I'm a Senior Designer for an engineering firm. This project/customer has consumed me for the last 1.5 years. It'll never end but at least now we've finally got a full packaged assembly completed and released (until the shop in Houston finishes quoting it out and has me make some revisions). But it's there.
This is the CRT 2.5L 2 stroke boat racing motor. There are basically 2 versions. The SR and CR. SR is the "Stock Race" version and CR is the "Custom Race". The CR version runs like a bat out of hell and pushes 400 horsepower. This guy came to us with a Mercury block and said he wanted to make his own out of billet with his own tweaks. I basically took this block, got it into 3d and we started to chop it up. And add, and cut, and add. It was never ending but we ended up with a pretty solid piece of engineering. Originally he aimed it at the weekend racers, but after a couple of trips to Dubai and other major F1 and Xcat races he's decided to go full out towards the professional race teams at the top of the food chain. Mercury is actually discontinuing this 2.5L so he's picking up where they left off. Also, keep in mind for those big ass world class races they pair 2 of these motors to the back of the boats.
EVERY single piece of this assembly was designed by scratch and put into Solidworks by moi (it's what I does brah) along with all of the prints to manufacture it. We're talking gaskets, heads, head caps, cylinder sleeves (custom patent), the block, the crank, the pistons (I'm currently going back and forth with Wiseco on these pistons).... Every single piece was started as a "Well we'll just use the Mercury version", and then ended up us making our own part for it.
The 3.5L version should be pushing close to 600 horsepower. It's basically done but I've just got to go and make all the modifications we made to the 2.5L with the cover plates and cooling system and adjust the 3.5L version to mimic that. And Pro-Marine wants us to design a full out out 6 liter that cranks out 1,000 horsepower.
Even the clamp and swivel was redone and beefed up to hold up to the extra power that this thing produces.
This was the first version that was machined. it's changed a LOT since then
This is the last render I ran of it with the most up to date parts shown.
Getting the block CMM'd and lasered for QC inspection
These are some of the pictures of the assembled version shown at the Miami Boat show last Feb. The block has changed recently where we've shaved the sides down and added custom cooling plates to each surface on the block and front half.
Thought you guys might like seeing my latest work project
- troyguitar
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dyslexic wrote:DO YOU FEEL FEAR
- goIftdibrad
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neat!
those heads look thin.
those heads look thin.
brain go brrrrrr
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The heads on these serve 3 purposes and aren't really like a 4 stroke head that needs to house valves.
1) There's a boss that wraps around the top of the cylinder diameter that basically is a female to male connection where it helps support the top of the cylinder
2) It houses the "puck" at the top of the cylinder that can be changed out to different ones to vary up the compression per application
3) There's water passages in the head itself that travel completely around the cylinder walls and head cavities
It's thin everywhere we can make it so that it dissipates heat better. When the ocean is your radiator, you can really do some interesting things with engines and thin walls (where applicable) is usually the chosen path.
- goIftdibrad
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Ah i see now, the part that is the head is the black bit. That looks stiff nuffAcid666 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2017 4:55 pmThe heads on these serve 3 purposes and aren't really like a 4 stroke head that needs to house valves.
1) There's a boss that wraps around the top of the cylinder diameter that basically is a female to male connection where it helps support the top of the cylinder
2) It houses the "puck" at the top of the cylinder that can be changed out to different ones to vary up the compression per application
3) There's water passages in the head itself that travel completely around the cylinder walls and head cavities
It's thin everywhere we can make it so that it dissipates heat better. When the ocean is your radiator, you can really do some interesting things with engines and thin walls (where applicable) is usually the chosen path.
brain go brrrrrr
- Acid666
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Yeah, we told him that doing this would be complicated because the tolerance between cylinder distances needed to be within a really tight spec. He found how we weren't joking when one machine shop made a set of heads and it pinched the cylinder bores to a side since they weren't equal. The top 1" of travel caused the pistons to bind and cause problems.Big Brain Bradley wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2017 5:06 pmAh i see now, the part that is the head is the black bit. That looks stiff nuffAcid666 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2017 4:55 pm
The heads on these serve 3 purposes and aren't really like a 4 stroke head that needs to house valves.
1) There's a boss that wraps around the top of the cylinder diameter that basically is a female to male connection where it helps support the top of the cylinder
2) It houses the "puck" at the top of the cylinder that can be changed out to different ones to vary up the compression per application
3) There's water passages in the head itself that travel completely around the cylinder walls and head cavities
It's thin everywhere we can make it so that it dissipates heat better. When the ocean is your radiator, you can really do some interesting things with engines and thin walls (where applicable) is usually the chosen path.
Just because the 5 axis's spec says it can hit plus or minus .002" don't mean it always does.
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Interesting. -T651 I assume on the temper? What thickness of plate do you start with when you machine the block?
- goIftdibrad
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yea, and that 0.002" is at some short tool depth distance when the machine is setup to be super stiff. Most of the time the real world tolerance is less UNTIL the operator tweaks the program and setup to hit those critical tolerances.Acid666 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2017 5:15 pmYeah, we told him that doing this would be complicated because the tolerance between cylinder distances needed to be within a really tight spec. He found how we weren't joking when one machine shop made a set of heads and it pinched the cylinder bores to a side since they weren't equal. The top 1" of travel caused the pistons to bind and cause problems.Big Brain Bradley wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2017 5:06 pm
Ah i see now, the part that is the head is the black bit. That looks stiff nuff
Just because the 5 axis's spec says it can hit plus or minus .002" don't mean it always does.
