What material do they use on cylinder heads that are meant for performance?
Like teh heds that expand a lot on compression and lightweight and can handle HIGH TEMPERATURES?
2007-11-20 09:27:48 · 4 answers · asked by 1999 Nissan Skyline GTR Vspec 5 in Cars & Transportation ➔ Maintenance & Repairs
Aluminum is used for high performance cylinder heads, for light weight and fast heat dissipation. Stainless steel or titanium valves or used. The best heads have hemispherical combustion chambers.
2007-11-20 09:43:55 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
Aluminum heads are standard for most cars. Most have steel inserts for the valve stems and spark plug hole(s). As suggested, aluminum is good for heat dissipation. Heads aren't supposed to expand- if they were rubbery, the compression would be lower. No head will handle combustion temperatures by itself. You need cooling of some sort. Old motorcycles were air cooled, not as good as fluid cooling. Some of the cooling was performed by the fuel going from liquid to gas in the head- that absorbed heat (like alcohol evaporating on your skin makes you "feel" colder) and that was fine with 25-cent gasoline. Since the gas crunches, economy is more and more important, so most new bikes are fluid cooled, even though they have aluminum heads. I don't think I've ever seen an air-cooled car.
Sorry for rattling on. Remember, metalurgy is variable- so there must be lots of various alloys, each "better" for a purpose than the next.
2007-11-20 18:52:18 · answer #2 · answered by going_for_baroque 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Aluminum
2007-11-20 17:31:37 · answer #3 · answered by nowjr 2 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Heads should NOT "expand a lot on compression"... unless it's a ford head.
2007-11-20 17:30:50 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 2⤋