Date: Wed, 29 Jun 1994 11:06:49 -0700 From: Scott.Griffith@Eng.Sun.COM (Scott Griffith, Sun Microsystems Lumpyware) Subject: Re: New project - Heads, cam combo... To: "Brian St. Denis" , > > but after seing how > > sensible the blowers are to fuel systems and heat, especially last > > Sunday, I have reconsidered my stratergy to a more reliable but quite > > effective setups. > > So, what did you see? What happend with the supercharged motors that > made you not want to get one? One of the things that you typically see at one of our open track events is a certain number of the blown cars leaving thin trails of smoke, or pulling out of the paddock on a trailer before the end of the day. It is true that a blower is a very easy way to make power for street or strip use, where full throttle conditions come in a squirt for 10 or 20 secinds at a time. In road-course use, on the other hand, full-throttle conditions are maintained for 10 to 20 _minutes_ at a time, and the motor will be at WOT and max revs for major portions of that. Coolant and oil temps climb to the moon, and detonation is almost a certainty. It takes a great deal more development to get a WOT fuel-enrichment scheme that actually works (read: keeps the motor alive) for roadracing use, and you may well find once you have it that it isn't as flexible as you'd like for boulevard cruising. There is one guy on the list here who has made a Vortech-blown car live, and make good power, and be reliable. That is, it's pretty reliable _now_. To get there, he spent a pile of headgaskets, fried plugs, and maybe a piston or two, and I've helped him push his car onto a trailer once or twice to get it home. He has what he wants now, but it was painful in the extreme watching him get there. What Chris is discovering is that he wants to go fast on the track, for 5 20-minute sessions a day, and that he _doesn't_ want to be one of the guys who have to come back into the paddock and hang an IV bag of something expensive over the car and wrench like mad just to keep it alive all weekend. And have to bum a ride home with one of his buddies at the end of it all, to book a tow company to go back up and drag the car home. Blower kits, as delivered, are an excellent way to make a lot of power for a short time. They are not a panacea. And I'd go so for as to say that they are not easy to make live in a roadracing environment. You *can* definitely do it, the knowledge is out there. But that little poly bag of parts that comes with the Vortech in the original packaging is _not_ all you'll need. And despite all your best efforts, all it takes is having the fuel pressure drop 5psi during a WOT run from turn 11 to turn 1, and you'll be fogging for mosquitoes with a coolant/oil cloud that would do a NASCAR engine-related retirement proud. If you just live to wrench on the car, and you want to learn a lot quickly, and you have the budget, a blower may be for you. But for those of us like me who really don't care for wrenching on the car once we're at the track, and who want a reliable machine to play with all weekend, building power the old-fashioned way *may* be a better choice. My 110k-mile-old motor was seeing oil temps of 295degF and coolant temps of 235degF at the end of sessions over the weekend (it was a tad bit warm, you see). The guys with blown cars had their hands full keeping the pistons from trying to change holes in those conditions... There are as many solutions to the "perfect track car" as there are drivers. Some of us make do with a not-the-quickest, but reliable car, and are rewarded with much more seat time, and much less wrenching time, than the trickest kids on the block. Even if they do dust us off on the straights. My wrench time/seat time ratio is right about 6:1, right now. I don't want it to go a lick higher! Date: Wed, 29 Jun 1994 16:49:24 -0400 From: bkelley@pms706.pms.ford.com (Brian Kelley) Subject: Re: New project - Heads, cam combo... To: mustangs@onet2.cup.hp.com Brian St. Denis writes: >There are two problems that I have heard of when going with your two >suggestions. One is that the fancy heads/cams usually make the >idle much worse and makes city driving less enjoyable. Both of these points are a crock, as has been discussed here numerous times. If you want to defend this contention, please cite specifics. A proper camshaft selection and tuning will not result in drivability problems. Most performance cams do require that the idle RPM be increased. A B303, for example, will run very nicely with a 1,000 RPM idle. If you try and run the idle at 750 or 850, you're going to have idle quality problems. Regarding city driving, this should not be a significant problem. It really depends on where your priorities are. If you absolutely must putz down the road in 1st gear with your foot off the gas at 1 mph to ogle the bodies on the beach, you will want to take that into account when selecting a cam. > The other >is that, while heads and cams and intakes increase peak horsepower, >they don't significantly increase torque. Obviously you have yet to ride in a Mustang with a well built 302. Just what is it that causes my rear wheels to spin at 60 mph when I stomp on the gas? A good head/cam combination won't lose torque, it will gain torque. You get more air and fuel in at a given RPM, and you get more energy out. >Blowers, on the other >hand, increase both power and torque over a wide range of rpms. Sure, when they're cold! Talk to Baer racing if you don't believe me. Heat is one of the big power problems with their use of a blower. By the end of a race they've got a 375 HP normally aspirated car running just as strong as their blown 351. At the beginning of the race, they make much more power than that car. I'll bet the blowers run absolutely amazing during those first several pulls on a 40 degree morning. --- bkelley@pms706.pms.ford.com Not speaking for Ford Date: Wed, 29 Jun 1994 19:40:32 -0500 (CDT) From: Charles Copeland Subject: Re: New project - Heads, cam combo... To: bkelley@pms706.pms.ford.com (Brian Kelley) (Brian Kelley) >>There are two problems that I have heard of when going with your two >>suggestions. One is that the fancy heads/cams usually make the >>idle much worse and makes city driving less enjoyable. > > Both of these points are a crock, as has been discussed here numerous > times. If you want to defend this contention, please cite specifics. A MAF car will idle ok, but pre-MAF EFI mustangs idle badly with a cam. Fancy heads with larger intake/exhaust reduce low end torque. Less low end torque would equate to less enjoyable city driving to me. > A proper camshaft selection and tuning will not result in drivability > problems. Most performance cams do require that the idle RPM be > increased. A B303, for example, will run very nicely with a 1,000 RPM > idle. If you try and run the idle at 750 or 850, you're going to have > idle quality problems. I don't think you can change the idle rpm. Talk here suggests the computer slowly corrects this back to 750rpm if you change it. >> The other >>is that, while heads and cams and intakes increase peak horsepower, >>they don't significantly increase torque. > Obviously you have yet to ride in a Mustang with a well built 302. > Just what is it that causes my rear wheels to spin at 60 mph when > I stomp on the gas? The ~300hp GT40 package only increases torque by 30ftlbs, and that at very high rpm, between 1000-2500rpm you loose torque. > A good head/cam combination won't lose torque, it will gain torque. If you drive around at 5000rpm all the time. > You get more air and fuel in at a given RPM, and you get more energy > out. Ford was very careful to tune for maximum torque at 3200rpm, very low. Changing intake, heads, exhaust will move that to 4000rpm or higher. Not that that is all bad, but one should be aware of it. >>Blowers, on the other >>hand, increase both power and torque over a wide range of rpms. > > Sure, when they're cold! No argument there. > Talk to Baer racing if you don't believe me. Heat is one of the big > power problems with their use of a blower. By the end of a race > they've got a 375 HP normally aspirated car running just as strong > as their blown 351. At the beginning of the race, they make much more > power than that car. Spearco makes a humongous intercooler for the vortech, if you've got $1000. Its the same "worlds largest production intercooler" they sell with their twin turbo kits. Date: Wed, 29 Jun 1994 20:55:29 -0500 (CDT) From: Ed Welbon Subject: Re: New project - Heads, cam combo... To: Scott.Griffith@eng.sun.com On Wed, 29 Jun 1994 Scott.Griffith@Eng.Sun.COM wrote: > On Jun 28, Brian St. Denis wrote: > > So, what did you see? What happend with the supercharged motors that > > made you not want to get one? > > In road-course use, on the other hand, full-throttle conditions are > maintained for 10 to 20 _minutes_ at a time, and the motor will be at > WOT and max revs for major portions of that. Coolant and oil temps > climb to the moon, and detonation is almost a certainty. It seems that for durability that the sane thing would be a trade-off between max lbs of boost and other mods (headwork, cam, headers, etc.). In other words rely less on boost for the HP. I assume that the blown guys are using sufficiently high octane fuel (if not then they are p*ssing in the wind). > It takes a > great deal more development to get a WOT fuel-enrichment scheme that > actually works (read: keeps the motor alive) for roadracing use, and > you may well find once you have it that it isn't as flexible as you'd > like for boulevard cruising. I have seen it done on drag race vehicles (at least on some boosted vehicles it has been done). I hasten to point out that 11 seconds is sufficient time to wound an engine with detonation. > Blower kits, as delivered, are an excellent way to make a lot of power > for a short time. But I can't believe that many (if any) blower kits are designed to be used for road racing. For that matter, is the 5.0 designed to be thrashed in such a way in stock form? Or is it so conservatively designed that it happens to survive this abuse? > [One] *can* definitely do it, the knowledge is out there. But that > little poly bag of parts that comes with the Vortech in the original > packaging is _not_ all you'll need. In my (perhaps limited) experience, there are dang few HiPo things that one can purchase that bolt directly on and meet expectations. It seems that there is always some snag (or aspect of the design that doesn't suit your goal) that will force you to EC/alter the HiPo thingy. > And despite all your best efforts, > all it takes is having the fuel pressure drop 5psi during a WOT run > from turn 11 to turn 1, and you'll be fogging for mosquitoes with a > coolant/oil cloud But wait, it's not that hard to keep the fuel pressure as high as is required. It might take a baffled fuel cell and redundant pump capability to do it, but it can be done. What was that adage about going as fast as your wallet allows? > If you just live to wrench on the car Yeah, I do. You got a problem with that? 8). > and you want to learn a lot quickly, *This* is a drawback? > and you have the budget, This *is* a draw back. > a blower may be for you. or a conservatively sized turbo. > My 110k-mile-old motor was seeing oil temps of 295degF and coolant > temps of 235degF at the end of sessions over the weekend (it was a tad > bit warm, you see). The guys with blown cars had their hands full > keeping the pistons from trying to change holes in those conditions... Aside from the fact that more output power means more waste heat to stress the cooling system (regardless of how the power is developed), isn't the main problem that the boost levels are not held to a reasonable level? Is it because it is *so* easy to crank up the boost ... hey, that extra oomph feels *so* good ... and that the folks breaking parts basically have no self control/discipline? > There are as many solutions to the "perfect track car" as there are > drivers. Some of us make do with a not-the-quickest, but reliable car, > and are rewarded with much more seat time, and much less wrenching > time, than the trickest kids on the block. Even if they do dust us off > on the straights. My wrench time/seat time ratio is right about 6:1, > right now. I don't want it to go a lick higher! Perfectly sound reasoning in my opinion, especially since you *say* that you rather drive than wrench (implicitly disqualifying suspension work as wrenching I suppose 8). But what if you like to wrench? It seems to that it is easier and cheaper to improve ones wrenching/fabricating skills than ones driving skills (you can wrench 7 nights a week, try racing 7 nights a week). I guess I tend to view a race as an experiment where one intentionally stresses a machine to *find* it's performance/failure limits (you then use this data to increase those limits). I tend to see the pilot as a tool required to run such an experiment. The problem is that the pesky pilots usually fail to recognize their role in the grand scheme of things and spoil all this fun by insisting on finishing races... imagine that, what nerve! #include Ed Welbon; 512-838-1827; zazen@hwperform.austin.ibm.com This .sig has been sanitized for your protection BTW, I got my pinion angle down to about 0.5 degrees (from 3.5), this seemed to reduce the driveline NVH quite a bit (no objective measurements though). It was a royal pain in the a.. to do. Date: Wed, 29 Jun 1994 23:52:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: Re: New project - Heads, cam combo... To: mustangs@onet2.cup.hp.com -> Talk to Baer racing if you don't believe me. Heat is one of the big -> power problems with their use of a blower. By the end of a race -> they've got a 375 HP normally aspirated car running just as strong as -> their blown 351. At the beginning of the race, they make much more -> power than that car. I've seen this from too many normally-reliable sources to discount it entirely, but I think there's a perception problem here. What we have here is not a blower problem. It's a *cooling* problem. The original 221-CID V8 made approximately 100hp. The cooling system as designed was entirely adequate and has remained virtually unchanged at 290+HP in the old BOSS 302 and 220 or whatever this week's claim is for the 5.0. By the time you get up to the 375hp range, you're asking the cooling system to reject 275hp *more* than it was originally designed for. Now, "designed for" back in 1956-1959 meant simply wrapping the engine in a water jacket and maybe playing with a couple of different water pumps; at the designed power level it'd be pretty hard to screw things up. The BOSS 302 had no cooling problems in Trans Am racing, but the BOSS had Cleveland heads. Before the BOSS, Ford had had cooling problems in their Indy stock blocks, and Shelby had had cooling problems in some of the long-distance Cobras. Shelby used to weld up some of the core holes in the heads to redistribute water flow. Essentially, the 5.0's coolant loop shortchanges the rear cylinders. That's not particularly unusual for engines from any manufacturer - there's plenty of water in there, after all. At least for an occasional long grade or a run down the strip. For long duration use, particularly at higher outputs, you overrun your margins. There has been only one major variation in the SBF cooling system - early engines used a rear water crossover at the back of the intake manifold. It reappeared briefly in the late '70s. I don't know if the water crossover shows up on the late models. If you have a manifold with the rear crossover, you could probably get a good change in coolant flow by tapping in to the crossover and running a heater-size hose up front to the thermostat housing. Offenhauser makes an inline thermostat housing that would be handy, or you could try plumbing the line into the heater port at the front of the intake. Other expedients, should this not prove sufficient, would be to feed water to the block down at one of the side core plugs, etc., or even a reverse flow cooling system. Whatever, it's not the supercharger's fault that the engine overheats. Jeez, this is all real basic stuff. Date: Thu, 30 Jun 1994 09:11:08 -0500 (CDT) From: koch@meerkat.cig.mot.com (Clifton Koch) Subject: Re: New project - Heads, cam combo... To: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us > Other expedients, should this not prove sufficient, would be to feed > water to the block down at one of the side core plugs, etc., or even a > reverse flow cooling system. Whatever, it's not the supercharger's > fault that the engine overheats. I'm not sure engine coolant heat is the entire story. One of the big problems (as I see it, at least) is with detonation and lower efficiency due to a warmer intake charge. The superchargers heat the air up quite a bit, which in turn ups the temperature of the intake components, which further heats the air, etc, etc. All this heat is a big cause of the detonation. While the water jacket cooling may not help, I'm not sure this is the major cause