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150: The Self-Taught Way: Building Wild Engines from Scratch
150: The Self-Taught Way: Building Wild Engines from Scratch
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About this episode
Andre chats with Josh Vellman, a self-taught engineer known for his bespoke engine designs, about his journey from building a custom hill climb car to developing high-performance engines. They discuss the intricacies of engine design, including the challenges of creating a V6 engine with a unique 120-degree bank angle and the importance of 3D modeling. Josh shares insights on manufacturing processes, turbocharger specifications, and the significance of cooling systems. The episode highlights the balance between innovation and practicality in automotive engineering, making it a deep dive into the world of performance engines.
Topics:
3D modeling and CAD software
3D printed part
aluminium 6061
billet aluminium
blocks
bodywork
chassis
crank shaft
cylinder head
damping
Imagine being a self-taught engineer who mastered the intricacies of engine design and is now building bespoke engines from the ground up. That’s exactly what Josh Valman from Motorsport_Engineering has done.
We welcome Josh back for his second appearance on the podcast. This time, we catch up on his wild Alpha V8 Hayabusa project and dive into his latest creation — a turbocharged hot-vee V6 bespoke engine.
👉 Use the code ‘PODCAST500’ to get $500 OFF HPA's VIP Package: https://hpcdmy.co/podvip
In this episode of Tuned In, Josh shares his journey from self-taught engineer to bespoke engine designer and builder. We check in on his progress with the Alpha project before unpacking the details of his new V6 design.
We explore the technical side of engine performance — including pre-ignition chambers, variable valve timing, and the unique benefits of a V6 engine configuration. Josh also discusses the finer points of engine design and the importance of balancing stroke and bore ratios while selecting the right compression ratios for boosted engines.
With deep expertise in machining and manufacturing, Josh offers valuable insights into precision machining, materials selection, heat treatment, and maintaining tight tolerances in high-performance engine parts.
If you’re fascinated by engine design, engine building, machining, or CAD, this episode is packed with knowledge. Josh’s passion for sharing his experience makes it a must-listen for anyone interested in the art and science of building engines.
👉 Use the code ‘PODCAST500’ to get $500 OFF HPA's VIP Package: https://hpcdmy.co/podvip
Follow Josh here:
Instagram: Motorsport_engineering
Youtube: Motorsport_engineering
Timestamps:
0:00 The Self-Taught Way: Building Wild Engines from Scratch
3:34 Welcome back, Who are you? Where are you from and what do you do?
8:45 How did you learn your CAD skills?
2:11 What’s the complexities with manufacturing in China?
18:31 What’s happening with the Alpha project?
21:31 What is the process for making the tooling for carbon fibre body panels?
23:20 When do you see this competing in the British Hillclimb Championship?
23:46 What engine changes would you make to run the car at Pikes Peak?
27:05 What is a pre-ignition chamber and what’s the advantage?
34:40 What is pre-ignition and what causes it?
38:04 What’s the advantage of variable valve timing?
40:26 How did you go from a manufacturi
45:49 How do you choose the V angle for an engine?
51:17 How do you design parts & get them right without years of experience?
55:25 Why would a V6 require balance shafts?
58:27 Is it easier to design an engine from scratch than modify an existing one?
1:04:12 What are the factors that affect deciding on a stroke length?
1:06:36 How critical is the rod to stroke ratio?
1:07:55 How do you choose a compression ratio?
1:11:05 How do you confirm the strength of your engine parts?
1:13:53 Why do we need to heat treat our parts?
1:17:11 How do you keep accurate tolerances while machining these parts?
1:21:09 Why are you using a liner over a coated bore?
1:22:31 How hard is it machining coolant passages into the block & Head?
1:25:45 How are you confirming you have sufficient cooling when designing these engines?
1:30:40 How are you sealing the head on this engine?
1:34:12 How did the V8 engine go when you got it on the dyno?
1:35:53 Why did you go gear drive between the crank and cams?
1:40:09 How long between over
Filter:
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Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Term
V8
"I appreciate the V8s or the V10s sounded incredible, but sounding good doesn't necessarily win you anything."
A V8 is a type of car engine with eight cylinders that gives strong power and good performance.
A V8 engine has eight cylinders arranged in a V‑shaped configuration, commonly used for high power and torque.
Term
V10
"I appreciate the V8s or the V10s sounded incredible, but sounding good doesn't necessarily win you anything."
A V10 is a car engine with ten cylinders that can produce a lot of power and sound impressive.
A V10 engine contains ten cylinders in a V‑shaped layout, offering high power output and smoothness.
Concept
tube frame hill climb car
"he was deep in the build of a very custom, very bespoke one‑off tube frame hill climb car"
A tube frame hill climb car is a small, fast vehicle made with steel tubes for the frame, used in races up steep hills.
A lightweight racing car built on a tubular steel chassis, designed for uphill time‑trial competitions.
Concept
3D modeling and CAD software
"leveraging his engineering skills and engineering knowledge, which is interestingly almost exclusively self‑taught, but also his insane ability when it comes to 3D modeling and CAD software"
3D modeling and CAD let engineers draw a virtual car on the computer so they can see how it looks and works before making it.
Computer programs used to design and visualize parts or entire vehicles in three dimensions before building them.
Term
EFI
"we specialize in teaching people how to build performance engines, how to tune EFI"
EFI is a system that tells the engine how much fuel to use, making it run smoother and more efficiently.
Electronic Fuel Injection controls fuel delivery to the engine using sensors and computer algorithms for optimal performance.
Term
wiring harnesses
"how to tune EFI, how to construct wiring harnesses"
Wiring harnesses are groups of wires that link all the car’s electronic parts together.
A bundle of electrical cables that connect various components in a vehicle, ensuring proper power and signal distribution.
Concept
fabrication
"we also cover topics on fabrication"
Fabrication means making the physical parts of a car, like cutting and shaping metal to fit together.
The process of building or shaping metal and other materials into parts for vehicles, often using tools like lathes, mills, and CNC machines.
Part
bodywork
"Before we move on just in terms of that bodywork with it design what was the process you'll go through..."
Bodywork is the outside shell of a car, like its doors and hood. It keeps you safe and gives the car its look.
Bodywork refers to the exterior panels and structural components of a vehicle that protect occupants and give the car its shape.
Part
panels
"Before we move on just in terms of that bodywork with it design what was the process you'll go through..."
Panels are the flat pieces that make up a car’s exterior, like the side panels or the hood.
Panels are flat sections of a vehicle’s body, such as doors, fenders, or hoods.
Concept
tooling
"Before we move on just in terms of that bodywork with it design what was the process you'll go through in terms of to to make the tooling to produce these come farther panels."
Tooling means the special tools and molds you need to make many parts of a car, like stamping metal panels.
Tooling is the set of tools, molds, and dies used to manufacture parts in large quantities.
Term
variable valve timing
"So it probably will run variable valve timing which you don't have on the high boost but it allows you to account for the fact that the air gets thinner as you go up."
Variable valve timing lets the engine change when its valves open and close, helping it run better at low or high speeds.
Variable valve timing (VVT) is a technology that adjusts the timing of engine valves opening and closing to improve performance, fuel efficiency, and emissions across different RPM ranges.
Term
chassis
"We could talk to you another five years and you'll be back in the same situation but with a completely different chassis and engine combination is the problem."
Think of the chassis as the skeleton of a car. It holds everything together and helps keep the car stable and safe.
The chassis is the vehicle's frame and structural base that supports all other components, including the engine, suspension, and body. It determines rigidity, weight distribution, and overall vehicle dynamics.
Term
engine tuning
"If you're a fan of the podcast and you're interested in topics like engine tuning, automotive wiring, performance engine building..."
It’s like fine‑tuning a car’s engine settings so it runs better or faster, similar to adjusting a recipe for the best taste.
Engine tuning involves adjusting an engine’s parameters—such as fuel injection, ignition timing, and air-fuel mixture—to optimize performance, efficiency, or emissions.
Term
performance engine building
"If you're a fan of the podcast and you're interested in topics like engine tuning, automotive wiring, performance engine building..."
It means building or upgrading a car’s engine so it can go faster or handle better, like putting in stronger parts.
Performance engine building is the process of assembling or modifying an engine to achieve higher power output, better reliability, or specific performance characteristics.
Term
lean
"Does this kind of tune things on its heed in terms of being able to run a lean if your ratio, but still make great power?"
Lean means the engine is using more air and less fuel. This can make it run better if done right.
A lean mixture has more air than fuel, allowing the engine to run efficiently and produce less exhaust gas. It can improve power output when managed correctly.
Term
dynamic compression ratio
"Yeah, and giving you a lower dynamic compression ratio by closing the valve early..."
Think of it as how much the engine squeezes air and fuel together before ignition. A higher ratio can mean more power, but it also needs careful control to avoid engine damage.
The dynamic compression ratio is the effective compression ratio of an engine during operation, which can change due to valve timing and other factors. It influences power output and fuel efficiency.
Term
direct injected engines
"With production, direct injected engines, one of the problems that is pretty well known."
Direct injection means the engine sprays fuel straight into each cylinder instead of mixing it with air first. It helps engines run better and use less fuel.
Direct injection is a fuel delivery system where gasoline is sprayed directly into the combustion chamber of each cylinder, rather than mixing with air in a separate intake manifold. This allows for more precise fuel metering and higher compression ratios, improving efficiency and power.
Part
exhaust manifolds
"and exhaust manifolds between the two cylinder heads"
Exhaust manifolds are metal tubes that gather the hot gases from each cylinder and send them together to go out of the car.
Exhaust manifolds collect exhaust gases from multiple cylinders and channel them into the turbocharger or exhaust system.
Part
intake manifolds
"even with the intake manifolds"
An intake manifold is a part of the engine that takes air from the air filter and sends it to each cylinder so the engine can run properly.
Intake manifolds are components that distribute air (and sometimes fuel) from the intake system to each cylinder of an internal combustion engine. They help ensure balanced airflow for efficient combustion.
Term
damping
"you can do without it, embracing, because the vibration isn't the end of the world, but you still need an element of damping on the crankshaft and certainly on the camshaft."
It’s like putting a cushion around parts of the engine so they don’t shake too much, keeping everything running quieter and more reliably.
Damping refers to the use of materials or devices that absorb vibrations and reduce oscillations in engine components, improving smoothness and longevity.
Part
crankshaft
"but you still need an element of damping on the crankshaft and certainly on the camshaft."
Think of it as a big metal rod that spins inside the engine, turning the up-and-down motion of the pistons into the spinning power that moves your car.
The crankshaft is a rotating shaft in an internal combustion engine that converts the linear motion of pistons into rotational motion to drive the vehicle’s wheels.
Part
high boost head redesign
"[3604.0s] I was effectively trying to see, well, how they done it, how would I do it, but in Billet"
A high‑boost head is a part of an engine that lets it run with more air and fuel, making it faster. Engineers change its shape or materials to keep it strong when the pressure inside is very high.
A high‑boost head is the cylinder head of an engine designed to handle very high intake pressures, often used in racing or performance applications. Redesigning it involves improving airflow, cooling, and structural integrity to support increased boost levels.
Concept
OE engine world
"[3806.0s] and in the OE engine world, [3809.0s] a good example of that"
This means the engine is built by the car company itself, not a third‑party maker. It follows the exact rules and parts the factory uses.
The "OE engine world" refers to engines that are sold as original equipment by manufacturers, meaning they come factory‑installed and meet the manufacturer’s specifications for performance, durability, and emissions.
Term
rod to strike ratio
"[4007.0s] Is the rod moves through its cycle? [4009.0s] It's effectively, look at it as a triangle, right? ... [4015.0s] And you want to try and minimize that angle,"
In a car engine, the connecting rod pushes the piston up and down. The rod-to-stroke ratio tells how long that rod is compared to the distance the piston travels. A higher ratio means the rod stays more straight, which can make the engine run smoother.
The rod-to-stroke ratio is the proportion between an engine’s connecting rod length and its piston stroke. A higher ratio reduces the angle of the rod during operation, improving efficiency and reducing wear.
Term
turbo
"But to get to that much boost on the turbo, you have to go through a whole range of low levels of boost"
A turbo is a device that takes exhaust gas and uses it to push more air into the engine, making it stronger.
A turbocharger (turbo) uses exhaust gases to spin a turbine, which compresses incoming air and increases engine power.
Term
pressure sensors
"send it to pressure sensors and temp sensors"
Pressure sensors check how hard fluids or gases are pushing inside parts of a car, like the oil in the engine. They help make sure everything is working correctly.
Pressure sensors measure the force exerted by fluids or gases inside a vehicle’s systems, such as engine oil pressure or brake fluid pressure. The data helps diagnose issues and ensure components operate within safe limits.
Term
temp sensors
"send it to pressure sensors and temp sensors"
Temp sensors keep track of how hot parts of the car are, like the engine coolant. They help the car stay cool and run smoothly.
Temperature sensors monitor the heat levels of various components, such as engine coolant or air intake. This information is used to adjust performance and prevent overheating.
Term
aluminium 6061
"So it's already been so with aluminium 606-1, which is sort of your run of the mill machining aluminium, that normally comes in it in a T6 format,"
Aluminium 6061 is a type of metal that car makers use because it’s strong, light, and easy to shape into parts.
Aluminium 6061 is a widely used alloy in automotive manufacturing, known for its good strength-to-weight ratio and excellent machinability.
Term
3D printed part
"[4551.0s] If you think about a 3D printed part that's got layers, [4555.0s] it's very easy to break it across the layers,"
It’s a part made by printing it in layers, like using a 3D printer instead of cutting or molding it.
A component manufactured using additive manufacturing, where material is deposited layer by layer to build the final shape.
Term
billet aluminium
"but when you're machining a piece of billet aluminium like this, I can only assume it's putting a lot of heat into the aluminium"
Billet aluminum is a solid piece of metal that you can cut or shape into parts. It’s lighter and stronger than many other materials, so it’s popular for making things that need to be both strong and not too heavy.
Billet aluminium refers to a solid block of aluminum that has been cast and then machined or formed into parts. It is commonly used for high-performance components because it offers a good balance of strength, lightness, and workability.
Term
heat treating
"I might have missed it, but do you do a final heat treat after the final machining, or is that it?"
Heat treating is when a metal part is heated and then cooled in a controlled way to make it stronger or harder.
Heat treating is a metallurgical process that heats and cools metal parts to alter their physical properties, such as hardness and strength.
Term
line honing
"...such as the line honing, the main bearing tunnel and the block..."
Line honing is a special polishing step that makes the inside of engine cylinders smoother, which helps the engine run better and last longer.
