Cryogenically frozen engine parts?
 

Was reading the thread on cryo-frozen brake rotors - seems there is some truth to the longevity claims. Wondering if folks have frozen engine parts?

Seems like some frozen valve guides could help balance the long life of the 911 bottom end with a longer lasting top end. Could $50-$100 up front prolong valve guide wear by an extra 5 years? If so, that's cheap insurance.

-Boyo

I've wondered this myself but never asked the question to the people that really know. I do know that Diversifed Cryogenics (www.frozenrotors.com) has treated engine blocks for snowmobiles, for whatever that is worth. Seems like it would work. As for "cheap insurance"...I don't know what the cost would be but it might be worth researching more. When I get some time maybe I'll give them a call or stop by their shop.

What about freezing some of the 915 tranny parts to make it last longer?

SNAKE OIL

:rolleyes:



A few links to independent sources (i.e. sites not related to a specific manufacturer or otherwise overtly biased toward cryogenics) on the topic of cryogenics:

http://lennon.pub.csufresno.edu/~rlk16/cryo.html

http://www.nuclear-diagnostics.com/Science/Technology/Cryotechnology/index.html

http://www.hekimianracing.com/cryostudy.html

http://www.nfa.ca/NFAFiles/CFJArchive/Misc/CryoTreatment.html

How much Horse Power will I get if I Cryogenically Freeze the Driver?

http://www.pelicanparts.com/support/smileys/eek3.gif

Chuck

Brembo spent a small fortune performing tests on its own rotors and found NO PERCEPTIBLE DIFFERENCE in cryo'd Vs. non-cryo'd rotors. StopTech did their own testing, and arrived at similar results, although stopping short of saying that the process is absolutely worthless.

Where cryogenics is applied to transmission components (which prompted the comment of "Snake Oil"), there are no high quality gears or ring & pinion sets that benefit from cryogenic treatment, and in fact most manufacturers of these components (as well as the companies that heat-treat them) are unified in their insistance that freezing after-the-fact could very well create a more brittle product.

In 1994, long before todays cryogenic craze (and during a time when virtually all heat-treatment facilities incorporated a cryogenic phase to their heat treatment process), Roy Kern, the resident tech advisor for the publication "Metal Heat Treating", cautioned against cryogenically treating already-finished gears manufactured from high nickel steels (such as 9310, EN36A, 8620, etc). With over 50 years experience, he had seen embrittlement issues when cryo'ing these materials in an attempt to reduce the level of retained austenite.

There very well may be some production gears made from inferior materials and/or induction-hardened (a hardening process sometimes used for low quality transmission components) that may benefit from freezing. But you won't find these lower quality gears in any Porsche transmission.

If you want to spend money actually strengthening 915 parts, have those pieces polished through the isotropic normalizing process, available at a few shops like Orbit Racing or Taylor Engineering. The results of this process are real, not imaginary. Likewise the shotpeening process (although many transmission parts may have already received this treatment).

As for valve guides (as mentioned in the original post by Boyo), there have been guides manufactured from virilium which seemed to last forever (with the valves requiring replacement first).

I"ve heard Ted Williams loves em!

How difficult (read "expensive") are this virilium valve guides?

About double the cost of silicone-bronze to manufacture.

How would a magnesium case take to this process?

I've got to rebuild my turbo and need to know if this process will take to the magnesium?

Any thoughts?

TIA!

This comes up periodically... http://forums.pelicanparts.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=182601&perpage=20&highl ight=cryo&pagenumber=2

It was also discussed on engine parts here.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/911-engine-rebuilding-forum/219996-cryo-treating-parts.html

TOO Funny!!