#Duttweiler Performance | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

itsworn · 7 years ago

Text

12 Tips and Tools to Make Your Next LS Engine Build Easier

Now that the LS has burrowed deeply into just about every facet of Chevrolet performance, making power means spinning wrenches and swapping parts. That’s where the power theory runs right into specific knowledge requirements. While the LS is considered a branch of the small-block Chevy’s factory tree, it’s at best a distant cousin with its own, sometimes quirky, set of demands.

We’ve been wrenching on LS engines long enough to have collected some working knowledge that is worth passing along. Some of these technical tidbits you may have seen before if you are an LS veteran, but remember that not everybody has your depth of knowledge. We’ve also run across a couple of new tools that will make your wrenching life easier and less stressful. So with that said, walk out to the garage, open your tool drawer, and get wrenching on that new LS project.

Pre-Lube the Oil Pump

Remove that large 16mm plug from the front driver-side of the block and use a short length of 3/8-inch rubber hose and a funnel to pour a few ounces of engine oil into this passage. This will fill the oil pump cavity and prime the pump.

If you’ve removed or replaced the oil pump in your LS, or if the engine is brand-new, it can be challenging to make oil pressure just by spinning the engine with the starter motor. We learned a trick from George Richmond at Melling (the oil pump gurus) on how to pre-lube the oil pump, and it works on all LS engines. Remove the oil passage plug at the front of the driver side of the engine block. This plug is large enough to allow you to shove a 3/8-inch rubber hose into the hole. Then use a small funnel to pour a few ounces of engine oil directly into this passage. This pre-fills and primes the oil pump. This is usually enough to allow you to remove all the spark plugs and spin the engine with the starter motor and make oil pressure to lube the main and rod bearings before starting the engine. If this does not work then you can resort to pressure lubing.

Don’t Drop ’Em

Westech’s Steve Brule’ is inserting an LS lifter tool during a cam swap on the dyno. Obviously, this long tool requires roughly 24 inches of clearance in front of the engine when attempting a cam swap with the engine in the vehicle.

LS engines can be easy to work on. They can also be a pain. The plastic hydraulic lifter holders do a great job of holding the lifters in place so you can change the cam. GM did this because you have to remove the heads to remove or replace the lifters. However, problems can surface with high-mileage engines with plastic lifter holders that become brittle. The trick is to spin the cam around to push up the lifters (after removing the pushrods) and the holders should do their job. But if one or two lifters slip out after you removed the cam, you will hear that awful clink when a lifter drops into the crankcase.

A very creative LS engine builder came up with the idea of slipping a length of 5/16-inch aluminum dowel through each lifter bank. Some guys have used wooden dowels, but we prefer aluminum so there’s no danger of the tool breaking off when attempting to remove it. The dowel may allow the lifter to drop slightly but it’s relatively easy to use a long tool to push them back up. The good news is the lifter won’t drop completely out of the plastic holder. Powerhouse sells this two-dowel set (PN POW101046) or you could easily make your own. We’ve also seen steel rod used. Either way, taper the leading edge of the tool so it’s easier to install and remove.

Seal the Deal

The Mr. Gasket front cover tool positions the bare cover over the crank snout to align it so the front seal can be driven in place. Make sure to add a drop of oil to the rubber O-ring in the tool.

The Mr. Gasket rear seal cover tool aligns the rear cover over the crank flange. Then the seal can be installed.

We made our own front seal alignment tool using the hub from a truck balancer. Placing this tool into the cover with the seal in place helps align the cover with the crankshaft.

Unlike its small-block cousin, the LS family of engines do not use dowel pins to locate the front and rear covers. GM recommends using ridiculously expensive dedicated tools, but the aftermarket has come up with a much simpler and less expensive idea. Mr. Gasket recently released several tools that make installing both the front and rear covers on Gen III and IV engines much easier. They offer two different front cover seal tools. The LSTC1 aligns the bare cover on the engine over the crank snout after lightly positioning the bolts to hold the cover in place. Then, reverse the tool to drive the new seal into place. The bolts can then be fully torqued. We found we had to also loosen the oil pan bolts slightly to make it all come together.

The other front cover seal tool (LSTC2) is used to properly position the front cover over the crank snout if the seal is already in place.

The rear cover seal tool (LSRC1) positions the cover over the end of the crankshaft, the bolts can be lightly tightened, and then the seal can be driven into the cover.

If you don’t build enough LS engines or perform weekly cam swaps, then purchasing a front seal tool may seem like an extravagance. Before Mr. Gasket introduced these tools, Kenny Duttweiler of Duttweiler Performance suggested that we build our own front cover alignment tool. We dug up an old truck harmonic balancer and used a cutoff wheel to remove the crank hub from the balancer. Then we used an abrasive flapper wheel to lightly hone the hub’s inside diameter until it would slide easily over an LS crank snout. With a new seal installed in the front cover, we placed the cover on the engine; lightly installed all the front cover bolts (including the lower pan bolts); and then slid our lubed, homemade hub into the front seal. After we made sure everything aligned properly, we tightened the front cover bolts and the two vertical oil pan bolts.

One other trick is to place a small dollop of RTV at the corners where the front and rear covers contact the oil pan. This will prevent minor oil leaks where the cover gaskets meet the oil pan gasket.

Washer Warning

We sanded all the head bolt or head stud washers with 60-grit on the washer’s head side to avoid problems. When torqueing the head bolts, monitor the washer carefully. If it spins, this can quickly put excessive load into the fastener and damage it or the block.

Be careful—this could happen to you! We ran into this while swapping heads on a 6.0L. We had installed a set of ARP head studs in the engine in anticipation of supercharger boost. As we were applying the final torque sequence on the head studs, something felt as if it was giving way—almost as if the stud was stretching since the torque, which normally increases as we tightened the torque wrench, seemed to flatten out. That’s when we noticed the washer under the nut was turning as we tightened the head stud nut. If you feel this, immediately stop turning the nut or head bolt.

ARP had told us about this a few weeks before. It seems in the process of improving the finish on their washers and bolts, the washer has become smooth enough that it no longer remains in place but begins to spin. This is most often experienced on LS engines because the spot finish on the heads is very smooth, but ARP has seen this happen on Ford Mod engines, especially on the Coyote (not that you care!).

Here’s why this is a big problem. Roughly 50 percent of the torque required to create a clamp load on the head gasket is absorbed by friction between the underneath side of the bolt head and the washer—or in the case of a head stud, between the nut and the washer.

Another roughly 30 percent of the torque is absorbed as friction between the threads and the block on a bolt or between the threads and the nut with studs. This leaves approximately 15-20 percent of the applied torque that actually stretches the bolt. But if the head bolt washer turns, it essentially becomes a bearing that dramatically reduces the friction, allowing more torque to be applied directly to the bolt. This can quickly damage the bolt by stretching it beyond its yield point. If that happens, the bolt is damaged and must be replaced. The other possibility is that the threads will pull out of the block. Either situation is bad.

ARP showed us a simple trick to avoid this problem. Simply sand the head side of the washer with 60-grit sandpaper, making about three passes across the washer. This creates a rough enough surface so the washer does not move. Once all the washers are sanded, be sure to clean them thoroughly. It’s also important to use ARP’s Ultra-Torque lubricant but only the topside of the washer. The head side of the washer should be as dry and clean as possible for best results. We have performed this trick several times and it works.

Pick the Right O-Ring

Using the correct O-ring will save you headaches later. If the wrong O-ring is used, the pickup may not seal properly and the pump will not be able to create pressure.

The Gen III and IV LS engines use two different O-rings to seal the pickup to the oil pump. In the midst of swapping parts, it’s easy to get confused and use the wrong O-ring. The result is the oil pump will be unable to pull oil up from the sump. Zero oil pressure is the result. That’s not a good place to be, but picking the right O-ring is easy if you know where to look. Melling offers a chart that will dial you right in.

If the stock oil pump pickup has an O-ring groove in it or is tapered where it enters the oil pump, that design uses the factory red O-ring. This is replaced with the Melling green O-ring. If the pickup tube is straight where it enters the pump and it uses the blue OEM O-ring, then use the Melling black O-ring. Both O-rings are supplied with each new Melling oil pump.

Pressure Lubing

The Summit Racing pressure tank comes equipped with a sealed, threaded fill opening ball valve that opens to push the oil into the engine; a pressure gauge; a length of AN hose; and a couple of AN fittings.

Fill the tank with oil, pressurize it, hook up the feed line to the engine, turn the ball valve, and the tank pushes fresh oil through the bearings and lifters. You may have to drain the oil and do this a couple of times to get oil up to all the lifters.

This is our homemade pressure pre-luber using a 1/2-inch drill motor to drive a small-block Chevy oil pump. We also drain the oil back to the pump from the oil pan. To make this work, the engine would need to be positioned higher so the oil could drain back. Sometimes it requires 5-10 minutes to push oil up to all 16 rockers.

