On Jul 31, 8:52 am, lethaldri...@gmail.com wrote:

It is called "casting".  Molten metal is poured into molds.  A century
ago there were many small founderies who would do custom casting for
anyone with patterns.  Then it became a very specialized business and
the small custom casting shops almost died out. I understand new
technology is making for at least a limited return of the small,
custom foundery.

Also a century ago many small shops had their own internal foundery.
There are still amateur machinists who do their own foundery work.
For more about home founderies, visit and inquire at
rec.crafts.metalworking, another usenet/google group.

It is a mixture of casting and machining.

Mostly by sand casting.  A form made out of metal, plastic, or even wood
is covered with sand, then the form is removed and molten metal poured into
place.  This gives you a piece of metal with a rough outline of the final
part.

Then the higher precision stuff is done to drill, mill, and bore out the
various parts that need to be done to very precise dimensions.  

After the machining operations are completed, the metal is reheated and
then cooled down in a controlled way to harden it.

Some more precise pieces are made either by machining them directly out
of metal billets, or by lost wax casting.  But almost everything you
see will have been sandcast and then machined to final dimensions.

Sure, you can do this in a well-equipped home shop.  You'd need a furnace,
an engine lathe, and a vertical mill.  I know folks who make small steam
engines and model airplane engines using small bench lathes and tabletop
mills.

Now, here is a question for everyone else... in the early 1970s, I was
given a book which MIGHT have been published by Popular Science or by
Chiltons, which consisted of a number of short articles.  One of them
was on overboring the hemi engine and was called the "Hyper Hemi" and
at least one of them was either written by Don Garlits or about some
engine that Garlits built.  But what was MOST interesting was that it
had a whole article with photos showing the process of rebuilding an
engine... all of the machining operations and then some furnace work.
What the hell WAS this book and where can I get a copy of it?
--scott

On Jul 31, 9:52 am, lethaldri...@gmail.com wrote:

Casting, forging, drilling, milling, heat treating are the basic
proceesses used.

It would be possible to construct a complete engine from raw
materials, but it would be prohibitively expensive.  It is not unusual
for a smaller car manufacturer to purchase entire components such as
an engine or transmission from another company.  For example Volvo has
at times purchased entire engines from other car makers while also
building engines directly.

Casting, machining, forging.
It simply depends on what your goals for the parts are;
durability, strenght, lightweight, high performance.

All these are considerations, hope this helps!

  One example.
  http://www.dmdaustralia.com.au/block.html

These folks (http://vri.etec.wwu.edu/) have done some interesting
development with various vehicle technologies. Their web page search
function appears to be broken, but when I went on a tour there, they
were working on a composite carbon fiber engine block. Cylinder sleeves,
bearings and such were machined from steel and the block was built up
around these components using wrapped carbon fiber. Quite interesting,
even though most of the technology was lost on me (I'm an EE and was
paying more attention to their hybrid drive train technologies).