of the problem. Date: Thu, 30 Jun 1994 10:15:24 -0500 (CDT) From: stg!zog@uunet.uu.net (Chris Herzog) Subject: Re: New project - Heads, cam combo... To: uunet!onet2.cup.hp.com!mustangs@uunet.uu.net, > -> Talk to Baer racing if you don't believe me. Heat is one of the big > -> power problems with their use of a blower. By the end of a race > -> they've got a 375 HP normally aspirated car running just as strong as > -> their blown 351. At the beginning of the race, they make much more > -> power than that car. > > I've seen this from too many normally-reliable sources to discount it > entirely, but I think there's a perception problem here. > > What we have here is not a blower problem. It's a *cooling* problem. I just spoke with Hal Baer last week about radiators and cooling. He claimed the coolant temp in their supercharged car is _always_ in the range of 185 to 205. So it's _not_ a cooling problem in the traditional sense. I think the real supercharger issue comes from the work being put into the compression of the incoming mixture which ends up being expressed as heat. A lot of this heat is coming from the supercharger itself as this is where the compressing is happening. This rise in the input charge temp starts the descent into lower efficiency and lower power... > The original 221-CID V8 made approximately 100hp. The cooling system as > designed was entirely adequate and has remained virtually unchanged at > 290+HP in the old BOSS 302 and 220 or whatever this week's claim is for > the 5.0. By the time you get up to the 375hp range, you're asking the > cooling system to reject 275hp *more* than it was originally designed > for. Actually, if you listen to Smokey, you're looking at at least twice the horsepower increase being expressed as additional heat due to losses in the motor. If you add 100HP to the crank, there are about _200_ HP going into the coolant and exhaust as heat. It's amazing these things don't turn into puddles of molten metal! > Shelby used to weld up some of the core holes > in the heads to redistribute water flow. > > Essentially, the 5.0's coolant loop shortchanges the rear cylinders. > That's not particularly unusual for engines from any manufacturer - > there's plenty of water in there, after all. At least for an occasional > long grade or a run down the strip. For long duration use, particularly > at higher outputs, you overrun your margins. Many of the higher performance head gaskets fix this for you... The Felpro 9333 PT1 graphite head gasket (the HP garbage truck gasket) actually blocks both water passages into the heads in the from, the next set blocks the top and has only a 1/8" hole for the lower, the next passage has a ~3/16" hole for both passages, the next a ~1/4" hole for both, and the furthest rear passages are full size. > There has been only one major variation in the SBF cooling system - > early engines used a rear water crossover at the back of the intake > manifold. It reappeared briefly in the late '70s. I don't know if the > water crossover shows up on the late models. > > If you have a manifold with the rear crossover, you could probably get > a good change in coolant flow by tapping in to the crossover and running > a heater-size hose up front to the thermostat housing. Offenhauser > makes an inline thermostat housing that would be handy, or you could try > plumbing the line into the heater port at the front of the intake. What will change do (just wondering)? > Whatever, it's not the supercharger's > fault that the engine overheats. Again the engine coolant itself is not overheating! > Jeez, this is all real basic stuff. You said it, not me... Date: Thu, 30 Jun 1994 09:35:53 -0700 From: chucko@freud.arc.nasa.gov (Chuck Fry) Subject: Re: New project - Heads, cam combo... To: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us [Moving the blown vs normally aspirated discussion over from the Mustangs list... and then taking a tangent to that:] Date: Wed, 29 Jun 1994 23:52:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) What we have here is not a blower problem. It's a *cooling* problem. The original 221-CID V8 made approximately 100hp. The cooling system as designed was entirely adequate and has remained virtually unchanged at 290+HP in the old BOSS 302 and 220 or whatever this week's claim is for the 5.0. By the time you get up to the 375hp range, you're asking the cooling system to reject 275hp *more* than it was originally designed for. Pet Peeve: The 290+ HP rating of the old Boss 302 and the 215 HP claimed for the current 5.0 are in two different rating systems. The 215 HP rating is much closer to the actual power output as installed in the car. (For that matter, note that the Motorsport GT-40 kit is rated at 270 *gross* HP -- it doesn't really gain that much compared to a '93 5.0 HO.) Remember that the HP numbers of the '60s were often inflated for marketing purposes, and indeed, the SAE test methods used for "advertised" HP became much more conservative, unfortunately about the time the bottom dropped out of the muscle car race due to smog and mileage concerns. Jeez, this is all real basic stuff. Yeah, but it's awfully common for people to overlook the basics in a "killer" buildup. -- Chuck Date: Thu, 30 Jun 1994 12:46:32 -0500 (CDT) From: koch@meerkat.cig.mot.com (Clifton Koch) Subject: Re: New project - Heads, cam combo... To: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us > -> (as I see it, at least) is with detonation and lower efficiency due > -> to a warmer intake charge. The superchargers heat the air up quite a > -> bit, which in turn up the temperature of the intake components, which > -> further heats the air, etc, etc > > That happens with turbos too. Heat load is heat load, doesn't matter > where it comes from. My point is that one of the primary problems is heating of the intake charge, which is only patially affected by coolant temp, which it is possible to keep in a reasonably normal range, and is affected a LOT by temperature of various pieces of the intake tract. I'll bet an intercooler on the supercharger will go a long way to minimize problems like it does on a turbo. Date: Thu, 30 Jun 1994 14:18:18 -0400 (EDT) From: tredwarb@shv1.dnet.dupont.com Subject: RE:excess BTU rejection To: chucko@freud.arc.nasa.gov Chuck, Dave: I am probably cutting into mid-conversation but, I am very interested if you have any insight to the cooling of high-output motors. What options are available besides oil and water heat exchangers, and adjusted water flow (or other liquid medium). I don't know how many times I have seen guys with claimed 12:1 CR with stock tiny radiators say "I never never have any cooling problems!" and others with 9:1 motors come steaming in after just a few laps at WOT. How do you compute the cooling requirement for a particular engine? I have run numerous 289 vintage motors, running from 380 to 410 dyno corrected hp, cooling is definitley a problem, as is head gasket sealing. These are typically 11:5 CR mtrs run under 7000 RPM. I am not sure if the motor itself causes cooing problems or the cooling system set-up. Both the water and the oil get pretty warm 230water/210oil. I would be a lot happier if the temperatures were reversed! Dave, what considerations do you use in setting-up a new car/engine combo? My solution has always been, "More cooling is better than not enough" and usually put the biggest continuous fin crossflow radiatior that would fit along with a large oil cooler. I could then adjust by blocking-off cooling if necessary (seldom in California). Coolant flow has always mystified me. Various size orifices, impellers, barrel valves all seem to be hit and miss. Is that as scientific as we can get, hit and miss? I am curious an to other approaches. Ron Date: Thu, 30 Jun 1994 14:38:37 -0500 (CDT) From: "Brian St. Denis" Subject: Re: New project - Heads, cam combo... To: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) (Dave Williams) > I've seen this from too many normally-reliable sources to discount it > entirely, but I think there's a perception problem here. So your point is that the engine temperature, as shown by water temperature, is the reason the SCs don't do so well when hot? I figured the heat from the block would transfer up into the SC (as in the Kenne Bell) and then reduce the VE that way. I assume that keeping the water temperature down would not really stop the heat transfer up to the SC. With the Vortech type SCs, the blower would be blowing into a hot manifold and the same loss in VE would occur. Would keeping the water temp below, say, 240, really help this? Date: Thu, 30 Jun 1994 11:13:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: Re: New project - Heads, cam combo... To: mustangs%hpda.cup.hp.com@cup.hp.com -> I just spoke with Hal Baer last week about radiators and cooling. He -> claimed the coolant temp in their supercharged car is _always_ in the -> range of 185 to 205. So it's _not_ a cooling problem in the -> traditional sense. What the thermostat sees is the temperature of the coolant at the front of the intake manifold. The coolant can (and does) get much hotter in the engine, particularly around the exhaust valves. Boiling begins as a surface film, which is a dandy insulator, causing the engine to get even hotter without transferring much more heat to the coolant. Film boiling also doesn't gas much, so you can have boiling without filling the overflow bottle. -> This rise in the input charge temp starts the descent into lower -> efficiency and lower power... The charge temp rise is a function of boost and inlet temp. It doesn't matter if the engine was just started or if it's the end of a track day. -> Many of the higher performance head gaskets fix this for you... The -> Felpro 9333 PT1 graphite head gasket (the HP garbage truck gasket) The graphite gaskets, BTW, represent a relatively new idea in gasketing. Back inna old days you used to O-ring the heads, put sealer on your cardboard gasket, and then torque it all down until your eyes popped. The idea was to make the damned head STAY PUT, because if you got too much load (mechanical or thermal) it'd start to shift and you'd blow the gasket, hydraulic'ing the motor if you were unlucky. Modern theory says well, if the head wants to move, let it, at least within certain narrow limits. The graphite coating is to prevent fretting the gasket areas and eventually failing the seal. -> > plumbing the line into the heater port at the front of the intake. > What will change do (just wondering)? Pulling coolant out the old rear-crossover passages will provide a positive flow around the rears of the heads rather than just depending on the flow from the block, through the gasket, and then back up to the front of the head. Since you're pulling hot water out of the engine at this point, more (relatively) cool coolant comes up from the block. -> > Whatever, it's not the -> supercharger's > fault that the engine overheats. > Again the engine coolant itself is not overheating! Remember, the outlet temp at the thermostat doesn't have much to do with how hot it is elsewhere in the motor. Date: Thu, 30 Jun 1994 11:40:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: Re: New project - Heads, cam combo... To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov -> See you on Fordnatics, where brake-specific-fuel-consumption is a -> dish best served cold. Or something like that.. Yes, I've already been Warned by the Almighty. I guess speedometers and car alarms are *much* more interesting than those dirty old engine things... Date: Thu, 30 Jun 1994 11:55:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: Re: New project - Heads, cam combo... To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov -> Pet Peeve: The 290+ HP rating of the old Boss 302 and the 215 HP -> claimed for the current 5.0 are in two different rating systems. Yeah, but it doesn't matter what rating system you use - the BOSS made bunches more power than the 5.0 does. Intake ports large enough to stuff small children through, 2.25/1.76 valves, big lumpy cam, and a 715 CFM Holley four barrel. Full smog equipment, too - inlet heat and PCV valve! -> Remember that the HP numbers of the '60s were often inflated for -> marketing purposes, and indeed, the SAE test methods used for Except for various cars that had the numbers DEflated to keep them off the insurance companies' bad-boy lists. Such as the BOSS 302 and BOSS 429... -> rating is much closer to the actual power output as installed in the "Horsepower" is a largely imaginary figure, like "advertised duration" in cams or "user friendly" in software. What the dyno measures is torque. You take the torque figure, then plug it into an equation with the RPM, altitude correction, your current astrological chart and maybe roll the dice, and you get horsepower. You have SAE net horsepower, SAE gross horsepower, DIN horsepower, DIN PS, JIS horsepower, marketing-droid horsepower, French cheval wotzits, etc. It's also easy to fall into the horsepower trap, which has overtaken most forms of motorsport at one time or another. Engine A makes 600hp. Engine B makes 500hp. Obviously engine A is the one you want, right? Sometimes no, unless you have fourteen speeds forward and want to risk Repetitive Strain Injury of your shifting hand. The *shape* of the power curve is just as important as the maximum output. Date: Thu, 30 Jun 1994 10:15:21 -0700 From: Scott.Griffith@Eng.Sun.COM (Scott Griffith, Sun Microsystems Lumpyware) Subject: Re: New project - Heads, cam combo... To: fordnatics@freud.arc.nasa.gov To all your Fordnatics stalwarts who aren't currently on the Mustangs list, here's a heads-up. This discussion is moving here from there, as it is no longer Mustang specific. It has to do with the pros and cons of supercharging versus traditional normally-aspirated tuning as a way to build reliable power for roadracing (as opposed to drag racing or brisk street) use. It was off-charter over there, but i't's dead-center on target here, so here we come... We now drop you into the discussion, already in progress. On Jun 29, Ed Welbon wrote: > On Wed, 29 Jun 1994 Scott.Griffith@Eng.Sun.COM wrote: > > > On Jun 28, Brian St. Denis wrote: > > > So, what did you see? What happend with the supercharged motors that > > > made you not want to get one? > > > > In road-course use, on the other hand, full-throttle conditions are > > maintained for 10 to 20 _minutes_ at a time, and the motor will be at > > WOT and max revs for major portions of that. Coolant and oil temps > > climb to the moon, and detonation is almost a certainty. > > It seems that for durability that the sane thing would be a trade-off between > max lbs of boost and other mods (headwork, cam, headers, etc.). In other > words rely less on boost for the HP. I assume that the blown guys are using > sufficiently high octane fuel (if not then they are p*ssing in the wind). True enough. But then again, remember that people are being sold their blowers as a panacea. The sales guys say, "you don't need the head work, just jack up the boost and shove the air through the stock ports. You'll get the same results, for less money". People happily take this advice, and then buy more pistons and heads and headgaskets when things go wrong. If you need $500 worth of headwork to make your 6psi boost rig make reliable power, that's fine. You and I _both_ know that it will help. but the point is that that's not what is being sold. > > It takes a > > great deal more development to get a WOT fuel-enrichment scheme that > > actually works (read: keeps the motor alive) for roadracing use, and > > you may well find once you have it that it isn't as flexible as you'd > > like for boulevard cruising. > > I have seen it done on drag race vehicles (at least on some boosted > vehicles it has been done). I hasten to point out that 11 seconds is > sufficient time to wound an engine with detonation. The difference between an 11 second WOT quarter mile and a 20 minute WOT roadracing track session is a bit bigger than you'd think. The total heat loads that the cooling system must handle are several orders of magnitude higher, the heat-soak of the intake system is complete and an equilibrium of sorts is reached, the fuel in the tank is thoroughly heated (by recirculation from the regulator, and by direct heat from exhaust turndowns and radiator waste heat in the airstream)... You also have some extremely nontrivial problems from slosh in the lubrication and fuel systems. It's true that you can hurt a motor in 11 seconds. You can also make it live, even with several of the major parameters a bit wrong. My point is that it's just about impossible to make it live for 20 minutes unless everything is _spot on_. > > Blower kits, as delivered, are an excellent way to make a lot of power > > for a short time. > > But I can't believe that many (if any) blower kits are designed to be used > for road racing. For that matter, is the 5.0 designed to be thrashed in such > a way in stock form? Or is it so conservatively designed that it happens to > survive