Why F1 Pistons Cost £50,000! 

The other cost here is the incredible amount of time and labor spent on development (R&D). But $67,200.00 is more than I could have imagined.

I'm genuinely surprised they don't use some sort of titanium aluminum alloy

Ummm, no way they cost 50k pounds. Maybe for their entire allotment for a whole year, but not per engine and definitely not per unit. Each team makes many of these pistons each year & the tech is well developed and understood & has been for a long time. Ultra high rpm engines have been around since the late 50's/early 60's. Modern machining is extremely fast and very accurate & can easily get to very high tolerances. The metallugy is also well developed. Pistons have been made slightly oval on all kinds of engines for decades now. These pistons cost no more to make than anything you'd find in any high level sportbike(many of which spin over 15k rpm). Once they have the design figured, the rest is pretty straightforward. The design work is also much easier now that it used to be. The software available for this is incredible.

@@overlandwalkabout6376 I was thinking the same, also he stated that F1 pistons runs with 0.15mm clearance, that does not add up. I hope he will clarify

@@Iggy900ss it is an urban myth that f1 engines can't be rotated cold.

That has to be one insane CNC machine

Cheers man!

Kinda agree

and I still dont trust their legitness

is there any car related video on YT in the trends without a comment from u? :D

Then what for did you skip it? 🙃

Maybe linus?

@@thunderlucas8923 beat me to it

Only channel I know that's as seamless is Tier Zoo

actually they made me stop the video

I take it you haven't seen rich rebuilds then...

Same, i was not ready for that information. Also, hi miata dad f1 engine when??

That means my old Alfa engine was an F1 engine but I didn't know it!

they should be too loose to start engine, not to seize... something is wrong. Edit: video has several misinformation. So yeah, pistons can't seize in room temperature. Metals expand when heated, so engine components are really loose on room temperature. Thats why they need to heat up the engine before starting. They just could not start it at lower temperature, because compression flows past the compressor rings at room temperature.

@@Martink9191 remember the block and bore diameter also shrinks. the passageways for the pre-heated oil/water are of course located in the block. the piston then gains most of it's dimensional changes off the intense heat of combustion AFTER the engine's running.

They are NOT seized prior to starting. The internal components (piston, rings, wrist pin, con rod, etc) "swell up" once they are hot. If it's "seized" prior, it won't start once it's up to operating temperature because aluminum, steel, plasma moly, actually swell up BECAUSE OF HEAT, so the pistons would be even more seized 🙄 than before temperature is brought up lol.

As a CNC shop owner in China, I must say you totally nailed it. If the tolerance requirements mentioned in the video are correct, the challenges of making these pistons are just nothing more than our everyday tasks.

The costs are the R&D costs, certification/F1 legality checks cost and the simple fact that the buyers are willing to pay this price. Normally, the R&D costs in for products would dilute, but since these are made in quadruple digits at best it can be crazy expensive. Not to mention that these need to withstands such forces. And do not forget the certification costs! My parents are dentists and they have to use a lot of certified things, but these are not only the dentist devices, these apply to even things like computer monitors or metal trays, which do not even get close to the patients mouth. The certified metal trays cost $48 (I dont know the exact exchange course), while you can get similar in store for $4. 12 times the price for the same product.

maybe they buy a new CNC machine for each piston?

@@josefmuller86 Even if this were true the pistons still don't cost 50,000 pounds. The research costs what it costs, The question is what does it cost and F1 team to buy the next piston. 50,000 pounds would be nuts.

Graphene costs abut $100 a gram but from those in the graphene industry that i have talked to, everything is top secret and they told me that there is an upper limit on the amount of graphene that is used. Graphene is many times stronger than steel and is a mystery material for the outside world. Of course the $15,000 racing bikes and both the Williams sisters tennis rackets are made from graphene, but in racing the old adage is "Speed costs money, how fast do you want to go?" John Force could use it in his NHRA Funny Cars because one explosion he had in 2019 or 2018, cost him about $750,000 in lost stuff as everything on the car and frame was toast. For a racing engine, not Top Fuel or Funny Car, about one percent of graphene in a 750 gram piston will raise the cost of the piston by a few hundred dollars. Two percent is a good number, but in Indy cars, it is about perfect, as they are no where near as expensive as F One engines. But, can you run better pistons at just some of the races but not all of them? Such as the Indy 500, where the winner gets about $2 million in prize money and extra endorsements, running a piston worth $5,000 is probably worth it, just for that one race....even if you place second where you take home about $800,000.