Line honing is a precision machining process that smooths the cylinder walls inside an engine block, improving surface finish and reducing friction.
Concept
Formula One
"[5219.0s] but I mean, you'll see every weekend on Formula One [5221.0s] as well where they go."
Formula One is the top level of car racing, with very fast and advanced cars that are built for speed and performance.
Formula One is the highest class of single-seat, open-wheel racing sanctioned by the FIA. It features cutting-edge technology and highly specialized cars designed for maximum performance.
Part
cylinder head
"How difficult, how complex is it to keep the cylinder head sealed to that block?"
This is the top part of an engine that holds the valves and spark plugs. It needs to stay sealed so the engine runs properly.
The cylinder head sits atop the engine block and contains valves, spark plugs, and combustion chambers. It must be tightly sealed to prevent leaks under high pressure.
Part
block
"to that block?"
This is the big metal part of an engine that holds everything together. It needs to be strong so it doesn’t break under pressure.
The engine block is the main structure that houses pistons, crankshaft, and valves. It must be robust enough to withstand combustion pressures.
The Self-Taught Way: Building Wild Engines from Scratch
What’s the complexities with manufacturing in China?
Welcome back, Who are you? Where are you from and what do you do?
How did you learn your CAD skills?
What’s happening with the Alpha project?
What is the process for making the tooling for carbon fibre body panels?
When do you see this competing in the British Hillclimb Championship?
What engine changes would you make to run the car at Pikes Peak?
What is a pre-ignition chamber and what’s the advantage?
What is pre-ignition and what causes it?
What’s the advantage of variable valve timing?
How did you go from a manufacturi
How do you choose the V angle for an engine?
How do you design parts & get them right without years of experience?
Why would a V6 require balance shafts?
Is it easier to design an engine from scratch than modify an existing one?
What are the factors that affect deciding on a stroke length?
How critical is the rod to stroke ratio?
How do you choose a compression ratio?
How do you confirm the strength of your engine parts?
Why do we need to heat treat our parts?
How do you keep accurate tolerances while machining these parts?
Why are you using a liner over a coated bore?
How hard is it machining coolant passages into the block & Head?
How are you confirming you have sufficient cooling when designing these engines?
How are you sealing the head on this engine?
How did the V8 engine go when you got it on the dyno?
Why did you go gear drive between the crank and cams?
How long between over
Select text to request an explanation
I appreciate the V8s or the V10s sounded incredible, but sounding good doesn't necessarily win you anything. I want to build engines that work. It's all very well doing another V10 that sounds great, but if you try in a competing series where you have full manufacturer teams and some private tier teams, I want to be the private tier teams that chance to do something that would compete with the manufacturers and not get lost.
I'm Andre, your host, and in this episode, we're joined for the second time by Josh Vellman of Motorsport underscore engineering Instagram fame. Josh's original episode was all the way back on episode 17, and at that time, he was deep in the build of a very custom, very bespoke one-off tube frame hill climb car, loosely based on an alpha of my memory serves correct, but more interestingly for us powered by an insane twin turbo, a high abuse
of the base V8, and the engineering that goes into this car is nothing short of extraordinary. We decided it was time for a bit of a catch up with Josh to find out what the progress is on the hill climb car, but he's had a bit of a shift in his direction lately and is now getting involved in designing his own engines. Now obviously this is no small task.
There's a lot goes into this and he's leveraging his engineering skills and engineering knowledge, which is interestingly almost exclusively self-taught, but also his insane ability when it comes to 3D modeling and CAD software, so I took the opportunity to dive in deep and get some answers to some of the burning questions I've always had when it comes to designing an engine with a complete blank sheet of paper.
Before we jump into our chat, for those who are new to the tune and podcast, High Performance Academy is an online training school, we specialize in teaching people how to build performance engines, how to tune EFI, how to construct wiring harnesses, we also cover topics on fabrication, 3D modeling and CAD, Race Driver Education, and data logging just to name a few.
You can find all of our courses at hpacademy.com forward slash courses. All of these courses are delivered in a high definition video modules that you can watch from anywhere in the world provided you've got an internet connection.
This means you can learn from the comfort of your own place and you can learn at your own pace. All of our courses also come with a 60 day no questions asked money back guarantee.
So if you purchase them for any reason at all, decide it wasn't quite what you expected, no problem, let us know, we'll give you a full refund.
And for podcast listeners, you can also use the coupon code podcast 75, that will get you $75 off the purchase of your very first HPA course.
We'll put the coupon code in the show notes to make it nice and easy for you to find.
Lastly, if you like free stuff, then I've got a great deal for you. We are constantly partnering with some of the biggest names in the aftermarket performance industry to give away some great prizes.
You can always find our latest prize at hpacademy.com forward slash giveaway. It might be an aftermarket ECU or dash, it could be some engine components or engine building tools or just about anything in between.
They are great prizes and we will ship them free of charge to your door if you're the winner. There's no tricks here, no purchase required to get your name into the drawer.
Enough with our introduction. Let's get into our interview now. Welcome back to the podcast. Josh, thanks for joining us again. It's been been a while.
And I think it's fair to say you've been pretty busy in the meantime. We wanted to catch up and sort of see what you've been up to, how the alpha project that we talked about last time's going and what your latest and greatest projects are building these one off bespoke engines.
Before we get into that, just for those who haven't heard your first episode, could you give us a real brief recap on who you are, where you come from and what you do.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'm Josh. I'm based in London. I've been, well, I say I'm an engineer. I don't think I'm allowed to say that because I don't have a certificate. But I've been making things my entire life.
Started in robot wars on TV, making all sorts of craze machines and blowing them up and ended up running an engineering manufacturing company.
So for about almost 15 years, I ran that developing all sorts of products on behalf of other companies, medical devices and consumer stuff and a little bit of industrial working robotics as well, but with the primary focus on the sort of go to market manufacturing.
So running a lot of manufacturing facilities that were making the first 500, 1000, maybe 10,000 units or something huge manufacturing capacity and, well, I'm an engineer.
So running businesses is good fun, but I've been making things in the background for very long time, which one of those was was the car of the gas introduced so the how for was initially a COVID project to try and restore something and have some fun and then it got all out of hand.
And there's not much left on it that's that's where I think even originally was a stretch, not much left on it. This off the shelf. I ended up machining everything all the bolts absolutely everything and redesigning it all.
And a quick recap there, we're talking a full to I mean, we say alpha for those who obviously haven't seen it. There's not a lot of alpha as you mentioned, full to frame one off mid engine, 20,000, V8, high boost based V8 that sort of gives us the just of things.
Yeah, 850 kilos with a person in it, 850 horsepower designed to go up a hill. It was intended to go into the hill climb classes because there's almost no rules, right. So I want to build something as wild as I could and go mad with every last thing, which admittedly has taken me longer than I thought.
So I have gone into more detail than I thought. So I think that gives me an excuse. But I yeah, that has been stored the last year or so family life and I'm in the engine business time to pick up because to say I've been designing things for cars and things for a long time and that started to become a bit more of a commercial endeavor to make things for the people. So sure.
Let's just pop back a little bit. So you mentioned that you are an engineer, but maybe not an engineer from there. I'll take it. You haven't actually got a formal qualification as an engineer.
No, no, I started the manufacturing company when I was 15 off the back of the robot all stuff. So yeah, I did that for a long time without a chance to go to university or anything else.
So self taught, do you see any benefits and any sort of roadblocks from going down that path as opposed to the traditional mechanical engineering degree.
So this is a podcast in his own right. So I haven't been to university. I've taught quite a few universities and I've helped run quite a few projects with universities as well.
And the thing I think education misses at least in the UK and a bit of the US education system that I've been involved in is the practical real life world.
I think you quite often you basically get set a very controlled challenge and said solve this and here's the textbook that's going to have the answers for you in the textbook.
It just happens to have the same examples as the thing you're working on. The reality of engineering is you sort of get started on a project that you know, 90% of how to do any work out you go along because you only learn by finding challenges and you find
enough different challenges of the same subject and you sort of start to understand the basis of the subject. I personally don't believe the education system does enough of that because you can't because it's very hard to structure.
I get 10 messages a day on Instagram saying how do I how do I do what you do how do I let what book should I read to learn how to design this.
And there is no book I've read very few of them and I think school teaches you that somewhere out that there is a book that will tell you how to be an engineer how to design an engine how to design a race car but there isn't.
It's years and years of facing problems and facing sort of technical challenges working ways around them and you can read as many books as you like.
I've never found reading a book cover to cover is taught me anything about engineering is always been finding a specific question or specific problem and then trying to research how to solve that and you do that 50,000 times you get to a boy we understand what you're doing.
I think that probably sums it up quite nicely. I think there is a sort of a disconnect between theory and practical with with a lot of education.
My take on having done a batch of technology here in New Zealand is that I probably don't really use almost anything that I learned in that degree but I also think that a university degree probably does in a lot of ways teach you how to think for yourself.
So you can then apply that because as you say the problem that you're having in the real world probably is in a nice worked example in a textbook.
It's going to always be a little bit more complicated than that.
A big part of how you came across our radar and I think probably why a lot of people are following on Instagram is your care your 3D modeling and your beautiful renders.
How did you sort of develop those skills and again we've discussed this in your first episode but just give us a brief recap.
Time, there's nothing more complicated to it whether it's complicated in its own right but there's nothing more to it than time.
I learned how to use Google SketchUp when I was 10, 11 and since then so for the last 20 something years I've been in CAD at least a couple of days a week, some weeks the entire week and nights.
It's just time I've spent tens of thousands of hours in CAD. I've moved on from Google SketchUp but I am still stuck in solder works.
Customer that wants to work in Kiteer I'm a bit lost but it's purely time and people ask why their CAD doesn't look like my CAD and I think the thing is the detail because I draw everything.
I don't go quite as far as drawing stickers on stuff but I will draw in all the bolts, all the fixings, all the lines that make up what something is you know I'm not just building dummy CAD and nowadays I don't there's not much that I'm drawing that exists.
I'm drawing things with graphs so it naturally has all the detail and you put enough components together and the biggest thing in it it looks good.
Yeah, can confirm it does indeed. I think one of the potential pitfalls for a lot of people who are jumping into CAD these days fusion for example being essentially free for home enthusiasts is that you can draw anything that your mind can come up with.
Obviously once you've got the skills in CAD in the first place.
But of course when it comes to actually making the components often you'll design something in a way that it just can't be machined there's no real way of making it.
So is that where your sort of super power I guess is your manufacturing background you you understand the process how something is going to be manufactured so then you can adapt how you're designing that in CAD.
Yeah, I hope so I don't always operate the machines and I may be the most hated person in the facility but yeah a lot of my life I have operated machines and therefore I understand exactly how they work so when I'm designing something I'm going okay well that's a six mil ball mill and it's going to do this and it's going to move in that pattern and this is how we're going to mount the piece and actually these four holes are nothing to do with the product itself they're what we're going to mount the piece from just so we've got a date and face and you know a lot of my design starts with how we're going to manufacture it not necessarily what.
I want you know I'm sure we'll cover but designing things tends to be a compromise of a million different things and I just make sure that I've also got a table for the manufacturing methods and approaches because if you do it that way it's it's quicker a lot of people say that I produce things quite quickly but I think it's because I'm designing the cameras I'm designing the cat you know I'm I'm thinking about how am I going to program this I'm writing notes in the model in a in a 3d note taker of okay we're going to machine this from this direction in quite a lot cases I'm drawing the tools in as well so I can you can turn on toolpaths in.
In the cadres I'm designing it you know not once you put it into hyperbino something but actually in solid works I've got toolpath that you can turn on ago actually I put that there that doesn't you know that tool can't get parts there anymore which is what speeds speeds things up so if you tackle that alongside the product itself yeah you can you can deliver things much quicker in terms of the actual manufacturing is this in house you you got sort of a warehouse full of big scene scenes or is this being outsourced.
So I've got some machine facility in the UK a lot of the things that I own are in China and then I've still got a bunch of supply chain from from the olden days in the old business where I'm also working with them outs also.
What's the complexity is with working with a company in China is it just you know get the same result for 30% of the cost or is it also a case of finding that not all of the Chinese manufacturers can work to the same level.
Better to be honest I don't want to offend anyone that work within the UK or Europe or anywhere else but the quality that you get in China is in most cases false passing anyone out.
I've been out there for 20 years so I've spent a lot of time on the floor with with everybody you know from machine or process through to people that own the companies and as long as you understand how each other works and you understand what machines are what the tooling available is you know what the QC process is going to be in you design parts to see the facility.
And you work together on exactly what your processes are going to be together you have absolutely no issue at all if you throw off you know a 3d model and a crap drawing that gives you two days and references and say make this I want for.
It's not going to work for you if you if you properly consider it and you explain how you want things mounted and you explain how you expect the program to work and you explain exactly what it is you want and what needs to be checked and what doesn't you will have absolutely no issue at all.
It makes no difference where in the world you are it's about understanding what's available seems it would be in the UK or the US or New Zealand or anywhere else but when you're more local you can go down to the shop and they can tell you why something doesn't work whereas when you're working overseas potentially cross languages.
You know they might not ask the questions they might just make what you've asked for and if you haven't answered properly it's your problem and people move on.
So you get what you're at you've asked for that sometimes you might not know what questions to ask essentially to a large extent if you're going to work particularly in China but a well run manufacturing facility is there to manufacture the things that are asked for they're not there to be consultants and they're not charging any time that's why they're cheap.
So if you don't ask the right thing they're not going to ask you if you're sure they're just going to make what they've been asked for and that's how a production contract manufacturer should work really so it's only to me like a few are coming into this.
You've experienced you've you've fired up fusion for the first time designed your first part just like I mentioned earlier and it maybe isn't designed for manufacturing.
Then send this out to a shop in China to have it made you're likely to end up with a hot mess come back but when you've got the level of experience that you've got you know how the processes go you've dealt with local machine shops.
You can ask the right questions and provide the right detail to get excellent results so some sum it up nicely.
Yeah yeah yeah potentially and I don't want to blanket it that no one in China is going to help you but certainly it's important that you specify what you want because people don't know what you're building.
You know if you send somebody even you send them a camshaft and yes they might understand what camshaft is but they don't know what tolerances are and the rest of the engine they don't know what you're trying to achieve.
If you don't specify that needs to be ground they'll quite happily do it on the lathe because I could make that shape on the lathe and you might not get the accuracy you want if you haven't sent any weird items to reference against.
That doesn't mean that they made a bad product it means they made what you lost for.
So you know if you are coming and fresh this stuff the best thing to be doing is trying to find somebody with experience to guide you and you know lots of engineers out there will quite happily review a drawing for you with them reason.