this abuse? The pedal is there, and there are those of us who will use it that way. The question at hand ignores that issue. What we're actually discussing is "Given that we intend to thrash the car, is it better to buy a blower, or do the headwork?". The answer will differ for each of us, but there are getting to be fewer and fewer of us who really believe that for that particular application, hanging a 15psi Vortech on the crank is the answer. > > [One] *can* definitely do it, the knowledge is out there. But that > > little poly bag of parts that comes with the Vortech in the original > > packaging is _not_ all you'll need. > > In my (perhaps limited) experience, there are dang few HiPo things that one > can purchase that bolt directly on and meet expectations. It seems that > there is always some snag (or aspect of the design that doesn't suit your > goal) that will force you to EC/alter the HiPo thingy. Yup. So for 350 reliable HP for a 20-minute session, which is more cost effective/reliable/low maintenance: lots of headwork, a hot cam, and twist it to 7000 normally aspirated, or hang on a blower and start playing with WOT enrichment and buying pistons until you get it right? > > And despite all your best efforts, > > all it takes is having the fuel pressure drop 5psi during a WOT run > > from turn 11 to turn 1, and you'll be fogging for mosquitoes with a > > coolant/oil cloud. > > But wait, it's not that hard to keep the fuel pressure as high as is > required. It might take a baffled fuel cell and redundant pump capability to > do it, but it can be done. What was that adage about going as fast as your > wallet allows? Exactly. Over the course of a 20-minute session, you'll consume something on the order of 5-6 gallons of fuel, and the fuel temp will rise by between 20 and 100 degF, and the amount of sloshing will increase appropriately. Noplace in the blower doc does it say "Oh, by the way, sucking a bubble at the fuel tank pickup at WOT will cost you a headgasket and the #8 piston". You learn that the hard way, and try again... > > My 110k-mile-old motor was seeing oil temps of 295degF and coolant > > temps of 235degF at the end of sessions over the weekend (it was a tad > > bit warm, you see). The guys with blown cars had their hands full > > keeping the pistons from trying to change holes in those conditions... > Aside from the fact that more output power means more waste heat to stress > the cooling system (regardless of how the power is developed), isn't the main > problem that the boost levels are not held to a reasonable level? Is it > because it is *so* easy to crank up the boost ... hey, that extra oomph feels > *so* good ... and that the folks breaking parts basically have no self > control/discipline? Sure. I personally don't feel that you really need that extra power, until you learn how to really *drive* the car. There aren't a heck of a lot of us who are at that level in our roadracing chops just yet. I know that at Sears Point, there are at least 3 seconds a lap left out there that are just a matter of discussion between my butt, my hands, and my right foot. Once I get those, then another 50 ft-lb of torque might be just the ticket for more yuks, but I can wait. People want *more*. Fine. The discussion is settling on how to get *more*, and have the car live for the weekend. There aren't many people who are cranking up more than 8 psi of boost, and they're still leaving on the trailer. > > There are as many solutions to the "perfect track car" as there are > > drivers. Some of us make do with a not-the-quickest, but reliable car, > > and are rewarded with much more seat time, and much less wrenching > > time, than the trickest kids on the block. Even if they do dust us off > > on the straights. My wrench time/seat time ratio is right about 6:1, > > right now. I don't want it to go a lick higher! > > Perfectly sound reasoning in my opinion, especially since you *say* that you > rather drive than wrench (implicitly disqualifying suspension work as > wrenching I suppose 8). But what if you like to wrench? It seems to that it > is easier and cheaper to improve ones wrenching/fabricating skills than ones > driving skills (you can wrench 7 nights a week, try racing 7 nights a week). And that's the exact wrong solution, for those of us with a realistic budget. I wrench on the car for roughly 30 hours before each track event, to prep it. My wife and I then *run the wheels off it* for the weekend, and it runs reliably for us. The investment of the first part pays off in the second part. And we then drive the car home. When I am at the track, I am there to _drive_, and that is my singular passion. I don't go to the track to lay under the car and try and figure out how to kluge the car back together to get another session in, or to get me home. When I get to the track, the car _must_ run like a Swiss watch for 10 or 25 20-minute sessions, with me feeding it nothing but fuel, brake pads, maybe a quart of oil, and giving it a pat on the head after each session. Believe it or not, I have such a car, and I've been running it that hard since 1987. Now, given that, I am interested in the question that Chris Beheir initially asked, which is "How do you best achieve modest, realistic power increases most cost effectively and reliably: through supercharging, or the old-fashioned plumped airpump way?" > I guess I tend to view a race as an experiment where one intentionally > stresses a machine to *find* it's performance/failure limits (you then use > this data to increase those limits). I tend to see the pilot as a tool > required to run such an experiment. The problem is that the pesky pilots > usually fail to recognize their role in the grand scheme of things and spoil > all this fun by insisting on finishing races... imagine that, what nerve! > > #include That's one of the reasons I still insist on _driving_ the car to the track, even after all these years. It tends to underscore the reality that scattering motors just for shits and grins is for people who did a better job of picking their parents than I did.... -skod Date: Fri, 01 Jul 1994 04:40:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: RE:excess BTU rejection To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov -> have seen guys with claimed 12:1 CR with stock tiny radiators say "I -> never never have any cooling problems!" and others with 9:1 motors -> come steaming in after just a few laps at WOT. The compression ratio doesn't really have that much to do with cooling. A high CR motor will generally make a little more power, which means a little more waste heat, but we're talking single-digit percentages here. You normally bump compression when you go to a larger cam, kind of a balancing act. -> How do you compute the cooling requirement for a particular engine? -> Is that as scientific as we can get, hit and miss? Basically, yes. With a good research program and plenty of Cray time you can model just about anything, but the modeling is not always cost-effective compared to just poking something with a stick to see if it barks. For most production engines there's no problem with cooling - you just jacket what you can, slap a pump on there somewhere, and let the water sort of swirl where it wants to. It almost always works. Sizing the radiator is equally simple - figure how much heat the engine will reject, using whatever thermal efficiency you get from a dyno run, then figure a long pull on a hot mountain day (low air density), derate the radiator by some magic figure to compensate for age, crud buildup, and dirt, and that's your radiator. -> water and the oil get pretty warm 230water/210oil. I would be a lot -> happier if the temperatures were reversed! That's pretty cool for oil. Pennzoil recommends 250-275-ish. (they actually won't give a specific figure - you just keep throwing numbers at them and they say "too low", "OK, or "too high." Weird.) You want the water >212 to boil out any water from condensation. Water looks a little high, but if you're not boiling over or running into detonation I wouldn't be too concerned. -> My solution has always been, "More cooling is better than not enough" -> and usually put the biggest continuous fin crossflow radiatior that Apparently not all water pumps are created equal. B&A Ford's magic bullet is the TRW aluminum replacement pump, available in LH or RH rotation depending on your accessory drive. Gary claims the 351X motors could overheat on long pulls, but the TRW pump eliminates all problems. Some pumps also just plain don't work over some specific RPM. Depends on impeller design, which can be anything from a true-form impeller to a piece of bent sheet metal. The average car probably never sees the high side of 4000; if it sees more, it's only for brief periods. The pumps just stall at higher speeds, and you lose coolant circulation. For drag racing or whatever it's no problem. -> Various size orifices, impellers, barrel valves all seem to be hit -> and miss. I have some literature from Cosworth. Cosworth's magic bullet (magic bullet is this week's buzzword) is air entrainment. Now, from what I can gather from the DFV data sheets, the thing leaks like a seive - you add sealer to keep it from drooling on the ground, then the combustion chambers leak pressure into the water jacket. The Cosworths run without a pressure cap, or with a very low rated cap. They use a "swirl pot", a sort of centrifugal de-aerator, to pull the air bubbles out of the coolant. Excess air is then vented overboard. Cosworth claims entrained air causes overheating. The swirl pot sounds like a good idea anyway - it's not unusual to see bubbles in the radiator - but you have to find a place to PUT the thing. -> I am curious an to other approaches. I never much liked the thermostat-and-bypass-hose scheme, even if most engines do it. The little German Ford V6 had a very nice system - instead of stalling the coolant behind a closed thermostat, the pump always circulated it full bore. When it got hot, the thermostat (a rather complex assembly) shunted hot water out to the radiator and cool water in. I'd also like to experiment with a positive-displacement water pump. Car pumps are always (as far as I know) centrifugal, so they'll just stall with the thermostat is closed. With the positive-displacement pump, you KNOW water is being pumped. Date: Fri, 01 Jul 1994 03:57:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: Re: New project - Heads, cam combo... To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov -> My point is that one of the primary problems is heating of the intake -> charge, which is only patially affected by coolant temp, which it is -> possible to keep i a reasonably normal range, and is affected a LOT -> by temperature of various pieces of the intake tract. I'll bet an -> intercooler on the supercharger will g a long way to minimize -> problems like it does on a turbo. Mmm, you only have about four inches of intake port, and the air's moving through there pretty fast. And the port's only 180F, as opposed to an underhood temp of probably, what, 150F? I really don't think the charge is picking up much heat from the port. An intercooler would certainly help, and it'd be duck soup on a Paxton or Vortech installation. If there was some reason you couldn't run the intercooler, you could get much of the effect by spraying water at the inlet side of the supercharger to get maximum charge cooling. Date: Fri, 01 Jul 1994 08:07:02 -0700 (PDT) From: David Schwarze Subject: RE:excess BTU rejection To: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) > I never much liked the thermostat-and-bypass-hose scheme, even if > most engines do it. The little German Ford V6 had a very nice system - > instead of stalling the coolant behind a closed thermostat, the pump > always circulated it full bore. When it got hot, the thermostat (a > rather complex assembly) shunted hot water out to the radiator and cool > water in. Maybe so, but as I'm sure you are aware, that little German Ford V-6's water jacket area was severely under-engineered. I have had a helluva time keeping that little aluminum jacket and those long, thin, steel bolts from corroding, breaking, deforming, and the like. I hear you are a Capri guy. Nice to see someone on this list who appreciates those cars as I do. Are you a member of a Capri club? I am in two of them. Come to think of it, your name is starting to sound a bit familiar to me. I think I had better go home and look in the registry before I embarass myself. :) Date: Fri, 01 Jul 1994 06:06:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: Re: New project - Heads, cam combo... To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov -> I figured the heat from the block would transfer up into the -> SC (as in the Kenne Bell) and then reduce the VE that way. I assume -> that keeping the water temperature down would not really stop the -> heat transfer up to the SC. I doubt it. You're moving several hundred CFM of air through the blower and intake - that's plenty of cooling. Your charge temp will be mainly dependent on boost, secondarily dependent on inlet temp - it is *very* important to feed the blower the coolest air you can. Date: Sat, 02 Jul 1994 03:28:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: Re: New project - Heads, cam combo... To: fordnatics@freud.arc.nasa.gov -> True enough. But then again, remember that people are being sold -> their blowers as a panacea. The sales guys say, "you don't need the -> head work, just jack up the boost and shove the air through the stock -> ports. You'll get the same results, for less money". People happily -> take this advice, and then buy more pistons and heads and headgaskets -> when things go wrong. B&M sells their "Blower Handbook" for about $5. Even given that it's written by B&M as a device to sell more B&M blowers, it's well worth the money. There are quite a few dyno charts in the book, showing the same engine with/without the blower after various mods. Interestingly, head work and cam selection were generally even more important with the blower than normally aspirated. If you picked up 75hp on the normal engine, the blown one might get 100, etc. -> ports. You'll get the same results, for less money". People happily -> take this advice, and then buy more pistons and heads and headgaskets -> when things go wrong. I'm not quite cynical enough to say there's a sucker born every minute, but you have to remember the majority of these blower kits probably work perfectly for the average buyer - the guy who wants more punch for his *street* car. Even with a blower it's difficult to run an engine hard enough to damage it before the nice men in uniforms take your license away. You trackies are off the pathological edge of the sigma curve. You're upset because the blower cars, as a class, aren't tremendously reliable. I'm impressed they're lasting as long as they do, given they're basically bolt-on stuff. -> The pedal is there, and there are those of us who will use it that -> way. As an aside, the original 221-inch motor was designed for Ford of Canada, for use in trucks. Anything in a truck is intended to be run wide open forever, basically. Then Ford stuck the 260s and 289s in honking big Galaxies with something like 4000 pounds gross (really gross!) weight and ran the snot out of them, sometimes pulling camping trailers and the like. -> discussing is "Given that we intend to thrash the car, is it better -> to buy a blower, or do the headwork?". The answer will differ for -> each of us, but there are getting to be fewer and fewer of us who -> really believe that for that particular application, hanging a 15psi -> Vortech on the crank is the answer. Not without giving some serious thought as to the rest of the motor. Date: Tue, 05 Jul 1994 12:09:00 -0500 (CDT) From: stg!zog@uunet.uu.net (Chris Herzog) Subject: Re: New project - Heads, cam combo... To: uunet!chaos.lrk.ar.us!dave.williams@uunet.uu.net > -> I just spoke with Hal Baer last week about radiators and cooling. He > -> claimed the coolant temp in their supercharged car is _always_ in the > -> range of 185 to 205. So it's _not_ a cooling problem in the > -> traditional sense. > > What the thermostat sees is the temperature of the coolant at the front > of the intake manifold. The coolant can (and does) get much hotter in > the engine, particularly around the exhaust valves. Coolant temp is not a good _instantaneous_ measure of engine temp but it is a reasonable indicator of overall, weighted temp during a 30 minute race. > -> This rise in the input charge temp starts the descent into lower > -> efficiency and lower power... > > The charge temp rise is a function of boost and inlet temp. It > doesn't matter if the engine was just started or if it's the end of a > track day. Of course it does; your statement doesn't factor in an intake tract and supercharger running at 200+ degrees further heating the intake charge. > > -> Many of the higher performance head gaskets fix this for you... The > -> Felpro 9333 PT1 graphite head