Billet water jacketed head

I doubt is an epoxy adhesive/sealant would be effective in a engine head.
There is too many cooling and heating cycles even if the epoxy had the same expansion coefficient as aluminum.
 
Or a gasket of sorts. It's also going to have 14 head studs and any additional holding the halves together if deemed needed.
 
I'm surprised this has not been tried on a commercial scale before now. There have been other "sandwich" heads successfully built and raced (notably Pro Stock AMC drag cars) and even at least a couple of 300 six heads.
When I was teaching welding there was a process called electron beam welding that made it possible to join metals with a joint root opening thickness-to-root-opening ratio of 500:1. That means half-inch thick piece pieces of metal could be joined together with a root opening as little as .001" . I wonder if this is the process they are using.
 
No laser beams involved, sadly.

[image]https://www.enginelabs.com/image/2015/12/2015-12-15_18-53-28.jpg[/image]

[image]https://www.enginelabs.com/image/2015/12/2015-12-15_18-53-31.jpg[/image]

[image]https://www.enginelabs.com/image/2015/12/2015-12-15_18-53-26.jpg[/image]
 
I'd seen the screwed ones, and that may be a viable option as well.

[image]https://www.sonnysracingengines.com/images/cms/97c7bfad-e8fa-1ade.jpg[/image]
 
"Kong" Jackson, was Pete Jackson Gear Drives brother, and made many custom performance Flathead Ford parts as well as many sets of 2 pc. billet Flathead heads with water jackets back in the 50's before billet was called billet and were very successful. In more modern times, back in the early 2000's, Norm Frick's also made custom 2pc. billet V8 Flathead and Model A cylinder heads with water jackets. Never saw any comments on them leaking, and as far as Kong's heads of the 1950's, there probably weren't any high tech or fancy sealers of that era other than what was commonly used by mechanics of the day. I think i've seen discussion about Norm Frick's heads using simple o-rings for sealing the 2 halves together.
 
I thought the Kong 2-piece were cast then machined? With the low cooling system pressure, shellac (bug-poo glue-Gramps) or about anything would seal water in. I do recall some billet tribute heads. Aussie/Kiwi?
A hotrod OHV head would be exponentially more difficult.

Kong heads were the inspiration for a watercooled Briggs head I made in the 90's, trying to adapt it to a small outboard lower unit. I wanted to eliminate the noise of the fan, and figured it was sitting in the middle of a darn big radiator. It almost wasn't a dismal failure. Almost.
 
I saw them mentioned in an older The Rodders Journal about 7 or 8 years ago. The owner of a car featured in that magazine had a set of Kong heads on it and told some background history of Kong and his heads. The article had pics of the heads before they were installed on his engine. They looked to be machined on all sides of them. And he mentioned that Kong started with 2 pieces of aluminum to make them. It would make sense that the 2 pieces were cast and them finish machined though. The same thing could be done with a Ford 6 head. Make an upper and lower section that were each cast then machined to fit them together.
 
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