Or quite happily give you some information and talk to you about it.
I certainly do I seem to spend all my evenings just replying to people that have asked for a bit of help and I'm quite happy doing that.
Yeah sure.
And there's lots of people might think that to do that but if you do that you'll get the results that you want out of any facility anywhere in the world.
Now you mentioned that within reason the stuff you get out made made over in China is at a higher level higher quality than what you could get locally.
What is it that separates them? Why are they Chinese manufacturers providing a superior product?
I've got to be careful not to offend local shops but I go for it we love it because the way for many many years manufacturing in China has been specified which is I will make what you asked me for.
It means if you ask for 300 different data to be measured on a drawing that's what you get and you get a report I got on this morning that's got 652 measurements on it.
It's a very complicated part of an IO perspective because I wanted to be sure but every single one of those has been done.
I think the tightest tolerance was 0.005 mm everything is with intolerance and that's what I got.
I find quite often other than the top-end facilities that are producing for Formula One and Aerospace and they're used to those kind of requirements in the UK and otherwise.
If you ask for that much stuff they'll either give you the idiot tax and give you a price that's obscene or they'll go well I check most of them and the rest are probably fine and that's what you get.
Close enough's good enough.
Well yeah and the problem with a lot of these things particularly you get into more detailed and complex components of products is close enough isn't good enough and there's a reason that was 0.005 it wasn't just for fun.
And you put the whole thing together and realize it doesn't fit and no one's going to come back and rework apart and that's that complicated and he's remaking and if you're not going to pay to remake it they're not going to remake it.
So you end up in this horrible hole that whilst you might have not had to wait three days for the shipping.
You may end up in a bigger mess and quite frankly I get better lead times on the ground in China particularly for materials or raw materials I can get three four months quicker than here when I'm ordering something special.
Yeah timelines are quite often better results quite often better as long as you're providing the right instructions.
On this basis would it even make sense for you to bring that manufacturing in house or the end up with a hugely expensive machine that's sitting idle for maybe 50% of the week and that doesn't make sense.
This is where I really start with.
The base line attitude in the manufacturing centers in China and in Asia generally is we're here to do a job.
This is the job we're going to do we've been given these drawings this is what we're going to follow.
Let's get on with it to find people with that attitude in the UK who are affordable because there's many people like that but they're in very expensive salary rolls because they're managing teams trying to get everybody else on that level.
It becomes untenable to tell us you know we could quite happily go out and buy several large machines and put them in the shop and run them.
But it would end up being the people who are designing the parts trying to run the machines which isn't very cost efficient.
Right so it's the staff not necessarily the machines that it's more of a problem.
I types the same machines are the same machines that the contractors I work in the UK that have got some big machines.
Same machines we're running out in China but it's what level of attitude do you get as you go up and down the salaries and it's it's vastly different top to bottom in the UK.
As a generalisation than it is in China.
Alright let's just pop back to the alpha project.
So what's sort of been the roadblock on that sort of mentioned family?
Where is it at? What's left to do? Is it ever going to see the light of day?
I think maybe I saw a post from you a year or two backer that you might consider selling it.
Then I couldn't do it. I like it too much. I want to finish it and I don't want to see it go somewhere else and go in a shed.
If it's going in a shed and going nowhere it needs to be in my shed.
No it's going somewhere. It's just life took over really. I'm at the point of bodywork and that's not my forte.
So I've been working with a couple of guys who are absolutely brilliant who've done some really interesting surface modeling for me.
But I've now got to go make all those tools. I've got to start making that bodywork and
that is time consuming and financially quite expensive.
And today when I'm doing all the machining I'm doing that largely with facilities that I either own or have a share holding in and therefore I can afford it.
But when you're talking about doing the carbon fiber a lot of that needs to come from elsewhere.
So I've got pay for rates. It's expensive.
So yeah it will come, but it's going to come over time and sort of the more commercial work needs to take priority in the moment.
Yes you've got to make the money before you can spend the money.
Yeah it's a toy. It's never going to return on investment. So I can't justify spending everything on it.
Well I'd actually challenge that. I think there's a more subtle aspect that's maybe not quantifiable in terms of what it's doing for you
because that's how you came across our radar. That's how you've built up your Instagram following to the point that's at.
And as you mentioned you're getting these inquiries now I'm guessing a lot of them are probably guys just reaching out for a bit of free advice.
But I'm guessing you're probably also getting some paid work out of this as well.
Oh yeah yeah I mean that value is enormous because I know I also get a lot of messages.
People say how do I get into multiple and the answer is I don't really know. I just started making things which probably is the way a lot of people get into it.
But yeah that car has opened a lot of doors for me because it's allowed me to demonstrate what I can do without having to sort of already.
You can't start a portfolio without having a portfolio whereas that was my portfolio a few years ago and now I have one.
I kind of almost liken it back to my old drag car which back in the day it was probably paying myself minimum wage so I could pour every cent that I made into building this drag car which in the end sets and world records.
And at the time it sort of didn't really make much sense you know driving around in a car that was racing a car that was probably a modest two bedroom house.
And you know it's not really bringing work into my old business to justify that but it's also kind of set me up for where I'm at now with high performance academy.
Got us the recognition worldwide so when you look back on it yeah it kind of did actually work out even though at the time sometimes I sort of shake my head and think what on earth am I doing this makes absolutely no sense.
Before we move on just in terms of that bodywork with it design what was the process you'll go through in terms of to to make the tooling to produce these come farther panels.
So I'm going to do all resident fusion from a cost perspective really because I can do most of that in house I haven't decided exactly what I'm going to machine the malls from I've been to people about doing it in 3d printing could be done.
I know Alex Thomas is doing his ill climb car using 3d printing which is looking really good actually in his starting to think that maybe I could 3d print all those molds but I'm a man of tight tolerances and it scares me to 3d print a mall.
So I'll probably end up checking it out and doing tooling board I mean there's probably two tons of tooling board in those tools so it's a serious job.
It's not a case of whack it on the on the bed. I don't think many people are going to let me put half a ton of tooling board on one of our CNC machines and gun the whole thing up.
So I'll probably need to do that out of house and in a tooling specialist.
So tooling board versus the likes of routing it out of high density foam just the tooling board gives you that actually in detail that you wouldn't get with the foam.
I mean tooling board really is a high density for really it's an overpriced high density foam but yeah it gives you very high temperature tolerance.
So if you machine it it is what it is six months later.
I've probably trying to stray from the tooling board rather than use the tooling board to make a mold and then mold from the mold.
I'm not planning to make many I'll probably make through a force that's bodywork and tools will get laid up and it in a shed somewhere.
It's not a production line car. I will make one and I will have some space for when it gets crashed.
If it gets crashed I think positive.
It's going to get crashed.
And I like fixing it so I don't mind if somebody crashes it.
One of the bonuses of a project car that never gets finished is the running costs are incredibly low.
You say you should see the shopping list. I've got carts all over the place in my favorites in Google Chrome.
Can we get a timeline on when you actually see this compared to in the British hill climb championship?
I think it's probably going to end up on Pike's Peak before I guess the British hill climb championship to be honest.
Which next year is not happening but maybe the year after.
I mean the current engine program is quite intense and I've got two other customer programs on at the moment.
But you know they should start to become something by the next year and I might have some time back.
Without derailing this too far just in terms of Pike's Peak being such a unique hill climb with the 14,000 foot altitude the low air density.
Is there anything you would need to change around the engine configuration or turbo sizing that would be Pike's peak specific?
Yeah I mean I originally designed it around the high boost V8.
I now have a version of that where I've redesigned the high boost heads as custom heads.
That was going to go in it and then I started this V6 program and I'm quite excited about that.
But then I want to go to a monocoque chassis and then suddenly it's a different car and I'm getting out hand again.
So it probably will run variable valve timing which you don't have on the high boost but it allows you to account for the fact that the air gets thinner as you go up.
And your boost is going to be all over the place.
I'd quite like to run it pre ignition of pre ignition chamber on it which I haven't some of my other engines because.
A, we can get a bit more efficiency out of it but B, we can deal with less oxygen much better and run it leaner without having to just dump fuel into an end of the flooding issues and commercial issues.
So there's all sorts of things I'd like to do to get it to run better at the top end of the hill which is the reason I'm leaning towards putting the V6 in.
But we'll see the V6 ideally needs a hybrid element to it.
So then you had a whole level of complexity that it wasn't designed for and you end up starting again.
I think it's easy for that scope create to come into just about any project and yeah, it sounds like from the last few sentences you could redesign that car a couple of times over and kind of probably.
We could talk to you another five years and you'll be back in the same situation but with a completely different chassis and engine combination is the problem.
Yeah, I've got a couple of people on my wish list that I would like to see drive it and if one of them says I'll do it then that will give you the kick up the bomb to go and get it done right.
So we'll see I'm having this conversations.
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All right, let's get back to the episode.
I can't just let you gloss over the term pre-ignition chamber without sort of diving back into that.
Kind of a little bit of detail because this is sort of some formula one technology. Can you talk to us about what a pre-ignition chamber is, how that actually works and where the advantages lie?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so it's not too uncommon if they used to be called spark plug boosters, but effectively it's a little hell that there goes in the end of the spark plug.
And it's simplest form and actually the way they do it and I got really interesting document the other day, which appears to be from a Japanese magazine.
And I've done a lot of googling for Formula One engine pictures over the years and I've never found these.
I assume because it's not been indexed because it's a scan of a Japanese magazine in print, but it shows some real detail from the Honda Formula One development.
And effectively, it's a little hell that goes on the spark plug and it has some holes in it and it is.
If we oversimplify what it's doing is you inject your fuel into the combustion chamber as your person goes into a compression phase.
Effectively it pushes fuel into that little chamber, which is hugging the end of the spark plug.
When the spark plug goes, what you end up doing is almost like a flame thread so you ignite a much more rich fuel bubble around the spark plug, which then shoots out flames.
In hopefully as many day erections as you can around the combustion chamber and rather than having a flame that propagates in a traditional engine usually centrally.
See spark goes in the middle and the flame will propagate outwards to the edge of the cylinder.
You can actually propagate from the center of the cylinder, but also from the outsides because this flame throw effectively ignites the cylinder wall area, which gives you a much faster burn, but also much more even burn.
So you can run, you can run an engine much more efficiently, much lower, have fuel ratio because what you're trying to ignite is still rich, but the rest of the chamber doesn't have to be.
So that's that's sort of one of the limiting factors is if we've got a linear fuel ratio, you get to a point where it's essentially hard to reliably ignite it and achieve combustion.
So you're using a rich kernel of air and fuel near to the spark plug, which is easy to ignite and then you've got those flames that are shooting out, essentially igniting this much linear air fuel ratio and the periphery that that's sort of what's going on there.
Yeah, exactly that.
Okay, so this allows a linear fuel ratio, but when we look at the relationship between power and the air fuel ratio.
Does this kind of tune things on its heed in terms of being able to run a lean if your ratio, but still make great power?
Well, it's about lots of things right when you start to an engine, you've got a table of how many things, probably 50 things in the zone, I could open it in a minute.
I've looked, but it's called it 50 things.
They were trying to weigh up and the top of that is power and talk, but from that next level, you're looking at well, what ball, what stroke, what RPM, probably not even boost to that point.
Boost comes after that. And then from that, you're looking at the format of the engine and how we generate that power and talk and what RPM needs to be in your sort of balancing all of these things.
The big challenge in industry at the moment is how do you do more with less fuel, because we're trying to be more sustainable, but also we're trying to operate in environments that are getting hotter and hotter.
And if you're not burning incredibly rich, rich mixtures, you are not necessarily generating as much heat.
So you can avoid pre-ignition in the fuel, which is becomes a big issue because to make an engine more efficient and more power over smaller capacity.
Ideally, you want to increase the pressure. So if you want to pixel into pressure in the 200s, maybe even in the 300s of bar.
So effectively, if we can get a position where our engines are burning less fuel, we can keep that temperature down whilst allowing those compression ratios to be increased, allowing the boost to increase.
Without pre-ignitioning the fuel, that's what the pre-ignition gives you.
Okay. Am I safe to assume here you're targeting running leaner than stoic with these engines?
Yes. Yeah, quite a bit.
Are we allowed to know, sort of, what if your ratio targets are using under full power, full load?
Full load? You're probably at a lander of point, well, until you tune it, right? If you want all the power you can get out of the engine, then probably point 8.9.
If you want to go lean endurance back, you can have to run it down to 0.6.65, maybe even lower. Depends how much power you want to get out of that.
You're talking a equivalence ratio here, not lander.
Yes.
So just for a quick comparison there, so people understand what we're talking about, equivalence ratio, that is simply the invasive lander.
So one of your lander value.
So if we're talking 0.6.5, the inverse of that is 1.5 lander. So that's where you're operating.
With a traditional port injected engine, or even a traditional OE style direct injected engine, it would be impossible to ignite the air fuel ratio.
It makes just that lean, which is what we're talking about before with the pre-ignition chamber.
Yeah, it just does with nothing happening.
No. No.
So on that basis, it is safe to assume, though, that you're still giving up some power running at 1.5 lander.
You could reach in this air fuel ratio up and make more power.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, of course.
Yeah. This is not a case of we're getting the same power with less fuel.
This is a case of what can we keep the engine running out?
And what's the, you know, when you look at the curves of power versus fuel consumption, where do they cross at the best point to keep an engine running with enough power at the right temperature without burning huge amount of fuel?
Because otherwise everyone would just run a 12-litre V12, put six turbos on it, run it incredibly hot and put water injection to cool it in.
And that's not the game, because there are other things that you can find in advance if you're making the package smaller, making the package lighter.
And also, as things become more hybrid, you're looking at what is the internal combustion engine for?
If actually most of my takeoff comes from my electric power, then what you want your engine to do is run quite efficiently, but give you that top end power for your top speed.
Yeah. In terms of the combustion temperature as well, the sort of a curve going on there.
So most road car engines, turbocharged, we're going to be running, you know, maybe 0.75 to 0.85 lambda under wide open throttle.
So rich of stoic.
And at that point, the richer we go, the cooler the combustion charge temperature becomes.
We're essentially using the fuel kind of, as a cooling agent.
So then as we lean the fuel ratio out, we end up with the combustion temperature climbing.
But when we're talking about this 1.5 lambda, I think people who kind of just know enough to be dangerous would assume that at 1.5 lambda, our combustion temperature is out the gate, absolutely off the charts.
But of course, it sort of peaks around stoic.
And then if we continue to lean the fuel ratio out, we sort of get go the other way and it starts dropping away again.