gasket (the HP garbage truck gasket) > > The graphite gaskets, BTW, represent a relatively new idea in > gasketing. Back inna old days you used to O-ring the heads, put sealer > on your cardboard gasket, and then torque it all down until your eyes > popped. The idea was to make the damned head STAY PUT, because if you > got too much load (mechanical or thermal) it'd start to shift and you'd > blow the gasket, hydraulic'ing the motor if you were unlucky. > > Modern theory says well, if the head wants to move, let it, at least > within certain narrow limits. The graphite coating is to prevent > fretting the gasket areas and eventually failing the seal. The issue with the gaskets is not the graphite but the fact that the gasket tries to force coolant to the rear of the block by controlling the size and number of water passages into the head from the block. > -> > plumbing the line into the heater port at the front of the intake. > > What will change do (just wondering)? > > Pulling coolant out the old rear-crossover passages will provide a > positive flow around the rears of the heads rather than just depending > on the flow from the block, through the gasket, and then back up to the > front of the head. Since you're pulling hot water out of the engine at > this point, more (relatively) cool coolant comes up from the block. Interesting stuff. Does blocking off the heater out/in have any major effect on the coolant flow pattern? By this I mean just blocking off the heater outlet on the pump and the inlet on the manifold. If so, would you run both into the front of the manifold (it would seem that heater flow would overwelm the flow from the rear of the manifold and possibly even cause a reverse flow into the rear of the block). > > -> > Whatever, it's not the > -> supercharger's > fault that the engine overheats. > > > Again the engine coolant itself is not overheating! > > Remember, the outlet temp at the thermostat doesn't have much to do > with how hot it is elsewhere in the motor. I can agree with that on a short term basis but over a 30 to 60 minute time, it's as good an indication of the cooling situation than anything else. I'd have a hard time believing that the coolant is only at 185 and the motor is completely melting down in some places (supercharged or not), eventually, those hot spots will either melt or raise the temp of surrounding areas and cool that way. Date: Tue, 05 Jul 1994 16:19:24 -0700 From: Scott.Griffith@Eng.Sun.COM (Scott Griffith, Sun Microsystems Lumpyware) Subject: 5.0 cooling system upgrade To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov Here's an effort to stimulate a little archive-hunting. I have a cooling system "opportunity", and I'd like to arrive at an optimal solution given my modest means. Application: normally-aspirated 5.0 Mustang, stock displacement, injected, gasoline fuel. Car is used for roadracing, so it sees 20-minute WOT sessions, and has worrisomely high water and oil temps (235degf/290degF) at the end of the session. It has a great deal of radiator capacity, and I have reason to believe that the actual radiator outlet tank water temp is well below 200degF, even when the temp at the water temp sender (in the rear crossover passage) reached nearly 240degF. Evidence: the car doesn't puke coolant, even with those temps showing. The puke tank stays dry like a bone. I'm currently running a Flow Kooler pump, underdriven 33%, and I don't believe that the pump is in stall when at operating temp and RPM. Also, the waterpump suction hose is fresh, and well reinforced. Coolant is Red Line Water Wetter and distilled water. Radiator cap is at 21psi and is new. I run a thermostatically-controlled electric fan, switched on at 220degF at the thermostat housing, as well. I have lots of radiator airflow, and a decent air dam to keep it coming. Surmise: Water flow at the rear of the heads is nearly stagnant, leading to steam pockets or worse back there. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately!), that's where the temperature bulb is. Possible fix: pull off some water at the rear crossover, by using the temp port to pick off a 8AN or 10AN line to run up to the thermostat housing. Alternatively, pick off that line and use it to feed a water-oil heat exchanger, and then return the outflow directly to the inlet side of the water pump. This is likely to help my oil temp problem as well, I'd think, and might help kill two birds with one stone. The primary goal would be to guarantee positive flow back there, so I might as well _do_ something with it, no? Possible downside: the temp bulb may be running in an unbleedable bubble, and all of this is just dodging shadows. Perhaps there is really no cooling problem to address. However, Mr. Murphy and I are old friends, and I'd prefer not to leave it to chance. Good news: There are no class rules that prohibit any mods I care to try, so I can do whatever I damned well please without having any sanctioning body whack my... oh, nevermind. And finally, the question: Over 35+ years of racing experience, what have folks done in this department? Small-block Chevy racers shoot additional coolant into the waterjacket right below their brain-dead siamesed exhaust ports. What have the Ford guys done all these years? I saw a very trick swirl-pot rig where a guy had used 3/16" hard line and set up bleeds to the pot from the pump housing, the front of each head, each radiator tank, and the rear crossover. The perfect self-bleeding system. And he _still_ had cooling problems... I'd prefer answers that were based on some real track experience, rather than articles in one of the ragazines (with the possible exception of Circle Track, he said as he genuflected towards Smokey's shop in South Florida). Dan? Dave? Tred? Whaddaya think? Help me spend some money to save some more. I'm a chassis guy, not a powertrain guy... Date: Tue, 05 Jul 1994 16:39:42 -0700 From: chucko@freud.arc.nasa.gov (Chuck Fry) Subject: Re: 5.0 cooling system upgrade To: Scott.Griffith@Eng.Sun.COM Re Skod's theories on improved cooling to the back half of a 5.0. You'll be happy to hear that the stock intake manifold has a water port at each corner, all tapped for 3/8" NPT adapters and such. The right front port (next to cylinder #1) is the only one dedicated to a particular use, with the heater plumbing screwed into it. The right rear port has a 1/4" hose nipple, used to cool the EGR spacer (this fitting is unreachable with the upper intake manifold in place). The left front port has a temperature sensor (not sure if this is for the dash gauge or the EEC, probably the former). The left rear port is plugged. I've thought about doing something useful with the rear water ports too. The only real problem is that the water, vacuum and fuel plumbing, and wiring, already form a rat's nest in that neighborhood. Adding a -10 hose would be an exercise in detail engineering. Let me know what you come up with -- it should be an interesting discussion, anyway. -- Chuck Date: Wed, 06 Jul 1994 16:37:23 -0400 (EDT) From: Dan Malek Subject: Re: 5.0 cooling system upgrade To: Scott.Griffith@Eng.Sun.COM >Here's an effort to stimulate a little archive-hunting. I have a >cooling system "opportunity", and I'd like to arrive at an optimal >solution given my modest means. <....descriptions deleted....> >I'd prefer answers that were based on some real track experience, >rather than articles in one of the ragazines (with the possible >exception of Circle Track, he said as he genuflected towards Smokey's >shop in South Florida). Now, I have done this stuff long enough to know that Smokey stumbles around and gets lucky sometimes just like the rest of us, he's just been doing it a lot longer. I would have more respect for him if he knew something about the English language and grammar. But, genuflect.....Naw, I don't think so. >Dan? Dave? Tred? Whaddaya think? Help me spend some money to save some >more. I'm a chassis guy, not a powertrain guy... I don't know much about the physics of a water pump. Dave Dion's brother, Donald, custom builds the pumps for the engines (housing from here, impeller from there, etc.). The main reason is that it must be done for the V6 (no off-the-shelf pump), and we found out we could hold better clearances and save some money if we did it for the V8. Anyway, the point is that we have good pumps, just like you do, that bolt right up. Having said that, we really spin those babies up. The V8 runs almost 1:1, and the V6 runs a little slower, but not 33% (maybe 15). The V8 tops out about 7500 RPM, and the V6 about 8800. We look at water temp in both the head and the radiator. If the head is really hot compared to the radiator, then speed up the pump. If that does not do it, you will have to add some external plumbing. We use number 12 AN fittings and hose for water, maybe you can get by with 10, but I would not go smaller. On our engines, we tap right into the front of the head, and each one gets a separate #12 to the radiator. We don't run any crossover between the heads. The water goes into the block, through the head and to the radiator. The block is restricted to force the water to the back of the head and then forward. Now, thinking about that, I don't know if tapping into that back crossover will do the right thing. You may acutally want to run a smaller hose to regulate the flow. You don't want the water running into the block and out the back of the head without any flow toward the front. Yeah, the more I think about it, regulating the flow out the front and back is going to get tricky, especially since the thermostat regulates the flow out the front. I think you can do it, even if you use a shut-off on the rear line for normal driving, and then when it is warmed up at the track you can open it up. Just hook it up to the suction side of the pump, where the heater hose is now. If the radiator is hot, along with the heads, then you have an air flow problem. This does not sound like your problem. It is amazing how air flows over/under/through a nose, and how a minor change in the location and shape of a hole can be quite drastic to the air flow. Date: Wed, 06 Jul 1994 14:29:16 -0700 From: Scott.Griffith@Eng.Sun.COM (Scott Griffith, Sun Microsystems Lumpyware) Subject: Re: 5.0 cooling system upgrade To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov On Jul 6, Dan Malek wrote: > We look at water temp in both the head and the radiator. If the head is > really hot compared to the radiator, then speed up the pump. If that does > not do it, you will have to add some external plumbing. We use number 12 > AN fittings and hose for water, maybe you can get by with 10, but I would > not go smaller. On our engines, we tap right into the front of the head, > and each one gets a separate #12 to the radiator. We don't run any > crossover between the heads. The water goes into the block, through the > head and to the radiator. The block is restricted to force the water to > the back of the head and then forward. Right, that's the way I understood most full-on race prepped blocks to be set up these days. At the moment, my block is unrestricted, so that I do have coolant circulation through the deck at all of the usual core holes. After all, I've never lifted the heads. Barring rust-cooties, there's nothing other than the stock head gasket in the way there. I do believe that, as a result, a significant portion of the coolant is cranking right on up through the path of least resistance from the front of the block into the front part of the head, and out the front of the manifold without ever getting to the back end of the block to start with. Now, given my modest means, what do you think is the best way to guarantee water flow back to the nether regions? I'll certainly take your message as being one vote for machining the block for deck plugs, and I'll take it up with my machinist next time the block's out of the car (;-). Hey, it _could_ happen... For the record, do you guys plug the forward holes solid, or do you leave bleed pinholes? If so, roughly what size? And do you do any playing with the rearmost coolant passages through the deck, if that's where all your flow goes? > Now, thinking about that, I don't > know if tapping into that back crossover will do the right thing. You > may acutally want to run a smaller hose to regulate the flow. You don't > want the water running into the block and out the back of the head without > any flow toward the front. Yeah, the more I think about it, regulating > the flow out the front and back is going to get tricky, especially since > the thermostat regulates the flow out the front. That's why I was thinking about dumping the fore-aft connector back in upstream of the thermostat, essentially connecting the front and rear crossovers. Would I get enough flow to make a difference? Search me... I was hoping that maybe Shelby shipped the 289 Cobras that way, or something else that was essentially lost to the ages. Somebody must have addressed this problem without going to deck plugs, somewhere along the line. The other option, routing the rear-crossover flow to the oil cooler, would establish that as essentially a second bypass path, and would dump right back into the pump inlet, bypassing the 'stat altogether. That's likely to be a sizeable flow, though, and it might make cool-weather running a bit interesting. I may very well need to keep the two problems separate. In any case, I imagine that flow balancing will require a good bit of thermocouple time. What the heck. I need the test gear anyway... Luckily, there are some cheapo 10AN inline scavenge filter housings that don't filter worth a flip, but are easily disassembled and make *great* places to stick restrictors. Next time I run the car hard, I'll see if I can lay in some gear, and get good numbers for the water temps in the front and rear crossovers, and at the radiator outlet tank. It'll be good baseline info, anyway. Good info. Many thanks! Anybody else want to take a swing? Date: Wed, 06 Jul 1994 20:07:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: 5.0 cooling system upgrade To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov -> Possible fix: pull off some water at the rear crossover, by using the -> temp port to pick off a 8AN or 10AN line to run up to the thermostat -> housing. Sounds like a gonzo idea to me. -> Possible downside: the temp bulb may be running in an unbleedable -> bubble, and all of this is just dodging shadows. Perhaps there is Possibly. On the other hand, the air pocket would tend to reach equilibrium at near coolant temp, though sensor response might lag. -> And finally, the question: Over 35+ years of racing experience, what -> have folks done in this department? Not a damned thing, basically. Playing with the coolant hole size in the decks is about it. Date: Thu, 07 Jul 1994 02:54:34 -0400 (EDT) From: tredwarb@shv1.dnet.dupont.com Subject: Rust cooties and 9 year old gaskets To: scott.griffith@Eng.Sun.COM Skod, Sorry for the triple posting, it must be later than I think. If this doesn't work I will talk to you tomorrow. This may cause some credibility regarding my comments, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz! TRED Skod, Unless those rust cooties have eaten up your head gasket completely, the coolant passages in the front of the block should be covered (blocked) by the head gasket (or the factory put the gasket on backwards). That is why the gaskets have "Front" stamped on them and the metal backing is on top on one side and the bottom of the other. The head gasket only has coolant passages at one end and, when correctly installed, it is the rear end of the engine. I guess I deserve to be surprised when someone tells me that race car engines are run with a 1:1 water pump drive. One of the first things done 20 years ago was to install restrictor orifices and a smaller pully on the crank to slow down the water to approx. the same speed as stock. The theory was that taking a stock pump to 7500 rpm would move the water too fast through the block for proper heat absorption. I know a HP water pump on a 289/Boss 302 has less vanes and they are curved to minimize cavitation. I never got to sticking TC's all over the engine to see what was really going on and I guess that is why I deserve to be surprised. Would love to hear more on this! Date: Thu, 07 Jul 1994 15:45:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: Re: 5.0 cooling system upgrade To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov -> We look at water temp in both the head and the radiator. If the head -> is really hot compared to the radiator, then speed up the pump. If -> that does not do it, you will have to add some external plumbing. We I hauled out Grumpy Jenkins' Chevy book last night and did some re-reading. He mentioned he'd instrumented some of his drag SBCs and found wide temperature variations, over 80 degrees, from cylinder to cylinder. There was discussion and quite a few photos of blocked and rerouted water lines, altered deck water holes and plugs, and external water manifolding. I