The real question is "Will this thing ever get finished?"
The answer is I think not.
Ouch. I guess the truth hurts the most
I've got enough 1/2" 321 stainless ordered to do the exhaust flanges for both cylinder heads. Wasn't terribly cheap at $100, but it's best for what I want to do. I hope to get at least one set milled out this weekend.
[This message has been edited by FastIndyFiero (edited 01-26-2009).]
off topic but me and my uncle want to put some together. what are they runing nowdays?
Cost pretty much depends on how much you want to spend.
The first one I built cost about $700 to get up and running with a decent barrel/upper, standard M4 collapsible stock, pretty much standard lower:
About another $500 and I had a decent optic setup and a nice MAGPUL PRS stock.
The one I'm building right now I've spent about $800 on, and I've yet to get a barrel, handguard and stock, which total, will be another $1000 or a little less, without any kind of optic. Factoring in a nice Eotech holosight would be another $400.
Pics in its current form:
Here's a model I made to get a feel for what I'm going after.
Pics show it with the handguard and flash hider I'm going for. Final form will be a 10.5" Short Barrel Rifle (SBR). I'm also about to put my BATF Form 1 paperwork through for building a suppressor, which would add another 6-7" of length. If I permanently attached it to the barrel, I could get around the $200 SBR tax stamp and pay for the tax stamp for the suppressor only.
nice! i cant do much with one in collage but i could start with the lower receiver and when im done with school get the rest and work my way up, i would be going for a SPR style.
Hey, the email bounced again, so here is a preview of the drawing I got with my parts. As Imentioned it's 22ft long and has 5 views, but not of too much value from a design standpoint.
[This message has been edited by Blowd (edited 02-05-2009).]
May as well put up a photo of the head. I got some of the shelf dust off of it. For the rest of the group, I just scored a basically NOS SD4 16v head and shortblock ass'y. Lots of little bags and boxes of parts still to sort through. I don't actually have a use/plan for it yet, but just couldn't pass up the oportunity to get my hands on one. Nate and Tom have been kind enough to help me out with some documentation and info. Thanx Guys.
Wow, looks nice. Does that intake look like a production unit, or custom? I'll try emailing you again, can you PM me the bounce error you're getting? My email seems to be working okay on my end.
hey fast indy, your Indy fast yet? j/k If I was closer I swear I would go there and finish it for you.
get er done
I want to see that thing smoke every thing on the road.
Hehe...Donate 5-6 thou and I'd have it done in a month
Aluminum test flange is done, will know fitment tomorrow. It's .500" thick, has a .25" recess so the transitions can be nested inside the flange and welded inside and out. I'll probably also leave a little more material radially around the port, just for a little extra stiffness and space for the weld.
Also planning on cutting (on the CNC machine) a 2 piece mandrel for forming the transitions from oval to round, hoping to do that this week.
Port alignment looks nice (I jus luv lookin down those ports). So that's probably gonna take a pretty good notch on the water pump, but will definitely make for a trouble free header. Keep us posted.
I was recently thinking about becoming a little more ambitious with the exhaust flange project. Because I am already investing a fair amount of time in cutting these flanges out myself, I started thinking about reverting back to my original plan from several years ago and doing the entire transition in a single billet. Because I don't have my own NDI/X-ray inspection quality control department, minimizing welds is one of my top priorities in the design of my exhaust system. With an addition of a couple of machining operations, I could eliminate having to cut out a mandrel and form the transitions by hand and having them welded onto the flange.
This got me thinking about what F1 does. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find any kind of good information or even closeup pictures of the parts that I was looking for, but what I WAS able to find was a seller on eBay clearing out old CART/IRL exhaust parts. I figured this may be more useful to my turbocharged application anyway (though I won't succumb to claiming that my level of build or tune even approaches that of an IRL engine). So, just because I was curious, I wound up with three flanges; two from successive generations of late 90's Mercedes Ilmor engine, and a flange from a Chevy Aurora engine. The Aurora flange is billet Inconel while the Mercedes flanges are cast stainless or Inconel, I'm not sure which. These confirmed my sneaking suspicion that a one-piece transition could be a suitable solution to the problem of transitioning from the port to the round tube, and looked fairly similar to what I had already worked up in CATIA. On to the pics.
