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B230 minimum cylinder wall thickness

Volvo244GLE

Active member
Joined
Jul 31, 2006
Location
Sydney, Australia
Just got my engine back from the machine shop and keen for a second opinion on sonic testing results for the cylinder wall thicknesses. Machine shop does all kinds of high end performance builds and said it should be fine...

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Build specs:
B230 bored out to 96.5mm
traum pistons
H beam long rods
2.5L penta crank
16v head ported and polished
Custom intake and exhaust manifolds
Holset HE351

Planning to run 30 psi of boost or so which I'm thinking should get me in the region of 500hp.

Good to go? Grout fill up to the bottom of the freeze plugs to add some strength? Throw money away and try and find a better block to get machined?
 
B230 stroker motor with 96.5mm Traum pistons, h-beam rods and 16V head I helped build for a 940 drift car. IT made 425 whp @ 23 PSI on the dyno. Then this happened on the first drift event.

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I would go for a sleeved block if I were you. I can tell you that his next block will be sleeved. Should cost around $250 AUD per hole.
 
@poulrais

I can see why your steering clear of this thread

http://forums.turbobricks.com/showthread.php?t=358672

:lol::lol:

Actually this is not my engine and I didn't pay for all this but I can tell you that the owner has WAY over $20k invested into this drift car already.

As for the damaged engine, the pistons and rods are fine as well as the head. It just needs another squirter block in good condition and a set of rings + another $1000 for the sleeves job.
 
I have tried to find info on peoples experience driving a partially filled b230 but havent come up with much. This motor is going in a street driven car on 40 degree celsius days, or 104 in american speak. Running the wider radiator from a 940 in my 242.
 
That 87 for the mid rear on cylinder #1 is kinda weird.
I would find another block for street 30psi.

Rob Prince had someone build him an engine with block fill, and it was a sloppy job. I disassembled it, found 4-corner scuffing and the water pump hole in front partly blocked. We did his prep and machining on a second block, he assembled it. No probs I know of.
With V8s, a 1/3 fill is usually max for mixed street/strip.
Even if you theorize that the most heat is at the top, and metal conducts better than liquids, you are still missing transfer area between coolant and metal. We won't know how much it cools until someone tries, and with a 20k investment, this is not the block/car combo to try it on.
Yes, block fill will help those thin walls, and yes, it might make a great drag or drift block with a half fill. But no guarantees.
Get a better block.
 
I would find another block for street 30psi.

Rob Prince had someone build him an engine with block fill, and it was a sloppy job. I disassembled it, found 4-corner scuffing and the water pump hole in front partly blocked. We did his prep and machining on a second block, he assembled it. No probs I know of.
With V8s, a 1/3 fill is usually max for mixed street/strip.
Even if you theorize that the most heat is at the top, and metal conducts better than liquids, you are still missing transfer area between coolant and metal. We won't know how much it cools until someone tries, and with a 20k investment, this is not the block/car combo to try it on.
Yes, block fill will help those thin walls, and yes, it might make a great drag or drift block with a half fill. But no guarantees.
Get a better block.

I recall rob doing the partial filling the block himself in the spare bedroom of the little house he had?
 
Hmm ok well I have purchased an ebay special sonic thickness tester. Also read up on modifying the probe to match the curve of a cylinder wall. Cost wasnt much more than I paid for getting the current block tested.

When it arrives I will endevour to confirm the results from the machine shop and measure at a bunch more locations. I have also got a spare block that I will measure up to see if it is any better.

Lesson here is to make sure the machine shop measures wall thicknesses and gives you the results before they start machining. Not after when you get the bill for all the machining that may be now wasted...
 
It's something about 3.5mm, here in finland my friend has measured splitted blocks, and also with sonic thickness tester:

B23 was 2.7- 4.4mm.
B21 was 2.5-3.1 mm.
B19 was 4-6mm.
b230f was 3.3.
B200 was 3-4.

BEst blocks was made in 1995->1997, they made them with different casting factory and they were strongest ones.

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Ok well I brought an ultrasonic thickness gauge from ebay, model UM6500. It comes with an 8mm diameter flat probe. I used a file to shape it to the curve of the cylinder wall. Doesnt take much, probably removed 0.2mm at the extreme edges, tapering to nothing near the centre of the probe.

None of the preset calibration adjustments for different materials matched up with measured thicknesses to well. It has a 5mm thick piece of metal on the unit that is used for calibration. I found that the side of the block down near the sump is approx 5mm thick so calibrated it against that. I then worked my way through the preset calibration adjustments till I got a very close match between measured thickness. Best place I found to confirm accuracy was measuring at the very top of the cylinder bores where they are closest together. At that location its solid metal between the bores and easy to check against a measurement with vernier calipers.

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Using this approach, I was able to match the results from the machine shop pretty well. I also had a good look around for any more thin spots. I mapped out the areas with a thickness less than 110 thou and marked a white outline around them.

It found pretty consistent results showing the thinnest areas where 1 and 2, along with 3 and 4, get closest together. On a b230 cylinder spacing isn't equal, the gap between 2 and 3 is slightly larger and correspondingly doesn't appear to suffer the same issue of thin spots.

For reference of depth, I used a vernier caliper to reflect approx where the top of the piston would be when at the bottom of an 86mm stroke.

Cylinder 1
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Cylinder 2
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Cylinder 3
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Cylinder 4
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The thin areas reflect that at the top of the bores the cylinders are 'siamesed', followed by thin spots directly below that. I didnt find any particular thin spots outside of these locations. Given the depth of these thin spots and as they arent on the thrust side of the bore, perhaps its not an issue?

I also have a AQ171 and another B230FX which I measured up for comparison. As per below, there is strong trends between the different blocks. Did some colour coding to highlight the trends. Red is 109 or less, orange is 110-120, yellow is 121 to 130.

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The spare B230FX was actually particularly thin in and not a viable alternative. The AQ171 is pretty good, however its already bored out to 96.5mm and has a bit of corrosion in the bores. Not sure how well it will clean up with a hone and if in the end it would still be in spec. Also doesn't have oil squirters. Given these findings I'm less concerned about using the freshly machined block but may see how a hone of the AQ171 goes.
 
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