FrankenFerrari engine

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mk e
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Re: FrankenFerrari engine

Post by mk e »

Runit wrote:I know of an old Ferrari race V12 that developed water leaks around some of the inlet guides. Every attempt to fix the leaks with oversize guides had short lived success or was an outright failure. The owner's mechanic's "it's off to a new owner" solution was to connect the engine to the cooling system of a street car (using the heater hoses) and circulate coolant and stop leak through it for a couple of hours.
I did think of that!!!!!

...but since its staying with me for a while it's probably best I didn't think of that :lol:

The first was an easy fix, the second is still leaking after grind/weld so either I didn't have the right spot or the crack is growing. The guides are currently 9/16 which is 2mm oversize.....so I guess worst case I pop a 5/8 or 3/4 hole in and weld around top and bottom and re-drill for a stock size guide...and then make all new guides becasue these are custom with a 5mm stem instead of stock 7mm. Thinking about it just doing them all might be the fastest, easiest, most reliable way to proceed.......I'll spend a couple more hours chasing leaks before using the nuclear option I guess.
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Re: FrankenFerrari engine

Post by turbobaldur »

Runit wrote:I know of an old Ferrari race V12 that developed water leaks around some of the inlet guides. Every attempt to fix the leaks with oversize guides had short lived success or was an outright failure. The owner's mechanic's "it's off to a new owner" solution was to connect the engine to the cooling system of a street car (using the heater hoses) and circulate coolant and stop leak through it for a couple of hours.
I think some car manufacturers have shipped cars with some kind of leak stop additive in the cooling system to address porosity of alloy head/block castings that may not be 100% reliably detected before assembly.
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Re: FrankenFerrari engine

Post by gofaster »

I some cases it helps to bore the hole oversize, press fit a piece a piece of 6061, weld it on both ends, and bore it for a new guide. For a one off effort or an unobtainium antique it's often worth the effort.
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Re: FrankenFerrari engine

Post by mk e »

gofaster wrote:I some cases it helps to bore the hole oversize, press fit a piece a piece of 6061, weld it on both ends, and bore it for a new guide. For a one off effort or an unobtainium antique it's often worth the effort.
That is exactly where my mind was heading.....i do want to see if I can avoid all that work by just fixing the trouble spots but I don't want to spend a lot of time chasing my tail when I know a plug and re-bore would fix it.

I've got to get back into the shop.....it's just been a crazy busy spring summer so for :(
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Re: FrankenFerrari engine

Post by englertracing »

mk e wrote: The big money on the cam was the grinding.....$100/lobe or $4800 :cry:
:shock:
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Re: FrankenFerrari engine

Post by mk e »

englertracing wrote:
mk e wrote: The big money on the cam was the grinding.....$100/lobe or $4800 :cry:
:shock:
I know!

That did include rough grind, copper plate, heat treat, straighten, then finish grind the lobes and jounals...but it was a lot of money.

I need to get back to this, hopefully I can make some progress this week.
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Re: FrankenFerrari engine

Post by mk e »

mk e wrote:
I need to get back to this, hopefully I can make some progress this week.
I actually did something this week! There is current just 1 tiny little whole let in the 1st head. The vast majority of the issues were porosity in the welds....just tiny bubles that opened up during the porting so I'm guessing once I start the cleanup work this weekend there will be at least 1 more round of welding.

There was a nasty 1" crack below one of the intake seats, right where the port runner meet the deck/seat aera in the casting......it must have cracked when I beat the seats in. Its fixed now, just need to replace the seat.

I'm testing at 50psi....I started at 20, 30, now 50 and I should probably up that to 60 I guess to be sure all is well.....these ports are pretty thin in some places though........
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Re: FrankenFerrari engine

Post by Leftcoaster »

If it's weld porosity alone rather than cracks or structural issues, believe MadBill, Darren Morgan and others have posted effective treatments such as pressurising the coolant jackets with "water glass" and/or other special solutions
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Re: FrankenFerrari engine

Post by mk e »

Leftcoaster wrote:If it's weld porosity alone rather than cracks or structural issues, believe MadBill, Darren Morgan and others have posted effective treatments such as pressurising the coolant jackets with "water glass" and/or other special solutions
I've seen some of those posts and at a minimum there will be stop-leak in the coolant :)

I think I'm winning the battle with the welding torch and will press on a bit further but if it starts to look like all I'm doing is chasing my tail I'll be re-reading some of those posts!

