Whenever I mention it, I usually get the same answer: "No, you can't make your own engine. The casting is too complicated. How would you pour out your blocks? Is there a foundry in your mother's basement? Start from scratch It's too expensive to process one. You don't know what you are doing!"

This is a common response to my question. I hate them for being right. I really don't know what I am doing. I am a financial officer and learned how to work in a car by reading books. But in the seven years since WRC Mexico, I have learned a lot, and the opponents are also wrong.

I will do it. I want to build my engine.

Professional motorsport is a cold and hard place. If you want to run with a big dog, you can’t just

I say "make" my engine because building an engine is a completely different thing. That's where you take a production block and replace the rod, piston and cam. Maybe you port and polish the head and increase compression and use valve springs. This is great, but I want to make my own engine from scratch. There is no Betty Crocker cake mix here.

I am not going to reinvent the wheel. I don't want Jason Torchinsky's fever dream, a weird piston cycle engine or a variable compression motor, even though the roller valve looks great.

Just remind me to keep it simple, or decorate yours with RGB lights, touch screens or even digital thermostats.

Take a look at this single-piston four-cylinder engine with a homemade cylinder head. The tube is not a valve, but rotates like a camshaft, exposing a small cut in the tube to the combustion chamber.

The center of the tube is hollow, so when the piston moves down, when the groove is aligned with the compression chamber, it will pass air through the throttle body at the end of the tube, down the tube, through the groove and into the cylinder. Its simplicity is a bit beautiful.

The video above uses a homemade header on the production block. I want to try the opposite method-make my own block and bolt it to the production head. For what I am trying to do, I can use a traditional valve mechanism.

I want something small, powerful and light. Most production engines are built to withstand a lifetime of abuse. My engine may never exceed 10,000 miles, so why not make a super lightweight one?

I know what you are thinking: V8 with falcon head. My friends and I have been talking about this since our first article on Racecar Engineering more than ten years ago. (I can't find the original version, but this is an outline of V8 Hyabusa.)

The problem is that it looks so good. The engine is too expensive. I want a 24 hour lemon version. I know this is not how the world works, but I think they are wrong. I think you can build your own engine.

Unfortunately, my first engine will not be V8. This will be an inline four to prove it works. Then I can do more complex packaging and processing of V8.

So, how do you build your own block? Well, most people voted for them. Others machine them with a solid piece of metal. These two methods are the correct way to build the engine block from scratch.

But neither suits my madness. If you were to make 10,000 blocks, engine castings would be great; I have seen them dump Ferrari engines this way on the Discovery Channel. I lack the foundry and the ability to make those perfect sand castings.

The CNC route is by far the coolest. Learn SolidWorks, CAD design method. Take a piece of aluminum and tell the computer to start cutting the metal until there is an engine block left.

Kirkham Motorsports usually takes about 30 hours of computer-controlled processing to rotate...

You can also machine metal manually on the old Bridgeport, but I don't have the patience to learn SolidWorks or run Bridgeport for a month. I want to take a shortcut.

I will machine some simple parts and combine them with other parts until I have an engine block. The key is the cylinder, I can buy those. I just need a way to hold them in place and parallel to each other. I think I will make a top and bottom plate with holes for each cylinder. Look, it's not that difficult.

The real problem is to connect the crank to the system in a way that holds the crank in place. I have seen the engine bend before, but it is not pretty. Have you seen a video where the team designed their own F1 engine?

Not only did the piston hit the head and hit the valve, but the shape of the cylinder changed so much that the crank didn't even turn in the bearing. The video below should load correctly to 21:25, and they grabbed this block:

So this will be a problem, but maybe not, because it is impossible for my design to generate this kind of power. I think we will find out and deal with this problem later.

I already know the main flaw in my design, it doesn't lock the motor firmly. This is how the crank is fixed in the engine. I think the lower deck should be machined to the bottom of the crank journal like the picture below.

Every production block I disassembled is hung under some covers like this design, but it also has the advantage of being connected to a large piece of metal instead of my small deck. Therefore, I tend to be more like the picture on the right.

Every custom racing motor I have seen has a belt-like structure that can hold the crank down from the side and bottom. This structure is part of or related to the external structure of the engine, similar to the cover image of the video below.

By the way, how cool is this engine? This is a quarter-scale V8. I don't know who Kieth7000 is, but he is my new hero. Look at this thing. Maybe I need to learn Solid Works after all.

