I really need to get a mill
mke said:Turns out I had a friend learning to cast stuff who was willing to give it a go if I paid for the material...like $100
With all of the other awesomeness in this thread, I feel like this discussion of casting was glossed over. Can someone identify what's going on in each of these photos? Is that wood in your mill to make patterns? Are those same patterns painted green and/or coated with some kind of mold release agent for making sand molds? Are those things that look like bricks sand + binder that were pressed with the pattern to make sand molds?
The good news, I finished up the replacement cylinder and got to the rest of the cylinders while the hone was out.
The pistons say to set them at 0.0035" min clearance....which way back seemed high for a street engine and I set them at 3. That choice turned out good as it left a little meat to re-hone and I went to 4...which I think means it's now safe to add a 200-250hp NOS system.
The bad news is I must have been wearing my rose colored glasses when I did the tear down and decided only #8 needed to be replaced. 9 &11 have rust damage the didn't come close to cleaning up....its down the bore but.....2&3 have rust damage (i guess from when the welded intake ports were leaking) near the top and #1 has a nasty score. They're scrap, well I could get them NSC played but that is about $200 each and I'd need to do all 12 for $2400 vs new blanks are $100 each....so I ONLY need to have $500 talk with Lana then spend another 3 or 4 days machining them.
In reply to Syscrush :
pic 1 is the CAD files I sent pulled into his software. Then he expanded them for shrinkge (hot metal expands, then shrinks as it cools so you need to start with a pattern that is oversize. He also added draft (angles on the sides so the pattern pulls out of the sand nicely).
pic 2 is the patterns being CNC milled (his mill not mine). Its common to use wood because it cuts fast and is plenty accurate and durable enough for most sand cast pattern. High volume stuff would use metal patterns but for 1 offs it almost alway wood.
pic 3 is the patterns painted to seal and smooth the surface
pic 4 are blocks of sand after the patterns were pressed into then and flow channels cut to allow the metal to be pored in and air to escape.
pic 5 is the sand blocks mated as top/bottom pairs and coated with a little flux it looks like to help the metal flow
pic 6 is the "as cast" parts with 1/2 the mold removed. The extra bits are the flow channels added in pic 4 that will need to be cut off
pic 7 is the finished parts after machining. the bottom sealing surface was sanded flat and the top hole drilled and a decorative ring milled to look like OEM ferrari 400i covers I was trying match but to fit the TR heads to seal off the distributor drives and cam ends.
Darton says the 5 cylinder blanks will ship tomorrow, then a week or so on the truck.
While wait I moved back to the heads. I pulled the exhaust seats out of the damaged head. It went pretty smooth, only pulled the weld off 1. They were a bugger to weld, they bubbled and spit metal onto the tungsten so it looked a lot more mig than tig but I got them.
I popped the rest of the seats out then remember I never faced the 2nd head to match the 1st so I took care of that.
With the seats all out I realized theres no way the same size seats, that I bought back in August are going to work. The book says the press should be 0.0035"..... I think the are int the 0.001-0.000 range, so I need more new seats.
Called the place got them from, which even though it's the manufacturers web site when you click buy the order goes to a 3rd party service, after 15 minutes on hold I got " we have a 30 day return policy and this is past that time sir.....". Called the manufacturer and was told the 3rd party handles all there sales blah blah....Lana's more pissed than I am.
I'm going to replace the guide in #8 and closer inspection found 6 guides that are wonky and never should have been installed. It looks like I pushed the drill too hard and drilled not so straight....centered inside the port, not so centered at the stem seal :oops:
I also added a little more weld in the damaged port. On the exhaust side between the seats it didn't quite keep up when I was milling the chamber...better to have extra.
Distracted again. Took nearly every clamp I own but I got the the warped mess of a door straight and now have a place to add insulation should I even get to it. 240 grit gave it a nice sheen.
The coolant manifold mount did have much meat for the bolts, 1 was already helicoiled, so I'm adding a bit to them
mke said:In reply to Syscrush :
pic 1 is the CAD files I sent pulled into his software. Then he expanded them for shrinkge (hot metal expands, then shrinks as it cools so you need to start with a pattern that is oversize. He also added draft (angles on the sides so the pattern pulls out of the sand nicely).
pic 2 is the patterns being CNC milled (his mill not mine). Its common to use wood because it cuts fast and is plenty accurate and durable enough for most sand cast pattern. High volume stuff would use metal patterns but for 1 offs it almost alway wood.
pic 3 is the patterns painted to seal and smooth the surface
pic 4 are blocks of sand after the patterns were pressed into then and flow channels cut to allow the metal to be pored in and air to escape.
pic 5 is the sand blocks mated as top/bottom pairs and coated with a little flux it looks like to help the metal flow
pic 6 is the "as cast" parts with 1/2 the mold removed. The extra bits are the flow channels added in pic 4 that will need to be cut off
pic 7 is the finished parts after machining. the bottom sealing surface was sanded flat and the top hole drilled and a decorative ring milled to look like OEM ferrari 400i covers I was trying match but to fit the TR heads to seal off the distributor drives and cam ends.