I thought it was way too high, yeah it's gonna cost more but in the end it's just a piece of metal with a different tool path on the cnc.

I was thinking this like there are alot of backyard built 1000hp motors around and i know they cant hold full noise for the duration of an f1 race but still all it is really is just higher quality control

Serious question. Does the team you produce for actually win?

@@tylerboto8930 Can those backyard 1k horsepower builds turn 15k plus rpms..... reliably?

@@asylumville8544 thats what I'm saying they cant ,but if backyarders are doing that on a budget of a quarter of the price of a single f1 piston then there is definitely some money wasting going on

i wach all your viedos

i saw it

More like: "Thanks for taking snippets of my (your) videos (which took days and weeks to make) and, combining them with dozens of clips from other content creators, adding a narration over the top, and making money from it!" I (you) might get a handful of viewers due to this 'exposure'. I'm sure these guys contact every youtube channel they steal...errrrrr borrow... from to get permission! I bet they even share the royalties from the millions of views, and share sponsorship profit.😂🙄🤔

@@endokrin7897 really? It's kinda ironic that you're writing a whole paragraph for attention as well

See they spelt it ' Warped PerceRption'

i mean that's still nearly extortion for most cars.

Somebody's sticking it to you Pedro. Contact one of the ring manufactures with your ring sizes. I just bought Perfect Circle rings for my 638" (4.625" bore) chevy for $212.00

and F1 teams burn someone elses money too

@@rallikas they cost that much because the sport generates that type of money so the parts companies charge them way more. they could sell them for 6-8k each. but it you can make somebody pay more why sell for less.

Too expensive for what you actually need

Hey, great to have you here! This is the reference for that statement - blog.wiseco.com/how-to-make-pistons-lighter

Man I noticed that too but it took me a second and then i was like wait a minute that's not right

@@Driver61 6seOa

Nope, 100% correct that maximum load is at TDC OVERLAP as there isn't any 'cushioning effect from mixture or combustion. That's something I knew about from motorcycle literature in late 1960's. As for why pistons cost £50,000, didn't explain that at all. (see my general comment)

Damnit Lauri, why do you Finnish think you're so smart?😀 Had to give you some shit! You should get ahold of some of these and do some press tests...

Look at ev batteries, that logic fails a lot.

Great points!

And the cylinder seizes in the engine block .. LoL . Rubbish .. they say this about halfway through that’s when I stop listening .. !!!!

Actually, quantity doesn't always translate to lower or higher price. My buddy just had a set of Ross forged pistons designed & built for his Olds Diesel block 440ci Super Comp engine with a set of custom 1 off Batten heads & they were exactly the same price as a more common set of small block Ford or Chevy pistons, about $1,400 for a set of 8, including a set of very thin Total Seal rings(.037 comp & .078 oil rings). He was worried he might have tweaked 1 of the oil rings so he called Total Seal & bought 1 comp ring, which was $80 inc shipping! Same thing with his set of TD rocker arms. The heads had to go to BOTH manufacturers for the parts to be designed & made & each pair rockers MUST go in specific locations on the heads. His mid 80s Cutlas has gone 7.96/168 with NO power adders on race gas with a single Pro Systems carb at Phoenix in June with 4,000 ft altitude air density, so it's no slouch & he knows what he's doing. Reher & Morison told him that HIS 555 BBC engine made 50 more HP than theirs! He's hoping for sub 8.50s on an 8.90 index. BTW, his 440 has so little ring friction that the engine won't stay on TDC while adjusting the valves without the spark plugs in the cylinders or a lock on the flywheel.

