More expensive doesn't necessarily mean "better". Powdered metal gears are very durable and have very precise tolerances. This is essential for the high oil pressure necessary in these Voodoo engines. A billet machined pump would have been stronger, but would make less pressure unless VERY...
My point exactly. There is only conjecture about the OPGs because some tuners point at the aftermarket supercharged car failures ( and Ford's own Cobra Jet had a billet pump) and come to a "conclusion". I don't know, and Ford isn't telling.
However, I am very aware of the development that goes...
Yikes! Guilty of nothing except fair mindedness. There's not one shred of credible evidence that these engines have a material defect. Just glittering generalities and Olympic conclusion-jumping.
Theory: A weak OPG design is causing vibration-related failures. If true, track cars that run lap...
Don't work for Ford, or any other carmaker. Lifetime of experience in metallurgy and precision machining. There is simply no evidence that the OPGs are defective. If the OPG "vibration failure" hypothesis had ANY merit, we would see more track cars with broken engines. That's not what we see. We...
Tikore uses genuine 6AL4V Titanium and these fasteners are made right here in the USA. They make private label TI fasteners for many of the top wheel manufacturers.
There are lots of Chinese made Ti nuts around at cheap prices. But there is no way I'm putting a "no-name" nut, made of god knows...
These are genuine Titanium nuts for the GT350 made by Tikore. Not cheap but a perfect replacement in satin finished 6AL4V Titanium. Fits GT350 and GT350R.
Sure, anything can break. These are humans we're talking about.
My point is that Ford invested in a substantial protocol to minimize things that go BOOM, and cost them thousands. Seems they did a pretty good job.
The oil lines are certainly an embarrassment for them. Defective manufacture...
One final point. Developing a new engine from scratch these days can cost $500 to $800 million. Even a variant like the Voodoo probably cost over $100 million to develop, test and certify. Think Ford wouldn't get excited if an investment like that went sour? This is Big Boy money fellas, and...
In the end, I just want to be fair. Ford is a long way from perfect, but let's give credit where it is due.
I happen to know that the test protocol for a new engine is brutal. Hundreds of hours on the dyno at WOT, maximum load and max RPM. Much more abuse than you see except in full race...
Cost is also the reason they didn't assemble the whole car with titanium fasteners.
Cost is the reason that the entire car isn't aluminum.
I know you want to believe that this should be a $50k hand built, blueprinted race engine, but it's not. It's a production high performance engine with...
I have a high powered Voodoo engine and I am perfectly fine with the OPGs.
If I were building a supercharged engine, I would likely follow Ford's lead and use the high dollah pump.
I'm not convinced that billet gears are the right solution for the Voodoo engine.
I know you are. That's fine by...
Everyone? Hmmm.
So Ford decided to use a really expensive oil pump in the Cobra Jet engines.OK.
Likely they determined in testing that this sort of pump was required. Not sure why, but they did.
Then, you would have us all believe that, after that decision, Ford Engineering got amnesia and...
I concur that PM would not be suitable for transmissions. That's just a Red Herring.
PM is used extensively for connecting rods in performance engines. It's even the rod of choice for some racing engines (look it up).
It is also used extensively by GE and Pratt & Whitney in jet engines that...
Alas, the tooling costs and production runs required for powdered metal preclude its use in aftermarket parts.
But with the ability to almost infinitely adjust the properties and maintain the part accuracy, I would choose the PM solution in most cases.
As Ford is a production engine builder, I...