New or rebuilt engines should always be pressure lubed before you start them for the first time. The challenge with the LS is the oil pump is driven by the crankshaft so that precludes spinning the oil pump separately. Summit Racing offers a 3-quart pressurized tank that can be filled with engine oil and connected with a braided line to the oil pressure port of an LS engine and then charged with pressurized air—usually 50-60 psi.

If you’d rather build your own pressure pre-luber, we built one using a hardware store 2 1/2-gallon bucket, a small-block Chevy oil pump, hoses, fittings, and some scrap aluminum plate. We mounted the oil pump to the inside of the sealed lid using 1/8-inch aluminum plate as reinforcement. We drilled and tapped the pump outlet for pipe thread to adapt a -6 male AN fitting and then cut the stock 5/8-inch pickup tube in the middle and extended it with a length of heater hose to the bottom of the bucket. We then used an AutoMeter adapter fitting to attach the outlet from the oil pump to the LS oil system. You can use that same port mentioned in the pre-lube tip. Finally, we drilled and tapped a metric bolt that fits the drain plug hole to allow oil to return to the bucket.

We drove the oil pump with a 1/2-inch electric drill motor. The return line allows us to run the pump almost constantly. The only issue we discovered is we have to stop pumping occasionally to allow the oil to return to the bucket. We’ve used both our homemade pressure pre-luber and the Summit tank several times on new and rebuilt LS engines and both work great.

Gauge Adapters

The AutoMeter kit includes both an adapter to mount a water temperature sender in the factory hole and an oil pressure gauge. Be careful when tightening the coolant fitting as it can easily shear as the connection is extremely thin.

AutoMeter offers a nice kit that adapts standard 1/8-inch NPT thread temperature or pressure gauges to the metric LS engines. The kit comes with two metric adapters; a low-profile temperature sender; and a 10K, 1/2-watt resistor. The first adapter is a 12×1.5mm to 1/8-inch pipe NPT (PN 2277, sold separately) to mount the water temperature sending unit. Be very careful when tightening this adapter, as it is very thin and will very easily twist apart and fail—ask us how we know.

The second fitting in the kit is a 16×1.5mm to 1/8-inch NPT fitting that replaces the factory oil pressure sending unit for a mechanical or electrical pressure gauge fitting. Rather than purchase the entire kit, you can just buy the above water temp adapter and drill and tap into the oil pressure cover that sits just above the oil filter on most LS engines. This can be drilled and tapped for a standard 1/8-inch pipe NPT fitting for a manual or electric oil pressure gauge. The included resistor is often required to improve the tach signal from the factory ECU.

Oil Pump Alignment

Slip the oil pump over the crank snout and with lightly tightened bolts, turn the crank roughly four or five revolutions. Then torque the oil pump bolts and the pump will be aligned. GM’s torque spec for the pump is 18 ft-lb. The pump cover bolts are 106 in-lb.

The official GM recommendation for adding a new oil pump requires you to bolt the pump in place over the crank drive mandrel and then remove the cover and place two 0.002-inch feeler gauges on opposite sides of the gear. Once the gear is centered, the outer four bolts can be torqued and the cover installed and torqued.

This procedure takes time and a bit of dexterity. Kenny Duttweiler showed us a shortcut that works and saves time. Install the oil pump over the drive and then gently tighten the mounting bolts to the block. Now, spin the engine over gently about four or five revolutions. The gears in the pump will align themselves and then all you have to do is torque the pump in place.

The classic line is “Trust but verify.” That’s what we did, learning that Duttweiler, of course, was right. The clearance was right at 0.002-inch all the way around the gears. So try this—and verify it for yourself! It’s the little things like this that make assembling an LS a nearly pleasurable experience.

Chasing Small Parts

The Summit kit will work for any Gen III or IV block. The Gen Vs require different fittings.

The barbell must be installed in this manner, with the O-ring facing outward.

When building a new LS engine, it can often be the smallest parts that cause the most grief. To make your life easier, several companies, including Summit Racing, have assembled the most in-demand parts so all you have to do is order one part number as opposed to five. The Summit kit includes the large coolant plug, the barbell, the small oil pressure passage plug, and three oil and water passage plugs.

This kit is designed for new blocks or used ones that have been completely stripped for cleaning. Each part is also available separately. The very large coolant drain plug requires a 17mm Allen wrench to remove or install. Amazingly, our local hardware store had that exact wrench in stock. You will need this to install that plug. As a last tidbit, if you need LS block dowel-locating pins for the heads, you can make big-block Chevy pins work in a pinch.

Thinner Head Gasket

Head gaskets aren’t nearly as romantic as camshafts or cylinder heads, but small changes like a thinner head gasket will contribute in a small way to both increase power and improve efficiency.

When swapping heads on an LS engine, you might consider trying a slightly thinner head gasket. Stock LS MLS (multi-layer steel) gaskets are generally 0.053-inch thick, but Fel-Pro offers a series of 0.041-inch gaskets in different bore sizes that will improve compression slightly. For example, a 6.0L engine with a thinner 0.041-inch thick gasket will increase the compression ratio by 0.25—or from 9.5 to 9.75:1.

One accompanying warning is you must measure piston-to-head clearance. Production LS engines often protrude the piston above the deck by 0.008-inch or more. This much piston above the deck reduces piston-to-head clearance down to 0.033-inch with the 0.041-inch gasket. This should be sufficient for steel rod engines that don’t spin above 6,000 but it’s worth noting. The accepted minimum piston-to-head clearance on most engines is 0.040-inch.

This isn’t going to be worth a bunch of horsepower but every little bit helps. The part numbers for the heads are listed in our accompany parts list. Also note that they are listed as left and right. Always make sure they are installed correctly to ensure proper coolant flow.

Rocker Trunnion Upgrade

Summit offers the trunnion conversion kit that includes 32 bearing halves, 16 forged steel trunnions, and 32 beefy C-clips.

The conversion tool uses the large base (1) along with the receiver for the opposite side (2), a mandrel (3), washers (4 and 5), and an alignment pin (6).

Here, we’re pressing in the second of the two bearing halves. Press them in just enough to allow the clips to fit in the shaft. This allows the shaft to move freely. Install the clips and the job is done.

The stock LS valvetrain is very robust, but as valvespring loads increase this places greater pressure on the stock rocker trunnion and its tiny roller bearings. Several companies, including Summit Racing, offer trunnion upgrades. The conversion can be accomplished with homemade tools, but the Summit tool includes a handy mandrel and magnetic base that makes the job really easy using a simple bench vise. We converted a set of 16 stock LS rockers in less than an hour using the Summit tool. We won’t run through the step-by-step, but after you do the first couple of rockers, it becomes really easy.

Pull and Push

The Posi-Lock puller works very well. We placed a small, 1/8-inch thick steel plate in front of the crankshaft to give the center post a nice, flat surface. The three jaws hook into the integrated flat surfaces on the backside of the balancer.

The Summit tool kit offers the ability to pull and install factory LS balancers. The press-on installer is in the foreground while the puller uses different length pins that fit inside the crank snout to push on the crank to remove the balancer.

Among the LS engine’s idiosyncrasies is the harmonic balancer’s lack of threaded bolt holes, which offers no way to bolt on a normal balancer puller. Kent-Moore offers specialized tools that are nice and work well, but are also expensive. We discovered a slick, Posi-Lock three-jaw puller that works exceptionally well. It is over $100 but does an admirable job. One advantage to this tool is that it can be repurposed for many pulling tasks. Summit also sells a set of tools that will both remove and install a stock harmonic balancer. These tools are available separately or as a kit. Finally, ICT Billet also offers a simple threaded stud with a bearing that is very simple and affordable as an installer. CHP

Parts List Description PN Source Powerhouse – LS lifter holding tool POW101046 Powerhouse ARP M11x2.00 thread chasing tool ARP-912-0011 Summit Racing ARP metric thread chasing kit (4-pcs) ARP-912-0010 Summit Racing Summit LS trunnion upgrade kit, bearings SME-143002 Summit Racing Summit LS trunnion upgrade kit, bushings SUM-141560 Summit Racing Summit LS small parts kit SUM-G-1585 Summit Racing Summit Pressure Pre-luber SUM-CSUM9164 Summit Racing Summit LS harmonic balancer installer SUM-900135 Summit Racing Summit LS balancer puller and installer kit SME-K-906008 Summit Racing Mr. Gasket front cover seal tool MRG-LSTC1 Summit Racing Mr. Gasket front cover seal tool MRG-LSTC2 Summit Racing Mr. Gasket rear cover seal tool MRG-LSRC1 Summit Racing Fel-Pro 0.041 head gasket, right, 3.945” bore FEL-1160R041 Summit Racing Fel-Pro 0.041 head gasket, left, 3.945” bore FEL-1160L041 Summit Racing Fel-Pro 0.041 head gasket, right, 4.100” bore FEL-1161R041 Summit Racing Fel-Pro 0.041 head gasket, left, 4.100” bore FEL-1161L041 Summit Racing Melling expansion plug kit (no barbell) MPE-900BR Summit Racing Chevrolet, large LS coolant drain plug NAL-11611351 Summit Racing Chevrolet, barbell oil diverter plug NAL-12573460 Summit Racing Chevrolet valve lifter guide NAL-12595365 Summit Racing ICT LS head dowel kit (4 included) ICB-551275 Summit Racing AutoMeter LS gauge adapter fitting kit ATM-5284 Summit Racing AutoMeter temp sender adapter ATM-2277 Summit Racing

Sources

AutoMeter Products 866.248.6356 autometer.com

Automotive Racing Products (ARP) 800.826.3045 arp-bolts.com

Fel-Pro 810.354.7700 felpro.com

Holley Performance Products (Mr. Gasket) 270.781.9741 holley.com

ICT Billet ictbillet.com

Powerhouse Products 800.872.7223 powerhouseproducts.com

Summit Racing 800.230.3030 summitracing.com

The post 12 Tips and Tools to Make Your Next LS Engine Build Easier appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

from Hot Rod Network http://www.hotrod.com/articles/12-tips-tools-make-next-ls-engine-build-easier/ via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Hot Rod Network

0 notes

itsworn · 8 years ago

Text

Pit Stop: Buick V6 Grand National vs. Standard V6 Flexplate

Is a Buick Grand National Flexplate Any Better Than, and Can It Replace, a 1981 231 V6 Standard Flexplate?

