Can a water cooled engine be made with the head and cylinder integral like many air-cooled units?

General Discussion
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Everyone keeps saying its been tried and it didn’t work or it is too expensive. There have been a lot of advances in manufacturing technology that makes things possible today that weren’t possible before. An economical and reliable integral head/block can be made, but only in an inline configuration. V engines probably could not be done with todays technology though horizontally opposed engine might be possible.

The engine would not be cast, that would be too difficult/expensive. It would be mostly aluminum. The first piece would be a block of aluminum that is pressed to form the combustion chamber, bottom floor of the water jacket and the outside jacket of the block. Pressing this eliminates a lot of the issues with casting.

Then the intake ports and exhaust ports are cast and set into place. The top half of the water jackets is pressed and then placed on top of the block/head, sandwiching the port runner in place. It is pressed into the head/block to pressure weld the two pieces and the port runner in place.

A one piece Iron/steel sleeve liner and upper bearing web is made. The sleeve liners also serve as the inner water jacket walls and the bracing that holds the liners together serves as the bottom of the water jackets. The pistons and crank are assembled and a lower bearing web is used to bolt it all together. Then this is inserted cryogentically into the block/head assembly.

Holes will be made through the head for the valve assemblies that would screw into place. The valve assemblies would of course be solenoid actuated so cams would be unnecessary. Machine in sparkplug holes and finish off the engine conventionally.

The engine would be essentially un-rebuildable but with most engines good for 200k or more and a lower cost to manufacture, that should not be an issue. The valve assemblies would be replaceable in case one of them went bad, but other than that, just routine maintenance.

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Yeah, I saw the difficulty to service myself. If the engine ate a valve like mine did, you could kiss it goodbye. Mine had been so neglected before I got it that it took two oil changes to get it to run somewhat right. The rings were more than just stuck! I think this was part of the issue as I have another identical one that is running just fine. I push it hard and cut pretty heavy brush with it but it stays together. I also change the oil and use synthetic.

I am sure for assembling this is a really simple engine to make. I realized how simple it was and why it was made with that odd 45 degree separation when I took it apart. The camshaft is actually plastic in this thing.

I am sure a monoblock could be made that would meet modern specs but it would probably be too costly. Most engines these days can run the life of the car without needing major work if they are taken care of. I really don’t know what advantage you would get besides eliminating the head gasket. This really makes sense on small air-cooled engines but am not so sure on something bigger. I am sure that there might be advantages but the fact it would essentially be non-rebuildable is a big minus. Yeah, it could be done but the cost to make it meet modern expectations as for performance and emissions might be too costly to consider.

That Honda mower engine was a disposable. The valve cover was glued on and I basically destroyed it removing it. Yeah, the engine was a disposable but you can tell it was easy and cheap to make. They don’t seem to bad as long as you take care of them. Again, it was small air-cooled unit. Certain things just don’t scale well to larger applications.

I don’t know if I have ever seen a two stroke not made this way.