Sometimes I miss making things.
brain go brrrrrr
- Acid666
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Block is round bar. I think either 14 or 16".
He usually anodizes the parts he wants with a nice coating. It also tends to fill in some of the machine marks and cleans up between their passes
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Oh interesting, so probably T6511, assuming it's extruded. 6061 is known to not hold its hardness consistently through the thickness of heavier items. In other words, it tends to get softer (lower tensile and yield strengths) in the middle. Have you not found that to be the case here?
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The block might not be 6061, but I don't think it's 6511. He hasn't complain about it yet. I designed these side cover plates for him that have a 1/8" oring and he kept making me make the plates thinner saying "the block is ridged as f0ck" when I said that we saw some deflection of the plate as it all heated and twisted. He's not an engineer so he just assumes it doesn't flex but I do this for a living.... everything defects somewhatwap wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2017 5:29 pmOh interesting, so probably T6511, assuming it's extruded. 6061 is known to not hold its hardness consistently through the thickness of heavier items. In other words, it tends to get softer (lower tensile and yield strengths) in the middle. Have you not found that to be the case here?
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Hmm. I wonder what temper it is then. Or what alloy if you now think it might not be 6061...Acid666 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2017 5:37 pmThe block might not be 6061, but I don't think it's 6511. He hasn't complain about it yet. I designed these side cover plates for him that have a 1/8" oring and he kept making me make the plates thinner saying "the block is ridged as f0ck" when I said that we saw some deflection of the plate as it all heated and twisted. He's not an engineer so he just assumes it doesn't flex but I do this for a living.... everything defects somewhatwap wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2017 5:29 pm
Oh interesting, so probably T6511, assuming it's extruded. 6061 is known to not hold its hardness consistently through the thickness of heavier items. In other words, it tends to get softer (lower tensile and yield strengths) in the middle. Have you not found that to be the case here?
Have you done any durability testing on a running example yet?
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That's kind of where we're at right now. He's gotten some of the previous generations running (were on the 5th gen of the block currently) but he's changed it up so much that we've just moved onto the next design and tried to optimize it. Right now it's at 98% and running like a raped ape, so he needs to get one of these newest latest and greatest blocks machined so he can test the cooling and power. So we'll likely run stress tests on it after this one gets made.wap wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2017 5:44 pmHmm. I wonder what temper it is then. Or what alloy if you now think it might not be 6061...Acid666 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2017 5:37 pm
The block might not be 6061, but I don't think it's 6511. He hasn't complain about it yet. I designed these side cover plates for him that have a 1/8" oring and he kept making me make the plates thinner saying "the block is ridged as f0ck" when I said that we saw some deflection of the plate as it all heated and twisted. He's not an engineer so he just assumes it doesn't flex but I do this for a living.... everything defects somewhat
Have you done any durability testing on a running example yet?
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Got it.Acid666 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2017 5:55 pmThat's kind of where we're at right now. He's gotten some of the previous generations running (were on the 5th gen of the block currently) but he's changed it up so much that we've just moved onto the next design and tried to optimize it. Right now it's at 98% and running like a raped ape, so he needs to get one of these newest latest and greatest blocks machined so he can test the cooling and power. So we'll likely run stress tests on it after this one gets made.
In4results.
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Damn, this is seriously impressive. In for more updates on this as you have them
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This is fucking awesome.
Desertbreh wrote: ↑Tue Oct 10, 2017 6:40 pm My guess would be that Chris took some time off because he has read the dialogue on this page 1,345 times and decided to spend some of his free time doing something besides beating a horse to death.
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Here's a couple of videos he made for stuff. This one was a quick animation explaining the patented inserts we designed. Normally these airflow cavities are cast into the block, but he came up with the idea to create a custom insert to make them interchangeable. Mind you, he added this on after we were starting and we didn't include this in our original quote. So at this point it changed from reverse engineering to full out new design. I had to figure this shit out quick to make the deadline for the boat show.
Here's one gunning it
There's one where they debuted it at a boat show and the driver actually flipped the boat because he had the trim a little too much, and it got on it so fast that even by the time he let off the throttle it was already 90 degrees in the air.
Lemme see if I can find the one of his test pilot running it. It's so fast that he won't even run it at speed because they take 90 deg corners and pull nearly 9 g's.
Here's one gunning it
There's one where they debuted it at a boat show and the driver actually flipped the boat because he had the trim a little too much, and it got on it so fast that even by the time he let off the throttle it was already 90 degrees in the air.
Lemme see if I can find the one of his test pilot running it. It's so fast that he won't even run it at speed because they take 90 deg corners and pull nearly 9 g's.
- goIftdibrad
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Acid666 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2017 9:22 pm Here's a couple of videos he made for stuff. This one was a quick animation explaining the patented inserts we designed. Normally these airflow cavities are cast into the block, but he came up with the idea to create a custom insert to make them interchangeable. Mind you, he added this on after we were starting and we didn't include this in our original quote. So at this point it changed from reverse engineering to full out new design. I had to figure this shit out quick to make the deadline for the boat show.
Here's one gunning it
There's one where they debuted it at a boat show and the driver actually flipped the boat because he had the trim a little too much, and it got on it so fast that even by the time he let off the throttle it was already 90 degrees in the air.
Lemme see if I can find the one of his test pilot running it. It's so fast that he won't even run it at speed because they take 90 deg corners and pull nearly 9 g's.
brain go brrrrrr