1.5 lambda when we're better lean of stoic, our combustion temperature drops again, correct?
Yeah. And also you can't really deliver that small amount of fuel and get it to mix in with the air properly through a port injection.
So that's why everything goes direct injection.
You know, you're running that 200, 300, maybe even 500 bar, you get a lot more disbursement of the fuel into the mix.
But you also get the adipiatic, I could never say that word, I can type it.
Adipiatic. Adipiatic, expansion of the fuel, which gives you some element of cooling.
And then there's a lot to be done in valve timing as well for expansion of the charge gases so that you're actually creating more cooling and expanding the gases in the mix.
Everything that comes out of your mouth just gives me another two or three topics that I want to dive into.
I'm going to get deep on this one way.
Well, I think that's why that's why we brought you back.
So are we here?
Yeah, there'd be no reason not to.
Okay, I'm going to jump back a little bit because you've mentioned avoiding pre-ignition a couple of times.
So this is different to your pre-ignition chamber, just to be clear.
This is a type of abnormal combustion.
Can you fill us in on what pre-ignition is and what causes it?
Lots of things cause it. That's kind of the problem.
Effectively, what you're trying to avoid happening is the engine goes suck, squeeze, bang, blow.
And you want to make sure the bang happens exactly where you want it to happen.
In other words, it's initiated by the spark.
Exactly, yeah, because if you, when the worst case is if your mixture explodes before it's meant to,
you can end up effectively jamming the engine back with it if you think about the way the crank is turning.
So you want that to happen.
Top dead center, maybe just slightly after, so that you're pushing the engine in the right direction.
What happens when you've got many different things?
But let's say if you're charged temperatures or the temperature of the air that's been compressed and the fuel and that mixture is too hot,
the fuel can combust just due to the pressure and the heat of the mixture itself,
which can happen before you've even reached top dead center.
Similarly, you can be in a scenario where your spark club just gets too hot
and you've got a hot point in the combustion chamber itself that can ignite.
There's all sorts of things that are primarily temperature controlled.
You can push the pressure as long as you can control the temperature.
And that's what we're trying to avoid with all these tiny little things.
And there are really small changes on the V6.
I've been looking at early intake valve closing.
I've had to closing the intake valve before you've even reached the full expansion.
So you reduce your volumetric efficiency.
But what you're able to do then is that charge you've let into the engine you can expand,
which calls the charge slightly.
And then when you go to compress it, you get less of a compression ratio than you would have had from your geometric compression ratio.
So how much?
So this is almost sort of a constant cycle operation.
Yeah, almost.
You're effectively, you're taking a very aggressive compression ratio geometrically.
But the dynamic compression ratio is not that reducing the diet.
Yeah, and giving you a lower dynamic compression ratio by closing the valve early, creating that expansion.
Those things can drop the charge temperature by, I mean, a mine were dropping the charge temperature by about 5, 6 degrees C,
which feels like nothing.
But in these engines, you're looking for the tiny amounts of improvement because you're trying to control a knock temperature window
that might be quite limited.
And it might change as well, depending on where you are, if you're in a variable valve timing.
You're doing everything you can to find the tiniest little improvements.
So, you know, switching a material might feel like that's a point, 001% improvement.
But actually that might be the difference between engine, the runs reliability and engine that doesn't.
Okay.
With production, direct injected engines, one of the problems that is pretty well known.
But maybe less well understood as low speed pre-ignition, which can very quickly destroy an engine.
Is this an issue for your engines as well?
Is that something that you need to be aware of?
Or keep in mind, design out of them?
No, we don't have so much issue there, I don't think.
Most of what we see is the issues when you're up in the power bank.
I mean, we're talking about 12,000 RPM engines, right?
I guess that's pretty much the opposite of low speed.
Yes, they've been very little time at any kind of low speed.
I mean, they'll idle several thousand revs.
They're happier between 11, 11,000 and 1,000 revs.
They're angry thing.
So, yeah, we don't have so many issues there.
All right.
Another topic you've mentioned a couple of times is variable valve timing.
Traditionally, I've sort of seen maybe not the big advantage in variable valve timing
on an all-out race engine, particularly when it's made it to a close ratio,
six or seven speed sequential gearbox, because you're using such a narrow range
of the engine's rev range anyway.
Can you counter that?
Why add the complexity of variable valve time?
Where has that been if it actually coming from?
No, I'm with you.
I don't always see the value in the complexity.
I think the value comes when you're looking at things like Pike's Peak
where your oxygen ratio in the air is decreasing between one under the track
and the other, quite significantly.
And it's at that point where you might say, actually,
it would make a lot more sense.
My valve timing was different at the other end of the course.
Okay, so you're talking almost barometric pressure-based valve timing
as opposed to through the rev range and load?
Yeah, I would say so, because, as you say, with a race engine,
you just kind of got a sweet spot and ideally you want to get from wherever you are
in braking back up to where you want to be as quickly as possible
and you're not hanging around in the middle revs personally.
I know there are some series that run VVT with a primarily manufactured
series that are using either roadcar spare engines
or they're trying to trickle down technology quicker into roadcar spare,
which VVT makes sense for efficiency in a car that spends a lot more time
in lower revs and a wider range of revs I'd say.
I think, actually, I might have got that a little bit wrong
with Pike's Peak because it's very unique sort of case study
that center section where they've got all those real tight hair
and switchbacks that W's they call it.
In that area, you do tend to actually end up quite low in the rev range,
so maybe there is still some benefit there in the traditional use of VVT.
There's some value there, but primarily it's where your entire charge maths
has changed by the time you get to the top of the course,
and that's where I'm looking at some of the data that I've gone
going, when actually VVT makes sense here,
whereas it doesn't, if you go and round them on.
Yeah, no fair enough. I think that probably sort of comes down to
a road course versus street style or hill climb,
where road course you know every lap you're going to be in the same gear
at the same point, you can be quite controlled around the use of the rev range,
maybe not quite so much on a hill climb.
I think we've probably got a little bit of a head of ourselves here.
We've talked about all this engine development.
Let me open my spreadsheet, that's how excited we got.
It's still time to dive back into the spreadsheet.
Let's talk about how you got to this point now.
Obviously a big change in what you're doing for a living,
selling off that manufacturing business,
and now designing race engines.
That's quite a shift there, talk to us about it.
Yeah, I know, something that I've always wanted to do,
there's two ways you go about it.
One is you go and get a job at a place that makes race engines.
The other one is you just get stuck in.
The stuck-in way is the way that I like to do things.
A few years ago, as I said, I was redesigning high boosts ahead
to try and get a bit more power and a bit more control out of those.
Somebody said, would you like to help us with this?
Got involved in a program building a V8.
I heavily based on those high boosts ahead.
I should call them high boosts ahead.
The V8 heads are the similar shape and size.
I built that engine with them.
That's really interesting.
I had licensed a caron developing.
I carried on developing it.
I actually sold that license to that earlier this year.
That's now owned by a team who I think are going to continue
developing it.
They're planning to run it next year.
That was quite exciting.
Over that time, I got involved in a few other things.
I've done a couple of hypercars that working on one has finished.
One is still ongoing.
There's a couple of other things in the works recently.
There's the V6, which is my in-house baby.
That was the thing that I was always desperate for.
Somebody's going to develop.
Nobody wanted to do it.
Nobody wanted to do 120 degree central turbo hot V6.
Everyone said it's going to be too big.
It's not worth the central gravity reduction.
It's not going to fit.
There's much better up the options with the time to be angle.
I can't like it.
I started it at the beginning of this year.
It's gone quite well.
We've got a whole bunch of customers signed up for it now.
They've seen some proper CAD.
They've seen some proper simulation from it.
They're going, actually, that is smaller than the V8 package.
It's a huge amount lower in central gravity.
You get huge amount of efficiency out of it.
It's something to give a go to.
This is almost a case of building and they will come.
Yeah, it doesn't always work.
But I was confident in this.
I spent a long time modeling this.
Mathematically modeling this.
I was convinced that it is something that makes sense.
Particularly in this world where a lot of racing is going hybrid.
You need smaller engines.
You need everything to be down low.
You want to take advantage of the power train for the electronics.
But you also have a top end that needs internal combustion to keep it interesting.
Sure.
I guess one of the questions I've got for you here
is why the V6 and before I let you answer,
the angle I'm coming from here is when full wheel one, for example,
went from what they 2.4 litre V8 was the last there.
Naturally aspirated engines, then they went the hybrid V6 route.
And it's no secret.
They maybe don't sound quite as good.
So from a perspective of performance,
the sound the engine makes is largely irrelevant.
If you are purely in the numbers as an engineer,
but as a fan, as a driver even,
I like an engine that sounds like the old school.
Naturally aspirated for wheel one engine.
So are you just so pure in your engineering direction
that it's all about the numbers and the sound is irrelevant?
Was that ever a consideration?
So I saw a friend of ours the other day who has a very cool car.
I went out to more than it is.
I used to get in, turn it on, drive it.
I don't want to drive it.
Can we go to the bonnet?
Can I see what's underneath it?
Can we put it on the ramp?
I'm an engineer.
I like the efficiency of things.
I like to try and make things work.
I appreciate that V8 or the V10s sounded incredible,
but sounding good doesn't necessarily win you anything.
And I want to build engines that work.
So it's all very well doing.
Another V8 that sounds great or another V10 that sounds great.
But if you try in a competing series where you have full manufacturer teams
and some privateer teams,
I want to be the privateer teams that chance to do something
that would compete with the manufacturers and not get lost.
OK.
So the V6 advantage here is packaging weight.
It's going to be obviously a smaller footprint than a V8.
Yeah, it's shorter.
Obviously it's less cylinders on it,
but actually I've managed to keep it with super,
sorry, I'm looking down at a model I've got printed here.
It's super low.
It gets 250 millimeters shorter than my V8 package.
And the V8 package is already pretty small.
Wow.
That's a big saving.
It's a big saving on just net height,
but then you look at the center graph,
the center graph comes down 180 millimeters.
Wow.
That doesn't sound like a lot,
but it does when that's the heaviest part of the car.
And the whole package, including turbo,
the moment is just under 100 kilos.
That's incredibly light.
For some comparison here as well,
what sort of power level will this produce?
Actually, what capacity we're talking as well?
It's just on two liters, stable,
sort of endurance spec,
you tune it to 700, maybe 750 horsepower on boost
in a hill clone spec,
you could push that to 800,
maybe 850 if you were brave.
You get quite a lot out of that.
For a very small engine.
The only thing is missing is the starter mode,
because it is intended to be plugged into a hybrid system.
We're currently working on hybrid bell housing.
So it's actually a starter generator in a bell housing
that would give you that off-the-line pump
without having an enormous battery in a full-front EV section.
OK.
All right, V-angle.
It's obviously a pretty key element
when you're designing the engine.
And you've mentioned this is a 120-degree V-sex,
a 120-degree bank angle.
Can you talk to us about all of the implications
or considerations that come around choosing
that the bank angle for a V-configuration engine?
Yeah.
You want to balance the engine.
You want to provide points of force
as equally as you can
around the rotation of the crank shaft.
You can provide points of force
off-kilter from the resonance of the engine,
but you end up then adding a load of dampers
and maybe balancing shafts and all sorts of other things.
So most formats, all formats of engine
have a natural place they like to be
with a V-6.
The majority of times trying to deliver power
every 120 degrees around the rotation
to provide power equally across the 360.
So sort of the natural places where a V-6 is happy
is either it's 60 degrees,
which is divisible by the 120 or 120 degrees.
Effectively, I am lazy.
And therefore, I want to go for the thing
that is the least resonance to it
so that I can avoid having to do all the damper
and the harmonics work.
But you can, I mean, the Formula One V-6s are 90 degrees
and they deal with that.
A, with acceptance and vibration,
and B, with some damping and some clever harmonics.
They also have some very weird
crank shaft angles,
which account for the flex in the crank shaft itself
but also they use that along the valve timing too
to balance the engine.
But for me, 120 was neat because I've looked at 180
before I've actually designed a flat engine.
And I really liked it until I started packaging into a car
and just realized how high you'd have to hold the engine
to the point where you may as well not have bothered
with the flat form of engine
because your central gravity still went up
because you have to be able to access the port.
Whereas the 120 to me was the neatest place to be
as flat as you can go while still having enough space
to get air and exhaust it and how the engine.
So obviously we don't have the benefit of pictures here
in an audio podcast.
But for those who maybe aren't picking up
what we're putting down here,
when we're talking about that 120 degree bank angle,
essentially it's how much splayed apart the cylinders are.
So the further we sort of splay those apart,
the wider the engine becomes
but the lower the centre of gravity gets as well.
Whereas the 90 degree V6
we're going to be much more upright or 60 degree.
We're going to be much more upright.
And the centre of gravity becomes higher
but also as narrow as so easy to package.
I guess as well with the hot V configuration,
you're considering that,
how to package a turbocharger
and exhaust manifolds between the two cylinder heads.
So that would be beneficial having a wider V configuration
with bank angle.
Yeah, I felt that was quite neat.
We could have run twin turbo
in a sort of more traditional format.
I kept those runners short,
kept some of that weight even lower
but then you end up with a package that is wide
and understandably people would say
that's too big to get to a car with any kind of arrow.
But the turbo in the middle didn't raise it up too high.
It kept a pretty good balance on the centre of gravity
allowing me to get the exhaust runners really short.
But what the 120 degree allows me to do
because it's quite short stroke engine,
it's a 50 mil stroke engine.
The combustion area that's getting the hottest
is actually quite high up at that phase.
So you've got a pretty large valley
that isn't as hot as it could be where you can package things.
It's still hot,
it's hotter than if it would be the other way around.
But it's not as hot.
And so you can get quite a lot into there
which is what I'm trying not to do.
Like you would on a traditional V engine
is just plug things into the side of the engine
to just allow it to get wider.
Because at the moment that is about the same width
even with the intake manifolds
as a current Formula One engine.
I mean it's really not that wide at all.
It is significantly lower.
And I know they've got centrality regulations
that they're not allowed to go so low.
But you know you could fit it in the same engine bay
without affecting the countings around it.
So it's interesting to me how much you can squeeze
into the same cube.
And that's why I've gone and you asked me the other day about
why am I designing oil pumps?
What's the point?
You can buy those.
It's packaging.
It's all packaging.
It's part of its efficiency
because I want to pump exactly the right amount
so that I'm not wasting anything.
I don't be venting things.
There is a pressure relief found
on various places around the engine.
I don't want to be using it.
Because it means that I've overcooked it somewhere.
I don't want to leach any power off.
But a lot of it is because of packaging.
You know I'm running a pump in a very weird place.
