The St. Louis Area and Southern Illinois VP Fuels Authorized Distributor

• Cylinder Head

  "Blown head gasket" are words no car owner wants to hear. But the situation isn't necessarily as catastrophic as it sounds.
  At D & M Performance Machine Shop diagnosing potential problems with the engine cylinder head, accessing gasket surfaces and replacing gaskets isn't all that difficult provided you have the right parts, the right tools and go about the process correctly. However, if you let this engine problem go unchecked, it will result in major damage and the need for very costly repairs. In the overhead valve head, the top half of the cylinder head contains the camshaft in a overhead cam engine, or another mechanism (such as rocker arms and pushrods) to transfer rotational mechanics from the crankshaft to linear mechanics to operate the  valves (pushrod engines perform this conversion at the camshaft lower in the engine and use a rod to push a rocker arm that acts on the valve). Internally the cylinder head has passages for the fuel/air mixture to travel to the inlet valves from the intake manifold, for exhaust gases to travel from the exhaust valves to the exhaust manifold, and for antifreeze (coolant) to cool the  head and engine.They also work on tractor pull engine cylinder heads and high performance cylinder heads. Learn about  cylinder head porting as well, so please go to D&M Performance.
  
  
  

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  Block Work

  When the engines are machined and assembled, very tight tolerances are used (parts are made more accurately) so that everything fits perfectly. D & M Performance Machine Shop looks at when an engine (or any part, for that matter) is designed, the intended dimensions of the part are given along with the allowable error in those dimensions. Making the allowable error  small -- tightening the tolerances -- helps the engine achieve its maximum potential power and also helps reduce wear. If parts are too big or too small, power can be lost due to extra friction or to pressure leakage through bigger than necessary gaps. The cylinder block is a machined casting (or sometimes an assembly of modules) containing cylindrically bored holes for the pistons of a multi-cylinder reciprocating internal combustion engine, or for a similarly constructed device such as a pump. It is a complicated part at the heart of an engine, with adaptations to attach the cylinder head, crankcase, engine mounts, drive housing and engine ancillaries, with passages for coolants and lubricants.
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  Connecting Rod Service

  Probably the most stressed part of the engine under constant high load and subject to continuous changing forces the connecting rod plays no small part in an engines cycle. With the small end connected to the piston wrist/gudgeon pin and the big end connected to the crankshaft both the geometrical alignment and the surface quality and roundness of its bearings are critical to good performance.When building a high performance engine at D & M Performance Machine Shop great attention is paid to the con rods, eliminating stress risers by such techniques as grinding the edges of the rod to a smooth radius, shot peening to relieve internal stress, balancing all con rod/piston assemblies to the same weight and Magnafluxing to reveal otherwise invisible small cracks which would cause the rod to fail under stress. In addition, great care is taken to torque the con rod bolts to the exact value specified; often these bolts must be replaced rather than reused. The big end of the rod is fabricated as a unit and cut or cracked in two to establish precision fit around the big end bearing shell. Therefore, the big end "caps" are not interchangeable between con rods, and when rebuilding an engine, care must be taken to ensure that the caps of the different con rods are not mixed up. Both the con rod and its bearing cap are usually embossed with the corresponding position number in the engine block.
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  ENGINE BALANCING- 

   The first considerations of balancing your performance or racing engine is that of horsepower and longevity. D & M Performance Machine Shop checks any automotive or marine engine spins at enough RPM (revolutions per minute) to cause damage to bearings, moving parts and cylinder walls if the engine's reciprocating assembly is not balanced correctly. Just about everyone has had a car or bicycle with a wheel out of balance.  The resulting feeling is often vibration, shimmies, and lack of complete control.  Imagine this feeling, now partially hidden within the confines of your engine.  In many instances (extreme out  of balance) you will see or feel the engine vibrations.  But most cases of engine unbalance go unnoticed.  These unseen or unfelt errors in the engine's assembly is quickly causing it's demise.