@@bradgriffith4231 Well, that’s because your buddy’s pistons didn’t have $2M of R&D time put into designing them. Someone probably spent an hour or two tweaking some parameters of a template and that was all the design work that was required.

yep

Except they take nearly 10 000g

Yep, he got the g-forces wrong and the clearances too, so much for precision...

Thats right. And the g-forces is also uncorrect. The old F1 engines that reved 20 000rpm had as high 10 000g on the pistons, gives the max force on the piston converted to kg, 3 000kg.

So it basically cheap to make, but they just make it expensive

@@andriusstankunas6555 I mean when you spend 10 million dollars designing one component and only make 20 of them, you gotta make money somehow

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And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me. And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace. For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. And this is the record of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou? And he confessed, and denied not; but confessed, I am not the Christ. And they asked him, What then? Art thou Elias? And he saith, I am not. Art thou that prophet? And he answered, No. Then said they unto him, Who art thou? that we may give an answer to them that sent us. What sayest thou of thyself? 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He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messias, which is, being interpreted, the Christ. And he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, A stone. The day following Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and findeth Philip, and saith unto him, Follow me. Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see. Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile! Nathanael saith unto him, Whence knowest thou me? Jesus answered and said unto him, Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee. Nathanael answered and saith unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel. Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou? thou shalt see greater things than these. And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man. And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there: And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage. And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come. His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it. And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece. Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim. And he saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it. When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom, And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now. This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him. After this he went down to Capernaum, he, and his mother, and his brethren, and his disciples: and they continued there not many days. And the Jews' passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting: And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables; And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise. And his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up. Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body. When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said. Now when he was in Jerusalem at the passover, in the feast day, many believed in his name, when they saw the miracles which he did. But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men, And needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man.” Gospel of John - Chapter 1-2, King James Version.

@@jakub8860 can you tell this god dude you speak of to do something productive for once instead of being a petty, murderous, power hungry child?

Maybe thats explains why they dont have blow outs at excess rpms

Very carefully with a warm block I'd imagine.

They use dry ice to freeze the piston which shrinks it

i work with tolerances down to about +-0.0015mm and i can say it's more time consuming than it is hard to work with. such fine tolerances also very expensive ofc.

@@Wehra96 what do you do? Those are tight!

@@devinhudson4905 i manufacture parts mostly for hydraulic systems, my job title is CNC operator but i also do honing of valve components which usually have a tolerance of either +0mm to -0.003mm or +0mm to -0.005mm. anything over 0.01mm would be considered pretty easy tolerances to deal with.

M

Eh maybe from a car channel. Polymatter does it better, that's what he's known for.

Yeah 😂

next time you tag something #Engineering, check the units;)

Also 2:55 0.15mm is not 60 thou but 6.

300 grams x 200G = 60kg

Better check the G force numbers again too. Those posted here are way low.

This. 0.15 is more of a russian standard.

@@therwfer "Eh, stop complaining Vasiliy, I hammer it into block so it fit"

He got his MM vs Inches mixed up.

0,15mm is normal clearance for forged pistons, cast pistons require much less clearances.

I think it migth have been an example and not coroct

Hey, that´s a bargain!

Pro Stock engines are actually very short stroke for being 500 cubic inches. The Chevy PS engines are currently 4.700" bore & 3.600" stroke, although that is probably at least 3 times the stroke of an F1 engine

P.s. I worked on road car parts and even there, there is no part of the motor in which tolerances of 0,1mm can be accepted .....over here we call it carpenters tolerances... but 0,1mm is a waaaaay to big tolerance in Automobil standards... even if it’s not f1

I was so confused by that part he definatly has the conversion wrong because 60 thou is such a big number for anything the first part I ever made in school was a 30 thou tolerance

Isn't the Indy 500 Indycar and not F1? Edit: I misread the comment, never mind XD

'Slightly wider' is key word

If the difference between the piston dia. and the cylinder dia. is .006 the piston to cylinder wall clearance is .003.

