I am following this with great interest. I am of the same mindset as you. I used to restore old Porsche air cooled engines and am thoroughly offended by the cost of virtually identical Lycomings. Did you know that most shops get $200-250 each, for roller tappets that cost about $3-5 to manufacture?!?!
I would love to see this engine work.
I have extensive contacts in the foundry and metal casting industry so if you ever need assistance finding someone to cast something, let me know. Steel, iron, aluminum, titanium, bronze... you name it and I probably “know a guy”.
Exactly.
I know exactly how much they cost!
The one on the left is a Lycoming, the one on the right is a GM.
They have the same bearing in them. The roller looks IDENTICAL to the point I bet they were made with the same program. The OD is identical Ø.8423... I mean seriously that's a pretty big coincidence.
I'm assuming someone over at Lycoming started with a GM and had to stretch it a a bit to get it to work with existing cases.
That said... with the lifters... My "nose" is needing some internal passageways for the hydraulic lifters. It's looking to be one of the only castings I need unless I can think my way out of it. I'm very interested in shops that are willing to do low rate projects. There is 1 place here in town that has done pretty good work for me using 3d printed wax investment casting, but they are limited in size.
You have any good design pointers for how to go about a traditional sand casting with internal passageways?
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I spent a solid half hour talking with a fella over at Haltech. I think I'm headed down the path with EFI port injection and electronic ignition.
I had almost resigned myself to buying a few slick magnetos to see how to cannibalize them to redo the distributor... but I don't think that's the right path forward anymore. Maybe it will come down to that eventually but I'm going to try the new modern electrical pixies because honestly that makes things REALLY simple mechanically which to quote Elon Musk here recently... the best part is no part. I'll aim for " or have an ignition system of equivalent in-flight reliability."
Besides at the price point, their entire system costs less than 2 mags.
We were talking about Oil temp, oil pressure, EGT for each cylinder, MAP and a throttle position sensor for the intake, and a crank position sensor.
So what's the cheapest autopilot with auto throttle!? LOL!