An original turbo Buick V6 flexplate, stamped “TUR,” as seen at Duttweiler Performance. According to Buick turbo V6 engine-builder Ken Duttweiler, “There’s nothing special about a Grand National flexplate other than the extra lightening holes. It’s no better than any other stocker for high-rpm use. The stock turbo factory rev limiter cuts in around 5,900 rpm anyway.”

QUESTION:

I have a normally aspirated 1981 Buick 231 V6 in my hot rod and was wondering what flexplate to use. It seems there are internal balance and external balance applications. Is there any reason I can’t use a Grand National flexplate that is rated for high rpm? The trans I am using is a TH200-4R. My hope is to eventually turbocharge this motor.

Steve Helwig

Via email

ANSWER:

Aftermarket rotating assemblies with forged cranks are usually internally balanced. All production Buick V6 cast-iron crankshafts are externally balanced. The unbalance factor for 1977-and-earlier odd-fire Buick V6s is different than the factor for 1978–1987 even-fire Buick V6 engines. According to TA Performance, the even-fire production unbalance factor is 36.6 percent.

During the even-fire era, Buick still used different stock flexplates depending on the specific model application. The late-model Buick V6 flexplates I’ve seen all have a 13.42-inch outer diameter with 160 ring-gear teeth. Torque-converter bolt patterns are the same, too. The major difference seems to be the number of lightening holes drilled in the flexplate, which correspond to different rotating-assembly weights. A 1986–1987 Grand National/Regal turbo 3.8L V6 (VIN-7, RPO LC2) came with heavier pistons, so the corresponding flexplate for this app had more lightening holes in it than a normally aspirated V6 (VIN-A) of the same model years. The original 1981 flexplate for your present normally aspirated 3.8L (also VIN-A) is different than either of the 1986–1987 flexplates. There’s no difference between any of these in terms of strength or high-rpm capability.

Common Buick V6 3.8L V6 Even-Fire Flexplates These are the most common numbers that may pertain to Mr. Helwig’s specific inquiry, but there are a number of additional flexplates not specifically listed here. Year VIN Code GM PN* Pioneer PN 1981–1982 A 25512346 FRA-134 1983–1987 A 25512348 FRA-137 1986–1987 7 (turbo) 25512350 FRA-147 *Listed for information only; all parts in this column have been discontinued.

Bottom line: If your 1981 bottom end is still stock and has never been rebalanced, use the original flexplate for your application, or there’s a chance there may be a slight vibration. When rebuilding for turbo use (you aren’t really going to use the stock normally aspirated, unreinforced, cast pistons with a turbo, are you?), if retaining the production crank and rods but using different pistons, the machine shop should adjust the internal rotating assembly balance but with the externally balanced flexplate and harmonic balancer mocked up on the balancing rig. In other words, you don’t necessarily need to change to a so-called Grand National flexplate. Note that up front, the turbo GN’s harmonic damper is different than your existing damper because it needs to work with the SFI (sequential fuel injection) crank trigger.

Now if you are using an aftermarket complete rotating assembly that already comes internally balanced, you’d need an aftermarket neutral-balance flexplate.TA Performance is one source for SFI-approved, heavy-duty Buick flexplates: internal-balance 231 V6 and 350 V8, PN TA_2032INT; external-balance even-fire 231, PN TA_2032EXT. When using “generic” aftermarket externally balanced flexplates (not direct replacement for stock), it may be necessary to adjust the engine’s internal balance as discussed above.

Contacts

Duttweiler Performance; Saticoy, CA; 805.659.3648; [email protected]

Pioneer Automotive Industries LLC; Meridian, MS; 601.483.5211; PioneerAutoInd.com

TA Performance Products; Scottsdale, AZ; 480.922.6807; TAperformance.com

Ask Marlan A Tech Question: [email protected]

The post Pit Stop: Buick V6 Grand National vs. Standard V6 Flexplate appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

from Hot Rod Network http://www.hotrod.com/articles/pit-stop-buick-v6-grand-national-vs-standard-v6-flexplate/ via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Hot Rod Network

0 notes

itsworn · 8 years ago

Text

Speed Demon Team Extends Streak to Seven Years

The couple hundred sunscreen-slathered and boonie-hat-wearing men and women that were gathered around the SCTA (Southern California Timing Association) trailer for the driver meeting had recently moved to the starting line for Speed Week’s long course. George Poteet had just officially been awarded the HOT ROD trophy, which has been given to the fastest single flying mile at Speed Week each year of competition since 1949.

George Poteet knows the secret to Speed Demon’s success, “The whole team gets credit for what we do. You can’t do it without people.” From left to right, Aron Cranford, Steve Watt, George Poteet, Kenny Duttweiler, David Diviak, and Greg Pyles, all original members and ten-year veterans of the Speed Demon team.

For several teams, taking the trophy comes second on their list of goals only to setting a record, if at all. George and the Speed Demon team had earned the trophy at Speed Week 2016 with a 429.099mph pass. It may seem odd to award the trophy a year after winning, but the driver meeting is the only time each Speed Week where most of the teams and spectators congregate in one place. It marked the sixth consecutive Speed Week that George and the Speed Demon team had claimed the honor, a singular feat in the trophy’s history.

Saturday

It was just after 10:00am and Speed Demon was lined up to make the first pass on the untried salt surface, packing the largest and most powerful of the four engines in its arsenal. Rumor was that the salt was better than last year, so hopes were high. Immediately behind the golden, aircraft-sleek streamliner sat Danny Thompson’s Challenger II streamliner, last year’s runner-up for the HOT ROD trophy and the only other car last year, besides Speed Demon, that managed a pass at more than 400mph. In contrast to Speed Demon, Danny Thompson’s ride shows off its 1960s heritage with a blockier design and retro lettering. Park it on the salt by itself and it’s a time machine to when Danny’s father, Mickey Thompson, campaigned the car in 1968.

George fired up the twin-turbo, 441ci LS V8 and got the go-ahead from SCTA starter Jim Jensen. Ron Main, behind the wheel of his Ford Super Duty, pushed George away from the starting line, kicking up a small rooster tail of salt. As George engaged the clutch in first gear we heard the V8 rev and propel the car toward the horizon and out of sight. We moved toward the small crowd gathered at the starting line and strained to hear the announcement from the nearest spectator’s radio. . . 312mph at the two and a quarter. . . 336mph at the mile. . . 367mph at the four. . . 418mph at mile five! The excitement hadn’t even died down minutes later when Danny Thompson fired up his twin, nitromethane-burning Hemi V8s. Danny had only a handful of passes in Challenger II, including its best ever 411mph pass from Speed Week 2016. This time however, both engines were burning an extra 10% more nitromethane, about 83-84% total. If George’s 418mph run had put any pressure on Danny Thompson, he didn’t show it. Danny was judicious with the throttle and never opened the twin Hemi V8s all the way and still clocked in a 435.735mph pass, which would stand as the fastest run of the day, putting Challenger II in the lead for the trophy.

George Poteet surveys the salt as he prepares for the first timed run of Speed Week 2017

The Speed Demon pulls away from the push truck en route to another 400mph pass.

Danny Thompson’s 435mph pass on Saturday put him and the Challenger II team in the lead in the race for the HOT ROD trophy.

Danny’s car is a really a good-looking car, and there’s nothing that sounds any better than those big-blocks running. It makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck.” – George Poteet

We stopped by the Speed Demon pits on Saturday to ask about their plan for the rest of the week. George was happy to have qualified for Al Teague’s long-standing A/BFS record of 409.98mph, although he told us that easing into the throttle cost some speed early in the run. “I was being chickensh*t,” he confessed. Despite the course’s five-mile length, the Speed Demon crew often compares a run to a drag race; a bad launch can’t be overcome. Getting Speed Demon up to full throttle early would be essential. Speed Demon’s engine chief Kenny Duttweiler mentioned their plan to turn the boost up a bit for their return run.