Because it meant I could get it in in an enormous
unknown position when you put the engine into a car.
A little off track from where we were going
but because you mentioned that.
When I sort of said to you,
why would you design your own dry sun pump
when you can buy them?
I think the consideration I have in my mind is
never for me personally,
I don't know.
Maybe you have done this before.
For me personally, if I was to design a dry sun pump,
I would kind of come into this.
Maybe let's assume that I am a wizard
with solid work so I can draw it.
And then I can have it manufactured.
But I'm probably coming into this from the angle of
I don't even know what I don't know about
the world of dry sun pump design.
Whereas those companies like
daily engineering, for example,
that have been building these for decades.
Actually, I don't know how long they've been in business for,
but let's assume decades.
They've probably made all of the mistakes along the way
and figured out what not to do and what to do.
How do you sort of circuit that or fast track your learning
so that you don't end up finding
that you've designed in a massive floor
into a dry sun pump.
And maybe a dry sun pump is simpler than I'm giving credit for
and that's just not a consideration.
Well, no, it's the same one.
All of this, right?
And it doesn't matter what design is similar,
but particularly in this world where there are companies
that already do this.
And you could say,
this is the engine I'm going to build.
And you go and knock on the door,
it costs worth a while.
You have someone else and you ask them to develop it.
And they will,
but it might cost a lot of money
and it might not be as much fun if you ask me.
I'm enjoying the process of designing stuff,
but also there's a huge amount of data out there now
and you've got access to it.
So you can read 10 different white papers
on various university studies on various types of pumps.
You can see what works doesn't work.
You can start with that as a basis.
And then the beauty, I guess,
of having the manufacturing larger end of my control
is that I make them.
So I've got 10 different pumps of varying coatings,
thicknesses, clearances that I then put on a rig.
And I test them and that's not as quick as going to daily
and saying,
here's the specs, here's what I want.
But it does give me the ability to have
a lot more control over what I'm doing,
how I'm packaging things.
You know, the sort of things that I want to do,
if I turned up to daily,
and so can you do this for me?
They're not going to waste the time on it
because I'm only going to buy 20 a year maybe.
It's not worth it.
And the consultancy fees to ask them to do it would be enormous.
It's just not cost effective.
So I quite like bringing these things in-house.
And I quite like the process of testing and evolving.
And again, you come back to the value of doing the alpha.
Well, the value of that Instagram reaches
that every time I post something,
I get 50 people that go, that's shit.
Am I allowed to swear on this?
Of course you are.
And that's quite valuable, actually,
because a lot of times they've caught me on something,
and a lot of times I'll get people with quite significant pedigree,
who may or may not put their, you know,
job title and everything else on their profile
who reach out and go,
oh, you know, look at this, look at this, look at this.
You've made a glaring era.
Yeah, and you'll go, oh, you know,
who are you?
Your profile's got pictures of cats on it.
And you go, I have a minute.
How have you got that information?
And then you Google them and you realize who they are.
And you go, I don't know, I've got, you know,
so-and-so that I saw on the TV the race last week,
and they're DMing me on Instagram,
talking to me about pump resistances
and how to avoid it and sending me a document
and nothing super confidential,
but stuff that you're not going to find with a basic Google.
Sure.
I think that's the world we live in now,
though, you do have access to people
with that sort of knowledge
and it's much easier to connect
than it's ever been in the past.
Yeah, and, you know, like I said earlier,
it's quite a collaborative industry,
and people are willing to help.
And that's been invaluable over the years
of, you know, design some uprights once,
and I was all very proud of all the maths I'd done
into the material sciences,
and then I analysed them.
And posted a picture of it all very proud
of how pretty they look,
and somebody came back and went,
here's a loaded data on uprights
when they are unanodised
and when they are analysed.
It's going to fail.
And really?
Yeah, they can be loaded data
on how hard analysing created
effectively a Britannus in the surface,
which creates a stress factors
when you got down to a certain level of concentration.
And my price would probably be enough
that I'm not at that level,
but as you start to strip more material away,
it would start to become a thing.
And I never considered it.
My simulations did not include the effects of analysing,
you know, it was based on the raw material
and they sent it this paper,
and actually, yeah, you're right.
That does make a lot of sense,
and I would never have found that information.
So, you know, having access to all these people
has been incredibly valuable over the years
because they do contribute
and you may not order it from the person
that makes tens of thousands of them,
but the person that design the things
that are sold for tens of thousands
does reach out and say, try this.
Yeah, that's really interesting.
I would never have considered analysing
really having any positive
or negative effects on the part.
I mean, little sidequest here on this topic,
but that's fairly typical
of motorsport uprights to be hard analysed, isn't it?
I thought so, but no.
Time to analysing is fine,
but off is little to no value
other than oxidisation.
Type 3, according to this paper,
and the data that's empty,
creates a brittleness in the surface
that can create cracking.
Well, and they'll propagate
under particularly under dynamic loads.
So, you know, they'll be strong enough in life,
but as you start to go into very high vibrations
and very high loads at the same time,
you start to see the fracturing
and that could be a reason that it propagates
is the brittleness of the surface.
Okay.
All right, we'll get back to engines
and we'll park motorsport uprights.
You've mentioned earlier,
trying to get away from the need for balance shafts,
and there's a lot of complexity around this.
So, for us that way,
why would a V6 require balance shafts?
Because when people buy a road car,
they expect to be very comfortable
rather than feel an engine,
which is a shame,
because I think the spine shaking of an engine
is quite valuable, but anyway.
Particularly with a V6,
because you've only got three cylinders,
they're inherently unbalanced.
I think it's fair to say that with a V8,
you can have two going down as two going up,
and the same on the other side,
and it's not perfectly balanced,
but you've got a rocking motion
that you can handle with a V6.
You've effectively got two three cylinder engines,
so you've sort of completely off kilser.
Well, a balance shaft does,
it effectively replicates,
yeah, I think I can say that.
It's simplest for me.
It replicates, afforded,
but to balance everything out,
and if you extrapolate it,
it balances the uptown motion of three cylinders
to make them feel equal across the rotation.
You can do without it,
embracing, because the vibration isn't the end of the world,
but you still need an element of damping on the crankshaft
and certainly on the camshaft.
But with a 120 degrees,
you just don't get as bigger issue,
because you are closer to where the engine is happiest.
You're delivering power of 120 degrees.
You're doing that from a 120 degree bank angle.
You're missing the ideal,
which is another three cylinders coming up the bottom,
but you can handle that vibration.
That's the frequency that's easy to manage.
Yeah, I can.
All right.
This sort of comes down, I guess, as well,
to an understanding of what that tune balance
even means when it comes to an engine.
I think a lot of people kind of get confused,
and we're talking about balancing the pistons
so that all of the pistons weigh the same amount
and the conrods.
And when we're balancing a conrod,
that gets a little bit more complicated,
because part is considered to be rotating
and parts considered to be reciprocating.
So we actually have to balance all of the big ends
to weigh the same as each other.
And then all of the overall weights to be the same.
So that kind of fixes that.
So then your parts weigh the same,
but that still doesn't take into account
the vibration that's put into the crank shaft
during operation.
Correct?
That's another consideration.
Yeah, because they may weigh the same,
but they're throwing down different times
around the cycle, right?
And what you end up happening with
is, effectively, the engine wants to rock.
So it might want to rock backwards and forwards.
It might want to rock side to side or twist.
And that's what you're trying to offset,
because it makes it incredibly uncomfortable
and it puts a lot of stress on the car.
So ideally, you want to get to a point
where you can minimize the rocking of the engine,
so it's not trying to work itself loose.
So yeah, there's two aspects to that.
So you're talking before about road cars.
Always go to great lengths
to reduce the individual noise vibration
and harshness.
You want everything to be nice and smooth.
You know, balance a coin on its edge
on the rock cover
and rev the thing to the red line
and the coins stay still.
So in a race car,
we don't really care about that,
but also the vibration can be quite damaging
to components over time.
So there's still a consideration there.
In terms of the rotating assembly here,
am I safe to assume
that everything that you've designed here
is one off you're not relying on
any off-the-shelf components.
Yeah.
Yeah, nothing.
Does this give you sort of,
I guess, with this whole engine,
complete freedom?
Does a blank shed of paper like this make it easier
or when you could have any combination of,
let's say, even something as simple as
bored to stroke in order to get your
sub-to-leader capacity?
Yeah.
Is it easier or most when you're confined
by a particular geometry
with the engine design?
Initially, it's harder,
but then when you get into design phases,
much easier.
So I've got this big model here
with an Excel which effectively allows you
to weigh up a million different things
and work out where you want to be
because it's not as simple as going,
well, I quite fancy a hundred-mill bore
and that stroke,
it's a question of,
well, actually, does that give you
the power balance that you want?
Does that give you the power
and the revering that you want?
Can I get that in the package size that I want?
If I go that small,
does that push my cylinder pressures
right out to get the power that I want?
If it does, do I then need to space them
so why they may as well be eight cylinders
instead of six?
All of that is a balancing act
and I get lots of people going,
well, why have you done that?
Why have you done this?
And in isolation,
most of the time,
their suggestion is correct.
That would be really cool.
That would be a good thing to do
because of these six other things
that doesn't make any sense.
So initially, incredibly difficult
to decide exactly what an engine needs to be
and regulations are quite helpful
to sort of pin down at least some things.
But when you get into design phase,
it's so much easier.
You know, when I was doing the
high boost head redesign,
I was effectively trying to see,
well, how they done it,
how would I do it,
but in Billet,
maybe a bit stronger,
maybe I can increase the pressure here,
maybe I can increase the flow right here.
That was one thing,
but it was quite frustrating
because you don't have access to all the days you want.
You don't necessarily know that the measurement
that you've taken is the absolute nominal measurement
that that's supposed to manufacture it on
or if you buy a hundred,
actually, it was not the smallest
or the largest that it could have been.
You know,
you get into some world where you wish
you had the manufacturing drawings,
whereas when you start from scratch,
I mean,
my engines,
the last four I've done,
springs,
coils,
plugs,
and a couple of them,
the oil pump,
off the shelf,
everything else,
custom,
and that gives you a huge amount of flexibility
because if you don't want that to be a camshaft spacing,
you just move it,
and you can move everything else
and you can change everything else
as long as it still fits the springs that you've selected.
And even if it doesn't,
you can change the springs.
I quite like that freedom
because when I design an engine,
I don't just go right,
that's what building
and get to the end of it.
I'm finding what happens is
you design it,
you spend three months on it,
and you go,
actually,
if that was fundamentally different
and it may have an impact on 50 other parts,
this would be better
and you start again.
You're not sort of
wetted to something
because you already have that component.
So I quite like that flexibility,
as a huge amount more complex to you,
the pain in my life is the tolerance stack,
which is, you know,
when you're manufacturing something,
you're effectively saying,
this is how big I want it to be,
but I could accept it
if it was slightly larger
or slightly smaller,
which is fine on one part,
and you specify how much larger,
how much smaller,
then you put six other parts together,
and the problem becomes,
well, actually,
if that one was slightly larger,
that one was slightly smaller,
and then that one was slightly larger,
and larger,
and larger,
you've suddenly got,
one millimeter tolerance,
over six different parts,
you're now 0.6 millimeters out.
So when you're designing everything that,
is probably one of the toughest things,
because we're manufacturing as well,
it's trying to work out,
well, actually,
what should the tolerance be on that,
because that part could be looser,
but actually is it tight
because of something
that's, you know, 12 parts down the road?
I think anyone listening
who hasn't sort of had any involvement
with designing or manufacturing parts
would sort of think to themselves,
well, if I want the part,
let's say,
to be 85.5 millimeters,
why not just make it 85.5 millimeters,
but of course, that's not realistic.
There's always going to be
some level of tolerance required,
and as you specify tighter and tighter tolerances,
of course, the cost of manufacture
in that part,
to that tighter tolerance becomes higher, doesn't it?
Yeah, it becomes higher,
but also there's a limit
of how much you're going to achieve,
because you get to the point
where you have to specify tolerance
at a temperature,
because you can specify tolerance
or something,
you can hold it in your hand for 10 minutes,
and the measurement will be different.
So there's only so far you can go,
and with an engine,
you have to be effectively accounting
for the temperature it's going to run out,
and what that range might be,
because particularly
where you're working with a lot of aluminum,
aluminum's got quite a high coefficient of expansion.
So the difference between the size of the part,
at 80 degrees C, 100 degrees C,
120 degrees C,
can be quite a bit different
over a reasonable distance.
So you're not only accounting for
the manufacturing tolerance
of what the part looks like when it was made,
versus when it was, you know,
a room temperature,
versus when it's then an operating temperature,
whereas when you buy a manufactured assembly
of something,
then that works already been done for you.
They've done all that testing,
and they've worked everything out.
So I would say that's probably the most difficult part
of developing everything from scratch.
Sure.
Just to sort of give an idea
with that tolerance stacking,
as well as this exists,
no matter what you're dealing with,
and in the OE engine world,
a good example of that
is a crankshaft journal
will have a size range
that is considered to be
with intolerance.
And likewise, the journal
and the main tunnel in the block
will also have a size range,
and then that's where we get graded bearing shells,
because ultimately,
what we want to control very closely
is the oil clearance.
So depending on where in the tolerance range,
the crankshaft journal sits,
and where in the tolerance range,
the main tunnel in the block sits,
you'll then choose from a chart,
which graded bearing shells to put in,
and that, if everything works as it should,
that's going to give you the correct oil clearance
on each of the journals.
Now, just coming back to
one single geometry of the engine,
let's talk about the stroke,
and you mentioned 50 millimeters there.
I'm interested, is that,
purely driven by,
you mentioned 12,000 RPM,
as you rev range,
and one of the things
we do want to try and keep some control over,
to keep the engine intact,
is the piston speed.
So, is that the RPM range,
the only thing that drives the stroke choice,
or is there still a balance between
the stroke and board diameter
that you need to keep in mind too?
There's still a balance between stroke and board diameter,
because you're looking at the torque
that you're producing,
because obviously the longer the stroke,
the more leverage you've got the crankshaft,
so there's the more torque you're creating.
But you're also looking at,
it comes back to flame propagation, right?
Because you've got something that's really over square,
so where the board is significantly larger than the stroke,
it takes so long for the flame to get from the center,
or wherever you're propagating the flame from,
to the full combustion mix,
the engine moved on by the time you've got your power.
So, you've got to balance those so that you're not in a position where,
either the stroke is so short,
that you've already reached the other,
you know, you've come from top dead centre,
the bottom dead centre,
before the flame's properly propagated,
and you've generated your combustion pressure.
