Kiekhaefer engine

[Basil]

I am contemplating building a big block Chevrolet V8 for my next project. Kiekhaefer and Mercruiser used these Can Am style injected engines in offshore powerboats and that is what I plan to build. I want to include lots of detail and have decided on a scale of 3.5 to 1. Between 1/4 and 1/3rd scale.
First job is drawing everything up and 3d printing at this scale to see how everything looks. My progress so far.

 

[lohring]

I was privileged to ride in Dry Martini, a 1973 Cigarette deep v powered by two of these engines. It is owned by Mike Bontoft and is raced every year in the Cowes Torquay Cowes offshore race. I have a lot of pictures taken during the engine rebuild including the original gear cam drive that was swapped for a more modern drive. I'll attach some pictures. Let me know if you would like more.

Lohring Miller

 

[Basil]

A little more progress on the Kiekhaefer engine project. Alternator and distributor next. I'll leave the cylinder block to last I think. lol

 

[Basil]

Moving along. The engine is getting large! I printed a rough form up for the block so I could mount everything and check for fit.

 

[Basil]

A little more progress with the Kiekhaefer powerboat racing engine in Fusion. Waiting for new Filament from Prusa. Just had a very bad experience with damp PLA from another manufacturer.

 

[Shopgeezer]

A little more progress with the Kiekhaefer powerboat racing engine in Fusion. Waiting for new Filament from Prusa. Just had a very bad experience with damp PLA from another manufacturer.

I have taken to dehydrating my PLA reels after reading about problems with moisture in filaments. I modified a food dehydrator and then store the filament reels in vacuum bags. Not sure it is worth all the effort. I can see that there could be a problem during our humid summers but winters here are desert dry.

My poor old Crealty CR 20 died after hundreds of prints. Got a new Ender 3 V2 on the way from Amazon. Half way through a large RC model. Hope to start on an engine project next once I get the new printer settled down and running smooth.

 

[Basil]

Slow going but a little bit more progress on the Kiekhaefer engine CAD project. I printed the crankshaft laying down for strength. Camshaft next me thinks.

 

[Shopgeezer]

What a lot of work. It looks great. The closest piston on the right in the bottom photo seems to be contacting the crank counterweight. Looks like the relief slot in the skirt of the piston isn’t quite long enough, or the piston is twisted slightly.

I dream of the day when we can print actual metal parts at home. Have a selection of reels, various grades of steel, cast, brass, aluminum. Just keep printing until everything fits. Don’t suppose that will be in my lifetime. It would be handy in space. Halfway to Mars and the helmet clasp in your space suit breaks? Just print up another one.

 

[GreenTwin]

Very nice project.
Many/most of those parts could be cast.

.

 

[minh-thanh]

Very nice project.

 

[Basil]

What a lot of work. It looks great. The closest piston on the right in the bottom photo seems to be contacting the crank counterweight. Looks like the relief slot in the skirt of the piston isn’t quite long enough, or the piston is twisted slightly.

I dream of the day when we can print actual metal parts at home. Have a selection of reels, various grades of steel, cast, brass, aluminum. Just keep printing until everything fits. Don’t suppose that will be in my lifetime. It would be handy in space. Halfway to Mars and the helmet clasp in your space suit breaks? Just print up another one.

That is just the photo. They are all straight and clear the counterweight, not by much though. I put the crank in the lathe and rounded up all the journals. Printing this part flat gave a slight teardrop effect. Accuracy of these parts still amazes me though. I had to space the piston rings out of their grooves a few times to get to be visible on the finished part.

 

[Basil]

Very nice project.
Many/most of those parts could be cast.

.

Was thinking the same but the only experience I have was in metal shop at school. Then there is the equipment purchase.
Maybe!

 

[Basil]

A few months back I received a beautiful detailed plastic model of a big block chevy from the US. I had initially planned on muddling my way through a chevy Kiekheafer V8 build as used in offshore powerboats. I have lots of books on their tuning and blueprinting, with many of them showing what the stock chevy factory performance parts look like. To me this engine has such a recognizable beauty in its stock form I have decided to have a go at a 3.5/1 scale reproduction.
This is such a mammoth project for me and way above anything I have attempted before.
Firstly, I have learned so so much from the contributors on this forum its given me the confidence that I might be able to attempt such a build.
The Ford 289 that Mr Mayhugh is building is definitely is spurring me on. What an amazing engine that is going to be! So talented!
Here goes with my attempt. Definitely not going to be a quick build!


