BMW V8 dry sump from billet

[Divided he ad]

Looks alright from here Ade 


I passed your place yesterday afternoon, had a job bout 200yrds away!  Too busy to stop though     Might be back over there soonish though, gave 3 quotes to people the same street! Not that I'd prob' be able to stop then either.... Working with the bosses son and the fact that he's not quite into the machining or motors games might make that awkward 

Still.... I was there 


Hope all has gone to plan, have fun 






Ralph.

[gldwight]

Wow what a project!

Impressive workmanship and engenuity.
Must be very nice to have all those fine machine's & tooling to use.
I wouldn't know how it feels.

Is this the end at this point?  OR has another thread been started?

I admire your ability.  One of these days with a bit more pratice you'll
"make a machinist"  (IF you find one and she's willing that is! haha!)

Wishing you the best finish possible.
George

[AdeV]

Thanks George - it's been a journey, I have to say... The thread here is ongoing, things have just slowed down recently for various reasons, mostly due to laziness if I'm honest... plus a modicum of frustration with the lathe. Hopefully, sometime this week I'll get a chance to finish off digging out the slopes & move on to the next operations.

[gldwight]

Ade:

I fully understand such situations.  Have one nearing completion myself that's been going since
early January.  Between snow storms and back ache's, running out of operating cash and such
other delays. 
Seems like these projects all have a life of their own.
Wish you well,
George

[Fred Bloggs]

AdeV

Hope everythings ok? as I've been enjoyed the thread but you've not posted anything for weeks

Fred

[AdeV]

Hi Fred,

Sorry, other "issues" are at work at the moment, keeping me away from the machines 

I hope normal service will be resumed soon...

[Fred Bloggs]

Cool

Fred

[AdeV]

Yikes, 2 months (nearly) without an update. 

Well, I'm back  and I even made a little progress...

First job was to find where I'd put the mill:



This is what happens when you sell a car which is buried deep in the corner of the building, everything has to be moved or blocked in to clear a path out... Add the fact I had to move everything out of my (now demolished) office, & before I could move it back into the replacement Portacabin office I got blocked in with yet another broken car (Dad - if you're reading this, get it SORTED!  )

Anyhow, a bit of sweat & cursing later:



The sump has been put back on the machine, everything's dialled in straight, and the correct angle (33.7^o) set on the angle plate:



Note the crib sheet on the DRO to stop me over-shooting... The cutter is a 12mm "ripper" cutter, which removes aluminium faster than the BBC got shot of Jonathon "Irritating B*$£&#d" Ross. So, a bare hour & a half later:



The sharp-eyed of you may notice a small annoyance:



Yup, I managed to put one (both, actually, but the other by only a smidge) of the clamps too far into the piece, which interfered with the cut. However, as I still have a 5mm skim to take off the top of the entire piece, I figure I can let that slide for now. If there's any left over after the skim, I could probably just hand-file it off.


Next up, the oil channels; these will slope up from the drain holes, then take off across the top to the head drains (you can see the pilot holes for the head drains, one either side of the clamp, in the picture above). I had hoped to do one tonight, but I needed to move the angle plate forward on the table, and it's nearly beer o'clock, so that will have to wait... Hopefully, not quite so long this time.

 

[jim]

good to see an update!!

i know exactly what you mean about time!!!

[Stilldrillin]

Very nice to see you`re back with us/ to it, Ade! 

David D

[Rob.Wilson]

About time Ade   

Good to see you back on the job 

Rob

[Dean W]

Great to have you back at it, Ade.  I watch a number of projects here that are my favorites.
This is one of my "favorites of the favorites".   
Keep at it!  This is such a good one!

Dean

[Divided he ad]

 Hi Ade 

Bout time too (he said hiding, as he hasn't finished bu6637 all for an age!)

I drove past your place working on Friday, figured I'd have to give you a nudge  just to see if you were still with us   



Looking good.... All except the clamp 



Glad you've got it back in order.... Thought you might have rushed through it to get out for a race season.... Next year now then?




Looking forward to seeing how the rest takes shape




Ralph.

[AdeV]

Thanks chaps... I'll try not to let it go on too long, I have my own engine now, so the 2nd sump will have to be made pretty soon after this one...

Ralph - I don't know whether the car will be out again this season. Dad would say "yes, of course it will".... but we shall see. It had better be off the bloody ramps before the end of the year, I want to get my car moving now! Feel free to drop in any time (except Wednesday morning as I won't be here...)

I'm not too worried about the clamp. I made up for it somewhat with today's progress, tempered by the untimely death of the shop vacuum cleaner, which expired in a fusillade of crackles & a huuge cloud of smoke.

Anyway, on with the show. First job was to do some head-scratching, trying to work out the angle I needed to cut the drain slots at. Eventually, I gave up trying to figure it on a sketch, & drew myself a 2x scale version - which had the advantage that I could check the angle by both measurement & calculation:



19.9^o was a surprise, I was expecting a much steeper angle than that. Looks like I wasted £10 buying a 6" long 18mm end mill... I can easily make that cut with my regular 12mm ripper. So, lob it all on the mill, looks like it landed in about the right place:



Note the clamps are further back this time 

A bit of later, and the 1st two channels are done:



The left-most pair of drain holes will be channeled into the wide right-hand slot; the second leftmost drain hole will go into the single width left-hand slot. I've not decided yet whether they'll slope in or just be flat... the slope would be preferable, but will be an absolute bitch to do, it'll either mean mounting the rotary table on the angle plate (THAT would be an interesting challenge), or manually setting the sump at an angle on the angle plate & clamping it down. I'll have a think about that one. There are times I wish I'd bought a CNC mill....

