How our engines are made

Road & Track May 2001 issue
pg 107

General Motors has been employing lost-foam casting of cylinder blocks since 1983, but I'm still blown away by the technology of it , as described in a recent Automotive Engineering International , the monthly SAE magazine .
Imagine an assembly of Styrofoam replicates the block , complete with its reinforcing ribs, oil galleries, coolant passages and other details. Loose sand is poured around the assembly and shaken into its voids. Then molten aluminum is poured through a foam spruce into the sand .
The hot metal evaporates the foam, displaces its contours and cools to form the cylinder block. Compared with traditional techniques, the resulting casting requires less machining and has reduced chances of casting errors .....Road & Track May 2001 .......Thought this was pretty neat guys and wanted to share it with ya'll ....Wayne .....88 rs camaro

 

well our engine blocks not the entire engine

 

A teacher once told me that the purpose of the holes where the "freeze plugs" were was to get the sand out of the block after it had been casted.....never knew about the styrafoam though...

 

I always wondered what those were for Cali .....interesting ....Wayne

Hmm I wonder if GM recycled their styrofoam cups after their meetings and make engines with them hehe Maybe thats why some 2.8s seem faster than others , some people got the styrofoam with the caffine left it in while others got the decaffe ...haha
just kidding guys . Wayne

 

Do they Float

That was pretty interesting. I never new that . Learn something new everyday.
Thanks for the Info.

 

Never knew that either.

 

in High School we did aluminum casting and we used sand.... pretty easy too...

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by I Cant Drive 55:
[B]Do they Float

I dunno , someone have a block? we can throw it in my pool , or we can just push the whole damn car in and see if the rear sinks and the engine stays afloat ( camaro bowie ) ....I have more intersting camaro facts however its about 4th gens .If anyone wants them I can e-mail them some . Wayne

 

we make automotive dies where i work and before they are cast into steel they are built in styrofoam and go through the same process you described for the engines but sometimes the process does not wark perfectely and you get a sand hole in the metal, not a good thing in dies and especially in engine blocks

later

Paul (registered tool and die apprentice)

ps wayne ill take those facts
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[This message has been edited by Paul_Hughes_87 T/A (edited October 06, 2001).]

 

Thats intersting Paul .What do ya'll do with the blocks that don't work out and have holes in them ? ....Wayne

 

I think I got the decaf....

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we machine the sandhole to a square and make a steel insert for it our dies are way to big and expensive to rebuild. you know the grill on the jeep tj we built the die for that and the entire z3 and intrepid and the second set of dies for the pt cruiser