Jmac,

Under normal circumstances, I would agree with your skepticism as to the speed shops pricing. Hec they double everything else (check out the mining ER industry to see price gouging!!)

When you think about how cement behaves, I would hope that they dont use regular cement, or even flexible tile cement. I would hope that the cement that they use contains additives that allow it to retain a high mpa rating (needed to support the bore walls), whilist allowing flexabilty at the surface to assist with chip resistance and fracture prevention.

Regular cement (like used in house pads), is fine in a large surface area context(like a house pad), but it only binds well to itself or other organic material due to its pososity amongst other things (im sure a grano can fill in the technicial details for me here). Cement usually doesent bind well to metals unless it has additives to do that. When they use steel in concreting to reinforce, the metal itself doesent bind to the cement that well, but rather the steel takes the strain and is held in place by the cement due to being surronded.
If you break up cement away from metal that has not corroded inside the cement, it usually comes away fairly eaisly.

Also cement loses some of its chip resistance when it gets thinner/less surface area, And it will also fracture eaisly when stressed away from its best strength axis.

In any cast iron engine block, when you have quite coarse and porous metal, you may get better bonding then say a machined or alloy block, but its still not ideal.

You would need to get complete filling of all the spaces to get any real assurance that the cement wont break away and into the sump. You could use a cement sealant, but I would still be concenerd. as well as due to the shape, you dont really get any good strength lines.

But aside from me poo pooing grouting a block, I guess that since we are talking about a special case or major block mods, there probaly isnt a better option available that is close to affordable, so cement fills are probally they best thing available. For a strip engine, go for it, for a street enging, i would be concerned.

Any engine builders out there with experience with block grouting got some good information?

High MPA, with a sealant, minimal flexability, with additives to bond to the steel. Well tthey do have something like that, its called liquid steel, and it costs a small fortune.

As Jmac posted the cement is only on the bottom halve of the block
so its not an issue with cooling but the Grout is supposed to have
the same expansion and heat exchange qualities as Iron.
My guess it is somewhat flexible like grout but with extra graphite
dust mixed in to help with heat dissipation.

CLyons8 the Bige sample and my quote was for full C sleeving not
wet sleeving, very different and more machine work involved in
Wet sleeving as described the block is hollowed out from sleeves
and a or several step(s) made to suit the liners or sleeves to be
used. Much like Darton wet sleeved Honda blocks.
This is a factory standard part of renault engines dating back to
the early 1950s. Hence their A series like cast iron engines where
used in R5 GT with boost in the 50+psi range.
I had a chance to buy a stock R5 in the dreams of making it a replica
r5GT but the costs would have been better to buy an original. Still
one of my favorite all time 80s crapbox era cars behind the Lancia 037


http://bringatrailer.com/2010/08/28/m ... ter-1980-renault-5-turbo/


http://www.alfabb.com/bb/forums/attac ... -scorp-lancia037_1max.jpg

reuby_tuesday,

The cement used shouldn't really matter that much as it is wholely contained in the water jackets, not the oily side of the engine. There is no way the cement can come into contact with the oil or drop into the sump unless you have other issues like a leg out of bed that grouting a block just will not fix!
Yes it may crack but it cannot go anywhere and should still act as a filler to stop bore flexing?

Hmm nw that I think about it some more, ill retract a few things

Yes the oil should never come into contact. I know that. got a bit carried away there.

as for the cracking, once a crack arrears the rigidity of the cement is lessended and flex is potentially introduced, particulary as it goes on.. It might be still enough, i dont know.

It also depends on the amount of pressure it has to hold anyway. If the cement is well over engineered solution and is in a support role of the bore walls rather than holdng everything then its probally fine. Hec the reality is that is has been done before with success, so clearly its not all bad. I guess I just have reservations about filling the space that is supposed to have water in it with cement. It just seems too "agricultural" a solution

I spose I have to remeber that this is not a long tern solution for a daily streeter, but for specific high Boots applications where realibility may not be the primary concern.

For failure of any substance to occur you have to have "free space" for it to fail or move to.
I completly contained substance should not fail in the normal world. With enough force anything is possible (think fusion of hyrdogen at the centre of the sun.

If you can be sure that there is no free space anywhere then you have a good chance of maintaining the cements strength and avoid cracking. Once cracks appear its intregity would go down hill fast.
The water will get in, it will vibrate and cause the cracks to get larger just maiking it worse still.

I should probably rephrase what I wrote. I definitely don't know what block grout (the 'official' stuff) is made of - but obviously it works, and for it to work, there must have been a time when it didn't exist, and it would have been down to engine builders here and there all thinking outside the box and the first attempts - the engine specific stuff wouldn't have existed - so they 'must' have tried some regular hardware store type filler/cement of some type at first. And they only would have went on to make the engine specific stuff if the early stuff showed some amount of success..

So in a nutshell I'm not 'recommending' anyone just use regular cement powder or anything, just wondering out loud as to whether or not it really is a unique product or if it's still pretty much an existing product that's being relabelled.

It's kinda like - for example - one of the best products to use to polish and try and fix scratched dvds isn't actually a dvd product - the one that works as well as all of them is actually 'brasso' the brass polishing liquid (no kidding - using it with cotton balls and a sort of a 'wax on wax off' motion is pretty effective.

fair enough Jamc.

I would hope that it is an engine specific goop, but it wouldnt surprise me if it is just a relabeled product.

Maybe this wet sleave thing is just a little too keen, but a 1.8l turbo a-series is just so tempting particulay since mr plod would only ever see a 1.4l

Moroso block filler has been used in several turbo-engines at my friends speed-shop but they have also used cement. Only the middle of the Volvo engineblock was filled with block filler and they still had waterchannels going through the fill, in this case there was proper cooling in the bottom and at the top of the block. This was a winning concept but that was in a 500hp/l dragrace-engine.

Marcus

http://www.moroso.com/catalog/categorydisplay.asp?catcode=22008

I didn´t find any A14/A15 block that was in such bad shape that i would cut it into pieces during the weekend but my best friend Johan donated this A14 engine for my project today.

Datsun100ATurbo

On a side note,
In the second photo, is that a postie of some descripton in the background?

I kinda looks like one. The handlebars and headight a wrong, but it could still be a honda cub i spose.