Sunday

As both Challenger II and Speed Demon qualified for records, both were in impound and ready to run early Sunday. The Speed Demon team improved, running 428.784mph in mile five of the course, besting the 409.986mph A/Blow Fuel Streamliner (BFS) record previously set by Al Teague in 1991, with a two-run average of 423.521mph. What the timeslip didn’t reveal was how bumpy the course was. Teams desperately trying to put power down throw up a rooster tail and leave small ruts on the course, and that means George has to work to keep the car on the course. Back in the pit, celebrating the team’s new record, George told the team how close they’d come to missing the record. By the end of the run, he had the steering yoke locked to the left to keep Speed Demon on course, and even veered off course between the 4¾-mile marker and the final trap at the course’s end. Team tuner Shane Tecklenburg showed us onboard video of the streamliner passing by the 5-mile marker close enough that George could have reached out and touched it. Despite the tremendous driving, Danny’s 435.735mph in the fifth mile of the course remained the highest speed of the meet.

Danny Thompson’s Sunday run did not secure a record. With virtually no explanation, an engine failure on one of his twin Hemi V8s took the car out of competition. The block survived, the cam was undamaged, and the team had spare parts. However, after a brief debate on whether or not the engine could run again later in the week, the team decided that another, similar part failure could truly hurt the team’s chances of competing with the car at later events. They did get lucky that nothing major was damaged. As far as catastrophic parts failures go, it could have been worse. They couldn’t guaranty that a similar failure would leave them with a mangled crankshaft, windowed block, or worse. Their Speed Week was over. They packed up their pits and Danny and his wife, Valerie, took Challenger II back to southern California to prep for World Finals in October.

Before we left the salt for the day, we stopped by Speed Demon’s pit one last time. George reiterated the team’s goal to win the trophy yet again, noting with determination that they’d run all week if they had to. Still, he acknowledged the Challenger II’s Saturday morning achievement, “435’s a big number.”

Valerie Thompson holds onto a container of shattered engine internals as Danny tells the Challenger II crew that they’re done racing for the week.

George readies himself for the record return turn that would pry the 26-year-old A/Blown Fuel Streamliner record from Al Teague.

Monday

The Speed Demon crew was still in the hunt for the HOT ROD trophy, but they ran into problems of their own. After their third run at more than 400mph in their 441ci A-class engine, the team decided to run their go-to powerplant, the 368.8ci C-class small-block. The engine had always been a solid performer and seemed like their best shot at besting Challenger II’s 435mph run. Less than two and a half hours after making a 410mph run with the A-class engine, the C-class engine tripped the beams with a 402mph exit speed. Not only had the engine not delivered the speed the team needed, the front main seal had an oil leak that caused a small fire. Because the team had yet another spare engine on hand, a 388ci B-class small-block, they decided that it would be faster to swap engines rather than pull, repair, and reinstall the leaky engine. The crew geared up for their second engine swap of the day, but thanks to the clever design changes made to this, the second version of Speed Demon, engine changes happen much more smoothly and quickly than before. We’ll explain more later.

Tuesday

Efficient work from the team the day before had the engine ready to go for an early run on Tuesday, and George ran full throttle through the 5-mile course with a mile speed of 415.426 and an exit speed of 427.237, proving that the Speed Demon was still pulling at the end. Yet now there was a bigger problem. Early in the run the Speed Demon’s engine caught on fire. The engine was still running at 9,300rpm at the five-mile mark when George pulled the parachute. It was right about then that the fire’s damage to the wiring finally caught up to it and the engine died. When the engine kill switch is pressed in Speed Demon’s cockpit, water from the intercooler is automatically pumped onto the engine. The idea was that by the time the car gets back to the pits, the engine is cool enough for the crew to begin work. It also has the added benefit of putting out fires without calling on the aerosol fire suppression system. George was fine, the engine survived relatively unscathed, and so did the carbon fiber bodywork, but the wiring harness was a charred mess along with plenty of plumbing and one of the team’s Liberty transmissions.

The Speed Demon team was undeterred. While Greg Pyles worked diligently to reconstruct a wiring harness identical to the one he’d originally built for the car, the remainder of the crew took on the daunting task of pulling the engine, swapping transmissions, repairing fire damage, and readying the C-class engine for another pass on the salt.

The wiring took the brunt of the damage from the fire. Greg Pyles (WiredByG.com) spent the bulk of his Tuesday on the salt rebuilding Speed Demon’s wiring harness.

As the wiring was damaged, the engine backfired, blowing up the charge cooler. Speed Demon fabricator Aron Cranford fired up his TIG torch and welded it back up after beating and bending the 3/16-inch aluminum back into shape.

Engine builder and boost wizard Kenny Duttweiler works with Shane Tecklenburg as they go over data and plan their attack for the following day.

Wednesday

Racers try their best to get their records early in the week. Bonneville’s track surface typically doesn’t get better than it is Saturday morning. By Wednesday morning, the hundreds of passes have taken their toll, leaving ruts and divots, and it only gets worse as the day winds on and the morning dampness that keeps the salt packed evaporates as temperatures climb and the breeze picks up in the afternoon. For engines, mornings also mean cooler, denser air and more power. Power is less of a problem than traction for many teams, but in a speed contest where records are measured to the thousandth of a second, competitors try to get every advantage they can. Helping to minimize the effect of warmer, less dense atmosphere, Speed Demon uses the same pair of Precision Pro Mod 88 turbos to supply boost regardless of which of the four Chevy small-blocks is installed. As engine co-crew chief Kenny Duttweiler is fond of saying, “We bring our own air.” Still, Speed Demon is not immune to the effects of warmer weather and typically try to run early in the day.

The extensive fire damage kept the Speed Demon team busy and it wasn’t until Wednesday afternoon that the team was in the staging lanes and nearly ready for a run. A last-minute check revealed a leaky brake caliper. It would be a quick fix, provided the team had the proper O-ring. It didn’t. A single part that cost less than a buck was keeping them from running. A call was made out over the radio for any help with parts, but that late on Wednesday afternoon, most of the teams had either broken records of broken their machines and headed home. Even if they hadn’t, many retreated to Wendover for some air conditioned relief from the dry, baking salt. By chance, the one hardware store in nearby Wendover, Nevada, had the right part, but now it was late. George said it was the “absolute worst possible conditions we could have picked. We didn’t even know if it would run.” Pulling away from the push truck, the computer warned George there was a problem with the #5 cylinder, but George decided it was running too well for that to be the case. He powered on. At 5:43 on Wednesday, George Poteet piloted Speed Demon to a 438.643mph pass in the fifth mile of the course to take the HOT ROD trophy for an astounding 7th straight time.

Alex “Lil’ G” Pyles excitedly relayed the trophy-winning timeslip with its 438.643mph run in mile five.

The complete Speed Demon crew poses with the car and trophy. Top left: Shane Tecklenburg, Scott Lacy, Herb Sones, George Poteet, and Kenny Duttweiler. Bottom left: Tommy Horne, Jimbo McCoskey, Ron Main, Danny Burrow, Joe Galati, and Christian Taylor. Top right: Steve Watt, Dave Diviak, Kenny Koldsbaek, Alex “Lil’ G” Pyles, and Greg Pyles. Bottom right: Aron Cranford, Dan Nelson, Spencer Taylor, Chris Raschke, Jason McOlgan, and Eric Hoyt. Not pictured: Mike Magley

In Retrospect

Once Speed Week had wrapped up, we spoke with George about what it meant to win the trophy. “I don’t say that it was my goal to get the HOT ROD trophy, but after you get it one time, you don’t want to give it up. You get to looking at the names that are on there and the number of times they’re on there, like Al Teague. It’d be nice to get it as many times as he did. . . That’s something that will be there forever. You can look at the people that have won, it’s a pretty good crowd to be in, in my opinion. I never dreamed I would be in that crowd, but I’m very grateful that I am now.

Battling Danny Thompson and his crew in the Challenger II was the toughest challenge that the Speed Demon crew has faced in several years. Compared to Danny’s Challenger II, Speed Demon is packing a lot of new technology that helps them adapt to the track conditions, and is adding more each year. That includes traction control and taming the car at the beginning of the run by controlling boost. George was amazed at how his team is able to give the car power when he needs it, noting, “Kenny turned it up to 55 pounds of boost in the last mile and a half!” Considering the speeds Challenger II has recorded without any driver aid, especially in the last two years where salt conditions weren’t idea, George told us “I’ve got respect for (Danny’s) driving.” He also mentioned the advantage of making multiple passes at each Speed Week, “The last two years I’ve made 11 passes out there and he’s made three. His three were good ones, I can tell you that! It’s a legend as far as I’m concerned.”

Asked about the future of the Speed Demon, George mentioned plans of bringing a smaller, E-class engine to try for a new record. His stable of larger engines will still be ready to contend for the trophy. “I’ve had a good run with Kenny and Steve. When Kenny and I started back 10 or 12 years ago, I made a vow I’d go as long as he would. He may outlast me though! He’s committed to me one more year, so we’re probably gonna come back and go for it again.”

