well, that is very interesting about the phono needle.
no wonder those grooves wore out !

and the phono needle is an example of something I find noteworthy and useful
in Vanagon diagnostics....namely 'wherever there is an interface between
something electrical or electronic, and something mechanical.........that's
a weak spot. '
- like the sweeper arm in the AFM
( care to calculate the psi on that ? ! lol )

somehow ....with only 4 studs per cylinder with nuts at 37 ft lbs...
it still does not seem like there is a lot of force involved on combustion
sealing in waterboxer engines.
and they do fail to work at times after all.
but I get your point and calculations of course !

not talking about diesels here of course....but when I got a Mercedes 240D
and had the head off...
I think that head...........a cast iron head too...
was held down with 20 studs with nuts on top of the studs.
Looking at that ...
and considering it usses a nice robust double row timing chain ...
you just know 'no way is that going to blow, or leak, or let loose in any
way, for a long, long time.

A hose blowing out is about all I could imagine keeping the car from running
for the first at least 100,000 miles, maybe up to 150K miles.

I value Durabilty very highly in any mechanical device. Sheer durability ,
longevity, and reliability . ...those are the design goals to me.

and funny thing about CD audio and DVD discs ....right away you
go......fantastic sound, and no physical contact ..hot dog !
and yet...somehow those discs mess up too.
The chip though ....those seem bacially without fault, more or less. And
they get better all the time.
And what a chip can do ......which is the equivlant of what a 60's era
computer needed a whole room , or several to do ...
man is that a miracle or what  !
Can't even imagine how they do that .
And darn durable too.
It won't be too long before chips are embedded in people's brains ...or wait
! ...maybe they already are some and we don't know it !

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Beierl" <dbeierl@attglobal.net>
To: "Scott Daniel - Turbovans" <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Cc: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2010 2:25 PM
Subject: Re: Water Cooler System Design Flaw Workaround?

> At 04:25 PM 4/22/2010, Scott Daniel - Turbovans wrote:
>>and the heads are not held down by a lot of force, just 8 studs per head,
>>with nuts torqued to 37 ft lbs.
>
> But if you take into account the very small area of the sealing rings
> compared to the area of an I-4 head gasket, you'll see there is lots of
> pressure (psi) on those rings.  For comparison (for the older amongst us)
> an elliptical needle tracking at two grams on an LP (vinyl) record exerts
> something like 150,000 psi on the record at the points where it touches.
>
> Yrs,
> D