But simply that it's not so long,
that actually the whole thing runs out of them,
by the time it gets to the other end,
you just can't get enough RPM out,
something with two longer strokes.
So, again, that's one of those ones
where you're running two curves,
and you're looking for where they cross,
and you're trying to decide where you want them to cross
and adjusting them.
It brings you back to high school,
high school, quadratics and math.
Scary.
I don't want to go back there.
It's really scary.
Another consideration here,
is the rod to strike correction.
Again, you've got complete freedom.
How important is that?
Are we allowed to know we sort of end up
in a 12,000 RPM engine
with the rod to strike correction?
We are at, yeah, 120 over 50.
So that's about 2.2.4 on this engine.
Okay.
That's a really long rod to strike correction.
I mean, a factory might be 1.5.
Are we factory engine 1.5 to maybe 1.7?
It's something that I've always had a bit of an interest in,
but when you're dealing with production engines,
you don't really have the ability to make dramatic changes to that.
So you can only really look at the trends you see
in the lights of sport bikes,
where an excess of 2 seems to be the way.
How critical I guess is the rod to strike ratio in the design?
Is it maker a significant difference to the engine performance?
It's about loading.
Is the rod moves through its cycle?
It's effectively, look at it as a triangle, right?
So from one extreme to the other on the stroke,
you're creating a right angle triangle.
And you want to try and minimize that angle,
as best you can whilst keeping the engine at a sensible size.
Because of course, the longer the rod to strike ratio becomes,
the taller the block also has to become, correct?
Yes.
So packaging instead of comes back into another compromise
that you're making here?
Yeah.
You coming back to size and weight as well, right?
Because rods are longer.
They are the weaker they are.
So the more material you need,
the heavier they are.
The heavier the rotating mass, the more losses you get in the engine,
you go round around in circles.
But effectively what you're trying to do is minimize that angle.
So the rod doesn't have to go through a massive rotation.
You reduce the loading on the crankshaft.
You also reduce the amount of rotation the pin in the piston has to go through,
which can quite well reduce the size that you need that piston to be,
and the amount of friction you're creating in the engine.
So I went quite long on this engine because I'm trying to go efficient.
I could probably reduce the size of the engine by 2030,
and then a meter to cross it.
Probably get away with it without much of an issue.
But there's a lot of advanced choosing efficiency to keep it on.
Okay.
Next up, compression ratio.
How do you go about choosing compression ratio?
Particularly when you're talking a boosted engine at which point,
you obviously can also run multiple boost levels.
And naturally the fuel that you choose to run becomes a major player
in these decisions too.
Yeah.
The real answer is how brave are you?
Or at least that's the question to how are you start?
So the higher the compression ratio, the higher the temperatures are going to be in the cylinder.
The higher the pressure is going to be in the cylinder as well.
And before we even start talking about cranking tool,
because you've got to overcome this pressure just to turn the engine over.
We're at 14 geometric,
and because of the early valve closing, we're at about 13 net value.
That's where we'll start.
In theory, we can go up from there.
There's enough room in the temperature to go up from there.
There is a point where it doesn't make sense on the fuels that this engine's designed to run on.
When you start to get into more exciting fuels,
where they've got better not resistance,
you can push that compression ratio further without blowing things up.
I don't think we'll go much higher than 15 geometric,
but I might be wrong.
We'll test it.
I like to blow things up.
I've blown up many engines.
Sounds like a cheap experiment to me.
It's the way you have to do it.
We don't always do a single cylinder.
I have done a single cylinder for this,
which is to make an engine with one cylinder and you test all these things
so that when you blow it up,
it doesn't matter quite so much.
We'll probably get this full V6 on the dyno in hoping November.
I'll find out.
I'm not far off.
No, but that's where VVT is starting,
and come back to that conversation.
That's where it starts to make sense,
because we're running four bar boost gauge.
Everyone's at five bar,
I'm especially at the Panasonic.
Which is a lot of boost.
But to get to that much boost on the turbo,
you have to go through a whole range of low levels of boost,
where actually you might want to change your valve timing
and you might want to open earlier or later to account
for a lower boost level.
Depending on how quick you can spool that turbo up.
All right, so we're talking four bar of boost
and potentially up to a 15-to-1 compression ratio.
What magic fuel are you running this thing on?
No, it's on 102.
But you're opening the valves quite early.
So you're bringing that compression ratio down,
and there's a whole load of cooling trickery going on.
So there's no water injection yet.
I'm trying to avoid that,
but that might be a loss result to getting moving.
So you're sort of hoping that when you get it on the dyno,
you find out,
you don't find out that this thing is just heavily prone
to knock and you can't sort of put any time into the thing.
I hope not.
I mean, there's been a lot of,
Sam, there's a lot of calcs to try and work out
where we are.
We'll turn the boost up slowly to try and see
where we end up.
We will run, you know,
send it to pressure sensors and temp sensors
and things to try and work out where we are
before we push it too hard too quickly.
But in theory,
we'll get away with it.
Yeah.
So it really comes down to the book experiment
to the theory stack up once this thing actually has a dyno.
So five bar atmospheric
under the 14-to-1 geometric compression ratio
is where you get your 850 horsepower from.
So it's not going to run for very long.
The more stable reduces that compression ratio,
reduces that boost.
On that basis,
how do you sort of go about making sure
that the components that you're designing
and not just the rotating assembly,
but also the block itself
and then heat sealing?
How do you confirm
that that's going to be up to the task
with the sort of cylinder pressures
you're going to be expecting?
So I start with hand calcs for everything.
That's the only old-school bit of what I do
is pen and paper for the initial calculation.
So, you know, things like,
well, cylinder pressures,
you do want to hope stress analysis in this link initially,
which is a piece of paper,
piece of maths to work out how thick,
based on the tensile strength of that material,
at the temperature that it's going to be running out how thick
does that need to be for it to hold the pressure?
You add a safety margin in,
then you start to consider capping that
and so you're adding a restraint at either end of the tube,
which adds some structural strength to the tube,
how long is that tube?
And you sort of get a rough idea.
Then I tend to hash out in cats
and build something super basic
and put that into 3D sim,
where I'll then start to cycle it.
So the problem with engines is nothing happens continuously.
So you've got very high pressure,
but you've got it instantaneously,
and it's in a cycle,
and it's repetitive in a dynamic format.
So it's all well and good saying,
well, that could quite easily hold 500 bar with fine.
But actually, when you start pulsing that
and you're doing that 12,000 RPM,
do you start to fracture the material
to actually the fixing start to come apart?
That's the stuff where you need to get into 3D sim
and start to work out, well, how much?
How much materials do I need before it's definitely safe?
And then how brave am I to take the material off again?
Yeah, on that basis,
what sort of safety factor do you genuinely run with?
Because obviously the larger the safety factor,
you just end up adding more mess to everything you're building,
which is something you're obviously fighting really hard to avoid.
How do you balance that consideration?
I like to, if 10 mill is safe,
I'd love to go to 20,
but quite often I'm compromising at 1.5.
I find that's a reasonable balance.
If you're pushing something 50% further than it should be,
you're probably doing something wrong.
But also that gives you some opportunity
for other things to have gone wrong.
You know, a lot of these parts are he treated.
You can control that as much as you want.
But silly things can mean that a part that you thought
was spot on might even measure the right hardness
and all the checks you can do on the heat treatment,
but actually there might be just one square centimeter of it
that augusts the wind blew across the room or something,
and it called it a slightly different rate.
And that can completely change the part entirely
because you create a stress concentration point
and you just don't know.
So 50% gives me enough confidence to get away with that
in most cases,
unless it was catastrophic too.
I'm quite happy yet.
I know in industry they've pushed out three, four in some places,
but it's multiple.
We've got to keep them way off somewhere.
Absolutely.
You just mentioned heat training as well.
So can you maybe explain what heat training is
and why it's necessary?
Yeah.
So there's different forms of heat treating.
When you buy a piece of metal,
even then there's various forms you can buy a piece of metal
and you have the metal in its chemical format
that might be delivered to you.
You might have a piece of metal that's already been he treated.
So it's already been so with aluminium 606-1,
which is sort of your run of the mill machining aluminium,
that normally comes in it in a T6 format,
which has already been he treated and stressed.
And it's sort of taken the messiness
out of the construction of the material
and put it into a format where it's the right balance of strength
without getting to a point where it's brittle.
But the problem is when you're making things like a block
is that they're big.
And when you heat treat something,
you very rarely get penetration passed safely,
75 millimeters from the surface.
So if you've got a block,
and you're going to machine from 500 by 400 by 300 millimeters,
and you're going to machine 80% of that material away,
the reality is the material left with is probably
so deeply buried within the engine
that you don't actually have any heat treatment in those areas.
And by removing all of that material,
you've introduced a huge amount of stress into material itself.
So what you end up doing is actually we buy the material
for particularly the larger parts in a zero conditions
that completely unheated for things like block and heads.
It's actually forged, so we'll specify a block size
and we'll have it forged so the billet we get has been made
by forging, so it's been compressed,
which if you cast something and you pour it
a molten metal into a box,
what you end up with is an atom structure in the metal
that is quite neatly aligned,
which means it's very easy to break it.
You can snap it because those atoms don't have any interwebbing worries.
When you forge it and you crush it into the shape that you want,
all those atoms are kind of messed up
and they bond with each other much better,
and which means you don't have very clear lines or slices
to be able to break something.
If you think about a 3D printed part that's got layers,
it's very easy to break it across the layers,
whereas when you've got something that is a bit more mushed together,
technical term, it's much stronger.
So with a block or a head,
we'll have a forge piece that is our billet,
we'll put it on the machine.
We have a roughing CAD model,
so that is effectively,
it kind of looks like the block,
if you were a bit drunk and you were wearing the wrong glasses,
it's up to about four millimeters off the end surface.
A lot of the details aren't in it,
but you'll take in the bulk of the material away,
and then we'll go and do the heat treatment on it,
so we'll go and do a single-pass heat treatment to start with,
which might be,
and what is, you might heat it,
and let it cool at air temperature,
you might quench it in some steels,
but what that's effectively doing is allowing the material to relax,
introduce some strength into that material,
giving it some properties that it needs,
we'll then take off more material,
we might then go and stress the material,
or age the material with some more heat treatments,
and then go and take the final layer off very slowly,
because we don't want to introduce stress back into the material,
so we're taking very small cuts,
we tend to dance around,
so we're not going from left to right across the pieces,
we're machining it,
we tend to go and do a little bit over here,
a little bit over here,
a little bit over here,
so you're not just blasting one area continuously,
trying to reduce the stress that you put into that material.
So, another consideration there,
I'm guessing, I don't, I don't machine things,
but when you're machining a piece of billet aluminium like this,
I can only assume it's putting a lot of heat into the aluminium,
we've already talked about the fact that aluminium
has a high coefficient of thermal expansion,
so it's going to move around,
it's going to grow as it heats up.
You're also machining parts
that I can only assume have very, very fine tolerances,
so the question here is,
how do you go about controlling the temperature
and the block you're machining,
as you're machining it,
so you don't just end up with, you know,
a dumpster fire coming out the other end
because the tolerances are nowhere near what you wanted.
I had this conversation with somebody on Instagram
the other day who disagreed with me,
but I, for all my career,
I've always, despite putting coolant onto a power
as you're cutting it,
so quite often that coolant will actually come through
the tool itself,
so the tool is cooled
and the coolant will come out of holes in the end of the tool,
and try and call the workpiece.
I've always maintained that you're still going to generate
some localised heat,
you're still going to generate some localised stress,
and that's why I like to program the machine
to dumps around the part
and not focus in any one area,
because when you are machining to 0.05,
0.01 in some cases,
in some cases 0.05,
you know, just touching it could move the material
because it gets slightly hotter,
and because aluminium has very high heat conductivity,
you know, you know,
you want to be over here,
that heat quickly,
yes, it dissipates across the block,
which should, in theory,
bring down the average temperature,
but if the whole average temperature is going up
and we're talking about very small movements,
we'll create a lot of issues,
so that's why we don't just go ham,
machine all the material off,
and then go and heat treat it,
because by the time that's cooled off
from doing all the machining,
it's moved slightly,
you heat treat it,
it relaxes and moves slightly,
you could be miles out,
in a world where you're talking about 0.01
a bit millimeter.
Okay.
Now it's sort of coming back to
how you were talking about doing,
sort of a roughing of the block,
then the heat treating.
I might have missed it,
but do you do a final heat treat
after the final machining,
or is that's it?
And is that because the block
will tend to move during the heat treating process?
So if heat treating was the last step of the process,
you could end up with something
that's not dimensionally accurate
because of the heat treating.
Yeah, I mean, it's quite aggressive,
but you're putting quite a high cycle through the material,
so it will move during heat treatment,
which is why will heat treat it,
then machines are more off,
then we might do some further treatments,
then take a bit more off,
depending on how much we're taking off,
we might normalize it again,
just so we're in a position
where we know it's stable,
and then take a final layer off.
That final layer,
you might be taking,
let's say on average,
a millimeter of material away,
so you're not taking much material away
in the scale of the car,
you're not introducing much heat,
you're not introducing much stress,
but if you were to then put another again,
there's no guarantee it stays where it was,
it might still relax slightly.
Yeah, I try not to do that at the end,
unless you actually have to,
or it's a more simple part.
Okay.
I assume there's still sort of finished,
typical engine machining processes,
not necessarily on your CNC machines,
that go into this,
such as the line honing,
the main bearing tunnel and the block,
and obviously boring and honing,
the cylinders may be decking the top of the block as well,
that would be post all of this.
Yeah, so we grind the deck
on a CNC grinder,
so that happens at the same time.
The concentricity of the main bearing journals
is actually quite good,
so we don't always line bore those,
depending on how well it's come out.
If it's with intolerance,
it's normally good enough,
but it doesn't always work out that way,
and it's expensive part to make again
if you're point 001 off.
So yeah, you might line bore that.
This engine we use in liners,
so this will go to somebody
that has a boring machine to go and bore them.
But yeah, other than that,
I try to do most of it,
even one go,
and not end up sort of doing this,
and then it goes over here for gun drilling,
then it goes over here for something else,
because as it passes through hands,
it loses its tolerances.
I try and design things
that don't need to go across multiple machines too often.
I guess that's smart if you can,
if you can get away with it.
You just mentioned liners,
which was going to be one of my next questions,
so why go,
oh, first of all, I guess,
probably explain what a liners sleeve is,
when we're talking about aluminium blocks,
particularly in the OE world now,
but it's pretty common to use a coating
directly on the aluminium,
such as Neckosil,
why the liner over a coated bore?
