Trelleborg Sealing Solutions, a leading multi-national manufacturer of gaskets and seals, has published research into the interaction of sealing compounds with biofuels which will cause fuel system designers to rethink material selection for sealing gaskets and o-rings.Trelleborg evaluated the compatibility of typical automotive biofuels for both gasoline and diesel engines with a variety of fuel system sealing compounds, focusing on hardness, stress-strain and volume swelling.Initially...
Kalitta Racing has been around for 50 years in NHRA Top Fuel racing. As with every team in this category it uses a Hemi-patterned, 500 cid, 90-degree V8 engine with forged aluminium block (solid; with no water passages). The sleeves (cylinder liners) are made of centrifugal cast ductile iron of special formulation (ASTM 536-84) and are ‘slip fit’ into the aluminium block with 100 percent cylindrical contact.Each sleeve is held at the top by a flange and has a stainless steel wire...
The GM Gen-4 Small Block pushrod V8 engine family (aka LS-X) is growing in popularity and in application as a racing engine as well as a high performance powerplant for roadgoing cars. The basic LS design contains several significant improvements over the ubiquitous Gen-1 engine, and there is a growing abundance of high-quality aftermarket components which add even more features to the design.One of the newest and most impressive of those components is the aluminium LS engine block...
In the first eight years of the twenty first century (with the single exception of 2003), the honours in the 24 Hours of Le Mans have undoubtedly belonged to the team from Ingolstadt. Since its introduction in 2006, the last three years have been the sole domain of the diesel-powered Audi R10 Tdi, but its predecessor, the petrol-powered R8, took top honours from 2000 to 2005 (with the exception of Bentley’s Audi-powered win in 2003).It was perhaps inevitable then that the ACO would...
A leading race engine manufacturer ran into fastener problems recently when out of the blue they suffered two separate incidents of flywheel bolt failure, each on a different specification of engine, during the same test. One failure had occurred on a standard specification engine and the other on one which had been given an increase in torque of 30%.The manufacturer found themselves with a difficult engineering problem to solve and one which needed fixing very quickly. Receiving no...