Carbon Fiber engines could be the next big thing in motor racing!

Matti Holtzberg with the super light Carbon Fiber Engine Block

Carbon fiber has for quite some time now come to be a standard fixture at motor racing as concerns for lower weight has only kept increasing many fold over the years with carbon fiber composite chassis almost being the de facto rule in highly advanced and competitive forms of motorsport like Formula1. However, here’s something that could blow even the most hard core technophile in F1. We’re talking carbon fiber engines here, whole engine blocks that is.

This is precisely what Florida based engineer Matti Holtzberg has come up with and after four full decades of painstaking research on composite materials, Matti has finally able to conjure up an entire engine block made of carbon fiber. While the engine block still uses aluminum liners inside, Matti has now made possible what was previously thought as unviable and simply impossible. While the unviable bit may still hold good, the impossible now seems very much possible.

Carbon Fiber Engine Block

So much so, that Matti has now decided to offer his carbon fiber based engine block creations to the motorsport crowd for whom every pound lost and the resultant tenth of a second gained is worth everything. Matti has based his carbon fiber block on the Ford Duratec engine, and also plans to add many more bolt on components made of carbon fiber to further reduce weight by up to 20 pounds, for the carbon fiber based engine block to end up with a significant weight advantages.

Also, this latest advance in engine technology undoes the previous theory of a carbon fiber based block not able to dissipate enough heat to be practical enough for engine assembly, which was also a reason why the whole carbon fiber engine block thing never took off thus far. But with Matti demonstrating that the clever use of polymer technology with strategically located inserts can overcome this ciritical issue, carbon fiber engine blocks might as well become the next big thing in the motor racing scene.

Just like magnesium-aluminum composite engine blocks have become a standard fixture on many BMW 5 series engines, the carbon fiber engine block too could become a part of mainstream car technology of the future. One massive bottleneck however remains that could make carbon fiber engine blocks perpetually exotic like pneumatic valves, of that of the high costs involved. Each pound saved due to the carbon fiber engine block could cost about $2,500, which is frightfully expensive even by racing standards.

Via AutoGuide

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