Anyway, a bit more trig got the second angle, and I did the remaining drains that empty on this side of the sump:



The four drains towards the bottom edge of that picture need their slots cutting in from the other side, hence the work is off the mill again. It's late, again, so that'll be tomorrow's job.

 

[Brass_Machine]

WooHoo! Ade is back!!

Watching in anticipation!

Eric

[Divided he ad]

Nice work once again Ade 


I'll see if I can stop some time... Always working! always in a hurry to get to another job 

I'll have to come over there one evening, put the world to rights a bit and hopefully have a better drive out and back with no snow! 


Hopefully it won't take too long to complete and then the one for your car can be done (a little quicker second time around?) and we can hear/see some racing taking place   







Ralph.

[AdeV]

Yep, some racing would be nice....

No machining tonight, no way of cleaning up the mess  Tomorrow perhaps...

[AdeV]

Woo, Freecycle came up trumps, and I picked up a cheapie hoover today for £nuppence. It'll do until I build that cyclone thingy...

To celebrate, I finished off the sloped head drain paths; you can see them in this pic:



The black arrowed lines (just about visible) show which hole drains into where. I just have to decide now whether I mill them with a flat bottom (easy), or a sloped bottom (complicated - well, more awkward than complicated I suppose). Flat is currently favourite...

[Dean W]

Flat!
Really, the correct statement would be;  Does it matter?  It seems like the oil will pretty
much find it's way down to the bottom.

Glad you found a new vacuum chip sucker!

Dean

[AdeV]

Thanks Dean - flat it is... for the simple reason it was going to be too hard to use the angle plate with the rotab on top....

In fact, the size of the sump makes it chuffing difficult to attach to the rotab at the best of times (see the fun I had with the plastic sump, several pages ago); so I came up with an alternative. It doesn't leave me much headroom, but it does mean I can spin the rotary table, see the angles AND keep my knuckles intact:



The biggest problem is, that rotary table is horrific. It doesn't have any means of locking it for one thing, so I have to really keep a sharp eye on it to make sure any slack is taken up & that it doesn't try to wander off course... I'd planned to try to bring this one back into reasonable working order, but I'm thinking it might be easier just to buy a better one. Anyway, grumbles aside, I got 6 of the 9 drain holes done:



Unfortunately, I'll have to take the sump off & turn it around to do those last three, I just don't have enough Y-axis travel to reach them. Tomorrow's job...

[Divided he ad]

Nice super high set up     



It's definitely looking more like a sump every day       Always a bu663r when you run out of "Y"   





Ralph.

[Rob.Wilson]

    Nice one Ade    ,, How many hours do you reckon you have in the sump up to now ?

Cheers Rob 

[AdeV]

Ralph - it IS a bit high, isn't it? Fortunately, it's also exceptionally heavy... I can only just get the rotab on the mill unassisted, and the angle plate's not much lighter; so I wasn't worried about stability. And i didn't even think about the maximum load on the mill until just now  but I think it will be OK...

Rob - I honestly don't know... but if you count the initial carving up of the ali block, then there's maybe 35-40 hours so far. A lot of that is fannying about, mind, working out how to do stuff, and poking at my rusty trigonometry abilities to try to get some angles out. I expect future sumps (mine is next  ) to be a lot quicker in the making.

One thing I still haven't looked at is the whole structure which goes at the back of the sump (where the tabs are sticking out).... that's going to add a few hours...

[Rob.Wilson]

Hi Ade

Thats not bad going    ,,,,,,,,,,, nothing wrong with a bit fannying about,,,its some thing i excel at    ,,,,,and your going to do it all again     

Wonder what the sump will weigh when all is done ?  what i mean is how much of the original stock has been removed ,,,fare bit i reckon 

Cheers Rob 

[AdeV]

Thats not bad going    ,,,,,,,,,,, nothing wrong with a bit fannying about,,,its some thing i excel at    ,,,,,and your going to do it all again     

Wonder what the sump will weigh when all is done ?  what i mean is how much of the original stock has been removed ,,,fare bit i reckon 

I don't mind doing it again... I learnt lots doing the wax model, I've learnt lots more doing this version, and doubtless I'll learn even more on my version. With any luck, I'll have the machining times down to something sensible by then, and I can offer the sump as a commercial item on which I can make some actual money.... maybe. I think I might need a CNC machine to do that justice...

As for the weight: You're right that there will be a lot less metal when I'm finished, although just how much remains to be seen. The customer is hinting that he'd quite like it to be finned, which will obviously mean it's heavier than a non-finned version; but compared to the original block, much lighter. I'll weigh it when I'm done, and I have a similar-sized block waiting in the wings, so I can give you a good idea.



Meanwhile, tonight's mercifully brief update is as follows: I turned the sump around on the rotab & cut the remaining three oil guides. Then cleared the mill of ancillaries, bolted the sump end-on, aligned, and chopped the back edge to dimension. I also took the sharp bit off the pointy tab, so it's a bit more symmetrical.

Here's the sump as I'm taking the second of 3 finishing cuts, using my super-long 18mm cutter:



And the same cut, from the other side:




Finally, after cleaning everything up a bit, I glued the 3 plugs into the front. They'll need at least 24 hours to cure properly, fingers crossed that the Loctite does it's stuff...

More news as it happens...