Dear Listers,
Peter Zaborski asked what blueprinting is. Right, sharpen your knives while
I get this worm-can open...
I guess the term "blueprinting" originated from the act of preparing a motor
to zero tolerance specifications (ie. from the blueprints), but it means
much more than that now.
Blueprinting is what you make of it, I'd say. Balancing the engine is a good
start. Modifications to the head, such as porting & polishing, bigger
valves, certainly qualify. Lightening your connecting rods is good (grinding
off the forging marks makes them lighter and stronger, by reducing stress
focii.) I did all the above, but balked at the cost of really fancy stuff
like line-boring the crankshaft bearings, tuftriding the crank, or boring
the cylinders with a plate on top of the block at cylinder-head torque. Much
more is possible!
I would say that blueprinting is, basically, anything you do to the
mechanical components of the engine that would have been done anyway, if the
designers/builders had sought to optimise the thing for every last ounce of
performance. By this definition, I would place distributor and carburettor
modifications in the "tuning" category.
I bought a good book on the subject before I disassembled my motor, and
talked to a lot of professionals and amateurs who seemed cluey, so that's
where my knowledge and opinions come from.
Allen Nugent
Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering
University of New South Wales
Sydney 2052 Australia
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