LocostUSA.com

Learning how to build Lotus Seven replicas...together!
It is currently March 28, 2024, 4:12 am

All times are UTC - 5 hours [ DST ]




Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 242 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ... 17  Next
Author Message
PostPosted: September 18, 2010, 7:01 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: April 26, 2008, 6:06 pm
Posts: 3268
Location: Under the weather. (Seattle)
firebat45 wrote:
Replace "engineering student" with any of our names, and "engine" with "car", and hopefully you'll see the irony in that statement.
Since sticking a glorified pile of steel tubing together with a hot-melt metal gun and bolting a bunch of pre-engineered components to it has absolutely nothing in common with the advanced engineering and manufacturing require for developing a reliable engine from scratch...There is no irony to see. It's apples and avacados.

_________________
-Justin

"Orville Wright did not have a pilots license." - Gordon MacKenzie


Top
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: September 18, 2010, 9:47 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: April 12, 2010, 5:40 pm
Posts: 2081
Location: san francisco bay area
the guy designing a new car/engine/rocketship may not know a thing about the manufacturing requirements for xxxx grade steel, just what its properties are. i don't need to know how to cast and size a babbit bearing, its easier, faster and cheaper to go buy them in the size i need. .. it was cool to learn how though and and i've applied the knowledge i picked up then in other ways on other projects. as i occasionally remind myself, wilbur and orville built in their spare time and used formulas, on PAPER no less, for calculating boat hulls and props to come up with their flying machine design. whoda thunk back then that air (sort of) follows the same rules as water?

_________________
"There are times when a broken tool is better than a sound one, or a twisted personality more useful than a whole one.
For instance, a whole beer bottle isn't half the weapon that half a beer bottle is ..." Randall Garrett


Top
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: September 20, 2010, 2:17 pm 
Offline

Joined: July 23, 2008, 2:54 pm
Posts: 250
Location: Richmond, VA
Please come join the forum and discuss there:
http://www.orionengineeredmotorwerks.com/phpBB3/


Top
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: September 21, 2010, 12:57 am 
Offline
Auto Motive, My friends call me Motive
User avatar

Joined: October 23, 2007, 11:56 pm
Posts: 270
Location: Spanish Fork, UT
Wow horizonjob, I'm not sure what you are trying to get at or what your problem is. The thing with power/cc is that it can also be interpreted as power/weight. Sorry but your statement "Focus on light and small with big displacement" doesn't make sense. I can tell you what a cc will cost you, a pound. Just because a larger engine has larger cylinder holes in it doesn't make it lighter.

Personally I think a v-8 based on 600CC motorcycle heads sounds the coolest. From a manufacturing point of view the head with the valvetrain will be the hardest part. Using an existing head that is know to be good to 12,000+ RPM would be a plus. Give it a longer stroke than the bike motor with a flat plane crank would just be awsome.

For the rotory fans, there is a member on the cnczone.com forum that built a small rotory. Might be an interesting read for some of you.

_________________
My Build Log: viewtopic.php?t=5850
CAD Drawings:http://locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=6376&p=62465#p62465


Top
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: September 21, 2010, 3:12 am 
Offline
Always Moore!
User avatar

Joined: November 9, 2007, 3:40 pm
Posts: 4074
Location: Pittsburgh, PA
motive wrote:
Personally I think a v-8 based on 600CC motorcycle heads sounds the coolest.


Would a 554cc v8 using 250cc heads suffice? :D

http://dot.etec.wwu.edu/fsae/viking30.htm
http://dot.etec.wwu.edu/fsae/v30/v30pics.html


You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.

_________________
-Andrew
Build Log
Youtube


Top
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: September 22, 2010, 11:55 am 
Offline

Joined: July 23, 2008, 2:54 pm
Posts: 250
Location: Richmond, VA
That suuuuuure is perdy.


Top
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: September 22, 2010, 1:24 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: October 7, 2009, 9:58 pm
Posts: 396
Location: Waterloo, ON, Canada
Wow. I think someone else said it best on another forum I found in reference to this engine: "Why don't they just open source it?!?" No kidding! Please, someone release the data for it! I wonder what the power band for it looks like.

554cc may be a bit small still for even a Locost... but a nice 1000+cc V8 would just be sweeeeeeeeet.... If anyone has access to a 600cc bike engine they want to base a V8 around, I'll do your CAD work for that too.

_________________
Andrew

Exploring every single option, permutation, and possibility, to figure out what flavour of awesome I want.


Top
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: September 23, 2010, 3:04 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: October 7, 2009, 9:58 pm
Posts: 396
Location: Waterloo, ON, Canada
Just found this: a Dutch baker made his own Honda V8 from two 400cc inline 4s:

http://www.fasterandfaster.net/2008/03/tjitze-tjoelkers-homemade-honda-v8.html

Has a video of the engine running in the bike on a bench.

_________________
Andrew

Exploring every single option, permutation, and possibility, to figure out what flavour of awesome I want.


Top
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: September 24, 2010, 9:34 am 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: November 12, 2008, 6:29 am
Posts: 3567
killer_siller wrote:

The major disadvantage I see to lightness with the 4A is that its an iron block. Yes, its compact and light and thin-cast, but its still iron.


