[Shiny]

Originally Posted by dataway

Slowly getting the timing cover shaped up. Jeez, I see why they cast this part in Aluminum, what a complex piece, doing it in iron would have been difficult.

Yes I'd like to finish 3d printing all this as a model someday, but, getting on in years makes me wonder why go to the trouble to create these files, they'll probably disappear into obscurity after my demise. I do enjoy the process, kind of like doing a puzzle or something I guess. In the not too distant future I'll probably post all the STL files on a 3d file site, who knows if anyone will ever find it useful. The 3d printing community doesn't seem to intersect the vintage Pontiac community much Ideally it would be nice to pass down the Solidworks files so people could improve on the work, but not a lot of people "playing" with Solidworks.

Looking great!

I often wonder how they designed complex parts like these PC (pre-CAD) and PCNC (pre-CNC)? When I started work mid-70s, everything was still hand-drafted. This meant circles and lines were much preferred over arcs and abstract shapes. Dimensions were pre-ordained, not pulled off the CAD system.

Can you imagine being told to design that pump housing and timing cover if it was manually drafted? Even worse, imagine you were the guy sitting at a mill being told to machine the prototypes and/or casting patterns.

Then you'd have to be ready to change it when you got feedback from the foundry and machining centers...

Maybe parts like these were modeled in clay and not designed on paper?

Either way, the labor had to be huge.