Originally posted by HThomas:

Poking around the engine bay, I was amazed by the engine block. I had never seen a block looking so pale and silver in color. I have dabbled in metallurgy for years and I immediately recognized that this was not nodular or spherdoidal cast iron. I cut off a little chunk from a mounting tab near the tranny and sent it to the Metallurgy lab at work for some analysis. Imagine my surprise when I found that the block was made of A356 sand cast aluminum! This is the stuff of rocket science, this aluminum. I guess cars are really going space age now. I remember reading in Popular Science as a boy about how the first Jupiter lander was going to be made out of that stuff. And now it shows up on my new car. Do you think maybe I got a prototype piece that somehow slipped out of the R&D lab? Or did Ford recently take to selling prototype cars in response to financial woes?




Years ago I had a cousin who worked for Fords up in Michigain at the tractor plant. Back then, they were using lots of aluminum for tractor engines and transmission cases. Really surprised me, since I thought tractors depended on their "trench hugging weight" Ha Ha. But my cousin pointed out that the best shovel is a leightweight shovel. And I can't dispute that!

Bud Miller
** No mistake, it's a Mystique **