I've only got about 6-8 hours into the repair of this head at this point its just taken my all summer to find those hours. Then guides and seat back in and touched up......probably 20 hours and then I'll guess the same for the other head. It sucks to lose 40 hours but that's really nothing compared to the hundreds I already have into these heads...then another 20 or so to get them back on the engine of course :?
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Re: FrankenFerrari engine

Post by mk e »

What was a tiny leak turned into a pretty big leak once the guide was out. There was a hole about 1/4" down the guide hole...casting porosity i guess because I didn't do any work down there....but its fixed now and the heads holds 60 pis. Then I cleaned up the ports and retested.....still good. I need to clean up the guide and seat holes I worked near....hopefully that doesn't open any holes.

One thing a little concerning is usually when I grind out the defect the grinding alone seals the leak but it reopens clearly when I hit it with the torch....so I wonder if I'll have any surprises after i put it back together :?
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Re: FrankenFerrari engine

Post by mk e »

The guides and seat ard back in and no leaks. Time to finish machine it......which shouldn't cause any new leaks.......
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Re: FrankenFerrari engine

Post by mk e »

Head 1 cleaned up fine with no new leaks and is good to go I think.

Head 2 has been welded (5 ports needed repair), the welds cleaned and does not leak at 60psi. On to reinstalling the guides and machining.

For your viewing enjoyment here's what turned out to be the worst.....it was sealed at 40psi but started leaking at 50 and fell apart when I hit it with the grinder and got about twice as big when I put the torch to it. But it's sealed now. All 5 problem ports were in exactly the same place, a little core shift going on I guess.

In other news I've been playing with the EU code some more trying to make it a bit more efficient and manageable for future new functions. I spend some time starting to convert over to a state based logic system, still needs to be tested. Which brings me to the current project, an engine model. Enginelab has a built in simulator to "run" the code on a pc instead of the ECU for testing and has a "plant" which allows inputs to the ECU to be simulated so I'm trying to build a simulator to act like an engine to do warmup, respond to the throttle and let me play with idle control and such.....we'll see......its kind of a pain in the butt but should be helpful in the long term and gives me something to do at lunch time other than annoy the trumpettes in the politics section :)
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Re: FrankenFerrari engine

Post by mk e »

My wife has me paint the garage instead of finishing my engine :(

But I got some geek stuff done on an engine simulator to "run" the ECU against. I got a pretty good electronic throttle working so you drag a slider to simulate pedal position and the ECU outputs a control signal that the simulator reads and converts to motion then feeds the signal top the TPS sensor input so the ECU thinks it controlling the throttle body. It's got lag and overshoot and everything a real actuator has....I put a little extra lag/overshoot in to make it obvious on the graph. I build a coolant temp simulator too that looks at heat generated at current engine conditions and heats the coolant so the simulator warms up the same way a real engine does, then it outputs the airflow required for cooling which is helpful in sizing the radiator or cools with a fan wiht the temp cyling to the fan switch points. Another 10 or 12 functions or so and it will be useful for something.
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Re: FrankenFerrari engine

Post by mk e »

So with the leaks all fixed and seats recut I thought I was going to cut the replacement exhaust valves (in my anger I damaged a few) to length and get on with reassembly..... Open the 12 valves.....hmmmm......8 that match the the last 24 and are what I expected and 4 that are just a little bit different. Same part numbers, the right stem and head size but not the same head design and 33g instead of 35g, all that metal off the face so different cc in the chamber.

Now to see if I can track down 4 matching valves or I need to replace the other 20......sometime it seems like nothing goes right or easy.
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Re: FrankenFerrari engine

Post by skippy »

I'm really glad you're back on with this project Mark.
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