Now remember that everything needs to be built with great tolerance. When all the parts are completed and assembled into a "block", it needs to go to the machine shop to align the cylinder and the crank journal with each other.

How do I connect the head to the block? I used the holes on the top deck plate for the cylinder liner, and added and tapped more holes in the same position for the head I want to use. Treat the coolant and oil passages in the same way.

When this part is completed, I should have two rectangular plates connected together by cylinder tubes. The top plate will have additional holes to leak oil and coolant from the head to the cylinder block. I can connect metal pipes between the deck plates to pass the oil down to the crank, or I can simply pull the oil out of the head and use a dry oil pan to set the crank.

I can do the same with cooling by running the head and block as two separate systems. It does place a bunch of pipes outside the engine and adds some points of failure, but the block will become complex enough. The more components I can pull from the block and place them outside, the better.

Instead, I will run an external oil pump that will draw oil from the crankcase and head separately. I can also run different outputs and provide different oil pressures for different parts of the engine. I would love to spray some oil on the bottom of the piston. I don't think I need it, but I really like the concept.

A long time ago, I ordered an S14 cylinder block from BMW. Some of the piston sprayers were machined into it, but the kid in the parts room stole the cylinder block. This is also the last 2.5 liter block from Germany.

Since then, I have wanted those stupid piston injectors. The problem is that a group of Germans went to engineering school and studied all the fluid dynamics in order to get the right oil pressure on the right parts of the engine. I think I need to run them separately with their own pressure regulators.

Now, for the coolant. It needs to enter the area between the two plates and surround the piston, so I need to box on the side of my block to contain the coolant. My hunch is that this outer box will provide a lot of engine power. The pressure in the coolant area does not exceed 50 psi, so pressure resistance is not required. It only needs to distribute the load of the crank to the entire engine, so something that looks more like ladder work on the bridge would be ideal. Then, I can even use them to support the upper and lower decks, and then cover the area with metal to contain the coolant.

How does it all fit together? Well, connect the machined head bolts to the top plate so that the upper lip of the cylinder liner is directly pressed into the top plate. The bottom plate will slide over the bottom of the casing. Then I assume I need to solder them all together.

Before we continue, I know your first objection. There is no way to weld the components together and maintain tolerances. I have no intention of keeping everything perfectly aligned. My goal is to get it close enough so that I can have a mechanical workshop fix it all after I finish. So, although I don’t know what I’m doing, maybe when I’m done, the staff in the mechanical workshop can solve my problem.

My initial idea seemed feasible. It is just a tube that is sealed in the explosion and transmits power from behind through a crank. But then I looked at the Kieth7000 engine, and I realized it was more difficult than it sounded. Yes, this is a one-third V10:

The good news is that I can study engine design for 50 years, and the Internet is a very cool place. Even forums, sometimes. More importantly, I have some great friends who can design and build anything like Rob Masek.

He built a three-story combat robot, as you can see in the movie, controlled by an airborne human pilot. I also have friends like Strategic Racing Designs, who like to turn an idea into a tangible metal reality-they helped me build the Baja Pig and they have a CNC machine in their shop.

For all the haters out there, check out this engine built from scratch without a machine tool. This is very different from what I am trying to do, but the principle is the same. Air intake, compression, power, exhaust.

Now, the engine can barely charge the manufacturer's cell phone, but at the other end of the spectrum are these two huge engines. Aardema built this 1,193 cubic inch V12 for seaplane racing, and I think it is a 19.5 liter engine if my math is correct.

I met these people at PRI a few years ago, and it made me think I should build my own engine. Of course, their work is a work of art that can generate 3,000 horsepower.

The other engine was made by Falconer and was originally designed for three-quarter scale P-51 Mustangs, which were never built in the end. But Falconer continues to use the engine because it is so cool. Falconer is also V-12, but power is not discussed on their website.

One thing I know for sure is that if I find a way to make this engine, I will machine my last name onto the valve cover.

Bill Caswell is a man of many talents. He occasionally contributes to Jalopnik.

Since we are talking about crazy ideas here, have you ever thought about 3D printing engine blocks. You said the goal is cheap and light, right?

I remember reading some (despite failure) attempts by manufacturers to develop plastic engines.

It will be cheap, it will definitely be very light, if it explodes, you just need to print another one.

Maybe crazy enough to work? ? ?