[TR] Aluminum head?

[Michael Porter]

On 9/2/2019 8:25 PM, Paul Dorsey wrote:
> Why don't more cars have wet sleeve engines?  What was the weekness of 
> this idea?

Remember that the wet-sleeve engine in your car was first introduced 
with the Standard Vanguard in something like 1937-38. It was expensive 
to remove an engine for machining the bores, and with wet sleeves, the 
bores could be removed and replaced with the block in the car, or, in a 
pinch, machined on a lathe.  And, there was good heat transfer from the 
bores to the coolant, so it made sense at the time.  The other 
consideration was that the material that made really long-lasting 
cylinder bore material wasn't that easy to cast in big lumps, like 
engine blocks, without defects. And, an engine block with all that open 
space without cast-in-place bores was simpler to design and cast, and 
was more tolerant of commonplace errors in casting such as core shifts.

Over time, casting science improved, cylinder blocks were improved, 
materials science produced iron alloys that flowed well /and/ had good 
bore-wear characteristics, so wet-sleeve engines became pretty rare 
(except for really huge stationary engines which can't just be yanked 
and sent to the machine shop).


Cheers.


-- 


Michael Porter
Roswell, NM


Never let anyone drive you crazy when you know it's within walking distance....

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://autox.team.net/pipermail/triumphs/attachments/20190902/fb19f0f9/attachment.html>