found this all very interesting, but he never explained how he instrumented the engine to find out what the temps were. Several possibilities occur to me, but doing it right would require drilling and tapping the block and heads in several places to mount sensors. Yunick's book concentrated more on flow than temperature, and showed a picture of a test rig where he had machined off the top of one cylinder head and replaced it with clear plastic so he could watch the coolant flow. I actually have enough parts on hand to do that, if I get enough round tuits. ===dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us======================================= ======================================================================= Date: Thu, 07 Jul 1994 16:44:45 -0700 From: Scott.Griffith@Eng.Sun.COM (Scott Griffith, Sun Microsystems Lumpyware) Subject: Re: 5.0 cooling system upgrade To: fordnatics@freud.arc.nasa.gov On Jul 7, Ron Tredway wrote: > Unless those rust cooties have eaten up your head gasket completely, the > coolant passages in the front of the block should be covered (blocked) by > the head gasket (or the factory put the gasket on backwards). That is why the > gaskets have "Front" stamped on them and the metal backing is on top on one > side and the bottom of the other. The head gasket only has coolant passages > at one end and, when correctly installed, it is the rear end of the engine. Well, it might have been that way with older engines, but with the wonderful Modern 5.0 Injected Marvel, many of the other core holes are also open in the stock headgasket, allowing significant coolant flow up into the head nearer the front of the motor. The total open area of the core holes and steam holes between the cylinders is probably about 50% larger than the total area of the rear passages, where the water is _supposed_ to go. I'd guesstimate that as delivered, only about 30% of the total coolant flow ever makes it to the rear of the cylinder bank. Most of it takes the short cut through the front steam holes and beats it towards the radiator early. That's one of the sources of my worries. That, and the fact that all my blower-mad buddies keep telling me about killing the headgasket for the #4 and #8 hole... > I never got to sticking TC's all over the engine to see what was really > going on and I guess that is why I deserve to be surprised. > > Would love to hear more on this! You and me both. Who knows? Maybe this is my way to become a Motor Weenie. Nah, hell hasn't frozen over just yet. Still, it bears looking into, since it does have some bearing for us smallblock types. I looked back into my archives, and the '86 SVO catalog had a tech article on the buildup of one of Roush's 310 Trans-Am motors. It shows some interesting things, such as totally blocking the front passages (which are left partially open with the stock gasket), restricting the upper core holes to 7/32", the lowers to 1/16", and opening up the rears as much as possible. That's a start, for sure. Also, the late Fel-Pro carbonfiber gaskets have staggered sizes for the upper core holes, from 1/8 near the front to 3/8 near the back. There's more looking-up to do... Dave Williams wrote: > Several possibilities occur to me, but doing it right would require > drilling and tapping the block and heads in several places to mount > sensors. Well, back when I was still a karter, the hot setup was the thermocouple sparkplug gasket for keeping track of cylinder head temps. Wonder if Omega makes any TC gaskets for the 14mm tapered-seat plugs, and how many third-world countries I'd have to bankrupt to get some? At least, it would give some rough measure of hole-to-hole skews. Damn! Now that I look at it, Aircraft Spruce has the Westach plug gasket thermocouples for $12.25 each. I might even be able to afford a couple of those. This could get downright interesting. Now when was the next track event? -skod Date: Thu, 07 Jul 1994 17:50:41 -0700 (PDT) From: marrone@optilink.dsccc.com (Frank Marrone) Subject: Re: 5.0 cooling system upgrade To: Scott.Griffith@Eng.Sun.COM (Scott Griffith, Sun Microsystems Lumpyware) > temps. Wonder if Omega makes any TC gaskets for the 14mm tapered-seat > plugs, and how many third-world countries I'd have to bankrupt to get > some? At least, it would give some rough measure of hole-to-hole Well if you really wanted to spend some bucks, how about a thermal imager? You could point the darned thing at the motor and see all sorts of temperature related stuff. We have got one here at work but the damn thing only registers to about 100 centigrade. I tried real hard to get my boss to spring for the 200 centigrade adaptor when we bought it but he didn't buy the bit about happy motorheads being more productive electronic engineers. I have thought that some sort of IR attenuator might be used though, hmmm... Date: Thu, 07 Jul 1994 22:05:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: Re: 5.0 cooling system upgrade To: fordnatics@freud.arc.nasa.gov -> (which are left partially open with the stock gasket), restricting -> the upper core holes to 7/32", the lowers to 1/16", and opening up You can play with 1/16" holes on a race motor, but for a street motor the holes are going to gunk up after a few thousand miles. 7/32 would probably work OK, but anything smaller then 1/8" will get blocked with spooge even if you run rust inhibitor or antifreeze. -> Damn! Now that I look at it, Aircraft Spruce has the Westach plug -> gasket thermocouples for $12.25 each. I might even be able to afford Now that's *interesting*. Pretty soon you're going to have more instrumentation than motor... Date: Wed, 13 Jul 1994 15:13:33 -0400 From: acr@btdacr.med.navy.mil (Charlie Richardson) Subject: Cooling To: asedan@pms706.pms.ford.com I would like to hear some discussion about engine cooling in AmerSedan cars. Like most Camaros (and Mustangs I hear), engine temps run consistently at 260-270+ in oil, and 220-240 water. Is this what we must live with? I just changed my stock radiator for a Griffin super 4-core, and got virtually no improvement in temps. I use an electric fan in the stock location, with no effect while racing whether it is on or off. I have an oil cooler in the airstream to the radiator, facing down to catch the air sweeping up in front of the stock undercar air dam. Is the stock water pump the problem? Should the water be moving faster or slower? Should the water hoses to the heater be blocked? (That is apparently legal in AS). Any help out there? (I also use RedLine Water Wetter). Date: Wed, 13 Jul 1994 16:14:48 -0400 From: bkelley@pms706.pms.ford.com (Brian Kelley) Subject: Re: Cooling To: acr@btdacr.med.navy.mil [ I was going to send this directly to Charlie, but perhaps some of this will be useful to others ] Hi Charlie, I think you will find many answers to your cooling questions by carefully studying Smokey's book _Power Secrets_. I did not notice your air dam when I saw your car. They are very important on a Mustang (and I'm certain on the Camaro as well). Hal Baer (who has been running a A group World Challenge Mustang for 3 years now) reports that removing the small dam on a LX Mustang will increase coolant temps at the track by 10 to 20 degrees. By keeping the air out from under the car you force more air into the radiator inlet. There has been some discussion along these lines on the fordnatics list. One important thing to determine is how hot the coolant is at various locations. What is the radiator exit temperature? How hot is the coolant going into the radiator? Where is your current temp sensor mounted? One big concern is steam pocket formation in the block and heads and getting all of the air out of the system. Smokey's approach is to remove the water from the front of the heads. I suspect that would not be legal in AS. One thing to definitely consider are plugging some of the coolant passages in the deck of the block. This will re-route some of the coolant flow and can improve the head cooling situation. Your stock water pump probably isn't helping the situation. On the Mustang it is fairly standard to slow down the pump to speeds more consistent with the original design (street cars don't spend much time between 4,000 and 6,000) to prevent cavitation. This is done using pulleys (which are legal). An aftermarket pump would probably be a very good idea. I don't see anything in the rules that clearly allows this. More study might reveal that this is acceptable (and will you ever have to pull the water pump!?). There are far more performance pumps available for the SBC than the SBF. There is also the issue of thermostats and, if you don't run one, restrictors... I suggest that a very good source of information for you would be any GT1 drivers running the SBC. They've probably got trick plumbing, but they should still be able to help. Also, talk to the Circle Track folks. Most of them run Chevys under restrictive rules. Calling Coleman or Stock Car products would be one place to start. I'm certain this subject has been covered in past issues of Circle Track magazine. This is probably old news, as I don't recall seeing it in the past couple years that I have been reading it. bkelley@pms706.pms.ford.com Date: Wed, 13 Jul 1994 17:20:29 -0400 (EDT) From: lucy!neptune!calvin@srl004.srl.ford.com (Calvin Sanders) Subject: Re: Cooling To: pms706.pms.ford.com!asedan@srl004.srl.ford.com >I would like to hear some discussion about engine cooling in AmerSedan cars. >Like most Camaros (and Mustangs I hear), engine temps run consistently at >260-270+ in oil, and 220-240 water. Is this what we must live with? >I just changed my stock radiator for a Griffin super 4-core, and got >virtually no improvement in temps. I use an electric fan in the stock >location, with no effect while racing whether it is on or off. I have >an oil cooler in the airstream to the radiator, facing down to catch the >air sweeping up in front of the stock undercar air dam. >Is the stock water pump the problem? Should the water be moving faster >or slower? Should the water hoses to the heater be blocked? (That is >apparently legal in AS). I am comming from the other side (Mustang), but I expect this to somewhat be a problem also. I ran an old AS (back in the 70's) that had almost the same engine that my new American Sedan will have. I had cooling problems with that car at first, but solved them. The big differance between the two cars appears to be that my old '70 Mustang had a huge air hole in the front of it that I could just fill up with radiator and be OK. One of the things I learned in my early day working on race cars is that width and height was the first direction to fill for cooling before stacking (either radiators or radiator cores). It was also omportant to make use of every bit of air going through the front of the car. I would not put the oil cooler in a location that the same air went through the oil cooler and the radiator. It reduces the efficiency of both of them. On the old car I used a headlight opening. On this car I plan to use a brake duct opening in the aftermarket spoiler (it has 2 brake ducts on each side) and duct the air to the oil coolers (one small one on each side. Chevy and Ford have made the newer cars have smaller radiator openings for imporved aerodynamics and we can't change that very much. We can change the spoiler and some of the ducting. It is going to make it tough on us to get enough air into the front of the cars. I chose to use the Mustang LX nose plus a spoiler to get better airflow into the radiator. I would not give up any spoiler depth. I have a little vinyl extension on mine that is adjustable so that if I change ride height I can adjust the spoiler lip to the rules limit. This forces as much air as possible into the radiator and creates a low preassure area for the air to get out of the engine compartment. Charlie I'd at least add as much of an extension to the stock under car spoiler, if possible all the way across the car to help get the air out. I am not a beleiver in fans at all except for slow pace laps like some oval tack cars have to do or for autocross cars. I feel that any fan reduces slightly the airflow at racing speeds. Many dispute me, but nobody has been able to convince me that any fan improves things. I'd remove the electric fan and give it a try. With the stock water pumps all we can do is change the speed of the pump. I know that if you over speed the water pump you actually slow down the water flow. Since we typically don't have a water pump dyno and even then don't know what amount of flow the engine really wants. I just assumed that the water pump was designed to work best at about 3000 enigne RPM and work through the pulleys from there. That car had a 6500RPM engine so I slowed the water pump down to a little more than half of the original pulley speed. It seemed to come out good as I never had a cooling problem after that. I plan to have a working heater on my car with a restrictor in the hose to the heater. Mustangs have notoriously weak heater cores. I want to have a working defroster for races in the rain. I went to great pains to not interfere with the defroster ducts with my roll cage tubes behind the dash. I also plan to plumb in an overflow recovery tank that has a "T" fitting and a one way valve on the heater hose on the suction side of the water pump. Also make sure that you can fill you cooling system completely. Put a bleded valve of some sort at the highest point in the cooling system and also where a good air pocket might form. I have installed one on each side of the intake manifold to bleed air/coolant from the heads. Since I can modify the intake this is legal as I see it. Has anyone else tried Mecca's (or any other) PG coolant in their cooling systems? They have one system that includes a spearator tank, special caps, and the coolant that would be AS legal I guess (correct me if I'm wrong please). It was on my list to look into later when I ran out of other things to do with the car. Smokey Yunick was helpful to me. I wrote several letters to him about this. A couple of my questions were answered in Circle Track and all of the others he answered directly to me. He knows a great deal on this subject and is willing to help. If anyone writes to him be sure to explain what the car is and explain all of the limits. He will answer you. Smokey told me that adjusting the water pump speed is the way you should adjust water temps of your car. If you get the speed in the ball park where you are not messing up the pump speed efficiency then get several pulleys that change the speed maybe 5% and adjust the temp with these pulleys. On hotter days speed it up a little and on cooler days slow it down. I never got that good, but I did get my car to where it always ran in the 200-210F range. He said that I should have aimed for 210-220F for a little better HP, but I was close. Date: Sat, 16 Jul 1994 13:34:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: SBF cooling revisited To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov I've been poking about in my parts pile and my reference books, and have discovered that Ford has done quite a few variations in the head and block cooling passages. The 289s had steam holes along the top edge of the block. These were deleted in the 302. The 351W got a steam hole at each end, and the triangular core holes were shifted up and over from between the bores to alongside the top head bolts. I don't have all the head water patterns sorted out yet. Date: Sun, 17 Jul 1994 08:32:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: SBF cooling revisited To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov -> and block cooling passages. The 289s had steam holes along the top -> edge of the block. These were deleted in the 302. ... and now I've seen a 302 with the steam holes. Blah. Date: Mon, 18 Jul 1994 08:24:32 -0700 From: Scott.Griffith@Eng.Sun.COM (Scott Griffith, Sun Microsystems Lumpyware) Subject: Re: SBF cooling revisited To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov On Jul 17, Dave Williams wrote: > -> and block cooling passages. The 289s had steam holes along the top > -> edge of the block. These were deleted in the 302. > > ... and now I've seen a 302 with the steam holes. Blah. Right. This is why the new Edelbrock aluminum heads have that nifty semicircular arc milled into the deck surface that sweeps out from the top edge steam hole down to the "normal" 302 steam hole location. They didn't cast in any water passage close enough to just drill into, so they use the deck instead. Seems to me that that pretty much _guarantees_ steam bubble entrapment in the old 289s and whatever 302s have the holes there, but it'll be pretty small bubbles, and they'll percolate down, into the heads, and out quickly enough. Still, I can't help but think that that is your basic non-optimal solution. Oh, well. The wonders of CNC mills... Date: Mon, 18 Jul 1994 18:13:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: Re: SBF cooling revisited To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov -> Seems to me that that pretty much _guarantees_ steam bubble -> entrapment in the old 289s and whatever 302s have the holes there, That's why Baud invented the twist drill shortly after the Holy Hand Grenade. I've seen photos of the Edelbrock heads and I'm not entirely happy with their semicircular water passage either. Of course, a little Devcon would take care of it if required. I should be able to get by the local machine shop tomorrow and pick up that freebie 5.0 head. Then I'll have lots of fun gnawing on it with the milling machine. BTW, do you have an extra 5.0 front cover you'd part with cheap? I have a large assortment of 351W, 289, 302, and Baud-knows-what covers, but they're all for left hand pumps. Date: Thu, 21 Jul 1994 13:31:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: overheating revisited To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov I finally made it down to pick up my freebie cylinder head. It's perfect - a 1988 5.0. I didn't take it home, as the shop guy offered to acid dip it for free. I'll have to pick it up tomorrow. He was working on a set of 289 heads, so I dropped the 5.0 head on the bench and did a comparison. Mama mia, I didn't realize Ford had done so much. The 5.0 ports are much bigger, particularly in the bowl area, though they're not much different at the gasket surface. The water passages were different, of course. The '88 heads also had the heart shaped combustion chamber instead of the bean shaped one. Date: Wed, 27 Jul 1994 07:26:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: 5.0 heads To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov Last Friday I picked up my freebie 5.0 head, then spent from midnight to dawn Saturday morning carving on it with the mill. (got to get some larger cutters!) After a bucket full of cast iron chips I had found the right angle to expose the water jackets. The water stuff will have to wait until I have something to compare it to - working on getting an early 289 head now - but I was quite interested as successive cuts revealed the air drillings to the exhaust ports. Most engines put them outside, where they corrode or get in the way. Ford packages them conveniently inside the head, which is probably cheaper too. Looking at it, it doesn't look like a good idea. Each time an exhaust valve opens the entire passage (about 3/8 dia) is filled with hot exhaust. Lots of nice surface area to move heat from the exhaust to the water jacket. Also, drainback oil from the head runs about 1/8" right over the drilling, making sure every possible BTU of heat is stuffed into the water and oil. If I was having overheating problems and smog checks weren't a concern, I might hammer a rod into the passage to block it off. If I was feeling a bit more particular, that passage would make a dandy coolant pipe. Tap and plug the drillings to the exhaust ports, then drill through to the water jacket at selected points, and either pump in cool water or pull off hot water as your whims and results dictate. You could route the air pump output to tubes welded in the headers or pressed into the exhaust manifolds like most other cars do, and that'd take care of smog unless you had a problem with the visual inspection. Date: Wed, 27 Jul 1994 21:13:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: more head games To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov I wound up putting the head back on the mill and going back with a 1/2" endmill to open up the areas near the water outlets on the manifold face. For some reason the metal was much thicker there. A few more interesting facts have emerged: #1: when the head is mounted on a block much of its water jacket volume . is trapped air. I'll have some actual measurements shortly. #2: the water jacket is not symmetrical. The flow pattern will be . MUCH different depending on which side the head is on! The wet . flow tests will be interesting. #3: I don't know if the injection manifolds use the exhaust heat . crossover or not, but not only does it mess up that particular . exhaust port, it's another large surface area to transfer exhaust . heat into the water jacket #4: the exhaust ports themselves have a bare minimum of contact with . water, hugging the floor and moving right out the side of the . head. Together the four of them are probably about the same area . as the exhaust heat crossover, maybe twice the area of the air . injection drilling #5: there's LOTS of meat for opening up the exhaust ports, but rumor . has it there's not much flow to be gained that way. The intake . ports won't take as much grinding. I'll make some measurements. #6: since the intake floor has water under it, you can't do much to . resculpture the shortside radius. With Dart, TFS, Edelbrock, or . other thick-deck heads, you'd be able to grind down all the way . to the head gasket. #7: the head bolts go through a relatively thin upper deck (about 1/8") . and down cylinders to the deck, which is 1/4 to 3/8". There's no . apparent effort to spread the load at all! #8: believe it or not, the cast iron head is actually sort of springy. . I just had it clamped over a piece of 1x4 to prop it up for the . first few cuts. It would visibly bend as I tightened the clamps, . then spring back after I released it. I checked it with a . straightedge and it was OK. I was bending it at least 1/8"! #9: I'm not sure how the spring/rocker load will affect things. . Looks like the stud girdle guys were right. Further investigation . will have to wait for another head, which I'll saw into sections . on the bandsaw. This is becoming interesting, y'know? I'd like to take some photographs of the inside of the head before I put the Plexiglas cover on. Right now (even after two nights in the acid tank) the inside is sort of a grungy yellow color. I'm not sure how good the contrast will be with ordinary 35mm film. I don't know whether to try painting the inside a different color or just try black and white, which would be easier to run through a scanner. BTW, the head was a freebie from Friendly Auto Parts, here in Jacksonville. Binswanger Glass also cut me a piece of 19-3/4 x 5-1/4 x 1/4 clear Plexiglas for free. Friendly also donated a 302 block and timing cover. I just love it when a plan comes together... Date: Thu, 28 Jul 1994 11:35:51 -0700 From: Scott.Griffith@Eng.Sun.COM (Scott Griffith, Sun Microsystems Lumpyware) Subject: Re: more head games To: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams), fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov On Jul 27, Dave Williams wrote: > #1: when the head is mounted on a block much of its water jacket volume > . is trapped air. I'll have some actual measurements shortly. Excellent news, and not at all surprising. A most useful bit of data would be a drill location for the ends of the head that would allow a hole to be drilled and tapped, perhaps 1/8"NPT, to install a small bore bleed line (like 3AN or 3/16" hard line) to a high-mounted cooling system swirl pot. A line from each head, the rear coolant crossover (that could also be the "calibrated leak" to assure coolant movement back there), and each radiator tank routed to the pot, with a large-bore return to the pump inlet, would provide a most excellent self-bleeding cooling system. No rocket science there, except for calibrating the leak at the rear crossover (to acommodate less-than-optimal stock head gasket coolant flow). The good thing to know would be where to drill to catch the high point of the air pocket in the end of the head casting, without accidentally intersecting Something Important. > #2: the water jacket is not symmetrical. The flow pattern will be > . MUCH different depending on which side the head is on! The wet > . flow tests will be interesting. Oh, joy. But the heads themselves are asymmetrical, so why shouldn't the flow be gshtupfed as well? > #3: I don't know if the injection manifolds use the exhaust heat > . crossover or not, but not only does it mess up that particular > . exhaust port, it's another large surface area to transfer exhaust > . heat into the water jacket Yes. And in the 5.0s, it dumps heat into the EGR passage that winds all the friggin' way up to the EGR spacer/throttle body, at least when the valve is open. Luckily, for fullbore operation, it isn't, but you can still give the whole manifold a pretty righteous heatsoak sitting at idle for a while. > #7: the head bolts go through a relatively thin upper deck (about 1/8") > . and down cylinders to the deck, which is 1/4 to 3/8". There's no > . apparent effort to spread the load at all! Sounds familiar. One wonders if it might be possible to drill, install, and weld deck-to-deck compression posts in a few strategic locations to get a bit of deck reinforcement. If the upper deck is that thin, there's not one hell of a lot of benefit to trying to beef it externally. Or maybe scallop-grinding it (deliberate non-planarity, with a few thou releif at the head bolts, to help maintain compression of the gasket in the unsupported free span)... Stop me, I'm getting sucked into turd-polishing mode! That does lead to one other point, though. Maybe after all is said and done, you could find the point in the compresson deck that's the thinnest, so that the blower guys who stil want to run stock heads can sonic check for the thickest decks due to core shift. > #9: I'm not sure how the spring/rocker load will affect things. > . Looks like the stud girdle guys were right. Further investigation > . will have to wait for another head, which I'll saw into sections > . on the bandsaw. Good data there. I'd always wondered just how much meat the studs really had to grab onto, what with core shift and all. > This is becoming interesting, y'know? By definition, "test until failure" always is. At least, the shrapnel and puddles left behind make for interesting war stories. Date: Thu, 28 Jul 1994 13:34:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: Re: more head games To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov -> >#1: when the head is mounted on a block much of its water jacket -> volume is trapped air. I'll have some actual measurements shortly. > I worried about this each time I changed coolant in my each > of my three 302s. I wonder if one just blows the air out with steam > the first few times one warms up the engine after changing the > coolant. That's a solid "beats me" so far. First we'll see exactly where the air pockets are, then we'll see what can be done about them, if anything. I sold a 302 to a guy in England a few years ago, who put it in a Cobra kit. He mentioned troubles bleeding the air out of the cooling system since the engine sat level in the car instead of inclined back as normal. He said he used a tow truck to lift the front of the car high enough to burp the air out. I said "uh huh." Paul's kind of odd, and it wasn't something I wanted to pursue at $3/minute at the time. -> Keep up the good work, Dave! Your reports are an education -> for all of us out here. Stay tuned, same bat-channel, same bat-time! Date: Fri, 29 Jul 1994 17:55:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: Re: more head games To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov -> Excellent news, and not at all surprising. A most useful bit of data "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?" -> would be a drill location for the ends of the head that would allow a -> hole to be drilled and tapped, perhaps 1/8"NPT, to install a small -> bore bleed line (like 3AN or 3/16" hard line) to a high-mounted That's basically what Ford wound up doing as a service update on the old FE motors. They'd get air pockets, overheat, and crack. So you got a little kit to drill into the head, run some tubing out, and had an air bleed valve. -> The good thing to know would be where to drill to catch the high -> point of the air pocket in the end of the head casting, without -> accidentally intersecting Something Important. It apprears there's Nothing Important to drill into on the 5.0 casting. The bad part is, the places that'd do you the most good to drill into are under the valve cover. It wouldn't be impossible or even impractical, but you'd definitely want a good thread seal and AN hardware in there. Run the lines out a bulkhead fitting at the side, over the exhaust manifold. -> Oh, joy. But the heads themselves are asymmetrical, so why shouldn't -> the flow be gshtupfed as well? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there was plenty of room in there; I was surprised at how they managed to mung up something that looked basically simple to start with. -> Yes. And in the 5.0s, it dumps heat into the EGR passage that winds -> all the friggin' way up to the EGR spacer/throttle body, at least -> when the valve is open. Luckily, for fullbore operation, it isn't, Crap. California does an EGR lift-off test too, don't they? So we're stuck with it. Hmm... -> Sounds familiar. One wonders if it might be possible to drill, -> install, and weld deck-to-deck compression posts in a few strategic -> locations to get a bit of deck reinforcement. If the upper deck is It could be done easily enough to an aluminum head, but iron is a pain. It's not a weld-friendly material. Furnace brazing might work, but I don't know of a place that does it around here. -> it externally. Or maybe scallop-grinding it (deliberate -> non-planarity, with a few thou releif at the head bolts, to help -> maintain compression of the gasket in the unsupported free span)... Now *that* is an interesting idea... but it'd be a real bitch to do without a 3-axis CNC grinder. -> Stop me, I'm getting sucked into turd-polishing mode! Nah, you never know when a day might come that some trick like that might be the best way to solve a particularly bad problem. -> By definition, "test until failure" always is. At least, the shrapnel -> and puddles left behind make for interesting war stories. No shrapnel yet! Lots of iron chips, but we're still talking about bench racing. Starting to get pretty sophisticated, but still bench racing. Date: Tue, 02 Aug 1994 10:25:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: head games II To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov I spent some time out in the shop this morning playing with the cut head. Painted the outside Ford blue, the inside of the water jacket gray primer, what's left of the under-valve-cover area black. Color coordinated, even. More observations: 1) the intake valve guides have about 3/8" of water cooling 2) the exhaust valve guides have about 3/4" of water cooling 3) the guides are only about 9/16-5/8" in diameter, fairly well centered . for castings, but nothing to brag about. A 1/2" OD thickwall bronze . guide would have a fair chance of seeing water. You could probably . get away with it without leaks. I wouldn't want to try a 9/16 OD . guide. Theoretically you could get lots better valve cooling by . letting the new guide contact the coolant, but in my opinion the . top deck isn't thick enough to guarantee a seal. Also, the column . of the cast iron guide is also the support for the valve spring. . With stiff springs and thickwall guides, stuff could move around. . For any OEM Ford castings I build from now on, it's thinwall guides . all the way. 4) Looked hard at the water passages, with the head propped up at 45 . degrees. Getting water *in* the head is no problem. In fact, the . factory jacketing around the spark plug and hot side of the chamber . looks very good to me. I don't see any need at all for external . exhaust-side lines like the Chevy people use, either to put water . in or take it out. 5) With the head angled as on the car, about 25% of the interior - . the areas near the manifold face - is air. I don't see any good . way to completely bleed three air pockets, though you could do a . fair job by tapping inside the valve cover and running lines through . the valve cover rail. Put your trust in Aeroquip, yea mama. I . guess it's no worse than depending on the head, intake, and timing . cover gaskets, but I get antsy about divorced plumbing of any sort. . Baud intended oil and water to go through drillings, not tubes! . The air is on the relatively cool quench side of the chamber and . probably doesn't matter much even in a moderate performance engine, . but that's a fair sized volume of air right near the engine's main . hot spot, in an area you can't bleed. What this means is, any . boiling near the exhaust side will pressurize this volume before . pushing water through the pressure cap. Looks like a built-in . reservoir for air entrainment in the cooling system. I don't yet . know if it *hurts* anything, but it's annoying. Oh, and the air . doesn't get absorbed by the coolant - the head had "ring around the . toilet bowl" in that area before we tanked it. 6) At the deck, what you're looking at is mainly core holes used to . hold the sand cores in place while casting; their use as water . passages is sort of secondary. Oddly, the "freeze plug" locations . don't look like they have much to do with holding the cores. Most . freeze plugs are actually to fill the holes where the sand cores were . held up from outside. 