Diesel Power Magazine had a article a few months ago that showed a guy with a aluminum 5.9 cummins block... I think it said it was from a marine application

 

aluminum around salt water, maybe for a custom racing setup

 

Billet alum blocks are available. competition only. Super high dollar. Cummins is around $10k, Duramax is around $15k. I have never heard of a PS but anything is possible with enough time and money. Mostly money. Keep in mind this is competition only. This type of set up would be near impossible in a DD.

Do a Google search of Corey Atley. I am pretty sure the Cummins in his pullers are Billet.

I'm not sure if this answers the question in your OP.

 

if I remember correctly the book I read. by the end of WWII Germany was way short of AVGAS so they used diesel engines in some aircraft models. pretty sure they were not using a huge chunk of cast iron,or it wouldn't have got off the ground. how long they lasted or what issues they had??? but even the engines we think were wonderful like the merlins in spitfires, P-51's, and P-38's didn't have a real long life between overhauls

 

I was talking to a friend who worked with GM and Allison at the time of the 6.6 first release, he said they had 3 engines toward the end, a CAT cast iron diesel engine that was very much like the 7.3. Then the 6.6 we know today, but then he said they had 3 all aluminium 6.6. He said they were amazing but the price was to high to put it into production and they were afraid of the relibility of the block

 

BMW is using aluminum blocks now in their diesels. The cylinders are steel that are welded in.

Thats right, BMW welds steel to aluminum. Not even kidding

 

Wow, logic would seem like replaceable liners would be a lot better than welded in liners.

 

most all HD diesels have removable liners, they are what erode away, and need replaced, when the coolant SCA's are neglected. aluminum has a vastly different expansion rate than cast Iron and can be problematic in engine's with heat soaks like most diesel engine's seals and gaskets don't do well

 

They have removable liners for 1 reason only. It makes overhaul mu h cheaper and quicker than boring and sleeving. Yup different expansion rate all right, but duramax seems to do alright will aluminum heads on a iron block. So all aluminum head and block wouldn't pose expansion issues. Aluminum tends to be softer and prone to faster wear, especially at the higher pressures of a diesel. Iron sleeves in an aluminum block might have expansion issues. In the last 15 odd years they have developed various treatments, alloys, and other tricks to vastly improve the wear rate of aluminum cylinders, but still more complex and expensive than cast iron. Using the new technology you could put an aluminum liner in an aluminum block but could have issues with galling that might ruin many blocks shortening their lifespan.

 

I can't see aluminum. That's why they went with the composite blocks.

 

Somewhere on the net, someone stripped apart a yanmar air cooled diesel engine, and it had what they thought was an iron liner pounded into the aluminum engine.

 

Air cooled, and generally the yanmar engines aren't anywhere near as high output per inch as a pickup engine.

 

418cc/(0.4L)10hp yanmar (0.024 hp/cc)
7280cc(7.3L)/180 hp 7.3IDI (0.025 hp/cc)

unless my math is off.

And there is a couple guys that turbocharged those yanmars up to almost 30psi.
I wouldn't, it was never built for it, and being air cooled, probably unable to shed heat from all the extra power. High compression ratio too.

 

Your math is fine, your numbers are junk :-) 6000 CC (aka 6.0 diesel) 325 hp stock 600+ turned up. Thats about 2-3x time more than the stock yanmar. The iron liner in aluminum block isn't an insurmountable challenge but it adds a layer of complexity and expense that you don't have with the all iron engine. Some of the European manufacturers have done some really cool stuff with surface treatments for aluminum cylinders to produce steel liner longevity. Unfortunately not something we can do at home

 

Well I used the 7.3 idi engine as comparison, as it was a non turbo engine, using similar technology.

If you compare a 6.0 powerstroke with other smaller turbodiesel engines, especially car engines, there are many that have more HP/cc, but I'm thinking it's a longevity issue.

There are a lot of yanmar, kubota, and many others which have less power / cc of engine displacement than a truck diesel, and put hours on that we could only dream of.