Making a little progress

In these two pictures you can see the progress made last week. I've just placed the thermostat housing assembly and right hand cam cover roughly in place. It is starting to look like an engine already, even though there are no mechanical parts in the assembly yet.

Up next: First I'll do the left hand cam cover. After that I think I will start work on the right hand cilinder head.

Right hand cam cover

This took a lot less time, actually, than the thermostat housing assembly

What you are looking at is obviously the right hand cam cover, with the seals installed. I've decided to draw the inside detailing and the breather splash guard as well. It doesn't take that much time, but it makes a nice picture. ;)

Thermostat housing

It's always the small cast parts that just eat up a lot of time. I've just finished the thermostat housing in the middle of the vee on the engine block. There are a lot of chamfered and fillet-edges that are hard to measure up. So it took a little time but it's in now... :)

You can see the thermostat inside the housing as well. The tube and spring on top are the throttle cable guide and return spring.

Induction system

I've been at it for a week or two in my spare time between school and work, but the first parts of the engine are translated in 3D. The manifold itself was a little more work than I had hoped, because one of the way splines work in 3D sketches in Solidworks. (Developers; take notes, I want to define splines as seen from 2 view planes, and not as some 3D guesswork) ;)

All engine internals will be drawn as well, in case I need to do flow simulations on specific parts of the engine.
The various fittings and air or fuel hoses will be drawn later, as the routing may change, or I will upgrade to Goodridge lines.

And of course all the internals will work as they are supposed to. As seen with the throttle valves below. :)
I will probably need to upgrade my workstation again when I get to the valvetrain... :( ;) We'll see about that later.

Maserati project

My next project will be the blueprinting of the Maserati V6-4AC-24 Biturbo engine.
I got my engine from specialist Maserati Biturbo breaker KJB parts in Anna-Paulowna.
First I will slowly strip the engine, translating the parts to 3D as I go. After that I will clean all parts, and modify the engine as I see fit. It might very well be this only consists of the polishing of rotating parts and lightening of the flywheel, but it may also be some heavy machining on the engine block. At this point I just don't know. Last step will be repainting/replating of the various parts, and rebuilding the block. At some point the block will hit the dyno too. ;)

What will be modified is electrical routing, the intake and the exhaust system because, inevitably I will have to design the vehicle it will power too. ;)

Mechanical engineering thesis project

This was my BSc thesis project. I made the concept for a single seater open wheel race car. The idea was to create a historic feeling combined with modern technology like cantilever suspension, a composite monocoque and a motorcycle engine. During the project ex-F1 driver Jan Lammers was my tutor. 

When the project was finished senior motorsport automotive designer John Travis reviewed the project with me. He told me that even though some things were just plain wrong, I did look to the right aspects of motorsport design. I was the only designer on the project so all you see here was my work, guidance was purely focused on the practical aspects and project run time was one year. 

During the project I did basic concept development, exterior design, monocoque geometry development, suspension geometry and physical design, engine induction system design with variable intake stack and general 3D drawing.

3-day project for materials science

Simple 3-day project. The assignment was to design a wheelchair and defend your materials selection. I thought why not make a cool wheelchair while you're at it.