7) Iffen Ah was designing a head gasket, it'd look a lot different . from the ones I've seen so far. I'd block off the front two holes, . the top rear hole, and *all* the top holes. The lower row of holes . needs to be left open - that's your main cooling to the hot side. . You might get away with closing off the lower front hole, but I . would have to experiment first. 8) Getting water *out* of the heads is the problem. The left (driver's . side) head looks OK. I'd still pull water off the back of both heads . if possible - the 5.0 intake makes this relatively easy. The . problem, yea and verily, looks like the right (passenger side) head. . After playing with various schemes to tap water off under the intake . side of the head and run AN hose to the manifold and various other . weirdities, it became apparent that the most improvement for the . least work would be to pop out the freeze plug at the front of the . head and pull water out from there. The port on the manifold face . would probably need to be restricted to make everything work . properly. So that's my first-cut Killer 5.0 Cooling Mod Theory: pull water off the back of the intake and the right front head. Now, since I don't have a 5.0 Fox around to look at, what's in the way of the freeze plug on the passenger side head? I can drill/tap nearby, or just use the original plug opening. Date: Tue, 02 Aug 1994 10:45:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: Ride the Cool Wave To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov Going back to cooling again, I've not been real happy with the generic thermostat. Basically, the thermostat operates in a binary mode - open/closed. There's no reason they can't modulate flow - in fact, the usual wax pellet one does that nicely - but the rush of cold water through the engine slams it shut shortly after it opens. Therefore, the thermostat is usually either open or closed. When the thermostat is closed, things get HOT down around the plugs and exhaust valves. Since there's not much flow through the bypass port, it takes a while before the heat percolates up to the thermostat, which then opens rapidly, dousing the now-overheated parts with cold water. I bet head temps go up and down like a yo-yo. When the thermostat is closed the water pump pulls more power. It's just sitting there spinning its impeller. The pump is sort of a pain in the ass all the way around. Being centrifugal its output isn't greatly related to RPM and it doesn't know about load at all, so you just put a honking big pump on there, bigger than you (hope) ever need, and it sits there sucking 10-15hp and aerating the snot out of your coolant. A sliding-vane pump with a variable speed drive would be nice, or maybe even an electric rubber-star pump or two. The water pump also produces *pressure*, which is what you need to develop flow. I haven't entirely grokked the relationships between pump pressure, thermostat position, and so forth, but it looks like pressure inside the engine might sometimes be considerably more than the radiator cap's rated capacity. This also would change the flow of the pump, since pumps are rated as flow@pressure... and centrifugals are the most notoriously picky of all pump designs concerning back pressure. Some sort of control is necessary to maintain even temperature and fast warmup, but I'd prefer a bypass system that circulated the coolant full-time, moving some through the radiator as required. Now I'm starting to see why some cars run into severe detonation while the temp guage and puke tank keep saying everything's fiiiinneeee.... Date: Tue, 02 Aug 1994 13:46:49 +0800 From: dolan@henries.nsc.com (Rich Dolan) Subject: Re: Ride the Cool Wave To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov, dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us Some interesting comments from Dave about water pumps and cooling in general, things most of us don't ever consider. for instance: > When the thermostat is closed, things get HOT down around the plugs and > exhaust valves. Since there's not much flow through the bypass port, it > takes a while before the heat percolates up to the thermostat, which > then opens rapidly, dousing the now-overheated parts with cold water. > I bet head temps go up and down like a yo-yo. Instead of a power-robbing pump that is always turning and a thermostat that opens and closes with the need for cooling, why not just use an electric pump that is thermostatically controlled via a temp sensor on the cylinder head? It could even use a variable speed electric motor that could regulate flow in response to temp fluctuations. It would eliminate the yo-yo effect of all-or-none type cooling. It would also allow improved cooling at idle since you can just turn the pump faster. In a normal setup, the pump turns the slowest when you need it most.... stuck in traffic on a hot day. Pump speed would not be dictated by eng speed. It would also reduce the aerating effect, and could minimize cavitation that occours on belt driven water pumps at high RPM. Dave also said: > Some sort of control is necessary to maintain even temperature and > fast warmup, but I'd prefer a bypass system that circulated the coolant > full-time, moving some through the radiator as required. By slowing down the flow rather than turning it on or off would minimize hot spots and result in more even cooling. I'd think this would be a welcome addition to motors with aluminum heads and cast iron blocks. I also like Chevys approach to their new LT-1 (I know I mentioned the enemy). They use a reverse flow system, the water cools the heads first, THEN cools the block. In essence it cools the hottest spot first which tends to warm up the coolant before it reaches the cylinders. This evens out the thermal gradients, and allows them to get away with higher compression ratios and probably allows more spark advance without pinging. Makes we wonder if they have to worry about trapped air pockets in those motors. hmmm. Date: Tue, 02 Aug 1994 16:31:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: Re: Ride the Cool Wave To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov -> I also like Chevys approach to their new LT-1 (I know I mentioned the -> enemy). They use a reverse flow system, the water cools the heads -> first, THEN cools the block. In essence it cools the hottest spot -> first which tends to warm up the coolant before it reaches the -> cylinders. This evens out the thermal gradient I'm working part-time for the local Chevy dealer (hey, don't throw that!) and got to poke around a couple of LT1 motors. They've been having quite a bit of warranty trouble with them, mostly due to the cheesy water pump drive arrangement. Chevy likes to make out like the reverse flow is a big deal, though of course it's not any newer than most anything else that comes out. They supposedly did an SAE paper on it, which I'd like to see someday. I'm not an SAE member any more. I still don't like the idea of dumping cold water on the exhaust side of the head. GM is doing it... but I note they're only doing it with aluminum heads. And despite the noise the LT1 and its new 4.3 V8 brother are getting, those engines are only in the Camaro, Corvette, and the top line option in the Impala/Caprice. The trucks and lesser Caprices get the same old post'86 iron motor, two barrel throttle body and conventional cooling. No Tuned Ports for them! The LT1's fancy reverse-flow system looks astonishingly like the cooling system of a 351 Cleveland - dry intake, water going through the deck, except flowing the other way, of course. I maintain that if you have adequate continuous flow, it doesn't really matter which way you pump the water, though reverse flow would probably give you a faster warmup by some small margin. And remember, not much of the Ford's exhaust port is exposed to the water jacket. Date: Wed, 03 Aug 1994 14:55:52 -0500 (CDT) From: tlander1@wt9pn.b21.ingr.com (Tommy Anderson) Subject: Re: Ride the Cool Wave To: dolan@henries.nsc.com (Rich Dolan) > Some interesting comments from Dave about water pumps and cooling in > general, things most of us don't ever consider. > > > When the thermostat is closed, things get HOT down around the plugs and > .................. > Instead of a power-robbing pump that is always turning and a thermostat > that opens and closes with the need for cooling, why not just use an electric > pump that is thermostatically controlled via a temp sensor on the cylinder > head? I had the same thought me-selfsk, Rich..! Seems like anyway to reduce parasitic losses would be wise. Obviously, it would come with its own complications, but it's food for thought. Most of today's cars are so tight under the hood anyway, but it could be engineered in, I guess. Along those same lines, I saw where one of the off-road trucks has an output shaft that extends out from the engine and allows for several accesories to be mounted away from the front of the engine to allow for easy access to the front cover for repairs, etc. I think it might have been Walker Evans truck. Anybody who's wrestled with a water pump should be able to relate to that... [;) Speaking of trucks, I saw in the paper yesterday that Ch*vy trucks were 2.8 times more likely to erupt in fire than Fords in a wreck even when mileage driven was factured in. I guess they're slogan "Winning is Everything" was taken a little too seriously by the designers. [;) Date: Wed, 03 Aug 1994 14:49:15 -0700 From: Scott.Griffith@Eng.Sun.COM (Scott Griffith, Sun Microsystems Lumpyware) Subject: Re: more head games To: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams), fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov On Jul 29, Dave Williams wrote: > -> The good thing to know would be where to drill to catch the high > -> point of the air pocket in the end of the head casting, without > -> accidentally intersecting Something Important. > > It appears there's Nothing Important to drill into on the 5.0 casting. > The bad part is, the places that'd do you the most good to drill into > are under the valve cover. Hmm. Then, howzabout drilling the pockets through the intake manifold face? There really only should be two that I can think of, or _maybe_ three if the rearmost one is awkwardly placed. Then a tubular collector could be welded in place on the intake (fore/aft, perpendicular to the runners), and drilled to match the head vents. It could vent either through a bulkhead union for a swirl pot, or simply dump into the front coolant crossover... Cut some little donuts for O-rings if there's a sealing problem, and you'd have a very tidy setup... I _warned_ you about getting me started turd-polishing... Date: Wed, 03 Aug 1994 17:50:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: Re: more head games To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov -> > The bad part is, the places that'd do you the most good to drill -> into > are under the valve cover. > Hmm. Then, howzabout drilling the pockets through the intake manifold > face? There really only should be two that I can think of, or _maybe_ The problem is, two of the pockets line up nicely with the cast-in recesses for two of the head bolts. They're open to the lifter valley underneath, so sealing would be a problem. Date: Wed, 03 Aug 1994 17:32:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: Re: Ride the Cool Wave To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov -> Keep up the good work! I'm about to start messing with knock sensors -> (like, tonight). Do you have any feel for which cylinder would be -> the most prone, or the first, to detonate? I haven't rigged up a front cover and pump to see if one cylinder bank gets shortchanged yet, but if nothing is seriously off, it looks like the right rear would run the hottest. Date: Wed, 10 Aug 1994 15:19:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: You Got Me Under Pressure To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov I managed to schmooze another cracked head today - this one is a '78 351K head. Already acid dipped, bead blasted, and painted. The rebuilder declined payment, "Take that $(&!*! outta here!" (otherwise known as the Brian Kelley Syndrome...) This one I'm bandsawing crosswise, should be quite photogenic when I get done. One of the local engine shops wanted to know if I could make them a set of Ford torque plates. Sure, I have the mill, no problem. But now that I've opened a head up, it's apparent the average torque plate is probably not as effective as many people think. Bolting a two inch thick slab of cast iron to the top of the block certainly looks impressive, but the deck of a regular head is only a quarter inch thick, with the tubular bolt pillars, part of the chamber, and the outboard bolts putting a very uneven load on the block. No wonder blower motors have gasket trouble! So I've designed a torque plate that should simulate the effects of a real head, at least better than a solid plate. I dropped by the metal place today and ordered the pieces. I'll have to machine some parts, then weld it all up since the torque plates will be hollow weldments. Yee-hah! Are we high tech or what? I'll use them on the stroker 302, then I'll see if I can sell a few. Detroit Gasket did an SAE paper once, on a head gasket they'd made with bunches of strain guages embedded in it, where they could measure gasket loads directly. I'd love to have a toy like that. Date: Thu, 11 Aug 1994 10:45:21 -0400 From: bkelley@pms706.pms.ford.com (Brian Kelley) Subject: Re: You Got Me Under Pressure To: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us > I managed to schmooze another cracked head today - this one is a '78 >351K head. Already acid dipped, bead blasted, and painted. The >rebuilder declined payment, "Take that $(&!*! outta here!" (otherwise >known as the Brian Kelley Syndrome...) Huh? Are you referring to my propensity for vulgarity or that cracked but nicely cleaned and decked 302 block I have? > One of the local engine shops wanted to know if I could make them a set >of Ford torque plates. Sure, I have the mill, no problem. But now that >I've opened a head up, it's apparent the average torque plate is >probably not as effective as many people think. I have long wondered about that. I've tried not to give it too much thought, trying to think of it as something I can't do much about. >So I've designed a torque plate that should >simulate the effects of a real head, at least better than a solid plate. >I dropped by the metal place today and ordered the pieces. I'll have to >machine some parts, then weld it all up since the torque plates will be >hollow weldments. Yee-hah! Are we high tech or what? I'll use them on >the stroker 302, then I'll see if I can sell a few. Neat. The last time I was at Roush (about 1.3 years ago) I saw them doing a valve job on a aluminum Yates big block head (a BB version of the current Ford NASCAR head). They had what looked like a torque plate bolted to the deck of the head while they did the valve seats. My thought on the subject is to basically just hope for the best whe having a regular seasoned block done and chalk the losses off as not very significant. When I have a Good block done (SVO), I'm sure I'll worry more about this. I'll probably have Diamond, or Dan Malek's source do the machine work. And I won't presume to tell those guys how BK thinks it should be done. > Detroit Gasket did an SAE paper once, on a head gasket they'd made with >bunches of strain guages embedded in it, where they could measure gasket >loads directly. I'd love to have a toy like that. That would definitely be the hot ticket. I wonder how much development work the big boys have really done in this area. Probably quite a bit... I'll have to have my friend ask his source at Diamond what they do. I'm still thinking about those SVO C302 heads that will flow 330 cfm per intake port. The price has dropped again and now they're down to $385. They require custom pistons (for the canted valves). These would probably be about the hottest ticket for a killer 331. I think I'm going to hold off and just get my J302's ported and go to a high lift solid roller. Those heads do have stiffening posts and lots of meat for high compression. I suspect a torque plate to model such a head would be different than that required for a normal production Cleveland head. What about Windsor vs. Cleveland in general? Do you think different torque plate designs should be used? Brian Date: Thu, 11 Aug 1994 09:13:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: Ride the Cool Wave To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov I found an article with photos of cross-sections of an Edelbrock Performer head. If the photos are of a production head and not some odd prototype I'm appalled. The head is damned near solid, with a tiny irregularly shaped crack on the exhaust side - the crack is where ALL the coolant goes; there's no other passage. All the coolant from the