Thats just plain not true - cast iron is no heavier than aluminium for blocks because of the required ribbing for aluminium for the strength.

This has been proven over and over and you need to look no further than the weight of many 4 cylinder Honda aluminium engines that hover over 200kgs. Audi famously with their 5 cylinder increased the weight by 25kgs when they went to all aluminium by the time it was strong enough. The famous '80's BMW F1 Turbo engine was standard based cast iron unit and Renault used a cast one for their qualifying (aluminium for the race).


If you want to make a special engine then go for something different, you ain't going to beat the big boys at their own game and your not going to beat 210+hp out of a 4AGE that some get so whats the point?

Something like rotary valve head or the fore mentioned cheap V8 - I would suggest 2 x K24 Honda VTEC heads etc. The other choice is one that a company is now making, a 'normal' inline block for the Hyabusa (name your Superbike) internals and head to take a normal car type gearbox even to further that a twin counter rotating crank Square 8 (perfect primary balance).

Hard to start a bespoke engine program in this day and age of manufacturers getting 100+hp per litre with a 3 year warranty to boot in a standard car (Honda S2000 for example).


Top
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: September 24, 2010, 1:02 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: April 12, 2010, 5:40 pm
Posts: 2081
Location: san francisco bay area
cheapracer wrote:
Hard to start a bespoke engine program in this day and age of manufacturers getting 100+hp per litre with a 3 year warranty to boot in a standard car (Honda S2000 for example).

very true but without the limitations of 100kmile (minimum under current us emissions laws, soon to be 150kmiles) emissions systems required service life there are a lot of toys that can be built.
:rally: warranty smarranty those go void if you race the vehicle anyways.......

_________________
"There are times when a broken tool is better than a sound one, or a twisted personality more useful than a whole one.
For instance, a whole beer bottle isn't half the weapon that half a beer bottle is ..." Randall Garrett


Top
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: September 25, 2010, 9:59 am 
Offline
We are Slotus!
User avatar

Joined: October 6, 2009, 9:29 am
Posts: 7651
Location: Tallahassee, FL (The Center of the Known Universe)
Oldejack says:
Quote:
warranty smarranty those go void if you race the vehicle anyways.......


You get the "Texas Motorcycle Warranty" - "If it breaks, you can keep all the pieces at no extra charge." :D

Sort of like my insurance agent. Only things she learned in insurance school were, "There will be a slight rate increase" and "We don't cover that." (At least it seems that way to me.)

OK, ya'll can go back to talkin' about engines now... Sorry... Had to say it...

JDK


Top
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: September 26, 2010, 11:18 am 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: November 12, 2008, 6:29 am
Posts: 3567
By the way and FWIW, there have been a number of fabricated blocks over the years - that means plate aluminium or plate steel and various odd shapes welded together bypassing most of the serious and expensive machining processes.

There was a few earlier production motors made with this method too.


Top
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: September 26, 2010, 5:35 pm 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: April 12, 2010, 5:40 pm
Posts: 2081
Location: san francisco bay area
so.......
use the 4 pair of the second set of connecting rods http://tinyurl.com/fiat-connecting-rod paired to make a flat 8 on a 4 cylinder crank. .. use maybe a gixxer r1000 crank(59 mm stroke) and zx1200 pistons (79mm) pistons makes 2.3 liters with a rod ratio of 1.86 so thats all good. use the zx heads and valvetrain, i bet you could see well north of 10k rpm. question is can the bearing surfaces be made to match up?

_________________
"There are times when a broken tool is better than a sound one, or a twisted personality more useful than a whole one.
For instance, a whole beer bottle isn't half the weapon that half a beer bottle is ..." Randall Garrett


Top
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: September 27, 2010, 10:54 am 
Offline

Joined: February 28, 2009, 11:09 pm
Posts: 1307
Location: Connersville, Indiana
cheapracer, not trying to be argumentative, but if aluminum is no lighter, why would anyone (at least OEM) mess with aluminum for use in engine blocks? Aluminum introduces a lot headaches, expansion and warpage being obvious. Can that much be saved in machining time?

Bill


Top
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
PostPosted: September 27, 2010, 11:05 am 
Offline
User avatar

Joined: September 18, 2009, 10:10 am
Posts: 116
oldejack wrote:
so.......
use the 4 pair of the second set of connecting rods http://tinyurl.com/fiat-connecting-rod paired to make a flat 8 on a 4 cylinder crank. .. use maybe a gixxer r1000 crank(59 mm stroke) and zx1200 pistons (79mm) pistons makes 2.3 liters with a rod ratio of 1.86 so thats all good. use the zx heads and valvetrain, i bet you could see well north of 10k rpm. question is can the bearing surfaces be made to match up?

so how do two fiat rods fit in one section of the gixxer crank? would you need a separator?
My question is whether a flat 8 would fit well in a locost (of course you could make it work). how wide would this be?

_________________
Jest another locostusa lurker... for now


Top
 Profile  
Reply with quote  
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 242 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ... 17  Next

All times are UTC - 5 hours [ DST ]


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 11 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot post attachments in this forum

Jump to:  
cron
POWERED_BY