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Posted:
Wed Jun 10, 2009 9:11 pmby 86rocco1
I thought I'd share what I'd been working on lately. I made a cast aluminium manifold for my buddy's race car. It's a watercooled VW motor and this manifold will fit a single Weber DCOE side draft carb to it. This is my first attempt at metal casting, I did everything from making the pattern and core to melting and pouring the aluminum. Here's pic of the second one that I cast fresh out of the sand, at the point this picture was taken, the gating had been cut off and the core knocked out, nothing more.
Posted:
Wed Jun 10, 2009 9:36 pmby jakesportingservice
Looks good do you cast the ports also or is it solid ? Now we all need to learn to do this for fun like our flowbench addition isnt enough 
Keep up the great work
Jake
Posted:
Wed Jun 10, 2009 9:52 pmby 86rocco1
The ports are cast in there too, very slightly undersized so there's bit of material there for to allow for port matching etc.
Posted:
Wed Jun 10, 2009 11:09 pmby jfholm
Ed,
That really looks great. Lots of effort there. Can we see the ports? I would love to see that part also.
John
Posted:
Wed Jun 10, 2009 11:15 pmby bruce
Heck lets see pictures of the whole process?
Great project!!
Posted:
Wed Jun 10, 2009 11:45 pmby 86rocco1
Sure, a short web page I put together mainly for the benefit of the guys over on the detailing this project. You can see the shape of the ports and plenum but looking at the core.
Posted:
Thu Jun 11, 2009 1:03 amby slracer
Ed, Is the "gassing" process something you can explain a bit? I did some casting in 8th-9th grade (about 52 years ago) but don't remember anything like that. Of course, they were simple solid items (and I don't remember much at all from 52 years ago)! :p :p
Doug
Posted:
Thu Jun 11, 2009 1:19 amby Flash
I used to work in a bronze foundry, so i know vary well what you went threw to come up with a end product.
We did sand and shell molds. Poured bronze, brass, aluminum. a little silver and gold as well.
Was a vary interesting job...........sometime i wish i was still there, just to take advantage of things like that! 
Posted:
Thu Jun 11, 2009 10:11 amby 86rocco1
Posted:
Thu Jun 11, 2009 12:27 pmby blaktopr
Pretty cool. I will be checking out that site. I been wondering about an intake for myself.
Posted:
Thu Jun 11, 2009 10:13 pmby slracer
That's really neat! Can I assume the CO2 from my wire welder would work? I may make some giant "spitballs"! -- Doug
Posted:
Thu Jun 11, 2009 10:34 pmby 86rocco1
That'll work fine. Even CO2 in the air work, it just takes a lot longer.
Posted:
Fri Jun 12, 2009 7:08 amby MrHijet
Wow! It is already a great result what you made there. How long have you worked on it (designing and making the wooden parts till you had the chance to cast the first prototype) ?
Cheers,
Daniel
Posted:
Fri Jun 12, 2009 7:20 amby bruce
Did you put the core box on the flowbench and check it out ???
Posted:
Fri Jun 12, 2009 3:02 pmby 86rocco1
Working an hour or two one evening a week or so, it took a couple months to get from basic design to casting.
I did actually think about flowing a core box but that would have required making an extra core box with a couple of small modification specifically for that purpose. That does raise an interesting question, the core box is about 2% larger in each dimension than the actual cavity in the casting to compensate for the metal shrinkage, would this impact the result of a flow test, bearing in mind that the main interest in flowing the core box would have been to check and see if the flow is balanced from one port to the next?