I have always wondered if a shaving were to get in the cylinder, could it escape?? I know may people port heads, runners, etc and know some Al or steel is bound to end up in there. Thanks

 

Aluminum isn't AS big of a concern, granted people are excessive clean freaks and inevitably someones going to tell you that a spec of dust will ruin your engine, but honestly one or two SMALL aluminum shavings are no concern, unless they get trapped between the valve and seeat and scar it, they'll burn right up, aluminum shavings are used in explosives, and are flamable so to speak. With an oxidizer they become the fuel.


Just dont port the sniz ON the engine


I siamesed my base, blew it out with an air hose, soaked it with super clean, then washed it out with a garden hoze about 4 times, I consider it good to go.

 

A few small shavings won't really cause any damage. The vast majority of them blow out the exhaust as quickly as they go in the intake. Don't make this a regular event, though, OK? Once or twice in an engine's life and you won't have any problems, but don't push it.

 

Ok, so the Al will vaporize?? It melts at 1221 F. What is a flame temperature?? Why do the piston and head not have similar problems? Cooling in the head?

 

Aluminums melting temperatures going to be different for its mass, hold a lighter to a tree, then hold a lighter to a spec of saw dust.


Then there's also the fact that even though its given melting temperature, it will become substantially weaker much sooner, making it nearly harmless to cast or stainless or whatever other matirials you'll find in your combustion chamber.

 

Ok, the melting point of a material is an intrinsic property of that material. A small piece of Al will melt at the same temperature as a piece the size of the moon. It will just take more heat to get it there. This is a huge misconception I hope I cleared up.

Are you saying Al will turn soft or something inside a cylinder??!!!

 

Tpi_roc are you shure that Aluminum is flamable I know that magnazium is flamable but I have worked with aluminum for years and gone all the way to melting it with a torch and never had a piece catch on fire I have never seen a piece decentagrate either. I would have to see that one to believe it. Now when welding aluminum you will have more splatter but to I have never heared of aluminum being flamable.

I am not trying to flame you but I have never seen that happen.

To the origional poster if you have a few small shavings you wont' hurt your engine just don't go and do a full head port and expect everything to be ok. Your engine will produce small ammounts of shavings over time that are picked up by the filter.

 

Explosives are bad.

 

And you are telling me Al is non-ferrous because??

 

I guess I learned my new thing for the day. But do they use it because it is flamable or is it more of a catalist for the other material?

 

Because i wanted to include that.


Is that ok with you?

 

LOL... chill man he just through it in there for people that might not know.

 

not because its "flamable" in the sense of gasoline


its just the fuel that compliments that oxidizing agent the best.

I suppose it may work with KN103 (potasium nitrate) but i dont know that it'd get hot enough to burn/explode.

 

Piston's don't melt for a few reasons. I am pretty sure all pistons are an alloy of aluminum first off. As we all rememeber from physical science in high school, alloys are usually stronger than the parent metal, and that certainly would be the intent with pistons.

The other primary reason a small piece of AL filing would burn and not a piston is surface are vs. mass. A piston is exposing very little surface area as relative to it's mass, while a small filing will be exposing much more area per unit mass. And as we all remember from physics and the properties of heat transfer, the more surface area you have to conduct through, the faster heat will transfer.

As for metals burning, they all do, it's just a matter of enough heat and the right oxidizer. A quick search on google for "aluminum burning" returned this http://www.csar.uiuc.edu/~tlj/aluminum.htm , explaining the how/why of AL as used as rocket fuel for the space shuttle.

Here's an article from msnbc explaining AL's use in fireworks and .....sparklers http://www.msnbc.com/news/427362.asp

Have a nice day:lala:

 

Yup

I had to remove my example for fear that There'd be a few people becoming 1 hand typers.

 

Ed, you think the intake manifolds or cylinder heads are pure AL?? So what is your opinion on the shavings? They will be removed during combustion? Or the will exit into the exhaust.

 

Both

 

I want Ed, not you thanks. Ed has proven himself to me with his impressive postings and you have yet to.

 

Hahahaha


*salutes*

 

Also, if you remember from strength of materials, aluminum is softer than the cast iron of the cylinder wall. It's pretty hard for the aluminum shavings to scratch the cylinder wall, although enough aluminum shavings probably would cause a little bit of damage.

 

Aluminum is nice and soft by nature. I work on a Whitney CNC fab. One of the ops was to plasma burn 1/2" T6 plate. Since the slag accumulated under the table... A pile built up and did cause one hell of a fire...

Kinda like paint dust... Sweep it into a pile and it spontaneously combusts. Lotsa danger where I work!

Ever fill a baloon 1/2 oxygen, 1/2 acetalene and bouce it over to a piece of paper on fire? It blew up so powerfully it blew the front office doors open! Dust from the rafters.... Neighbors callled the fire dept!


Lotsa fun

 

even wheat/corn silo's blow up


They're called "dust" explosions


You can take some C4 and put a lb of flour on top of it and set it in a house with no rooms, the dust will fill up the building and then when it ignights/blows up it'll blow the walls off the place


dangerous stuff

 

On a similar train of thought, but more related to working on our cars (than exploding grain silos ), this is why you never grind a ferrous metal on a grinding wheel right after grinding aluminum without "dressing" the wheel. The bits of aluminum clogging the wheel will violently explode the wheel if it gets hot enough. It's also why you port iron heads with carbide bits, and aluminum heads with non-ferrous bits.

A few shavings falling into the motor won't mangle anything. Hopefully, after porting, it's cleaned out thorougly.

 

geez, yall guys know to much.. I'd love to know as much as some people on these boards..

 

Problem is I had to clearance my ac bracket for my lt1 manifold and shaving got everywhere!! I think I kept them out of the engine but I wanted to be positive. Thanks