Thanks very much for the detailed info.
With the increasing availability of 3D printing technologies, you have at least 3 other ways to get from drawings to finished parts like that:
If you had it to do again, and didn't have a buddy who wanted to get into casting, would you still go the same route, or take one of the above approaches?
Syscrush said:Thanks very much for the detailed info.
With the increasing availability of 3D printing technologies, you have at least 3 other ways to get from drawings to finished parts like that:
- Print the parts directly using direct metal laser sintering.
- Print PLA patterns and then cast using a lost PLA method.
- Sand casting into 3D printed molds.
If you had it to do again, and didn't have a buddy who wanted to get into casting, would you still go the same route, or take one of the above approaches?
The purpose of those parts was mostly cosmetic. The 400i had a lot of sand cast stuff, the 308 and TR were beginning to convert most stuff to much smoother casting processes including die cast on the top pretty up parts. When I weld stuff the cast look is gone forever but I thought adding a few cast smaller bits would be a nice finishing touch and nod to the 400i. I set up the 4 cam bolt holes on the "front" of the engine to use an OEM 400i cast cover, the stock engine only had 2 but I set up for 4. Then on the "back of the engine Brian made me matching cast covers. I could have made billet parts WAY faster but they would look just like everything else on the engine. As for how to best make the mold, that was up to brian and since he has a CNC and wood is really cheap wood it was. That is really all there was to the choices.
Welded up the second head
But the warped flange on head 1 kept nagging at me....its just the edge so it would still seal fine but. ...
Which of course let to welding the face on head 2. For anyone interested I usually run a small bead around the edge first whole it's relatively cool to try to get a cleaner corner then go back and fill it in. The head on the mill is already at 30 degrees from yesterday's drilling so quick to throw them in and mill the faces.
I'm sure we've all heard the old adage "If it moves and shouldn't: duct tape. If it doesn't move and should: WD40."
This thread makes me think "If there's no metal where there should be: weld. If there's metal where there shouldn't be: mill."
In reply to Syscrush :
And when I'm milling weld I hose it with WD-40 so there you go!
Second head done
I also went ahead and snugged them onto the block to be sure the 2 flanges came out at matching height so I shouldn't have coolant leaking. Back to the guides I guess.
Yesterday I thought the intake seats were ready, today I realized there was a small area that hadn't cleaned up on both.....it turns out standing at the machine I can only see 3/4 of the way around the holes.... DOH!
It's fixed now and I dressed all the exhaust seat holes back to round so they are also ready. Also cleaned the very obviously doesn't belong weld out of the ports.....but they are still rough until I finish cutting the seats and can be certain about what goes and more importantly what stays....mostly it was a for my mental health move as it looks a lot more like a functional combustion chamber now :)
Spotted this in the garage this morning in the corner kind of behind Lana's car....almost like I wasn't supposed to notice it and keep doing house work. Time to make 5 more cylinders.
So I got going cutting cylinders and as #3 came off step 1 I realized #1&2 are scrap :(
#1 bore looks nice but its tapered WAY too much to fix. #2 has less taper but with the tool chatter I'm sure it won't clean up. #3 is good....I was playing with setup and this 1 cut much better but now I'm 2 blanks short. Funny think is I started with the exact setup I used to cut the last one a couple weeks ago....I guess the tools were just right on the edge of trash.
I didn't order replacements yet, I tuned up the drawing and asked for a finished price before deciding how to proceed.
jdogg said:Absolute mad man. My favorite build thread on GRM right now
I feel like calling this a "build thread" is like calling the moon the "big piece of cheese in the sky." I don't know what to call this, other than insanity. Carry on.
In reply to mke :
I have never seen anything like this I'm in awe about the craftsmanship with that being said wouldn't it be more practical to just take a motor out of a 550 Marinello and put it in this 308 that's my 1st question . My second question , do you have confidence that this car will run like a real Ferrari V12 should run ? I think it would be amazing if it did no matter what horsepower the engine makes I wouldn't be concerned about horsepower I would be concerned about the motor running correctly and having reliability
I have had a Ferrari 328 for many years and the reliability has been impeccable.
Thanks
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