  Engine balance is the design, construction and tuning of an engine to run smoothly. D & M Performance Machine Shop will ensure that engine balance reduces vibration and other stresses, and may improve the performance, efficiency, cost of ownership and reliability of the engine, as well as reducing the stress both on other machinery and on the people near the engine

   

   

• Exchange Cylinder Heads

  A cross flow head gives better performance, but the popular explanation put forward for this that the gases don't have to change direction and hence are moved into and out of the cylinder more efficiently is largely erroneous since there is no continuous flow because of opening and closing of the valves. D & M Performance Machine Shop checks the main reason for a cross flow's performance is that the ports and valves can be larger and its physical separation of the hot exhaust manifold keeps the air in the intake manifold cooler. Most modern engines are of a cross flow design. A cylinder head is a casting generally made out of iron or aluminum that holds the valves, valve springs and retainers and one or two camshafts (overhead cam engines only). The cylinder head has numerous machined surfaces to provide a precision fit to mating parts. Inline four- and six-cylinder engines have one cylinder head. V6, V8 and V10 engines have two cylinder heads.
  
        Purpose: The cylinder head, when used with a head gasket, seals the cylinders so that they're capable of building compression for engine operation. D & M Performance Machine Shop offers these maintenance tips/suggestions: The engine in your car will last for many thousands of miles if driven and cared for properly. The best way to care for the cylinder head is to follow a good maintenance regimen. This includes regular oil and filter changes, engine performance check-ups, and cooling system maintenance. The main enemy of the cylinder head is overheating. If you notice that the engine temperature is higher than normal, take your car to a good repair shop as soon as possible. Overheating can quickly warp aluminum cylinder heads and contribute to head gasket failure. Any time you notice engine performance dropping off, or observe problems with coolant temperature or oil pressure, it's wise to have these looked into as soon as possible by a qualified professional like D&M Performance 
  
   
   

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  Flywheels Surfaced

  Do I have to have the flywheel re-surfaced? At D & M Performance Machine Shop we will inspect your flywheels because
  after repeated heating and cooling of the flywheel, the flywheel will cup and no longer be flat.. Re-surfacing flattens the flywheel surface and creates a new surface for the clutch assembly friction material to seat against. The re-surfacing will extend the life of the clutch assembly. The flywheel is a heavy rotating disk used as a repository for angular momentum. Flywheels resist changes in their rotation speed, which helps steady the rotation of the shaft when an uneven torque is exerted on it by its power source such as a piston-based, (reciprocating) engine, or when the load placed on it is intermittent (such as a piston-based pump). Flywheels can also be used by small motors to store up energy over a long period of time and then release it over a shorter period of time, temporarily magnifying its power output for that brief period. Recently, flywheels have become the subject of extensive research as power storage devices; see flywheel energy storage Done at D&M Performance 
  
   
   
   

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  Engine Design Service

  Engine configuration is an engineering term for the layout of the major components of an internal combustion engine, an  service provided by D & M Performance Machine Shop. These components include cylinders, pistons, crankshaft or  crankshafts and camshaft or camshafts. For many automobile engines, the term block is interchangeable with engine in this context, for example V block and V engine can often be used interchangeably in American English. This is because the most common forms are all based on a combined engine block and crank case that are milled from a single piece of cast metal. The locations of the major components are largely determined by the shape of this one component.The standard names for some configurations are historic, arbitrary, or both, with some overlap. For example, the cylinder banks of a 180° V engine do not in any way form a V, but it is regarded as a V engine because of its crankshaft and big end configuration, which result in performance characteristics similar to a V engine. But it is also considered a flat engine because of its shape. On the other hand, some V-twin engines which have none of the typical V engine crankshaft design features and consequent performance characteristics are also regarded as V engines, purely because of their shape 

   See the Engine Design Specialists at D & M Performance  

  Contact D&M Performance Machine Shop for specific information on Engine Design Service, including Racing Engine builder and Performance engine work, including the Super Charged Blo-Thru Carb

   

• Stock Engine Kits and High Performance Engine Kits

  A turbocharger is an exhaust gas driven compressor used in internal-combustion engines to increase the power output of the engine by increasing the mass of oxygen entering the engine. A key advantage of turbochargers is that they offer a considerable increase in engine power with only a slight increase in weight. Check with D & M Performance Machine Shop first.

  Contact D&M Performance Machine Shop for specific information concerning Stock and High Performance Engine Kits

   

   Click here to email the Owners : Dennis Meier - Marvin Meier - Joe Meier

  

  D&M Performance Machine Shop is a Clinton County Business ready to serve your needs.