There will be someone else that wins it, that’s the way it is in sports.” – George Poteet

Inside the Most Dominant Car on the Salt

Speed Demon is an evolution of the car that Ron Main was running when he and George Poteet first became partners. It was called FlatFire then, and was the first and still only flathead-powered car to reach 300mph. Ron suggested a partnership that would put George in the car with a new GM Ecotec four-cylinder. Naturally the car’s name changed to EcoFire and George had success piloting it to an F/BFS record at 325.934. In the meantime, George commissioned Troy Trepanier and Rad Rides by Troy to build him a Competition Coupe using an A-body Barracuda and powered by a four-cylinder Mopar sprint car engine. They called the car Blowfish. Shortly after Blowfish debuted, George and Ron retired the FlatFire/Ecofire car and part of its design was used to build a car that could take them even faster. Master engine builder Kenny Duttweiler built a turbocharged Mopar sprint car four-cylinder, just like the one found in Blowfish. Because the sprint car engine was known as Hellfire, the new car was christened Speed Demon. With the blown four-cylinder, Speed Demon was running in the 390mph range, but Kenny Duttweiler convinced George that a small-block V8 could push them into the 400s. That version of Speed Demon helped the team capture the HOT ROD trophy five consecutive times, beginning in 2009. After George Poteet walked away from a high-speed crash in 2014 that demolished the first iteration of the car, the Speed Demon crew rebuilt it from scratch, improving it along the way with the lessons gleaned from seven years of racing. Here are just some of the interesting aspects of the build.

Shane (Tecklenberg) brought a whole new level to our program.” – Co-Crew Chief Steve Watt

The carbon fiber body was built by “Carbon Kenny” Koldsbaek and is reinforced by honeycomb composite and insulated with heat shielding. Body and paint work was completed in Manteno, Illinios, by the Rad Rides by Troy team: design by Adam Banks, paint by Warren Lewis, and graphics by Tom Evans.

Lead shot is designed to go into shotgun shells and travel 800mph, but only once. The lucky 50 pounds of shot in this steel container has seen 400mph in each of Speed Demon’s 11 runs since it was rebuilt. The white push button switch kills the car’s electronics in case of an emergency.

Tandem front wheels ride on swingarm suspensions that use urethane pucks to set ride height and load sensors to measure downforce. Both wheels steer, one with a tie rod on the left, the other with a tie rod on the right. Shroeder midget sprint car steering box turns both front wheels simultaneously, when one side pushes, the other pulls. At full lock there’s only seven degrees of steering.

On the left side of the dash is the mechanical fuel shutoff, then a RaceGrade panel that houses switches for engine start, ignition, differential and transmission cooler fans, intercooler pump (turns on when filling intercooler with ice), primer fuel pump, and buttons to toggle through the menu. The MoTec C125 dash in the center has logging capability and is programmed with all sorts of ingenious ideas from the team. For example, it turns on the engine bay camera based on ground speed and displays the feed on the dash, allowing George to monitor for fires. Next on the right is the trigger for the three Stat-X aerosol-based extinguisher in the engine compartment. The fire “Fire Kill” toggle turns the engine off and turns on water pumps to spray intercooler water over engine. George flips this switch after each run. The handle labeled “fire” is for the Halon fire suppression system for the cockpit that’s located in a 10-pound bottle under George’s seat. On the steering yoke, red enables George’s microphone for team communication, he hardly uses it. White activates a nitrous solenoid to enable CO2 shifting of the seven-speed Liberty transmission. Green is the shifter, George taps it with his right thumb. Mounted on the right side of the yoke is another electronic kill switch.

There’s a list of about 40 things we’d like to add to the car.” – Co-Crew Chief Steve Watt

George’s seat may look uncomfortable, but he tried and rejected a foam insert, this suits him just fine. You may even catch him napping in the cockpit in the pits. The gold anodized knob is a parachute lever, there’s one on each side of the interior.

From left to right, a black dead pedal, Wilwood clutch and brake pedals with a shared reservoir, and the Moon gas pedal, a new addition as requested by George. Once he goes full throttle, he rarely lifts.

Here’s the left side parachute lever from the outside of the cockpit. The air cylinder is a linear actuator plumbed into driver side parachute lever. It uses a solenoid plumbed into the CO2 system. The ‘chute is deployed automatically in any of the following scenarios: if the front load sensor detects the nose is rising; if the car goes past the 5-mile marker and the accelerometer doesn’t register the deceleration of a parachute being deployed; or if there’s no data from the rear wheel speed sensor for around half a second, which could cause the traction control system to fail. A DJ Safety Halon fire system is behind George’s lower back. Two, 16-volt XS Power batteries and onboard charger are also immediately behind the seat.

There’s a lot going on just behind the cockpit bulkhead. Positive red power lug and negative Black lug are for running a timing light if necessary. The button between them is for bumping the starter. Below them on the left are the Pro Drag 4 ignition systems, one for each bank of cylinders. A RaceGrade RG IMU (Inertia Measuring Unit) is used to measure yaw rate and acceleration. Also mounted to the bulkhead is the controller for the Stat-X fire suppression system. One of the three aerosol canisters is mounted to the chassis crossbar. The gold anodized box is the MoTec M800 ECU that runs all of the engines. Stacked behind it is the MoTec Power Distribution Module. It’s a CAN bus that replaces fuses and relays and uses a logic system for controlling voltage and amperage. It’s new for this version of Speed Demon and has allowed for many of the programming solutions the team has developed to make the car safer. Finally, the black tank below the crossbar is the engine coolant reservoir and its blowoff valves. The valves protect the tank in case of a head gasket failure that pressurizes the coolant system. It can run 17 gallons and there’s a pressure sensor to tell the computer what’s going on. It feeds the engine with a huge, -28 hose from Brown & Miller. Because the engine runs on alcohol and is only running for just more than a minute, no radiator is used.

Speed Demon’s 441ci LS-based V8 uses 10-degree Dart heads. This engine was new for Speed Demon this year and helped them capture the A/BFS (blown fuel streamliner) record. Each of the Speed Demon’s engines has its own dry sump oiling system and is bolted to aluminum plates front and rear. Those plates serve as the lifting points for the engine and anchor points for most of the electrical connections required in a swap. Jiffy-tite fittings on Brown & Miller hoses make for speedy plumbing connections. The team must unplug three pressure sensors, three water fittings, two electrical connectors, fuel feeds, and a connector for the starter and trigger wire. When not in use, each engine sits on an identical stand in the race trailer.

The top bars of the chassis are electrical discharge machined so that they can be unbolted. Spare engines stored in the race trailer are winched onto a small crane system that bolts into the roof of the trailer. Engines move from the trailer and drop into the chassis without ever hitting the salt. Also note the tight packaging and triple fuel injectors per intake port. Because of the lower energy density of alcohol and the engines extreme power levels, Speed Demon consumes more than 3,000 pounds of fuel per hour at the top of the track. There aren’t electronic fuel injectors that can keep up, even running two per cylinder. Once the electronic injectors reach 80-percent duty cycle, mechanical injectors kick in. A cable from the rear of the dry sump pump turns a Waterman fuel pump that increases flow with engine speed to meet the tremendous demand.

The already specialized Liberty air-over-electronic 7-speed transmission was customized by the Speed Demon team after Speed Week 2013. The sustained acceleration caused the oil to flow to the rear of the case. Team fabricator Aron Cranford explained, “We found that the trans ran dry in sixth and seventh gear.” Their solution was an internal oil spray bar with carb jets that get bigger as it reaches seventh gear. The trans is mounted on a drag-race-inspired slide, allowing it to move back 7.25 inches to ease engine removal. The trans is linked to the small-blocks with a triple-disc Crower drag clutch. We asked Aron Cranford if there’s any sort of drop in power between shifts, “There’s no slipping, there’s no delay, it just goes right for it.”

One of the single biggest weight reductions when moving to this new version was the removal of the onboard hydraulic pump and batteries. Now, all that weight stays on a cart that plugs into these ports to lift and lower the car.

Two of the hydraulic lifting rams are in front of the tire on each side. They allow for easier servicing of the car in the staging lanes or pits. Ahead of the bulkhead on either side are the charge cooler tanks. Combined, they hold about 70 pounds of ice at the start of the run. Each tank has its own Meziere water pump. Intended for engine coolant use, they circulate ice water through the charge cooler mounted just upstream of the throttle body. Mounted vertically on the bulkhead is one of the water pumps used to empty the intercooler and spray the engine bay after each run.

Plenty of Bonneville cars run without suspension, but Speed Demon has a bit of wheel travel thanks to JRI coilovers on a bell crank.

Many teams on the salt rely on weight for downforce and traction. Speed Demon weighs 4,130 pounds, which may seem a bit high for a drag car, but it’s downright svelte for a 400mph salt racer. The team removed 1,100 pounds compared to the previous version the car and its improved speeds early in the course prove the theory is sound. Speed Demon fabricator Aron Cranford explains, “We control our mechanical grip with the ground through the four-link. We actually do quite a bit of adjusting.” Influenced by Pro Stock drag racing, it’s adjustable in 1/8th inch increments depending on where the bars attach to the mounts and where the mounts attach to the chassis. It allows for much more control than their previous geometry.