These are obviously no-expense-spared pieces, with the Mercedes flange even sporting webbing bracing the flange mounting points. Both transitions sport a very sharp knife edge where the ports merge, though something I'm not concerned about because my ports merge inside the head, not far past the bowl. Also evident is the relatively thin flange at the base, both measure around .15" thick where the bolt face would be. This was somewhat suprising to me, though I suspect I can't build a flange that thin because of the Cossie's 3-bolt flange versus the 4-bolt IRL parts. More later.
Am I missing something? Aluminum exhaust flanges- they must just be for mockup, right?
Inconel is definitely a much better choice for turbo exhaust system temperature considerations. Your exhaust will be hotter than the melting temp of aluminum!
Am I missing something? Aluminum exhaust flanges- they must just be for mockup, right?
Inconel is definitely a much better choice for turbo exhaust system temperature considerations. Your exhaust will be hotter than the melting temp of aluminum!
Yes...Just for mockup/test run of my CNC code. The flange that you see in 6061 there will be replicated in 321 Stainless. Austenitic stainless can be somewhat difficult to machine unless the toolpaths are just right (it work hardens very quickly, so making shallow or redudant cuts will cause very fast tool wear, or breakage).
In terms of cost and lack of availabilty (and difficulty in machining), Inconel is orders above even 321SS. I don't even want to consider what the same 1/2 x 5 x 36" plate that ran $100 in 321SS would be in Inconel. On the other hand, doing 1-piece transitions (instead of just flanges) in 321 is not completely outside of the realm of possibility, but again, the hunk of 2" x 4" x 24" hunk of SS that it would take wouldn't be cheap.
Okay, not really. We're finally in the process of installing a CNC machine (Haas VF-3) where I work, so that will help getting some of these odds and ends done. Also planning on making the rocker stud girdle and the main cap girdle.
I pulled the intake cam off of Alan's head to get journal sizes and do some general measuring. The cams are gun-drilled, with an oiling hole drilled at each bearing. The inner two bearings are plain, while the outer two are grooved for oiling. This corresponds with the holes drilled in the outer journals in the head for the pressure feed to the cam core I suppose.
Well...Right now the list of assembled parts is somewhat, ahhhhh.....slim. It was much better before I disassembled the short block and the head. Right now I'm looking for a shop in town that can do a proper hot plateau hone. Also working with a different shop to see if they can follow my design and get the 321SS transitions welded up, not sure I trust them. Thinking about doing the welding myself.
Looking only at the numbers i.e. time and money invested, the odds of completion are very, very high. My desire to "finish" this project is way, way up there. I do think about it every day and I run numbers or do back of the envelope designs at least 3-4 times a week. Right now the biggest enemy of this project is probably my patience - the abundance of it. To me, perfection has always outweighed a timely completion, and there's never really been any thought to not completing. Maybe I'm also milking it a little bit. Work on a project for 7 years and it becomes a bit of a comfy chair that's easy to relax in. Progress has definitely slowed in the last two years, BUT I have a house, a 1200sqft garage, and a wife to show for it . Also been dinking around with the other AR15.
FastIndyFiero:...Right now the list of assembled parts is somewhat, ahhhhh.....slim....
That means a short list which shouldn't take much time. Soooooooooooo, after 5 years of posting, please list the assembled parts (or does the "Fast" in your user name refer to your typing skills? ).
I don't have anything on the engine put together anymore...It needs a hot-block .002" plateau hone still. Which reminds me, I can modify my deck plate tomorrow.
The 2v head just needs to be assembled, but I don't have a valve spring compressor big enough to handle the job. The springs hit >600lbs at the open position...I tried using the compressor I had, and it wouldn't even get the top of the retainer even with the valve stem
But, the day is not without progress. I used my mandrel to make my first transition. The tube size isn't proper though, apparently the O'reilly's tubing sizes are +/- 1/8". This tube is waaay too big. In the picture where's it's sitting around the mandrel, the top of the tube should be very snug up around it. Instead it's got about an 1/8th on either side. It has a thinner wall thickness than the real stuff too, so that didn't help. It did, however, prove my concept, which means I'll be ordering some stainless this week.
Fast, A long time ago (10 yrs+) I was inquiring about one of these heads and was told they had an oiling problem. I don't know if it was in the lifter area or the head itself. I don't remember if it was the guy that ran FOCOA or his mechanic that had the Green Machine. Was wondering if you ever heard of anything along those lines. If so what did you do to address the issue?
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85 GT 3.4 14.9 @ 90 1.9 60' Old TH125/3.06 Unknown New 4T60/3.42
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