Repairing a 10,000hp Top Fuel Billet Engine Block

this is one of our billet blocks that we run on our top fuel dragster we bought this block used from another team and it had low runs but it had kicked a rod out of it and put a hole in the side of it they had it repaired and we ran it but immediately it cracked after slicing a hacksaw down through it i was blowing it out and notice this it's actually blowing all the way down through the channel and back up the other side so we started grinding away on it and we found someone and put a piece of aluminum in between the chunk they were welding in and the block again you can see how that was bubbling up when i was blowing clear on the other side so i'm gonna knock this block out and have a deeper look and see what's going on here follow along as we do this repair right here we go part two the repair of the repair i threw this thing up in the middle so i could get the material out without grinding everything away and making sure that everything was parallel i was also able to get in there and put a good chamfer where this thing is going to go in place at let's give you an idea how big this hole is in the side of this block now i'm just taking some measurements on the width and the height and making sure it's square the thickness of the panel itself and how thick the pan rail is going to be i don't know if you guys ever used a micrometer like this with a pressure gauge on it but you need to get one so then i just took all the dimensions made me a little sketch just kind of filled in the blanks so then uh i'm ready to throw this thing into bobcat picked out my material size and then started designing this thing up this is what i come up with we'll throw her in the cnc tomorrow part three repairing the repair so i got my window filler piece on the cnc and got it all machined here flipped it over so i can drop the part out and here's the part let's check a little bit of fitment it's starting to look pretty good i left it a little bit tall so we can machine the pan rail once we get it all welded in let's talk about prep before welding this is a mainline bar that i put in and torque to help keep the main line straight and then add these bolts i acetone all the parts the rods block everything and here's my little secret that's right master massager works like a metal axe it helps relieve all the stresses while welding and here's my welder settings next video will show you sticking this thing in the hole part four repairing the repair i do preheat my stuff i don't go crazy though after that i just go ahead and tack it in place then i turn on my homemade metal wax i start on the bottom of the inside shift to the outside and continue with that pattern that first weld is very critical when i'm done with my initial weld all the way around the piece i can set the temperature i check the main line and then i'll do a weaving weld to finish it up smart kenza always suggested to me never to have all your leads curled up while you're welding high amperage stuff so i've always done that the welding process took about two hours and some of that included the prep too even after filling that all in this old girl still spins tomorrow we'll throw it up in the cnc and finish off that pan rail so today was the day i was going to throw this thing up in the cnc and try and finish up some of the machine work so then i was looking for my main bar for setting it up in the machine and i found it over in the chassis shop and a rear end so i had to take that apart but once i got it back over to the shop then i had to indicate in where i'm going to hold this block at so i got that all done that added up some time and then i started to surface the top of the pan rail and then my coolant quit working so i had to work on that and then i got it going at this point now i can start the machine here and this here is a picture of my wife right here isn't she beautiful um that block is coming around but not quite as beautiful as my wife part five repairing the repair well i finally got back on the block project first thing i had to do though was get this thing picked up and turned on its side so i could finish this pan rail when you're by yourself you got to get kind of creative on how you do this anyway so you got to square this thing and x and y make sure this thing is perfect before you start any kind of machining operation i was really surprised when i was running down you know the x on this thing how straight it was even after welding it then took this corner radius tool and i went all the way around the block where i had welded it so i had a nice radius going into it after the corner radius i decided to go ahead and ride a quick program here on the inside so i got the roughing pass done and tomorrow i'll finish up the rest of it repairing the repair final episode you would have never thought right it's been pretty good process you know i probably wouldn't went to all these extreme things if this thing wasn't on tick tock but i wanted to make it look nice and still be really functional so i ripped this thing out of here and i'm gonna put it on the engine stand but check this out so the legs the engine stand are about the same as the hoist so i end up giving this thing a little bit of lift kit and finally got it in there on the inside of the block i wanted to do some hand blending on it that's the way it was before and it works just fine this is halfway through it and this is when it's done there's an outside view of that window see the nice corner radius and everything on it and here it is again comparatively to the other ones and here's a picture of the before and after what do you think

Channel: Rob Wendland

Views: 393,685

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Id: QJfwS48o4cM

Length: 6min 14sec (374 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 15 2021