As you increase cylinder pressure,
and we're talking,
well over 200 bar peak cylinder pressure,
you get a lot of movement,
and the Nexil doesn't light the movement very much,
so ideally you want to move to a steel,
which doesn't matter if it moves.
You're not going to lose any integrity in the coating,
so many of the temperatures coming in the Nexil,
it's fine to a point,
but when you start to push those temperatures really high,
it does become an issue.
The Nexil's lighter,
obviously it doesn't have a steel liner in there,
but then you're dealing with the aluminium,
I hope you stress that at 200, 300 bar,
you need so much space in between your cylinders
that it gets silly,
whereas when you've got strength,
the aluminium,
and the strength of the liner as well.
You can reduce it a bit,
and a bit is worth something in this game.
You know,
reducing the cylinder space by five millimetres
is actually worth quite a lot.
Appreciate it for an engine,
but I remember V6 is only 10 millimetres off the length,
but...
Doesn't sound that much.
Yeah.
Doesn't sound that much,
but I've spent weeks making a change
that takes five millimetre supply of engine,
it's worth it.
Yeah.
Alright,
other considerations worth machining this block.
It's easy in a drag engine that runs on methanol,
where we don't need coolant passengers,
but you do.
So how tricky is it to design the block
and also the cylinder head,
in a way that you can get coolant flow
around everything that's going to need it?
Yeah, the block's not too tricky,
as long as your sensor
below about what tooling is available to you
and how you're going to mount the thing.
So the block has drilling down the top
and the bottom of the cylinder walls.
It's not a full jacket,
it's a purely channels
to get it up to the head primarily,
and then it has some drilling down.
In the V,
I've got two large channels,
and on the other side of the V,
I've got two large channels.
There's two pumps on the engine
that flow into those channels
on the outside of the engine,
flow around the engine up the V,
and then,
so you're getting a controlled flow
top and bottom of each cylinder.
And that's it in the block.
It does not huge amount of cooling in there.
The block is made from quite a stable aluminum at temperature.
You know, a 606 one does not hold its tensile strength
as it gets up to temperature,
which helps,
and there's enough coolant flow going through the engine
that it pulls some heat away from the block.
Primarily,
I make a sound,
it's cool in the heads.
Head to tricky,
most head to cast.
I don't have casting capabilities in-house,
therefore I don't do much casting.
I guess it would also back up in nice sense.
The numbers you're talking,
20 a year, I think you said.
Yeah,
and that volume,
yes, you can 3D print sand moulds
for casting and everything else,
but it's still,
it is expensive,
and quite frankly,
it's not a skill that I'm specialised in.
So I try and stick within reason
of the things that I know.
So most of my head,
I now do a horrible piece of machining
where I have four access holes
on either side of the head
that will sit just below your ports.
I go in on the five axis
with a lolly-pop cutter.
So a lolly-pop cutter is,
well, it looks like a lolly-pop, right?
It's got a ball head that undercuts.
You tend to be able to get them in quite long ratios
so you can have them five axis,
think about a finger moving inside the head,
and they will actually carve out walls of jacket
around all the ports
over the combustion chamber
around the spark plug from those four ports.
Either side,
I tend to treat each cylinder separately,
so each cylinder has a water jacket
that is independent of the other water jackets.
Reason for that is I can then tune the channels that go
in between the supply of water
and each head
and I can monitor temperatures,
and as the engine has been developed,
I can plug restricts ports
to make sure that I'm getting balanced
cooling across the head.
What you quite often get,
so you know,
EM heads is actually pushed them,
you'll get quite uneven cooling.
So, you know,
one cylinder might see 20 degrees temperature higher
than the other,
which means one cylinder might knock repeatedly
whereas the other one doesn't.
It's pretty common to actually see
in almost every engine that I've tuned
when you're starting to look at individual cylinder,
knock control.
There's always one or two cylinders
that are a little more sensitive
to knock than the others.
And on that basis,
if you want to start getting down in the weeds,
you find where those ones start to knock,
obviously limit your timing on those cylinders,
but maybe you could creep another couple of degrees
into the remaining cylinders
and you get in that gain in power and torque.
So, it's all worthwhile.
This sounds like an area
where you could get it so very, very wrong.
Are you using any software to model
the coolant requirements for your engine
or is this kind of, you know,
gut feel experience and best practice?
No, no, no.
It's all simulated.
So, there's an element that I can do with the equipment that I have.
I mean, I'm not a manufacturer with hundreds of supercomputers
that can run a full 3D combustion model
with profiling heat and the degradation of the heat,
but I can reasonably easily calculate the heat that's generated
and the cycle that's generated in.
I can simulate how much heat is drawn away
by the material around it
and the conductivity of those materials
and therefore whether heat's coming.
And I can simulate the impact of the coolant
and how much heat is picking up as it moves through the engine.
And then what I'll do is I'll play effectively.
I'm trying to build a sensitivity model
by looking at, well, actually,
if I could increase the flow rate of the coolant
and let's say how much effects that have
is it really worth finding more flow rate on the coolant
or actually is it diminishing returns
and I'm just sucking power out the engine
to deliver more coolant flow without getting any value from it,
in which case, I'm generating more heat than nothing.
And then a lot of it comes down to dyno time and sensors.
You can do all the sim in the world,
but I mean, you'll see every weekend on Formula One
as well where they go.
It works in the sim, but it doesn't seem to work on the track.
It doesn't matter how much you spend,
sometimes you just got to make it.
Yeah, I guess if they can't get it right every time,
what hope the rest of us have.
Just a couple of things that pop to mind
where you've been talking about this cooling system.
The fact that you haven't got a full jacket
around the cylinder, I mean,
okay, you're not ever going to have a full jacket
necessarily around the sleeve
because they're so amazed
so there's some material joining them together.
However, you know,
from what you've explained with just some channels,
it would sound like to me,
you'd probably have sort of a
a gradient of temperature around the cylinder.
Where I'm going with this is,
do you do considerations around this
and whether you're going to end up with the boards becoming,
you know, out of round as they come up to operating temperature?
Are these considerations you have to factor in?
So they're not really channels
because we're machining with a lot of pop culture
and we're doing it at five axis.
You're going in a 15 millimeter hole,
but actually you can go out at 20, 25 degrees
in a conical shape and avoid everything.
So they're probably between four and six millimeter wall thicknesses
between ports and coolant.
So you're getting pretty close to everything.
You don't have any particular hot spots
because you can get out from those four ports,
you can get sort of coming in an angle around that intake port
and around that exhaust port and around the spot plug.
The only thing you can't do is come in left and right
because there's a cylinder inside.
And from that, we do from the inside.
So we have two ports on the top,
which sit underneath.
So there's finger followers and they sit on a head thing
that is the actual finger followers
and some of the oil sprays.
And that itself is a plug for a top port.
So you're then coming in from the top to machine the middle bit.
So you actually are quite a lot closer to a full jacket
than what I'd assumed?
Yeah, it looks quite similar to a cast head.
There are certainly things that I would do differently
if I was casting it and probably get some improvements from.
But as you say, it's pros and cons of what's available to me.
It works pretty well.
I don't get any major distortion issues that are unplanned.
Let's put it that way.
Yeah.
Okay.
And in terms of the cooling jacket or cooling passages in the block,
did you consider an alternative option?
We see a lot of the sort of billet drag engines
that are off the shelf from a few manufacturers now.
Where they do have a road going option with water jackets
and that will generally be a plate on the side of the block
that bolts in.
So basically with that, that plate removed,
they've got access to freely machine around the side of the sleeves,
the cylinders.
And then the plate goes in and blocks that off.
Consideration there.
So pros and cons are doing it that way versus what you've done.
Yeah.
In the modeling idea that I found that I wasn't relying on cylinder cooling
as long as I could manage my head cooling.
There was enough heat being taken away by this cooling channels.
I did look at doing a spectacular wet sleeve.
So a sleeve that has cooling channels itself.
So you create the cavity by putting the sleeve into lock off that cavity.
The reality is the cylinder pressure is too high.
If you make that wet sleeve, you just end up buckling the sleeve.
And to the point where you made the sleeve so thick,
that you may as well have not had a jacket at all.
So this works quite nicely.
It's something I've done before.
Admittedly without pushing cylinder pressure is quite as high as we are
in this engine.
But we'll see how it runs.
It runs okay.
There are more channels than I intend to use.
So in the first block that we've machines that's got 12 channels
top and bottom and they're all threaded so we can put a plug into them.
And just what we'll do over time is plug that one.
Plug that one.
Plug that one.
And as we see where the temperatures land will adjust that.
Water does strange things.
You think it's predictable.
It's not always predictable because it will do different things at different temperatures.
What the cylinder pressures that you've been talking about basically
with high boost turbocharged engines in particular that the fuse
or the weak link always really comes down to the heat gasket ceiling.
Of course I'm talking here about dealing with production engines
that were never designed for the sort of cylinder pressures
that we end up getting them up to.
You're obviously in the novel situation where you know what you're dealing with
so you can design around it.
How difficult, how complex is it to keep the cylinder head sealed
to that block?
And what is the solution I guess that you've gone with as well?
Yeah.
On a traditional gasket it's incredibly difficult.
You'll see in drag racing they'll use firings I think they call them
where they put affected some copper wire in to apply additional pressure
around the cylinder bore edge.
But I think even then for a long period of time at high pressures
you'll struggle to maintain the seal.
We use INK NL O rings.
So they're similar to rubber O rings.
They're a hollow INK NL tube.
They're plated with three layers of silver.
And they crush.
So the deck surface on the cylinder and the deck surface on the head
are mating.
And around each cylinder we have these metal O rings.
They crush 0.2 millimeters or something.
It's not very much.
The silver gives you enough to embed into the surface on either side
so you create a tight seal.
There's no PTFE or anything like that.
There's no sealant gunk.
They're completely clean.
They seal up to 500 bar dynamic.
So they're pretty tight.
They're quite happy.
They're probably comfortable oil and gasoline.
The only issue is every time you want to do the head new rings.
So it's an expensive game to service the head on these things.
There's a variety of options around that technology sort of
gas-filled O rings is generally what I refer to them.
And some of them have little holes so our combustion pressure
to go into them as well.
These were used back in the early F1 turbo era, I believe, as well.
I think it was rally cars that I should start.
rally cars too.
Yeah, yeah.
So it's definitely not a new technology.
And I think you're right.
The oil and gas industry.
Actually, the nuclear power generation industry as well,
I believe, use them.
And the problem sort of comes back to something we were talking about earlier
is that yes, they might be able to seal 500 bar or more.
But in those industries, it's not that cyclic pressure.
It's that cyclic that makes things difficult, really.
It does.
And that's why three layers are silver because that gives you the meshing.
Because as you say, you might put holes in them so that the cylinder pressure
itself helps expand them.
You can also get sea rings, which are like a seed profile, which I'm sure you've seen,
which rely on the pressure itself to sort of smash them out.
But because these engines operate such high speed, affected by the time it's sealed,
it's too late, even with a sea range of surprise, how much you lose with those sea rings.
So we tested a few things.
The gas fields in Kenelwe rings are the best we've found for this kind of thing.
I think you could probably get away without doing them in Kenel,
but temperatures can get high.
And that's one of those things with safety factor.
Keep it high.
Yeah, OK.
On top of that, what are you using for sealing the oil and water flow between the block
and the heat?
Is that a conventional email style gasket?
No, that is its own ring.
It's a funny graphite FKM mix concoction that can handle the temperatures
because you've got cool and running through the cool and one that is slightly less spec.
But they have 50 there are no rings.
So there's a single piece gasket of any sense that affects you.
Overings of various exotic nature that go into that head
and you just lay them onto the deck surface and put the thing down.
OK.
All right, so you've mentioned this thing's possibly going to see the dyno in November.
So obviously we don't have numbers currently to kind of validate all the modeling.
I don't know how much we can talk about here.
I know the V8 engine you're involved with that you have sold the IP for that.
So I'm not sure if we can talk about it at a higher level when you've got that onto a dyno.
Did it sort of meet your expectations?
Will there any big surprises?
Good.
Good.
Cool.
No, things break.
Yeah, things are wrong.
You find your tolerances are out.
We had a bit of a timing issue on that.
So we just couldn't get the cylinder pressure we wanted on it.
First I went on dyno and I blew one up.
We never really got to the bottom of why.
When you say it, when you see blew up, there's obviously levels to this.
What what actually was the failure?
Crushed valve.
So the piston contact of the valves and everything went out.
It's unclear why because we measure the cam and the cam was fine,
which in a mechanical engine should be fine.
We think it was probably harmonics in the in the gear drive train because the gear driven cams
and the damping probably wasn't right.
We may change the damping we never saw again.
I think we just had a funny harmonic come through the gear train and it just set the timing off slightly.
And everything went bang.
But that's part of it.
There's two ways to develop an engine.
One is you put hundreds of people on it, tens of thousands of hours of simulation,
a version hours of simulation.
You spend three, four years to turn up an engine or you simulate to a point,
then you make it, you test it, you break it, you go again.
You think one is more expensive than the other.
They probably net out on the end of it.
But one is quicker and one is more entertaining and particularly more accessible for a smaller team.
Yeah.
That's probably, I assume the only real way you can do about doing these things.
Just in terms of that cam drive, the gear drivers is pretty typical in motorsport,
bespoke design engines, whereas in the production world, we obviously have cam belts
or mainly now we've moved towards cam chains, pros and cons of the gear drive.
Why go the gear drive?
It could be made more accurate than you can get some slop in a chain and a belt,
which you get sloped with gears but you can plan for slop.
So you know what the backlash is in your gears, you know what is at the certain temperatures
and therefore you can adjust your time to suit that.
You can actually make it quite a bit lighter than chains,
which would be surprised to hear considering there's a lot of steel gears going around.
But you can make them lighter than chains.
What you lose is you get quite a lot of damping from a chain or a belt because it's not rigid.
And what happens is as the crank shop rotates and you deliver power to it,
you're delivering it in a cyclical way right?
So you're accelerating, decelerating, accelerating, decelerating in every point that you're applying power.
So your crank shop doesn't actually move in a consistent circle.
It's sort of accelerating, decelerating, which can cause absolute havoc on the drive train with gears
because they are solid.
So you're effectively banging the teams together over and over.
So you have to do quite a lot of work to deal with the harmonics to try and smooth out
that process one way or another.
There's a few ways to do it.
The old cause of the way to do it was to have a compliant gear.
So you'd have in a two-stage gear,
it would actually be able to rotate slightly within itself.
So one gear could move independent of the other one.
And that would be on torsion springs.
And so that would allow that oscillating motion for the crank shop to be filtered out.
