More questions for my diesel engine dissertation...

Hey all, be great if you could help me with the following, and don't worry, am also researching this myself!

Tie/compression rods - What metal?
Metal gasket - current ones seem to be aluminium... any ideas of which type?

And how do you go about balancing the tappets without the need to keep reopening the head plate?

Cheers all, more questions may come...

Metal gasket ally or copper,even head sealant
Adjusting tappets[balance?]normally requires removing rocker box covers.
Are we still talking Lister and does it have valve decompressors.
By tie rod I presume you mean conrod which are normally cast iron on the older Lister,possibly thick ally on the later versions but it is the bearing and gudgeon pin ends which house the bearings and pin that have to be capable of absorbing the force and wear of the bearing and pin so possibly sleeves.

Cheers.

Ok, so I think I used the wrong term for the rods. They are the ones running up from the block, thru the cylinder sleeve and out of the head, where the nuts are then screwed down. (So many potential euphemisms!)
I'm assuming they'll be a high tensile steel, to cope with the high pressures within the system?

As for the gasket, would a fluid setting sealant cope with the pressures below and above the cylinder sleeve?

Don't worry, am researching this too, but any pointers are greatly received!

[timwilky]

From your description of "rods" I assume you mean the cylinder head studs.

Yes these need to be a high tensile steel. Not because of the "pressures" but the clamping forces applied by correct torque of the cylinder head nuts.

A "fluid" sealant would not cope It has to remain intact at both high pressure and temperature. Lateral failure of the gasket would occur between the cylinder walls.

Aha, yes, cylinder head studs!

Ah ok, so is plausible to fabricate my own gaskets (well ask one of the techs at uni to...) out of a suitable aluminium or copper?

[timwilky]

Are you building your own engine?

For instance the old Leyland 500 series had an integral cylinder head/block which got rid of the requirement for gaskets/head studs etc.

Issues really were the valve seats. These were pressed in during manufacture and ground. However they were then a pain should the engine require rework as the only way to remove the seats was to weld a dummy valve to the seat using a special jig and push the valve/seat out and then press in a replacement and cut new face.

In practice this design worked for naturally aspirated. But was unreliable once the engine was turbocharged.

have you concidered Hydrolic Tappets.

I have to rebuild a single cylinder Lister diesel engine, a previous military spec generator.
Previous student dismantled head and cylinder sleeve after one of the gaskets blew due to excessive electrical load on the generator.
One or two of the head stus have damaged threads and the gaskets need replacing.