Speed Demon’s seven-year streak of winning the HOT ROD trophy began with a three-way battle against the Spirit of Rett and Nish Royal Purple streamliners in 2009. Winning the trophy cost the team broken quick-change rear end parts on five separate occasions. Now the car uses an Ardun rear axle from Don Ferguson built using 300M alloy steel parts. Aron Cranford and Steve Watt modified it to precisely spray oil where the ring and pinion contact, where the quick-change gears contact, and on the bearings in the rear cover. This one doesn’t break.

The wheels were custom made by Rad Rides by Troy, one of the first products of his massive CNC machine.

To make the radio antenna work, it needed a grounding plane, that’s the big flat sheet of metal you see. Above it are the filler for the fuel tank and the valve that controls CO2 pressure to the wastegates.

Just below the car’s vertical tail fin is the CO2 bottle and the 13-gallon fuel tank with bladder. Each five-mile run down the salt uses eight to ten gallons. On either side of the tank are identical coolers for differential and transmission. The transmission cooler has a temperature sensor on the inlet and outlet side that allows the team to know how effective the cooler is on each run.

Twin parachute tubes at the rear of the car are each packed with a parachute. Only one is needed to slow the car down. Salt conditions in 2016 shredded their parachutes for the first time ever. Now they’re made from Kevlar.

How a Run is Recorded

Bonneville’s long course is 150-feet wide and has five measured miles and three or more miles for shutdown. The first mile isn’t timed, and speed is measured over the next four miles, with additional time measured at the 2¼ and the exit speed at the 132 feet immediately before the five-mile mark. The four flying mile times are official and any one may be used to qualify for a record. The remaining two times, the 2 ¼ often referred to as the “quarter”, and the exit speed are only for reference. The difference between the 2 and the 2 ¼ speed give an indication of early acceleration while exit speed lets the team know if the car has reached its potential or is still accelerating.

How a Record is Set

To qualify for a record, the speed in any of the timed miles has to exceed an existing record by at least .001 mph. Once qualified, cars proceed to impound and wait to run the following morning. For the record return run, only the mile that qualified for the record matters. For example, if a car qualified for a record in mile five, only the mile five speed is counted, even if the mile four speed on the return run was faster. A record return run cannot be used to qualify for a record.

The post Speed Demon Team Extends Streak to Seven Years appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

from Hot Rod Network http://www.hotrod.com/articles/speed-demon-extends-streak-seven-years/ via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Hot Rod Network

0 notes

itsworn · 8 years ago

Text

Take Five With Kenny Duttweiler

Saticoy, California, is a small town that sits just east of Ventura, which is a bit northwest of Los Angeles. In the last census, there were 1,029 people living there. It’s the sort of place you can drive through without ever realizing you’ve been any place at all.

There, in a ramshackle building off an alleyway where his shop has been since 1970, Ken Duttweiler is building some of the best engines on Earth—engines like all-billet V6s turbocharged to the tune of 2,000 hp. Engines like those that have found a home in George Poteet’s Speed Demon streamliner that seems to set a new record every year at Bonneville. Duttweiler’s fantastically powerful engines have spread his renown across the planet. If there’s anyone who has become a legend in his own dyno room, it’s Duttweiler.

He’s close to finishing his eighth decade, but hasn’t cut himself any slack. As you read this, he’s likely bolting his latest ridiculous concoction up to his dyno and getting ready to run a few hundred pulls to get the fuel delivery exactly right. Duttweiler is still as sharp as ever, and now he’s armed with even more experience.

In 2015, Jeff Smith did a Take 5 with him, so here’s another one—actually, this is more like a Take 67, because 5 minutes isn’t enough. If you’re with Kenny Duttweiler, the best thing to do is shut up and let him talk.

HRM] Are the challenges today different than they were when you started?

KD] I don’t think they’re necessarily different, but they’ve grown more intense. Things were so simple when I was 30. You had carburetors and electronic ignition (if you were really into it). And today we have all these late-breaking innovations and electronics and stuff of that nature. Plus, there’s the ability to build stuff that never existed. Today you can just say, ‘I’m going to build’ and someone will make it for you. You have to think further in into everything you’re doing. It’s more challenging today than it’s ever been.

HRM] How many of your customers still want Buick stuff?

KD] It’s really weird. In the ’90s, I wanted to get away from that Clark Kent syndrome (people get typecast—like George Reeves, the original TV Superman). It’s just a family of things that you do, and they don’t seem to just go away. There are like four or five Buicks out here. You don’t want to make that your mainstay, but it just keeps going.

HRM] Is there anything you’d like to do that you haven’t already done?

KD] The only thing I don’t get to do that I’d like to do is hit the dragstrip more often. That’s my personal, little fun thing. Other than that—I’m not a guy who takes tours, I don’t like airplanes, and I hate boats. So I’m pretty easy to please. And I haven’t set lofty goals that I need to go someplace or do something. But keeping me away from that dragstrip mentality is tough.

HRM] How much longer do you think you can do this?

KD] Right now, I’m in the same position mentally and physically I was 10 or 15 years ago. You hate to look at the hourglass because people like to project. It’s tough for me to project, because I treat this as business as usual. The amazing thing is that people don’t realize how old I am, or don’t care how old I am. Because they just keep requesting to get stuff done. If I took them all on right now, we couldn’t even walk through the shop. I have to kind of space them out. Luckily, my reputation is out there for not getting them done immediately. So people are willing to wait. And I’m willing to go as long as it takes. I could not be retired. No way in hell I can. Sitting around and watch TV. The only way retirement could work for me is that I’d have to have so much goddamn money that I couldn’t figure out how to spend it all.

HRM] You have one daughter and three grandkids. Do any of them want to come in and run all this?

KD] The oldest grandkid, when he was real, real young, he lived at the dragstrip with us. So I kind of figured he get the hook in him real good. In fact, the middle one was more interested in that. So he works at ARP. And his dad works at ARP. That older one, he works for an auction company. He’s got that computer-generation mentality. He loves that stuff. So, the girl, she’s smart and goes to college. All three turned out good and all three are smarter than hell. If you want to make a good living with a good retirement and all that, businesses like mine really aren’t the way to go. Because the billable hours that you come up with are usually way, way less than the amount of time you put into it. You might spend 4 hours making a bracket to hold a crank sensor, and then turn around and figure you can’t charge 4 hours for a piece of aluminum with a hole in it.

HRM] You’ve been in this alley forever. Haven’t you ever thought of moving someplace else?

KD] Always. But you get more involved in what you’re doing, the convenience of it. I’d love to have a Taj Mahal, I think everybody aspires to that. But what I’ve got going here is pretty darn good. At the end of the driveway, we have a little coffee shop thing up there, so you don’t have to walk more than a couple hundred feet to go eat lunch. We’ve got ARP, which we rely upon for a lot of what we do, and they’re right here in the area. And it turns out that Turbonetics and the Vortech supercharger guys, they all kind of moved this way. So instead of me moving toward them, they moved toward me. It’s cheap enough to stay here. The rent isn’t that high. Location might mean something if you’ve got your name on the building and you’re soliciting people. One time I went down to Milodon’s down in the San Fernando Valley. I had some Chrysler Hemi heads and they were going to put those little O-rings so you could pull the plugs out. So I’m driving around and driving around, and finally I spotted a building and a little side door was open. So I stuck my head inside and, sure enough, that was Milodon. It impressed me that a guy with that stature—and he was a big name in the ’60s—and no name on the building. You couldn’t even hardly find the number on the building. And I thought that was pretty cool. So I just never put a name on anything. Now you can just put the name into the smartphone and it takes you here. I’ve noticed in the last 10 years or so that people say that they’ll come by, and they show up. And prior to that, you had to give them directions—get off the 101 to Central Avenue to Vineyard.

HRM] You’ve never had a line of Duttweiler products. No catalog or mail-order business.

KD] That may be the one thing that should have been attended to much better. We’ve had a few parts. At one time, we had intercoolers that we sold. Then when competition came in, it was easy to back off on that. The most enduring thing we’ve had is the neck for the intercooler on the Buick Grand National. We sold so many of those I can’t even count them all.

HRM] So the major product you sell at Duttweiler Performance is Kenny Duttweiler.

KD] Yeah, it’s just me. And as long as I’m around, it’s around. When I’m gone, there’s no one to sell it to.

HRM] So who is working here now?

KD] It’s just me, Margie, and Nick.

HRM] How far can you push yourself? When do you have to cry uncle?

KD] The thing I run into, it’s not anything mechanical, it’s when I have to deal with electronics and stuff like that. Wading through some software that’s going to do the control valves on the dyno back there. I have no background in it, and all I know is that you’ve got the software to look at it, and I have no clue what this stuff means. So I start hunting around and then I have a friend of mine who’s wired up like an electronics board. I don’t see that stuff. I see mechanical stuff.

HRM] Are there any cars out there you’d like to own?