I got very lucky in acquiring the ANSI 15 chain, they are amazingly hard to come by! Working the numbers for a 13 lower sprocket and 26 cam sprocket I have centers of 1.493" which scales about right for the crankshaft to cam dimensions. I've drawn up and 3D printed a stock timing cover and that will be my first part of the build. I'll change the forum heading to engine builds when I get this part complete. Wish me luck!

 

[ddmckee54]

You going to be casting the parts or machining them from billet?

Either way - Good Luck.
Don

 

[Basil]

Hi Don
I am dipping my feet in the water a little.

 

[ddmckee54]

Me too!

I picked up a new non-working furnace like that off Ebay last year for about 1/3 the price of a new furnace. I've been in or around industrial controls for the better part of 50 years so I knew that it couldn't be TOO complicated to fix. When I got the furnace and had a chance to do some trouble-shooting on it, I had to sit there for a few minutes saying to myself "It can't be that simple". They had connected the +12VDC from the PID controller to the - connection on the solid state relay, and the - connection on the PID controller to the + connection on the relay. By this time it was about an hour after I started working on the furnace. I flipped those 2 wires around I had a working furnace.

At a scale of 3.5:1 the block is going to be pretty big, are you going to be able cast something that size with that furnace? Those furnaces have a 3Kg capacity for gold, I think that works out to about 0.4Lbs of aluminum. That's a respectable chunk of metal, but is it enough to cast the block, riser, gating, and sprue?

Don

 

[Basil]

Sounds like you got a great deal on the furnace Don. Amazing what you can score if your good at fixing things.
As you said definitely not large enough capacity for castings as large as a block but interesting features such as water pump, thermostat housing etc could be fun to try.

 

[animal12]

So are you making Cad drawings for the real parts to be machined ? How do you get from those drawings to the 3D printer ?
Are you just putting the cad drawing into a slicer ? Yep I'm real new to the 3D printer world .
thanks
animal

 

[RM-MN]

So are you making Cad drawings for the real parts to be machined ? How do you get from those drawings to the 3D printer ?
Are you just putting the cad drawing into a slicer ? Yep I'm real new to the 3D printer world .
thanks
animal

My 3D prints are a bit more basic but using CAD you need to create the 'drawing" and then from there create a "mesh" that lets you save the drawing as an .stl file which your slicer can then take and create gcode from. I've been doing my drawing with FreeCAD and it was a chore to find out how to create the mesh and get it exported.

 

[awake]

So are you making Cad drawings for the real parts to be machined ? How do you get from those drawings to the 3D printer ?
Are you just putting the cad drawing into a slicer ? Yep I'm real new to the 3D printer world .
thanks
animal

Sort of, but not exactly. The 3d CAD programs I am familiar with will save in some proprietary native format that preserves all of the "history" that goes into making a part. (Not sure if they all work this way, but wouldn't be surprised.) They can also save in other formats that can be shared across platforms, but if I understand correctly, these also have at least some detail on how the object was generated. The slicer, however, only needs a file that describes the finished object. The most commonly used format is .stl, which generates the surfaces of the object using a mesh of triangles. There are one or two other formats that can be used, arguably better, but .stl is older and "good enough" as thus is the the one that seems to be most common.

I'm not familiar enough with anything other than FreeCAD to know for sure, but I would guess that the key command is going to be to "export" rather than to "save" - to export to the .stl (or other preferred) format rather than save as a fully detailed file.

My 3D prints are a bit more basic but using CAD you need to create the 'drawing" and then from there create a "mesh" that lets you save the drawing as an .stl file which your slicer can then take and create gcode from. I've been doing my drawing with FreeCAD and it was a chore to find out how to create the mesh and get it exported.

RM-MN, are you using the Mesh Workbench? You certainly can do that ... but it is not necessary. After generating the part (using whichever workbench(es) you desire), just select the part, then select File -> Export. In the Files of Type drop-down box, choose STL Mesh as the type. Done!