things. Piston slap is the piston rocking side to side as it goes up and down. The amount of rocking is directly related to the side clearance between the piston skirt and the cylinder walls. Piston skirts actually are not round. they are slightly elliptical with the major axis of the ellipse at 90 degrees to the wrist pin. Also since the advent of modern cnc controled turning equipment the skirt may also be barrel shaped top to bottom. The turning machines i was familiar with used an amplifier to control the tool when cutting the skirt. The service engineer when in house during install had a special tool that he could load in. After machining the skirt would have G & L on one side and Giddings and Lewis on the other.
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  48. For those in the US old enough to remember there used to be TIMEX commercials that featured John Cameron Sweazey. The commercials were all about how rugged the watches were. Volvo ran a commercial that went. "We strapped this John Cameron Sweazey inside this Volvo......"
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  49. I still think if this is real and not snake oil it involves a sleeve with an eccentric bore. This eccentric sleeve rotates in the big end of the con rod allowing the connecting rod to have a longer effective length at various points in the rotation of the crankshaft And the this pops up in my infeed
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  50. About the only thing I see new in this concept is the ability to change the phase angle on the two Cam Plates. Barrel Engines of one form or another have been around for over 100 years. A lot of the proposed ones were in the aviation industry.
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