KD] There are two or three new ones out there. The new GT500 Mustang that will be out shortly. Or maybe the ZL1 Camaro. I like the looks of the Corvette, but I can’t put myself in the driver seat of a Corvette because that’s not me. But I can be in the ZL1 because that’s a Corvette with a Camaro body. I’m so picky, I can find a fault with every car. There’s not one that I haven’t found four or five things I could fix to make it more like me.

HRM] So you’re haunted by your own expertise.

KD] Yeah, sometimes it gets in the way of my own fun.

HRM] You’ve never been an old-car guy. When you started futzing with the Buicks, they were brand new.

KD] When I flip that page in a book, I’m not going back to that page. We’ve already been through that and we can’t change it. But if we’re working on something for tomorrow, we might be able to change that.

The post Take Five With Kenny Duttweiler appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

from Hot Rod Network http://www.hotrod.com/articles/take-five-kenny-duttweiler/ via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Hot Rod Network

0 notes

itsworn · 8 years ago

Text

Speed Demon Team Extends Streak to Seven Years

From left to right, Aron Cranford, Steve Watt, George Poteet, Kenny Duttweiler, David Diviak, and Greg Pyles, all original members and ten-year veterans of the Speed Demon team.

Speed Week 2017 began with the customary driver meeting with announcements form SCTA and BNI officials and just before the meeting wrapped up, HOT ROD officially awarded the Speed Demon team, and driver George Poteet in particular, with the HOT ROD trophy for the top speed of the previous year’s meet, a 429.099mph pass in the recently rebuilt Speed Demon streamliner. The Speed Demon team had fended off Danny Thompson and the Challenger II streamliner for the win in 2016, and both teams wanted to claim the trophy this year.

Speed Demon was the first to make a pass on the untried salt surface on Saturday, the first day of racing. The team’s 418.168mph pass seemed like a good omen but if it put any pressure on Danny Thompson, next in line in the staging lane, Danny didn’t show it. He followed up with an amazing 435mph pass, putting Challenger II in the lead for the trophy.

George Poteet pilots the Speed Demon away from the push truck en route to another 400mph pass.

Danny Thompson’s 435mph pass on Saturday put him and the Challenger II team in the lead in the race for the HOT ROD trophy.

Both Challenger II and Speed Demon qualified for records, so both were ready to run early Sunday. The Speed Demon team improved, running 428.784mph in mile five of the course, besting a 27-year-old record previously held by Al Teague, with a two-run average of 423.521mph. Speed Demon’s 441ci LS-based V8 used 10-degree Dart heads. This engine was new for Speed Demon this year and helped them capture the A/BFS (blown fuel streamliner) record.

Danny Thompson’s Sunday run did not secure a record. With virtually no explanation, an engine failure on one of his twin, nitro-burning Hemi V8s took the car out of competition. The block survived, the cam was undamaged, and the team had spare parts. However, after a brief debate on whether or not the engine could run again later in the week, the team decided that another, similar part failure could truly hurt the team’s chances of competing with the car at later events. They did get lucky that nothing major was damaged. As far as catastrophic parts failures go, it could have been worse. They couldn’t guaranty that a similar failure would leave them with a mangled crankshaft, windowed block, or worse. Their Speed Week was over.

Valerie holds onto a container of shattered engine internals as Danny tells the crew that they’re done racing for the week. They packed up and began readying the car for the next meet in October.

The Speed Demon crew was still in the hunt for the HOT ROD trophy, and perennial 400mph threat Team Vesco, in the Turbinator II streamliner, was also itching to end Speed Demon’s streak and reclaim the trophy. Turbinator II had recently been rebuilt, and was running a new turbine engine. They were still working the bugs out and never were able to make an all-out run. The Speed Demon team ran into problems of their own. After three runs at more than 400mph in their A-class engine, the team decided to run their go-to powerplant, the 368.8ci C-class small-block. The engine had always been a solid performer and seemed like their best shot at besting Challenger II’s 435mph run. Less than two and a half hours after making a 410mph run with the A-class engine, the C-class engine tripped the beams with a 402mph exit speed. Not only had the engine not delivered the speed the team needed, the front main seal had an oil leak that caused a small fire. Because the team had yet another spare engine on hand, a 388ci B-class small-block, they decided that it would be faster to swap engines rather than pull, repair, and reinstall the leaky engine. The team had the engine ready to go for an early run on Tuesday, and George ran full throttle through the 5-mile course with a mile speed of 415.426 and an exit speed of 427.237, proving that the Speed Demon was still pulling at the end. But there was a problem. Early in the run the Speed Demon’s engine caught on fire. The engine was still running at 9,300rpm at the five-mile mark when George pulled the parachutes. It was right about then when the fire’s damage to the wiring finally caught up to it and the engine died. When the parachutes are released on the Speed Demon, water form the intercooler is automatically pumped onto the engine. The idea was that by the time the car gets back to the pits, the engine is cool enough for the crew to begin work. It also has the added benefit of putting out fires before George is aware they exist.

The wiring took the brunt of the damage from the fire. Greg Pyles (WiredByG.com) spend the bulk of his Tuesday on the salt rebuilding Speed Demon’s wiring harness.

The seven-speed Liberty transmission was also damaged in the fire. Luckily the Speed Demon team carry a spare.

The carbon fiber body’s heat shielding did its job well. These blisters are the only damage visible outside the car.

While Greg Pyles worked diligently to reconstruct a wiring harness identical to the one he’d originally built for the car, the remainder of the crew took on the daunting task of pulling the engine, swapping transmissions, repairing fire damage, and readying the C-class engine for another pass on the salt. By Wednesday afternoon the team was in the staging lanes and nearly ready for a run, but they were short one O-ring. A leaky brake caliper and a part that cost less than a buck was keeping them from running. A call was made out over the radio for any help with parts, but by Wednesday most of the teams had either broken records of broken their machines and headed home. By chance, the one hardware store in Wendover had the right part. At 5:43 on Wednesday, George Poteet piloted Speed Demon to a 438.643mph pass in the fifth mile of the course to take the HOT ROD trophy for an astounding 7th straight time.

The team excitedly delivered the trophy-winning timeslip with its 438.643mph run in mile five.

The complete Speed Demon team poses with the car and trophy.

The post Speed Demon Team Extends Streak to Seven Years appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

from Hot Rod Network http://www.hotrod.com/articles/speed-demon-team-extends-streak-seven-years/ via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Hot Rod Network

0 notes

itsworn · 8 years ago

Text

Duttweiler Shoots for 450 MPH With LS Engine at Bonneville

George Poteet’s Speed Demon blown Fuel streamliner, the world’s fastest piston-engine-powered land vehicle as certified by the FIA, will be back at Bonneville this summer running a totally new turbocharged, 441ci, LS-based engine combination built up around Dart’s Gen-III LS Next compacted-graphite-iron race block and its aluminum Race Series 10-degree LS canted-valve heads. Engine builder and crew chief Ken Duttweiler explains the reasons for the switch from the car’s previous record-holding, small-displacement, Gen-I style small-block: “We wanted to move up to the ‘big-block’ streamliner class to go even faster and set yet another new class record, but the chassis isn’t wide enough. Dart’s new LS block is available with a 9.300-inch deck-height, which allows us room for a 4-inch-stroke crank. The tallest Gen-I race block is only 9.300 inches. We special-ordered the new block with Ford Cleveland-sized, 2.75-inch-od, main journals that allow a crank with plenty of journal overlap for supporting the power-level we’ll be making. Our engine will be 441 ci in a class that permits up to 500 ci—essentially, a big-block wrapped in a small-block envelope.” Duttweiler says the new architecture has the potential to eventually make 3,000 hp, “but right now 2,300–2,400 is all we need to pump our current FIA 438-mph two-way record with the old-style small-block another 20 mph.” When we recently stopped by the shop, the new Dart heads had just arrived. Check out the photos and video.

The Dart LS splayed-valve heads have symmetrical intake ports, unlike the previous-gen Dart splayed valve heads formerly run by Duttweiler on his Gen-I style small blocks. “I expect to see 460–470-cfm flow-numbers from the 368cc intake runners.”

The heart-shaped chambers on both the Dart Gen-I (left) and LS (right) are nearly identical. They use 2.300-inch intake valves—that’s big-block territory.

Ken Duttweiler is shooting for a 450-mph two-way average speed with his new LS-based 441ci engine combo.

Contacts

Dart Machinery Ltd.; Troy, MI; 248.362.1188; DartHeads.com Duttweiler Performance; Saticoy, CA; (805) 659-3648; [email protected]

The post Duttweiler Shoots for 450 MPH With LS Engine at Bonneville appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

from Hot Rod Network http://www.hotrod.com/articles/duttweiler-shoots-450-mph-ls-engine-bonneville/ via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Hot Rod Network

0 notes

itsworn · 8 years ago

Text

EFI Nozzle Placement: Crucial for Maximizing Performance

It depends on the specific engine and application. Stockers usually place nozzles closer to the valve, downstream near the cylinder head; they’re primarily concerned with idle quality, low emissions, fuel mileage, and engine-compartment packaging constraints. Compared to a race engine, a stocker’s fuel-injector capacity is low, while inlet-runner velocity and low-speed vacuum are high. The smaller nozzle develops a good spray pattern that disperses uniformly within the incoming air stream. With good atomization, it can be located downstream, closer to the valve. Small injectors don’t have a lot of fuel to waste, so targeting the spray toward the valve’s backside ensures the available fuel is used most efficiently. OEM-style downstream injector placement also makes fuel rail mounting easier.

