http://www.replikamaschinen.com/

Replika Maschinen

Tucked away in this building is one of the greatest places you can take your engine to. They are called Replika Maschinenen and they are a high end machine shop specializing in performance porting, head work, thermal coating and many other racing applications. They specialize in high performance and racing cylinder head work, porting and polishing, research and development, reconfiguring and vintage restoration. They also do consultation work for automotive, motorcycle and diesel engines and components for shops and manufactures.

They also apply and consult on thermal coatings, their applications and use in racing, performance and industrial applications. Custom designs, machining and manufacturing are also done at RMI.

Replika Maschinen, Inc., is owned by Don Redmon and Chris Slay who together have over fifty years of professional racing and related automotive machining experience. Don has written many technical articles for publications such as DRAG Sport, Mazda Sport, Victory Lane, etc.

Thermal Coating
There are three basic types of thermal coatings in use at RMI. The first coating is a thermal dispersant, which is semi-gloss black. This coating helps parts and components shed heat faster than these parts could were they un-coated. Typical applications are cylinder heads, intake manifolds, radiators, oil coolers, brake calipers, etc. Most any thing that you would like to see operate cooler or thermally more efficiently.

Thermal barrier coatings keep heat inside an object or bar heat from moving from one area to another. Typical applications would be exhaust systems, turbine housings, piston crowns, combustion chambers, exhaust ports, valves, etc.

This engine has been thermal coated to keep it cooler

An engine that has been fully coated will run much cooler allowing more horsepower gains.

Special Thermal Gasket

This intake gasket is made from a special plastic composite material and also used by NASA. It acts a heat barrier to help keep heat from the engine from transferring directly to the inlet manifold.

Treated Turbo

Replika Maschinen, Inc., has a special turbocharger modification package to increase the efficiency and powerband width and reduce the turbo lag of your turbocharger unit. RMI will coat your turbine housing, exhaust manifold and down pipe with a special high temperature thermal barrier coating. The compressor housing, connector pipes and intercooler if applicable, are all thermal dispersant coated to reduce the inlet charge temperature making the charge more dense. RMI also does special work inside the compressor and turbine housings.

Half Treated Piston Head

The left top side of this piston has been thermal barrier coated to help keep the combustion heat in the cylinder where it belongs.

A silvery type of coating that does not allow heat to pass through it. By not allowing the piston crown to get hot the air will be more dense because it is colder allowing for a bigger spark. A bigger spark helps get more power.

The third type of coating is Dry Film Lubricants. These coatings are typically used on piston skirts, bearings, valve springs, valve stems, etc. Wherever one would like to reduce friction whose by product is heat.

Flow Bench Testing
Replika Maschinen, Inc. uses state of the art equipment for airflow testing and measurement of cylinder heads and related assemblies. RMI’s flow bench not only measures standard mass airflow, in Cubic Feet per Minute (CFM) but they can also test ports internally for velocity (air speed) and actually map out the air speed within the port itself. They can do standard dry as well as new wet mass airflow testing.

Flow Bench

Heads

Some top secret RMI ported cylinder heads being worked on. I managed to snap a picture of it while they weren’t looking.

This is RMI's "T&S" Valve seat and guide machine

They use it to cut multi angled (3 or more angles on the valve seats) valve jobs.

Naturally Aspirated and Turbo Pistons

The guys at RMI were showing me the difference between “naturally aspirated” and “Forced Induction” pistons. The “turbo” piston on the left has more metal between the top of piston crown and the top of the first ring land than the “N/A” piston on the right. The piston on the left is also “dished” to lower the compression while the one on the right has a raised crown in order to match the combustion chamber shape and raise the compression ratio.

This is why it is important to change you pistons, amongst other things, when you add a turbocharger to an originally non-turbocharged engine. Things like this make a difference in power and engine life.

Replika Maschinen Staff

Pictured from left to right is Don Redmon Luke Barnett and Chris Slay

Check out Replika Maschinen, Inc. web site at www.replikamaschinen.com  for more information about their services, additional pictures and technical articles.

Replika Maschinen, inc.
1745 Grant St., #3
Santa Clara, CA, 95050
408.986.8626 tel
408.986.8623 fax
E-Mail:
DON@REPLIKAMASCHINEN.COM