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87gn
10-23-2003, 08:19 PM
i had a idea today while doing a 3 angle valve job on some 360 heads that im putting on a 318. i was thinking about the pistons in diesel injector pumps, you know, the pistons that are so tight that if you remove them and wave them around in the air just for a second that they collect enough dust so that they will not go back in until you wipe them down with a lint free cloth.

any how, back to the heads, my idea was to cut some heads and find out how thick the metal is around the combustion chamber and then once i know that info ill take another set of heads from the same batch and mill a grove to tight tolerances around the combustion chamber. next i would resleave the engine BUT i would not mill all of the sleave down to the deck, i would leave as much of the sleave as possable on of course once i cut some heads up and find out how much meat is there to play with ill know for sure but for explination purposes lets say 1/8 of a inch.

now think back to the OLD vw engines, how they dint use head gaskets, BINGO.

my idea is to freeze the sleaves and then drop the heads on them and then torqe them, if all works out well they will instantly swell inside the groves, kinda like how you instal new valve seats in a head or "regear" a worn out tractor flywheel.

i think im on to something for high boost aplications, see, if a diesel fuel injector pump piston can pump that fuel to 3000 psi or so with out any rings or gaskets, just metal to metal, i dont see why my idea for headgasket-less heads could not deal with high boost presures. infact i would put money on it that the psi of boost that you could run would only be limited by your internals. the only problems i see with this is once the heads are instaled there NOT coming off, i guss you could use a blow torch to heat the heads to make them expand but i kind of question the ease of that. this also limits you to running steal heads, preferably made out of the same steal as the sleave for expansion purposes.

sniperSI
10-27-2003, 12:31 PM
arent the pistons in a pumps way smaller then those in the block of an engine? I would think all that mass may have something to do with it not being a viable option in an engine. Also if the head expanded from the block at all which mostly happens under a high load may life the head off and blow the sleeves apart since there is nothing for the sleves to hold back against since the would be no cylinder wall there.

I dunno just throwing out some things at ya.


edit: Also I think the gasket might be their as a point of failure, so when the engine is taking loads it can't handle it blows a gasket(in some cases) instead of going and going and going until it reachs the breaking point and disingrates the rods.

87gn
10-28-2003, 05:41 PM
arent the pistons in a pumps way smaller then those in the block of an engine? I would think all that mass may have something to do with it not being a viable option in an engine. Also if the head expanded from the block at all which mostly happens under a high load may life the head off and blow the sleeves apart since there is nothing for the sleves to hold back against since the would be no cylinder wall there.

ok, i dont think you understood what i was saying, the injector pumps gave me the idea but it has nothing to do with the design.

even if the heads expand there still bolted on with head bolts. besides, the sleaves would be like normal sleaves that they put in engines now BUT they would not be milled down to the deck. i do get what your saying about the failure point though, one thing that comes to mind is a "pop off valve" like in some superchargers and carb spacers. the only diffrence would be that instead of poping outwards this would pop inwards, like a normal engine valve. you could have the valve ran off a silinoid like the valves on some diesel engines and a knock sensor, when the computer "hears" 13 degres of KR it will pop the valve open releaseing all the pressure to the exhaust system. sure the car would fall FLAT on its face performance wise for a few seconds but you would not have to worrie about snaped internals or blown parts.

hey, its just a thaught