Anyone ever hear of aluminum–ceramic composite connecting rods?

I've been doing a google search on them and only have come up with one article on them:

http://www.competitionplus.com/05_14...tgen_rods.html

What brought this to my attention was they can weigh under 450 grams per rod and are much stronger than the typical aluminum rod.

If anyone has the latest Car Craft mag these rods are mentioned on page 92.

Rob

 

I've seen some light BME rods before, in the 370g range. 450g is not really that light, compared to a Eagle H beam, it is though.

Actually it sounds like the rods in that article are not a composite as much as a thick durable coating. Something along the lines of Casidiam for Ti parts but instead of being 2 - 4 microns it's 3 - 5 thou so a order of magnitude thicker. If this process works, I for one don't know if a thick coating can change the properties of aluminum enough to allow this to happen, it looks like you could run them in endurance engines where previously they were only a drag race item before. That would be cool.

With that said, for enough money you can cut the weight of a steel rod down into the low 500g mark or lower (but it costs more money) and still have enough strength do what you need to.

I do agree that cutting bobweight (piston,pin & rod mass) off the crank brings the force that is applied on the crank down dramatically and in turn is extending the life of the parts and keeping your inital crankshaft prices down or extending the useable survice life of what's in there. Because crankshafts do a have a service life the problem is the only way too tell is to cut the crank up and check it OR it will tell you by breaking on it's own.

I would think that if these parts are out there then the F1 teams would be looking at them. I know I would if I was them.

Bret

 

Assuming the strength was there for use in an endurance engine, could the reduced heat transfer/elevated piston temperature stand in the way of their use by causing problems in the piston? I'd imagine the Rod(when compared to the rings) carries a significant amount of the heat out of the pistons. Obviously a piston coating would help this situation and anyone willing to lay out the cash for these would likely be using coatings anyways.

I'm not saying i think specifically they would or would not work because of this, just looking for other peoples thoughts on the potential significance.

-brent

 

BME?

 

Bill miller engineering.

 

This came up in a thread on another board, having to do with titanium rods, and while everyone there was interested as well, nobody seems to know anything more.

 

Thanx Jordon. I remeber his website from quite a few years ago. Are these prices per rod?

http://bmeltd.com/rod_prices.htm

http://bmeltd.com/pistons.htm

I don't see any info on how much they weigh.

 

Nope that's per set.

The applications differ and from what I remeber the rods are made to order per application. I was looking at a Ford Small Block drag racing rod.

They do some nice work on pistons for NASCAR.


Brent,

Actually the oil and block take most of the heat out of the piston. Galling and stretch and a low fatigue life is why Al rods usually suck for endurance applications.

Bret

 

Cool, didn't know if that could be significant or not which is why I asked.

-brent

 

In the Car Craft magazine they make it sound like the whole rod inside and out is aluminum–ceramic composite.

 

That's what I thought too...

Journalists, Smokey Yunick used to love to play with them too because they just don't understand.

If we all read the same article then that guys rods are just coated kind of like a anodizing or a nitritding process. Something along those lines.

Bret