This 2,000-plus-hp Duttweiler 294ci, twin-turbo small-block Chevy uses 165-lb/hr injectors—the biggest available. They’re located more than halfway up toward the plenum for improved top-end performance and atomization.

Everything changes with really large injectors (over 96 lb/hr). High-capacity injectors generate a relatively poor spray pattern with large fuel-droplet size. If the injector is too close to the valve, there’s not enough time for the fuel to mix with the air. Large injectors would most likely be used in large-displacement or high-rpm engines. High rpm translates into less time between injector firing pulses, and the typically large-volume inlet runners needed to feed all those cubes generally mean lower air velocity downstairs. Moving the injector farther away from the valve (upstream, toward the top of the inlet runner) allows more time for the air/fuel mixture to atomize properly and remain in suspension when air velocity comes up at high rpm. This should improve peak power, but because of poor low-rpm velocity, at the expense of idle quality. There’s no free lunch!

Contact

Duttweiler Performance Saticoy, CA (805) 659-3648 [email protected]

The post EFI Nozzle Placement: Crucial for Maximizing Performance appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

from Hot Rod Network http://www.hotrod.com/articles/efi-nozzle-placement-crucial-maximizing-performance/ via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Hot Rod Network

0 notes

itsworn · 8 years ago

Text

Pit Stop: Buick Lifter Noise May Indicate a Failing Front Cam Bearing

QUESTION

Back in 1983, I inherited my grandfather’s 1973 Buick Apollo, equipped with a low-mileage Buick 350 V8 engine. The car is mostly stored, but I start it up and exercise it every few years. The last time it sat about four to five years until I got around to firing it up, and this time it had no oil pressure. By packing the Buick’s front-cover-mounted oil pump with grease and spinning the pump with a dummy distributor shaft, we eventually got oil pressure, but now there were lifter noises on the left-side rockers and a little tick on the right side. The noise hasn’t gone away. I’ve been told the lifters are stuck with varnish from the oil and the engine not being started for a long period. How can I fix this lifter problem without a top-of-the-engine teardown to clean or replace the original lifters? Is there an easier and better way to reprime the engine in the future?

Seen at Duttweiler Engineering, this is a typical 1985-and-later Buick V6 block and front cover. All Buick V6 and V8 oil-supply systems have a similar oiling layout, with the same problem: a tortuous supply path with multiple right-angle turns that make the engines hard to prime and an undersized, front cam bearing and journal that can fail if it experiences oil starvation—either on a new start-up, or if the car has been sitting for a long time. 1] From pick-up tube out to oil filter 2] From oil pump into block main oil feed 3] To main oil distribution junction 4] To passenger-side lifter gallery 5] To crank, main, and rod bearing oil-supply passages 6] Transfer groove from passenger-side to driver-side lifter oil-supply passage

ANSWER

Sorry, bad news: You’ve likely smeared the No. 1 (front) cam bearing. This is a problem on all Buick V6 and V8 engines (except the ancient nailheads) because the cam bearings and journals are on the small side, yet the front cam bearing journal must transfer oil to feed the driver-side lifters, as well as withstand eccentric loads induced by a spinning timing chain. According to Buick specialist Mike Tomaszewski at TA Performance, a classic Buick’s front cam bearing and cam journal can’t reliably handle these tasks when they get stressed by zero oil pressure under crank/start-up conditions, or by a hot rod cam and stout valvesprings.

On 1984-and-earlier Buicks, the only way oil can reach the driver-side lifters is via the camshaft’s grooved No. 1 journal that transfers oil from the passenger-side main oil passage hole to the driver-side lifter gallery through corresponding cam bearing holes. Oil pressure loss melts or smears the cam bearing, plugging the holes and groove with debris. This starves the lifters, causing a noisy valvetrain on the driver side.

This 350 bearing has worn normally. On 1984-and-earlier Buicks—such as Stgrym’s 350—only the cam is grooved. Melting bearing debris can clog the oil transfer hole from the passenger-side lifter gallery, causing a noisy driver-side valvetrain. The good news: Timely intervention might still prevent total cam and journal failure.

Buick cams have a grooved front journal. On 1984-and-earlier motors, this is the only way oil can reach the driver-side lifter oil gallery supply hole. If the smooth bearing melts down, debris can clog the groove and driver-side supply-hole.

In 1985, GM added a full groove to the V6 block’s No. 1 cam journal (see photos below). The groove is on the underside of the babbit bearing, so it won’t clog if the inside of the bearing starts melting down; this usually keeps the lifters quiet as they’re still getting oil. But that doesn’t mean that front cam bearing isn’t still failing—you just won’t know it until total bearing and/or journal failure occurs.

On 1985-and-later Buick V6s, GM fully grooved the No. 1 cam journal in the block. The large V notch is where four oil paths intersect: the main block feed in from the oil pump, the supply out to the passenger-side lifter gallery, the supply out to the bottom-end, and the driver-side lifter gallery transfer groove in the journal.

The late-style, in-journal transfer groove supplies oil through this hole to the driver-side lifter gallery. Adding a groove in the block to perform the oil transfer function in theory makes it harder to starve the lifters. But it still doesn’t prevent cam-bearing meltdown—just now the failure will be an “SBD” (silent but deadly).

Sure, you could try an engine top cleaner to verify it isn’t a sticky valve or combustion-chamber deposits; maybe even throw in a can of Marvel Mystery Oil to cleanse the bottom-end and see if you can free up those allegedly sticky lifters—but with a Buick, it’s probably a lost cause. Teardown and inspection is called for, even if the noise temporarily disappears. And don’t forget, debris from failing top-end components and/or prolonged low oil pressure in general can also contaminate the bottom-end, so due diligence also mandates inspecting the rod and main bearings.

Next time, when placing the engine into long-term storage, consider screwing in dehydrator (desiccant) plugs in place of standard spark plugs (Reher-Morrison’s one source). Dehydrator plugs contain blue indicating silica (sand) that soak up moisture, turning pink when they get saturated. Drain the fuel system; pump gas spoils when it sits around too long. Alternatively, Rollings Automotive recommends that ubiquitous Marvel Mystery Oil as a “poor man’s” fuel stabilizer. “Pouring in 1 ounce of Marvel per every gallon of gas keeps the fuel from emulsifying,” claims owner Norm Rollings. “It’ll keep the fuel in the carb from turning into white powder under long-term storage.”

About priming the difficult Buick: Consider installing an Accusump by Canton or equivalent pressurized oil reservoir tank. Typically mounted somewhere in the engine compartment, they store up to 3 quarts of pressurized engine oil. A relief-valve opens under conditions of low pressure, including under engine crank (start-up).

Lastly, use a modern engine oil such as Valvoline VR1 20W-50 that has lots of detergent without old-school, system-clogging paraffins. VR1 still has the ZDDP (zinc) additive needed for flat-tappet cams. After extended storage, consider an oil change because moisture will condense in the oil.

John Elway Chevrolet says GM’s old Engine Top Cleaner has been rebranded as “Upper Engine and Fuel Injector Cleaner” (GM PN 88861803; ACDelco PN X66P), but it’s still the same stuff and works well to clean out combustion chamber deposits and free up sticky valves.

Contacts:

Accusump By Canton (Canton Racing Products) N. Branford, CT 203.481.9460 (sales) or 203.481.9943 (tech) Accusump.com

ACDelco Detroit, MI 800.ACDelco ACDelco.com

Duttweiler Performance Saticoy, CA 805.659.3648 [email protected]

GM Customer Care and Aftersales Grand Blanc, MI 810.606.2001 GM.com

John Elway Chevrolet on Broadway Englewood, CO 800.345.5744 or 303.761.1286 JohnElwayChevrolet.com

Marvel Mystery Oil (A Turtle Wax Subsidiary) Addison, IL 800.Turtle.Wax MarvelMysteryOil.com

Reher-Morrison Racing Engines Arlington, TX 855.467.4880 or 817.467.7171 ReherMorrison.com

Rollings Automotive Inc. Mira Loma, CA 951.361.3001 Plus.Google.com/+RollingsAutomotiveIncMiraLoma

TA Performance Products Scottsdale, AZ 480.922.6807 TAperformance.com

Valvoline LLC Lexington, KY 800.TEAM.VAL Valvoline.com

Ask Marlan A Tech Question: [email protected]

The post Pit Stop: Buick Lifter Noise May Indicate a Failing Front Cam Bearing appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

from Hot Rod Network http://www.hotrod.com/articles/pit-stop-buick-lifter-noise-may-indicate-failing-front-cam-bearing/ via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Hot Rod Network

0 notes