Festiva safer?

[bravekozak]

Finely divided, especially powdered magnesium burns very hot with a blinding white light. That is why it is used in fireworks. Yes, if you throw water on it, it accelerates it and does not put it out. Machine shops have to be very careful with the magnesium chips and have to warn their local fire stations what they are up to, so they don't get a rude surprise if they have to turn on their water hose.

For all you hunters out there.

[jawbraeka]

So how is this exactly safe for building engines then?

sent from the depths of hell.

[bravekozak]

Engines are not fine powder. They are a big hunk of solid magnesium alloy with steel-sleeved bores plus specially passivated coating on the outer surface of the block. Not bare magnesium. No problemo. However, if you like your aluminum, then you can keep your aluminum.

[jawbraeka]

No that's cool.. I want it.

sent from the depths of hell.

[sketchman]

I'd rather they slanted or even laid the block flat to get a shorter silhouette than make it of mag or aluminum. I guess it's cool that you can just replace the sleeves theoretically indefinitely to keep the same bore size for rebuilds, but other than that I can't see a huge benefit to making the block lighter on a DD.

I do wish they used sleeves, though. Even on iron blocks. It just makes sense rather than cause extra machining down the road, but I understand the factory mentality. If you can eliminate a part of the whole and not affect or even speed up the build, you are a genius, and they don't have to care about machining costs/time for a rebuild anyway.