I've heard numerous times that it's just not true. But that preparing does help with reducing wear.

50 bucks?

@@300ml_brasil *grand

What how

You've probably given amazon more than amazon has paid in tax !

Jeff Bezos thanks you for that.

I'm in the US and I love racing but I cant watch Nascar. I like Indy car but F1 is where its at for me. The cars, the people are just so interesting. IMSA is pretty cool so is the LE Mans, those prototypes are sick!

Yawn ~ I love when they give some tolerance (200g force) with zero comparison ~ Maybe a standard cylinder takes 180g force ? Sounds more like military pricing than any type of 'legitimate' reasoning. Big Yawn ~

,,, NASA, could buy beryllium pistons, tested, on the Space Station, for less than that . I guess Daimler is glad it's a ¥-6, ,,, lol .

@@jamesscott7527 ,,, see above .

those tolerances are not that hard to achieve, also "very expensive materials" which is aluminium? :D

Judd and Cosworth will sell you F1 engine for price cheaper than 7million in bulk of 100 :)

Yeah, he totally forgot the fact that the R&D cost is divided between few produced units, which is likely the largest contributor to cost. I doubt it costs much more to manufacture an F1 piston than a high-end sports car piston.

​@@1312_PV Yep, also F1 whole engine doesn't cost more than 500k in material and labor, not 7M lol... Especially considering that they pretty much use the same engine from year to year with just small adjustments. And what costs the most is that research, not the engine or parts themselves. If you would put an F1 car in production so everyone can buy, you could literally sell the whole car for 1-2m in mass production...

they probably cool the pistons & rods and heat up the block, that should make it easier, u even use that technique in normal cars sometimes, like changing bearings in a gearbox or engine etc.

I had the same question

Unless the engine block is magnesium, the aluminum pistons will expand and contract at the same rate as the block, so the pistons aren't what would seize in a cold engine. The block would be undersized around the steel crankshaft at room temperature however.

@@RallyRat I doubt that the piston rings are made of ally!

@@overlandwalkabout6376 but the exact opposite was said in the video 🤔?

Lol was about to comment the same thing 🤣.

.0001 thousands tolerances? Damn man in my job that might as well be the size of a house.

Woo machinist party! I've made parts for both NASA and F1, and keeping tolerances under half a thou are tough, but not impossible! On really critical parts I always use fresh tooling (thanks ISCAR, love you) and loooots of coolant. What machines do you guys use? I'm a HAAS/MORI guy myself

@@avishai7830 a party it is!!! I’m a haas guy mainly but have my assortments with fanuc

Yeah I was just being sarcastic really :D Hat's off to your profession requirements, enjoy the party..

Yeah, I was looking to see if anyone else noticed this.

Yep, I think they missed that! Even though, even 6 thou seems a bit on the large side, I think.

@@tomthumb3085 yeah I noticed that too, I would think a close fit for that diameter is like .03-0.04 mm

He is confused on imperial measurements.. thinks a "tenth" is 1/10 of an inch.. Noooooo... it is 1/10 of 1/1000 of an inch. Not knowing the terms used when he looked things up, created an error of 1000 times

Yeah 0.0055" can be a common gap on 2618 aluminum pistons. 4032 aluminum with 12% silicon will expand less and be around 0.0040 depending on coatings on both. If these are built seized then they at most would have that clearance when hot and have negative clearance when cold. This does have me wondering what my clearance is at temp as I only check it cold. Have to look into that next week.

too bad 1kg isnt 1nm. its around 10. 9.81 to be exact

Yeah like the thumbnail of money pit series

Lol.. yup

People meet what they love and deserve

But very inaccurate.

there's a suck-up for ya. A like troll.

Its a click bait ... $50k my ass lol ... Judd and Cosworth would gladly give you the whole F1 engine instead :) for 7million they could give you 10 or 100 in bulk :) crash all you want :)

@@Zohar-Modifier I don't think it's 7m for an engine, it's probably that amount per year in design, development, production, and testing etc. for the whole engine allocation for a race season.

