Valve Guide Material

[icanfixall]

Today I was talking to a supplier of valve guides. I told him I wanted a set for my turbo idi motor and was told the bronze material wouldn't hold up. States that the temps would melt the bronze guides and that the steel or cast iron is the best thing for the turbo motors. Anybody ever hear of this? I'm really confused right about now. I have a set of heads that have the guides in them that are not cast iron and appear to be bronze. What gives??? Thanks

 

[riphip]

Doesn't make sense since the turbo temps shouldn't get that hot.

Bronze is used in GA$$ racing motors.


Rick

 

[typ4]

I would not take that as gospel, I checked with the shop that did my heads and they have many farm and industrial turbocharged engines with many hours on them. I have literally burnt and detonated to death a turboed 1.8 jetta engine and there was no guide damage, no aluminum melted in the head either.

I dont know why they would say that bronze wont hold up when they keep selling to this shop????

The machinist said that using bronze guides has never been a problem,better heat transfer than iron and so on, BUT they have to be honed, not reamed to the proper clearance. When the diesel went low sulpher they had some problems with sticking cast guides and bronze was the fix, less oil required to operate and so on, the old engines will be fine on ultra low sulpher till the guides get replaced with iron or so they suspect, I guess that is a whole other episode.

 

[sle2115]

One of the best guides we sold was a bronze compound lined guide. High nickel content in the guide itself IIRC and we put them in anything someone was willing to pay for them in. The machine shop I worked at started out doing single cylinder oil pump engines, many were air cooled and that is the type they used in them. The owner of the shop also raced legend cars and I put them in his 1300 cc Kaw motors which were also air cooled and shrouded by the body of the car, needless to say, they made some serious heat and he would not richen the engine if it meant loosing a race, he would lean it out win and then we would tow him in with a shot engine. Even under these extremes, we never had a guide failure, melted a piston or two to the block...I used them in the last gasser I built and when dynoed, it made over 1000 hp (engine dyno, not wheel) while laughing and was only a 331 ci motor, still runs to this day although not a daily driver!

 

[typ4]

One of the best guides we sold was a bronze compound lined guide. High nickel content in the guide itself IIRC and we put them in anything someone was willing to pay for them in. The machine shop I worked at started out doing single cylinder oil pump engines, many were air cooled and that is the type they used in them. The owner of the shop also raced legend cars and I put them in his 1300 cc Kaw motors which were also air cooled and shrouded by the body of the car, needless to say, they made some serious heat and he would not richen the engine if it meant loosing a race, he would lean it out win and then we would tow him in with a shot engine. Even under these extremes, we never had a guide failure, melted a piston or two to the block...I used them in the last gasser I built and when dynoed, it made over 1000 hp (engine dyno, not wheel) while laughing and was only a 331 ci motor, still runs to this day although not a daily driver!

I think they gave Gary bad info .I have done hundreds of heads with and without bronze with no problems. The only reason I didnt do my IDI heads is I don't have the tooling, YET.

 

[f-two-fiddy]

Lemme know when you get the tools.

So I wonder what the special guides DAS uses are made of?

 

[icanfixall]

I would also like to know what DAS uses too. I will probably go with the Bronzanium 90 if I can get more info on it.