2009 EngineMasters, What's new?

revolutionary · Post by **revolutionary** » Tue Sep 29, 2009 9:28 pm

Mike, indeed you are correct. Ran the Jones cams and was pleased today. We did about all we could with the lower lift version and I think it was about tapped out as it didn't respond much to changes. I guess we made about 25 pulls on that one and swapped in the bigger lift cam and it picked up 10 ft-lbs and hp pretty much across the board. BTW, 4/2/1 collectors killed 20 ft-lbs and hp over the Edelbrock merge thingys. Also the mufflers are killing 20 hp on us as well. Open headers sound awesome! That 3.5 muffler limit is the big problem with a big inch engine in a deal like this. We'll beat on it more tomorrow and see what we can do.

Carroll · Post by **Carroll** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 12:39 am

We'll have our pig finished up wed. and should be making some pulls wed nite. Hope it holds together!

Joe C

dan miller · Post by **dan miller** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 12:41 am

I wanna be just like Joe and Daryl

Good, Bad, Ugly. lol

Good - Spent the day working on the tune up. Made a little more power, and more importantly, got the second and third pulls to stay a little closer to the first. Ended up at 2761 points, 2737 avg for three pulls.

Bad - I’ve been working on headers/collectors at least six - usually eight or so - hours a day for two weeks. Just for grins, we bolted on a set of Plain Jane 2" Hot Heads street rod headers, and power picked up everywhere. Shit! All that work for nothing. Oh well.

Ugly - The Hot Heads headers were up several points over my headers, but we noticed that the power was falling off badly on the top end. Busted up a bunch of valve springs. Engine still appears healthy, lash didn’t change, leak down around 5%. I’ll confess, we found the springs in a box, didn’t have any idea of their history, but figured we’d try them when we tested with a roller cam in last year’s engine. Well, we left them in , and they apparently didn’t like the high lift rockers.

So, tomorrow, instead of packing for the trip, we’re going to play with cylinder heads. Luckily we have several sets of springs on customer engines that we can borrow.

Film @ 11. Ain’t this fun!!!

Danny

dan miller · Post by **dan miller** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 7:01 am

I believe that we have a healthy engine. In spite of the fact that we have just spanked it with over 60 very abusive (super lean @ peak power) pulls. Several intake springs are busted up. On one, almost the entire inner spring has been chopped up and escaped past the outer spring. On another, the outer spring was pretty much gone, with the inner spring holding the retainer up.

Even with the busted springs, on the last pulls the engine made by far the most torque, and a very good average. We noticed that after just above 6000, the power just flat died. The curve went down at a steep angle. The engine displayed zero signs of distress, save for a slight breakup right at 7000.

All the lash remained good, and all cylinders leaked down at around 5%. We’ll know more as soon as the dyno shop opens, but I’m pretty confident that we still have a player. John Beck is THE MAN. Stayed with us the whole time, allowed us to leave the engine on the dyno while we fix it, charged us for half a day (we arrived early, got it running from 1000, and finished up at 2000), and offered to give us the dyno time to straighten things out (tune up) after we got it running.

I’m still pissed over the header deal. lol Over two weeks of nonstop header/collector building, and the Hot Headers are way better. Looks that a career in header building is not in my future.

John offered that he had some springs that we could use, and we have two sets of springs on customers engines that are pretty close to what we need. We’ll drag them with us to Becks this morning and should be able to cobble something together. If not, I’ll order something.

We don’t have to be in Lima until Tuesday 1700, but I'd sure hate to miss anything by arriving late. I thought I had read something about a revised schedule allowing a later arrival. Can't find anything. Am I hallucinating?

Danny

Post by **CamKing** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 7:43 am

revolutionary wrote:That 3.5 muffler limit is the big problem with a big inch engine in a deal like this.

I promise not to say, I told you so

I'd try advancing the heck out of the cam, and focusing on increasing the torque. I don't think there is anything you can do to get the power back you're losing from the mufflers.

MadBill · Post by **MadBill** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 8:42 am

There is of course a lot of interactions amongst the components of a race engine, and those between cam and header are some of the strongest.
The 'failure' of your trick headers may be no more than the fact that the Hot Heads ones play better with your cam. One thing for sure, no matter how much time you spent on the pipes, the work had to be less and cheaper than running two or three dozen cams across the pump, varying each by a couple of degrees on a specific valve event. The good news is that you didn't put a blind eye to the telescope when it came time to re-baselining with the production headers.

As far as the power loss with the mufflers, I'd say a.) anything you can do by way of some extra volume between the ends of the collectors and the muffler inlets would be a plus and b.) optimizing cam index* and exhaust lash with the mufflers in place could pay dividends.
*(I'm with ck. I believe that usually the primary effect of advancing a cam is due to the earlier IVC, but in this case the resulting earlier EVC should help prevent muffler-induced back pressure from bottling up excessive exhaust mass in the chamber at overlap

revolutionary · Post by **revolutionary** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 8:44 am

Danny, that is hilarious and sad about the header deal. Who would have thought a generic header would do so well? Of course I was convinced our 4/2/1 collectors would just skyrocket torque but it did the opposite. Never know til you try. With a good set of springs surely you have a badass engine!

Mike you're absolutely right. We just picked this (572) because the guy we're building it for wanted a big inch engine for his car. (Our engines actually go in cars - poke, poke). We've got that cam in 2 degrees advanced now and we'll bump it up some more this afternoon to see how it responds.

Ted · Post by **Ted** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 8:50 am

Guys. After reading through some of the posts, my entry sounds like a knife that’s being brought to a gun fight. 292 Y-Block Ford for those of you that don’t know. But looking forward to a fun time and meeting many of you that I haven’t been able to put a face to the name up until now.
Ted Eaton
Eaton Balancing

revolutionary · Post by **revolutionary** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 8:52 am

Ted don't feel too bad. I think we might be lucky to have a sharp stick.

Post by **nitro2** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 9:46 am

dan miller wrote:Bad - I’ve been working on headers/collectors at least six - usually eight or so - hours a day for two weeks. Just for grins, we bolted on a set of Plain Jane 2" Hot Heads street rod headers, and power picked up everywhere. Shit! All that work for nothing. Oh well.

Had I known you, and some others, were going to put in such a monumental effort this time around, we might have been game to making an arrangement for you to use some of the equipment we mfg/sell.

MadBill · Post by **MadBill** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 10:01 am

Quick Danny! Sign Clint up for next year before he reconsiders!

rmcomprandy · Post by **rmcomprandy** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 11:19 am

I think this year will have the widest span of point totals of all the EMC contests.

Remember, 100 points is only about 20 to 25 average torque/horsepower.

RAMM · Post by **RAMM** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 11:37 am

We are not only waiting for our camshaft. YIKES! But are faced with the problem of getting this heap across the border (should we get it together). Thanks alot Bin Laden. J.Rob

Ken_Parkman · Post by **Ken_Parkman** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 4:47 pm

Make sure you stop at Canada Customs on this side and get do the paperwork and get a sticker so you can easily bring the engine home. We found no real problems if the paperwork was in order.

revolutionary · Post by **revolutionary** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 5:50 pm

Randy I think you are right. I fear the LS engines will smoke us big inch carb guys. The more I think about it the more I believe we will see numbers deep in the 2800's.