@@neilmcmahon Sound resonable, and they build and use how many engines in a year? For racing, the limit recently seem to be 3 per driver and year (for 22 races). With two driver per team, and a few engines used for practice and testing, this would be less than 20 engines per team per year. So the total budget would be about 140 M$ for engine development, manufacturing and tooling. Compare this to making hundreds of thousands of engines per year even for a relatively short series of road cars. So the cost for these parts is very much a factor of short series, probably more than the tolerances.

I agree, no way we would have won that quote, just add 500% markup and you'll be good to go.

even an ameture machinist like myself could get a .001 mm tolerance with a good cnc mill. at most they could cost $1000, also keep in mind that the honda s2000 has almost the same piston speed as an f1 engine and those are reasonably priced cars

jup

x9.81 for gravity. F=MA with acceleration in m/s

@@AmNeSiA98750 so in space there will be no forces acting between pistons and rods if we take same engine and rev it in same way? so how gyroscopes work in space? Or you don't know the difference between mass and weight.

I travel on jet engines and I regularly enjoy tolarences of +/- 0.001

@@lomdonsreets5350 I have slept in one and enjoyed the tolerances as well.

Even street engines can have those tolerances. Particularly in the bearing journals.

Jet engines have metal crystal growth bias to minimize clearance. I wonder if F1 materials use this or the temps aren't that extreme

@@frederf3227 crystal domains are an issue particularly in Jet turbine sections because of creep. The spinning blades want to get longer as due to centripetal g loading. ICEs don't have that level of force. (200g vs 20,000g)

no, typical clearance for a normal engine is @ .003.

He got it wrong in the video, it should have said 6 thou.

0.15mm is .006 in, not 60 thou as stated in the video, looks like they just forgot a zero in the conversion or some sort of other editing mistake

There are a lot of inaccurate statements in this video. Conversion from metric to imperial just made it worse.

Not a chance, 60 thou is 1.5mm

@M P well its not. The tolerances are that fine. The tolarances are normally found in air craft

@@christycullen2355 in piston engines in aircraft? I think not. Same as road cars.

Most metal's expand when heated above Ambient temperature. Plus most metal's contract when temperatures get lower than ambient temperature. I'm thinking some parts will go in the freezer and some will go in the oven, fore assembly.

@M P same principle applies..

Forget it, the piston has allways a smaller diameter than the block. The piston heats up much to higher temps than the block, so it expands more. This guy (61) has no clue what he is talking about.

Agreed. Why noone talks about this is odd. Modern engines have 0.03-0.05 mm gap between the piston and the cylinder wall. F1 engine has 0.15 mm gap. This is done because the engine always operates at maximum power, the piston is very hot and expands way more. If a road car has forged pistons, it has a bigger gap about 0.07-0.1 mm

Fair use my dude

@M P No, PF actually made the polycarbonate cylinder head for a lawnmower engine and used it to film the combustion of various different types of fuels over several videos.

There are tens of stolen clips in his video. Terrible.

If you are saying that that clip is actually from a Project Farm video, it isn't. PF does have similar clips, but the source for this one is easily found on Warped Perception's page.

@@ctsean the idea not the actual footage

That’s a lawn-mower engine.

@@Kimulstein No, pretty sure it's a side-valve F1 car. It beat last year's horse-drawn F1 car.

@@allenhanford ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-jdW1t8r8qYc.html

@@Kimulstein ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tXel6mxCSpc.html

Very informative thanks 👍

One more thing to consider is that the hourly rate of engineers in F1 is double-triple than elsewhere but aerospace.

My vote is with Mike Puckett's view on this hideously high costing estimate. The greatest artistry with these unrealistically expensive pistons is the con artistry to justify that price. Mike I also have previous experience in aerospace engineering and some experience with precision molding dies so everything you raise here I am in agreement with.

This is video bogus, most F1 teams pistons are now printed, (LMF) even the pistons we now use in hydraulic lifts are printed. Fine metal powder/dust is laser bonded, micron by micron layer at a time under pressure.