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Originally Posted by Fasterthanyou
Ask any materials engineer at any college with a decent program and he'll give you the REAL DEAL. He can explain to you what happens when you freeze metal parts. When you quench metal parts special things happen. Just like when you heat up a metal part you anneal it, the results are a softer metal. Quenching metal changes its properties, that's basically what freezing it is doing, making it harder. Harder as in more rigid. Other things happen but in general, a rigid part doesn't flex as much resulting in less heat (energy) from internal friction. Ever bend a piece of metal until it breaks and notice that the break is rather warm... energy.... connecting rods, blocks, cranks, pistons, they all do the same thing. I can see how a more rigid assembly would save a couple horsepower in that respect, NOT because it's slippy, that just doesn't make much sence. Keep in mind that a hard metal SEEMS slippery because it's so hard.
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pretty much the right idea. ideally, you would want to heat the metal, freeze it, heat it again and freeze it again (heat treat). the goal is to increase the strength of the metal. in iron, for instance, you are trying to make as much carbon as possible because iron is a relatively soft metal. ideally, you would want to cool the metal as fast as you can, then hold it at a constant temp. this allows martensite (hardest phase of iron carbide) to form. however, this is extremely difficult to accomplish as the quenching must occur in an extremely small amount of time.