Cool video about creative rulebook interpretation:
I watched that last night. Definitely a fun watch. Shaving the head at an angle to change the port-to-chamber orientation - genius.
Ian F (Forum Supporter) said:I watched that last night. Definitely a fun watch. Shaving the head at an angle to change the port-to-chamber orientation - genius.
Right??? I love those Smokey-esque hacks. Brilliant
In a different documentary (I want to say Prodrive) said that two cylinder heads were cut rotated and fused together. A a price of 30 to 40 thousand pounds each. So not just machining to an angle was involved.
I guess that's what killed Super Touring = factory teams for the British, European, German, French, Italian and Benelux Championships must have got kind of pricey.
BarryNorman said:In a different documentary (I want to say Prodrive) said that two cylinder heads were cut rotated and fused together. A a price of 30 to 40 thousand pounds each. So not just machining to an angle was involved.
Not quite. They made entirely new camboxes because of reasons not covered in the video: the Volvo heads use the "valve cover" as a combination of cover and cam caps. Between that and the geometry of the cams vs the valves, there is a severe lift limitation.
Touring Car ruleset said that material may be removed but may not be added. No welding. But by shaving off the whole cambox section, they met the letter of the rules. The parts they added were not part of the cylinder head anymore.
The bit about angle milling being the cutting edge tech irked me because angle milling is as old as valve in head engines. Everybody forced to run production head castings was doing it, back to the 60s and maybe earlier. Heck, it is still done today, turning 23 degree Chevy heads (production valve angle) into 20 or even more extreme. It also raises the compression significantly because of pushrod engine reasons.
VWMS was going through something like four or five heads to get one that didn't fountain coolant due to how much they had to modify them... and even then they would only last a couple heat cycles before they would crack. They were spending 10x what Formula 1 did on cylinder heads because of this.
AMC Pro Stock engines, however, DID have two heads sliced height wise and furnace brazed together.
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