Sure.
Nowadays, there's a few ways to do it.
But seemingly the way that most of the going is pensioning dampers,
about sits on the end of the camshaft, some of the non-drive side.
And again, filters out that noise, which then means you're not loading the overload in those gears
and you're getting predictable timing on your on your camshaft.
And that's not bouncing around.
Okay.
Can we come back to the dyno testing of this V8?
So you mentioned obviously we lost one unfortunate.
You said it didn't stack up to the numbers you simulated.
I'm guessing it didn't stack up in terms of it didn't make more than you're expecting.
Never really works that way, does it?
No, no, it doesn't go that way.
I certainly don't.
Maybe it's maybe some people do, but I don't put an engine on the dyno, go right.
This is what theoretically we should be able to do with it.
Let's go zero to one and off the pop.
I'm sure there's something about that.
There are either a comps enough in their work to do that or mad enough, but I haven't done that.
I tend to diet it up slowly and you'll run.
Firstly, it's just get it idling, but then you'll run it up to say mid revs.
Hold it there for a bit, pull it down, go up again, hold it there for a bit longer.
You know, it reasonably traditional test plan.
And all the time you're monitoring cylinder pressures, temperatures, flow rates and all the other things.
And what I'm looking for is deviation from what I'm expecting.
So quite often that first dyno day, it will deviate long before you get to the end of your run plan.
And the best thing to do at that point is turn it off, work out why, make some changes, then come back and work from the beginning of that run plan again.
Not to go, well, I did that first bit, so I'll start in the middle because you've made some changes.
You might have ruined something that would have failed on step one.
So I'll then run that run plan again.
Usually three or four days on a dyno before I'm happy to run it full pelt for anything longer than a couple of seconds.
Usually those changes are massive.
Occasionally, you'll want to go and remake something and that might put a big delay in the plans.
But quite often it's a case of in the ideal world of the vacuum of simulation that shouldn't reach that temperature and that shouldn't reach that pressure.
But it does.
And what you want to work out is we'll actually have sensitive is that is, is that problem?
Is that going to start causing issue?
Because as you say, when you first put an inch on the dyno, you usually only have one of them.
You're not in a position where actually let's just see what happens for the next one on tomorrow.
There's a cost of time, of course, as much as money and you want to try and fix the issues as they come up and approach them as best you can one at a time.
And if you just run all the way through what you end up with is it could have been one issue.
It could have been 12, but it's very hard to work out what the issue was because it's all happened too quickly.
So I'm just trying to run it in quite slowly.
So yeah, it will go on the dyno in November.
I very much doubt I'll be publishing numbers I'm proud of until early next year.
But I'm able to publish the dyno results to show people what that process looks like.
If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.
So no disrespect there if it doesn't work the first time.
It's emotionally hard as much as I know.
Definitely.
It's just in terms of the sort of service life of these engines.
You mentioned for endurance use maybe circa 750 horsepower.
You know, all out, maybe 800, maybe 850 horsepower.
But if we're talking endurance form, how many racing kilometers would you expect between overhalls or major servicing?
Overhalls.
Depends on the inspector race.
Probably a couple of thousand kilometers is enough on these engines.
Life in the parts, anything that I don't consider replaceable.
I tend to sum it to last thousand hours.
Again, isn't that much in the in the road car world in the race car world?
That's quite reasonable.
Most people have killed an engine long before a thousand hours.
People want performance.
And by next year they're on to the next thing they want.
They don't want an engine that lasts five years.
It's not the world we're in anymore with regulations changing and cars changing every year.
Okay.
At that 2000 kilometer mark, what are you expecting?
Will need to be replaced?
Is this kind of, you know, replace the bearings, pistons or maybe just piston rings?
Or is this the entire rotating assembly gets thrown away?
And replace with new.
Unless you've had a real problem, I wouldn't expect the whole rotating assembly to go away.
You might want to be looking at some of the gears.
You might have to wear on some of the gears and pitting on gear teeth and things like that.
You might replace some of the timing gears.
I would definitely do rings.
Sometimes you'll get somewhere in the camshafts.
Depends on, good a job I've done there.
I'll try and get those to last the four thousand hours, but it depends on how the engine's been run.
There's a lot of things as well as you can design it, slapping together at a very high speed.
Usually at that interval, I'd want people to strip it down or we would strip it down.
And we'd go through all of the sprays as well.
So there's a lot of sprayers in the engine with very small offices.
You know, some of them are 0.5mm because you're trying to get a distance or a very small localized area.
They're trying to deliver oil too.
These things get gunned up.
And as well as you can try in each filter and oil change, you don't pick them all out.
It needs disassembling and doing.
You can run pretty high oil pressures, but still these things will get blocked and they don't block themselves.
So I try and do that.
As far as that, I would hope that most of it is more or less intact on a good clean.
But a thousand hours is when you're going to start seeing things actually breaking.
So you might get teeth shattering on gears.
You might get a camshaft that starts to fracture.
Torsion rods are going to start to come to end of life.
But yeah, at 2,000 lb.
It's not a major reef at all.
You're obviously designing these 20 a year for customer programs.
Will this be a sort of a return to your facility for an overhaul?
Or is this something that the customer's going to be able to have their own machine shop or engine machine us to do?
As long as they have capability in house, I'm happy for people to do themselves.
We provide either a spare parts package or a support package.
Depending on what people need.
A lot of teams have got an engine team.
They'll be then asked to be able to run these things.
So I'm not worried about that.
But we also tend to rebuild some for some people.
A lot of them are private ear teams and they don't have that capacity.
So they will come back to us.
Or we'll give them a swap out engine while we go play with one and do that way.
That tends to be the way we work.
OK, for the sort of series race series that these are going to be used in.
The installation of the vehicle.
Are these considered or can they be used as like a stressed member?
Or do they have to be supported with their own sort of sub frames?
No, they can be stressed.
There's a bit of work that we do with each of the cars that they're going into.
Because the a lot of stress goes through the valve cover.
And depending on the shape of the car that loading on the car, what it's actually doing.
You need to hand up different forces.
So that valve cover will look quite different on some of these cars.
The block itself is more strong enough to take the forces that it sees down there.
But primarily it's going through the top of the head.
So we tend to do custom at least customized valve covers for each of those cars.
So you can stress it.
You don't have to either.
You can just run it.
You can drop it in.
I've got one customer wants to put it in a basically an OEM car.
Which I've always wanted to do an FAQ for an engine site that says.
Will it fit in your NANDs Honda?
Yes.
Should it go in your NANDs Honda?
No, probably not.
It's going in someone's NANDs Honda.
So we'll see how that runs.
But yeah, from Mary, it's approached up cars.
Sure.
Yeah, and just because you can't doesn't necessarily mean you should.
But I guess if you've got the budget and you want to put it in.
You can do it.
I'm fair play to you.
And I'd love to see it running that.
So.
Another question I've got for you is just around the turbo specification.
It's sort of obviously a pretty key part of the performance of any turbocharged engine.
Is this a one turbocharger for that engine?
Or is it going to depend on how that engine is going to be used?
And then follow up to that is how if you sort of concluded what turbo is going to be ideal for the engine.
So the turbo is the high fill the riskiest part of this program
because we're going to do the compression of the turbine housing ourselves with some support from outside places.
But we don't have the budget to work with a company that's going to do a whole turbine house.
And for us because that's a powerful million dollar project by the time you finished.
At the moment, you get a bit more lag on the endurance spec,
but it's made up for with the with the hybrid part of the engine to use the same housings.
We may if demand is there create a slightly smaller ratio housing that gives you a bit faster support up when you're not running as much boost.
But I'm trying to keep it to the point where you've got one turbo that can do both.
We'll see where we get away with that.
Where's the requirement for your own turbine housing?
That's dual entry because you're hot V and you've got the exhaust manifolds each side.
So just a packaging consideration, really.
Pretty much. Yeah, there is there is some spool benefit to it.
It's a twin scroll effectively.
And there is some benefit for delivering opposing sides of the turbine housing.
But we could have put it on a traditional normal off the shelf turbo.
It just means you've got to bring the exhaust up around and over and added weight and size and it was messy.
How do you deal with wastegating with that installation?
Are you running a single wastegate off each bank of exhaust manifold?
No, we're running a single wastegate with a branch off a coast and that's just above the back of the turbine effectively and dumps into the entire pipe.
But the moment that's electronically activated, trying to avoid hydraulics just to reduce the level of complexity and cost of the engine,
we'll see whether we can get away with that with the amount of heat in the air.
So you go hydraulic, if not electronic, over a conventional pneumatic and it's just faster response.
More control. You can do things weird things that you might not want to do or be able to do with pneumatic.
I won't go into too much detail, but in terms of over running the turbo, running the turbo in deceleration and all sorts of weird strategies that you can create.
And so yeah, ideally electronic or if it has to be then hydraulic activated so we can do some things independent of what's happening on the other side of the server.
So you can achieve essentially the same control strategies using electronic as you could with hydraulic.
You can't achieve those with pneumatic and then it comes down to will the electronic be reliable given the heat.
Does that sort of sum it all up?
Yeah, and at what point do you end up with the electronic actuators so far from the actual delivery that there's so much slop in it,
it makes more sense to just buy the bullet and put a hydraulic pump in a reservoir on the engine.
Yeah, sure.
Right. In terms of the manufacturing of these turbine housings, is this small enough numbers that you'd look at something like 3D metal printing or how are you manufacturing that?
Exactly. When we started looking at it, we spoke to a bunch of people that were making short on high-spec turbos and they were all printing and now heat treating and then post machining.
So we can try and do the same.
I think it's probably the best approach to it.
There's no way to machine and I've tried to machine a twin entry turbine housing in a single piece.
And whilst we can do like a salvage construction on the compressor side, there's too much heat in the back side to really be comfortable doing that as a salvage piece.
So yeah, print it, post machining it and see how that goes.
Okay.
And on the compressor side, is this a similar requirement for your own compressor cover?
Not requirement, but if you've started, you may as well finish.
So there's a few things that we're doing with, yeah, to do with the way it's getting the boost control strategy that makes sense to integrate into the housing and for a packaging point of view as well.
It's quite convenient if we've got control over that housing.
So yeah, we're going to design that one as well.
Okay.
Yeah.
All right, Josh.
I think we're sort of coming up around the two hour mark here.
And I think we'll probably get to a got to a point where we could talk for another couple of hours, but I do want to respect your time.
So we'll get on towards wrapping this thing up.
We've got the same three questions we asked you last time.
Maybe the answers will have changed slightly.
The first is what's next in the future for you?
More engines.
I'm enjoying this.
I can tell.
This was always a side project of things that I did weekends and evenings as part of things I got involved with the fun.
And now it's life.
The side quests have become the main quest.
Yeah, this is six every morning until we're at home and then back again when everyone's gone to sleep and back in the shed carrying on.
So at this point with the V6, like getting closer as you mentioned, probably it's going to be next year before it's producing the numbers that you're aiming for, but you're getting close.
Are you really sort of looking at what the next engine design is going to be or there's been more of an editor of approach to developing the V6?
No, the V8 sort of that program happened by chance and was acquired by chance.
I didn't set out to build something to sell as a license or even an engine.
I was building something interesting and then somebody asked joined in and it became a thing.
The V6 I see is quite an interesting platform to continue to develop on.
There's lots of things I want to do, but either enough is enough for now.
And I'll build on that later or budget might not make it a sensible thing to embark on just yet.
But also with any production needs to get it in market to what people want.
And if you go too quick into all your big ideas, you may find to develop something that nobody actually wants to play with.
So an element of this is seeing what happens with it, hopefully racing next year and what will last from it.
And then and I'll develop from there. So I'm quite interested in that.
But I've also got a couple of customer programs going on at the moment, which are keeping me more than busy.
So yeah, it's engines of all types. I'm working on one that is definitely the most unique engine you will have seen for a very long time when that goes public.
You'll question it, then you'll think about it a bit too much and then you'll really like it.
It's a hell of a teaser. We'll wait with boat of breath to see what that's all about.
All right, next question.
What advice would you give to a younger version of yourself to help reach where you are today and your career faster?
Could you even fast track where you've got to? It's pretty fast, I think.
Got quite a bit done busy.
If you average it out to hours, it's probably not that quick, but yeah, don't sleep much.
The thing looking back that's made things happen is just getting on with it and not sitting down thinking about it, planning it and doing everything else.
It's just jumping in. I hope I will carry on doing that.
But I think that's the thing that's helped me get all the weird and wonderful things I've been involved in done.
And if I was going to go back in time and tell myself something, it would be to just carry on doing that even when it might not feel like that's the most commercially sensible thing.
To go for it's worth a pump because all those opportunities like building the car like you said, turn into other things and we always use to send the last person at the meetings.
You don't want to go to tend to and not being the meetings that you actually need to go to because they've become really valuable.
So as with everything, just get stuck in and go and do something first and work out how later.
I think it's really easy to get stuck in their analysis paralysis sort of mode and never actually commit to doing the thing whatever that thing may be.
And the other consideration I always bring up is try not to let perfection be the enemy of good enough.
At some point, you've got to just get stuck in as you say and do it.
It might not be perfect, but at least then you've also got something to test and something to iterate from.
If you if you never make anything, you know, you're never going to find out how it works.
All right. Last question for today, Josh.
If people want to follow you and see what you're up to, how they best to do so.
The best thing is Instagram, which is at motorsport, underscore engineering, where I post all sorts of things.
At the moment, it's a lot of engines, but also some cars.
It's all detailed design commentary and quite often me waxing on to the absolute character limit on Instagram about what something is how it works.
Why it's definitely the right thing to do. And then you'll see another person we later explaining why it was definitely the wrong thing to do.
There's a lot of that and those who are kind enough to subscribe.
I do the whole madness of what's going on. I don't edit it. I don't spend two weeks trying to work out what I'm going to post in a real.
I just post the snippets of what I'm up to and the details of today we're designing camshaft profiles.
Here's all the things that go wrong. Here's how I do it. Here's everything else.
So there is a very excellent group of people there to see all the details that's far too uninteresting to go on Instagram.
But some people like it.
Yeah, I can confirm from my own experience your Instagram profile your accounts definitely one that everyone listening to this should be following always packed with some really amazing cad designs.
And as you mentioned, you're pretty open about all of the designs and the science and engineering that goes behind it.
So keep up the good work there.
As usual, we will put a link to your Instagram account in the show notes to make it easy for people to find.
Well look, Josh, it's been a pleasure catching up slight change of trajectory from when we spoke to you last, but still doing interesting stuff and we're here for it.
So thanks for your time today.
I appreciate it. Thank you for having me.
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