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I used to think building engines was difficult.
Then I rebuilt a transmission. Or rather, I tried.
I started to think that transmission were the real difficult part, the intricate and inane.
For maybe 10 years I held that point of view, and then I got back into engine building.
And it became clear that while, engines seem to have fewer parts, they are in fact more difficult to setup and build than a transmission, if for no other reason that the exploding fuel part of operation where heat and pressure turns into torque all the while trying not to wear appreciably thanks to a film of oil.
That film of oil, those spaces and the flow rate and quality of the surfaces over which oil is supposed to flow. Is microscopically influencial. Absolutely the atomic structure and it's serenity/conformity dictates weather an engine will last 1 year or 20 years, 1000 or 200,000 miles. it doesn't matter how strong the parts are because any minute wearing away of metallic debris instantly fills the engine with garbage and makes every other part practically into trash. So attention between ALL metal parts which move against those which don't... is just as important as anything else inside.
Thus the big part of whatever seems to matter is the attention to the microscopic detail and to some degree... the finesse and elegance with which the original engine layout structure/platform was designed, which help us mitigate some of labors of those micro-finish surfaces. But beyond whatever the factory supplies... you are on your own to develop new techniques and methods to just begin to discern whether what you see is really what it looks like or should look like at the microscopic level. We (enthusiasts) aren't a facility and we lack the sophisticated equipment necessary to do these things, thus we are alone as it becomes a reality of luck for many.
rood ruck
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