Building an engine without a head...

[Shaner]

Has anyone ever built an engine out of a solid block of metal with no head?

Basically, cut out the valves and installed everything that would be in the head, but eliminating the head...if that makes sense.

Intake is still there, valves are still there, valve springs, camshaft... just no head gasket and head bolts...its all one piece.

[GARY C]

Has anyone ever built an engine out of a solid block of metal with no head?

Basically, cut out the valves and installed everything that would be in the head, but eliminating the head...if that makes sense.

Intake is still there, valves are still there, valve springs, camshaft... just no head gasket and head bolts...its all one piece.

Years ago someone made a headless horseman...

What you are referring to was Fords idea behind the Flat Head engine, the "head" per say was more like an access panel to install the needed parts and hold a spark plug.

[prairiehotrodder]

i was actually thinking about this recently. If a motor could be built where the pistons install from the bottom of the cylinder, eliminate the head gasket and bolts and the head is all one piece with the block. I think i started wondering about this as i did the head gaskets on my piece of junk buick rendezvous with a 3.4 V6.
Brian

[Dave Koehler]

Look up any number of radial aircraft engines.
I suppose you could bolt something similar to a basic crankcase.
Is it doable? probably
Is it feasible? not in the least.

[stealth]

I saw a video of Mack trucks engine plant from years ago where they loaded the piston and rod from the bottom...

I rembers thinking...would you look at that..lol

[Baprace]

I think Offenhauser "OFFY" engines are built with cylinder and head as one piece. Pistons go in from the bottom.

[BILL-C]

Cylinders and head are one piece on Offys. No head gasket. Same with many older aircraft engines.

[MotionMachine]

Bentley had 4 valves per cylinder, roller cam and rockers, integral head in the 1930's.

[PackardV8]

Casting the head and block as a unit was quite common in the early days. Several of the Harry Miller designs done by Leo Goosen, including what became known as the Offenhauser, were done this way.

Just imagine the difficulty of achieving a precision valve seat when working up through a small diameter cylinder (the Miller 91" straight-eight has a 2.200" bore diameter) and at 45-degrees. There's literally no line of sight; it had to be done by feel.

[modok]

Offy's, airplanes, old motorcycles. Common pre-war.
Most recent one I can think of is a honda "5 horse" little 160cc guy.
split diagonal crankcase, one cam lobe runs both valves, 25lbs total, very interesting.

[digger]

I think bmw's last f1 engines the cylinder head and crankcase were a single piece

[SchmidtMotorWorks]

Solid block of metal? I guess its going to be adiabatic. With no head it will be an open hole, so it would have a head just not removable.
So yeah nothing new under the sun there.
The pictures load kinda slow, here is an integral block and head engine, it was mentioned above.

https://www.hotrod.com/articles/assembl ... gine-step/

Very nice set of images there.

[emsvitil]

Air cooled aircraft engines have a cylinder/head that bolts on to the crankcase.

[Leftcoaster]

English designer Brian Hart produced a monoblock 16v 1459cc four cylinder turbo engine specifically for F1

By 1984 the 88.0 mm bore x 61.5mm stroke 415T was producing 825hp at 10,500rpm

[ProPower engines]

They did it back in the 20's. It is a Willy's Knight. A real cool piece of engineering for its time.
The engine used 2 sleeves that slide inside each other and in the bore of the block similar to a 2 stroke does.
They were ported and controlled by con rods.
This engine uses 3 sets of rods and they are amazingly much smoother then conventional engines like a flat head or F head design of that time period. Their draw back was smoke. They burned oil and while they were more powerful and efficient then others they were not popular cause of the oil burning and the smoke they produced.

I did 1 of these gems a while back and the reason for the design was no valve jobs were needed which on others
required frequent valve jobs as the metallurgy was not very good where valves were concerned back in the early days.