head AND block has to go through there. Remember I was wondering if the aftermarket heads had different water jackets, and how that would affect water flow? The port layout looks fine, but the Edelbrock heads are running damned near dry. Well, I guess it saved money on sand cores... Date: Thu, 11 Aug 1994 14:55:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: Re: You Got Me Under Pressure To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov -> >known as the Brian Kelley Syndrome...) > > Huh? Are you referring to my propensity for vulgarity or that > cracked but nicely cleaned and decked 302 block I have? Yes. You're not the only one to float that boat, though. -> current Ford NASCAR head). They had what looked like a torque plate -> bolted to the deck of the head while they did the valve seats. Yep. B-H-J sells them, and probably others. They're also useful for pressure checking the heads. -> That would definitely be the hot ticket. I wonder how much -> development work the big boys have really done in this area. -> Probably quite a bit... I'll have to have my friend ask his source at -> Diamond what they do. I wish I'd paid more attention to those papers, long ago. Or just kept them. I could've cared less about any damned gaskets back then. -> I'm still thinking about those SVO C302 heads that will flow 330 cfm -> per intake port. The price has dropped again and now they're down to -> $385. They require custom pistons (for the canted valves). These -> would probably be about the hottest ticket for a killer 331. I think No problem, really. You have to have custom pistons anyway, or custom rods, or both. Arias wants about the same price no matter what, probably most of the other piston companies would be similar. -> compression. I suspect a torque plate to model such a head would be -> different than that required for a normal production Cleveland head. I'm almost certain of it. Looking at that Edelbrock head cross-section, I'm certain an optimum torque plate for it would be different from a plain iron 5.0 head. I have a Cleveland head available for carving up, though I hate to ruin a 4v Cleveland head. Date: Sat, 13 Aug 1994 09:57:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: Bandsaw Boogie To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov I bandsawed my fresh clean '78 351W head into pieces-parts yesterday. The internal jacketing looks identical to the '88 5.0 head. I may have a line on a '65 289 head; if it is the same too, I will assume all Ford Windsor heads are the same inside. Actually, my bandsaw lacked about an inch of being able to take the head, so I had a local welding shop do it. "You don't really want to cut this up, do you?" "Sure, right where the dabs of yellow paint are." "Why do you want to do that?" The sectioned pieces look really bizarre. If nothing else they'll make some killer .GIF files. Date: Sun, 14 Aug 1994 22:18:36 -0400 (EDT) From: "John J. Stempien" Subject: too hot heads ? To: fordnatics@freud.arc.nasa.gov > I found an article with photos of cross-sections of an Edelbrock >Performer head. If the photos are of a production head and not some odd >prototype I'm appalled. The head is damned near solid, with a tiny >irregularly shaped crack on the exhaust side - the crack is where ALL >the coolant goes; there's no other passage. All the coolant from the >head AND block has to go through there. Remember I was wondering if the >aftermarket heads had different water jackets, and how that would affect >water flow? The port layout looks fine, but the Edelbrock heads >are running damned near dry. Well, I guess it saved money on >sand cores... question...does that mean they will make the motor run hot, or will it cause steam to develop within those 'tiny' irregularly shaped cracks within the head ? Two of my friends are running these heads on their late model 5.0L's and have had no problems running cool. Both have Vortechs running over 10lbs boost with the heads Felpro Loc-Wire'd and the other O-ringed. One is now only raced at the track, currently at 11.3, the other is driven daily, in traffic, A/C on and has run as quick as 11.9. I'd say Edelbrock has done their homework as far as water passages since niether has noticed a change in their mech temp guages and three row (non aluminum) radiators. Yes, these are the heads I have elected to install on a 302 15psi blown nitrous assisted LX notch. Still waiting for the motor...been 3 months plus many sleepless nights. Date: Mon, 15 Aug 1994 10:00:36 -0400 (EDT) From: Dan Malek Subject: Re: You Got Me Under Pressure To: Dave Williams >One of the local engine shops wanted to know if I could make them a set >of Ford torque plates........ >.......it's apparent the average torque plate is >probably not as effective as many people think....... Geeze, Dave, you are giving away all of the secrets :-)! A torque plate can be a real big joke, and is sometimes worse than not using one at all. Another "secret".....Bolt the heads on the block, along with the intake and main caps, then use the bore gauge from the bottom of the engine. Carefully map the bores, then remove the stuff and bolt on a set of torque plates. It too often looks very different, but if you know the head design (and with the bore maps) you can fudge around with hardened washers and different bolt tension to get the bore maps to match. Also, aluminum heads will pull on a block differently than cast iron, and aluminum seems to match the torque plate better than iron heads, at least with my small sample. Now you know why a really good (and proper) block blueprint job costs so much money. It takes forever to fit, measure, and adjust stuff. With hand selected racing blocks, you can almost "mass produce" the blueprint job, but with factory blocks there is just too much variation, so it takes an equally long time to blueprint subsequent blocks. Date: Mon, 15 Aug 1994 18:39:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: too hot heads ? To: fordnatics@freud.arc.nasa.gov -> I'd say Edelbrock has done their homework as far as water passages -> since niether has noticed a change in their mech temp guages and It was a discussion about some of the blower cars at the track that started this whole thing. Remember, what you see on the water temp guage is just that - water temp. You don't really *care* what the water temp is; you're mainly interested in the temp near the spark plug and exhaust seat. Date: Tue, 16 Aug 1994 11:30:52 -0400 (EDT) From: Dan Malek Subject: Re: You Got Me Under Pressure To: Dave Williams > That's how I'm planning to see how closely my plates match the way the >heads tweak the bores. Too bad the main webs make it >impractical to bore/hone from the bottom. And here I thought the old >timers were in love with the integral head/barrel because it saved them >some machining and a gasket... We keep trying to figure out how to bore an engine this way, and then end up in a big discussion about is it really worth the effort. So what if you are off a few thousandths in the bore, what does that really mean? So you spend a year building the perfect engine, then you get to the race track, get a bad tire or have some other mechanical failure, and it is all for nothing. I have kind of changed my attitude toward building that perfect engine. We have arrived at a track with an engine we were quite ashamed of, but the chassis expert had the car hooked so well we just blew everyone away. There are just too many variables, and I am happy to have an engine that is competitive and will last through the race. Or, to have an engine on the street that I can rely upon, but still have some fun with. It does not take much on the street to be the best. Yeah, there is that personal satisfaction of having done it "right", but it is really hard to find others that appreciate that. Date: Tue, 16 Aug 1994 11:19:33 -0400 (EDT) From: Dan Malek Subject: Re: You Got Me Under Pressure To: sdbartho@cca.rockwell.com <....Cylinder bore mapping....> >How extensively do you map the bores, or is that a "secret"? How many >data points do you use before you're satisfied that you have enough data ? Well, the more the better, but the minimum is top, middle, and bottom of piston travel. Then parallel and perpendicular to the crankshaft. You end up with a minimum of six measurements, but we often add a 45 degree "X" to these which doubles the measurements. Date: Tue, 16 Aug 1994 15:25:12 -0400 (EDT) From: Dan Malek Subject: Re: too hot heads ? To: Dave Williams >-> I'd say Edelbrock has done their homework as far as water passages >-> since niether has noticed a change in their mech temp guages and > It was a discussion about some of the blower cars at the track that >started this whole thing. > Remember, what you see on the water temp guage is just that - water >temp. You don't really *care* what the water temp is; you're mainly >interested in the temp near the spark plug and exhaust seat. I was not able to comment on this yesterday, but Dave is right. Just because you don't see the water temperature rising doesn't mean things are OK. The water temperature is measured up in the intake manifold, where the water has reached some average temperature, and that single gauge isn't really telling you anything. You are interested in the heat distribution of the head, and if water passages are poorly designed it may look like everything is OK, but it really isn't. The heat is going somewhere, especially with a supercharged engine. With aluminum heads, it gets dissipated to the air, but a lot more of it goes to heat up the oil. Oil temperature is a very critical piece of information about an engine, along with water temperature. When we use a new head for the first time, on the dyno it gets lots of thermocouples, and we also use a laser IR pyrometer. This saves drilling lots of holes for thermocouples, and is fairly accurate. Without this you don't have a clue. In the race car we sometimes run as many as four water temperature gauges (at least during practice). One in the back of each head, one in the crossover, and one in the radiator. All we look for is the lack of air pockets and that water is flowing, which is about all you can tell at that point. Date: Tue, 16 Aug 1994 19:02:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: Re: You Got Me Under Pressure To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov -> We keep trying to figure out how to bore an engine this way, and then -> end up in a big discussion about is it really worth the effort. So -> what if you are off a few thousandths in the bore, what does that -> really mean? The leakdown tester will tell you. You do have a point, though. The cylinder walls are thin, and between combustion pressure and rod loading they probably move around enough on their own to make any minor boring error moot. Still, a round bore means there's one less variable. -> So you spend a year building the perfect engine, then -> you get to the race track, get a bad tire or have some other -> mechanical failure, and it is all for nothing. I have kind of -> changed my attitude True. It might be perfect on the stand, but as soon as you fire it up it's on its way to oblivion. Long ago I seldom had a motor together more than a few thousand miles before I tore it back down to change it, repair it, or sell it. I'm trying to think more of longevity now. Date: Wed, 17 Aug 1994 09:53:31 -0500 (CDT) From: king@khis.com (Robert King) Subject: Re: You Got Me Under Pressure To: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) > The leakdown tester will tell you. You do have a point, though. The > cylinder walls are thin, and between combustion pressure and rod loading > they probably move around enough on their own to make any minor boring > error moot. Still, a round bore means there's one less variable. Forgive my ignorance - I havn't machined a thing in my life. It seems that what you all are getting at is that a better way is needed to simulate the load and distortion imposed on a block when a head is torqued to spec. Apparently not having anything on the block when boring is not perfect, and having a torque plate on it is better. Would it be possible to bore the block from the *bottom* with a head installed? I'm not familiar with the equipment, but it seems that having an actual head installed would deform the block in just the way you want. Perhaps the compustion chamber of the head could be machined to accept whatever requirements the boring tool needed for clearance. Of course this would ruin the head for actual use, but it may still deform the block better than a torque plate. A well-equipped machine shop could even keep several different castings of heads about for this use depending on which head the customer would be using. (One for Edelbrock heads, one for Dart, one for GT-40, etc...) Date: Wed, 17 Aug 1994 19:12:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: Re: You Got Me Under Pressure To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov -> Forgive my ignorance - I havn't machined a thing in my life. It -> seems that what you all are getting at is that a better way is needed -> to simulate the load and distortion imposed on a block when a head is -> torqued to spec. Right. You're talking about 75 to 125 pounds of torque on the head bolts, which does weird things to both the head and block deck surfaces. As a side effect it pulls the bores slightly out of round. -> and having a torque plate on it is better. Would it be possible to -> bore the block from the *bottom* with a head installed? I'm not -> familiar with the equipment, but it seems that having an actual head -> installed would deform the block in just the way you want. A real head would be best, and boring from the bottom would be best. You've got the right idea. Unfortunately the cylinder banks are offset and the main webs get in the way. Conventional boring equipment also locates off the deck surface, or the top of the torque plate. The boring head would also likely not clear the web. Now, you *could* do the job with a mill and a standard machine-shop style boring head, just flip the block the right direction and bolt it to the table, *but* a standard Bridgeport or clone doesn't have enough spindle travel to do the job. My Gorton mill has 6" of travel, which is just slightly too little to do it. Mills larger than a standard Bridgeport are almost exponentially greater in price. A jig borer or big horizontal mill might do the job. Hmm... On the other hand, if I dink around with weldment torque plates long enough I ought to be able to come up with something that'll work with a standard boring bar. I might be out a few bucks, but it'd be much cheaper in the long run. Date: Thu, 18 Aug 1994 09:50:00 -0500 (CDT) From: king@khis.com (Robert King) Subject: Re: You Got Me Under Pressure To: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) > A jig borer or big horizontal mill might do the job. Hmm... On the > other hand, if I dink around with weldment torque plates long enough I > ought to be able to come up with something that'll work with a standard > boring bar. I might be out a few bucks, but it'd be much cheaper in the > long run. How about boring holes through the head, turning it into a torque plate. Kind of heavy-handed, but that may even be better than a solid plate of steel (then, maybe not!) How do folks like Robert Yates bore their blocks? (Or is that an Industry Secret?) Date: Thu, 18 Aug 1994 16:33:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: Re: You Got Me Under Pressure To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov -> How about boring holes through the head, turning it into a torque -> plate. Kind of heavy-handed, but that may even be better than a -> solid plate of steel (then, maybe not!) The perimeter of the chamber loads the bore some. If you cut it away it will change things. What I'm trying to do with the built up plates is to duplicate the same distortion I get with a standard head. -> How do folks like Robert Yates bore their blocks? (Or is that an -> Industry Secret?) I wouldn't mind knowing that myself. Date: Wed, 24 Aug 1994 16:54:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: Re: Heads To: fords@freud.arc.nasa.gov -> Dave Williams recently dissected a set. Guess what UPS just brought to my door, in a 50 pound box marked "World Products?" Guess what I'm going to do with it? Date: Thu, 25 Aug 1994 09:58:20 -0500 (CDT) From: "Brian St. Denis" Subject: Re: Heads To: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) (Dave Williams) > -> Dave Williams recently dissected a set. > > Guess what UPS just brought to my door, in a 50 pound box marked "World > Products?" > > Guess what I'm going to do with it? This post does not meet the spec for appropriate mail to the Mustangs list. If you think that bothers me, think again :-) Waht heads are we talking about here? I've been very busy lately and haven't been able to keep up with all the different threads. I assueme this isn't a head to be cut open is it? Date: Thu, 08 Sep 1994 13:02:17 -0400 From: bkelley@pms706.pms.ford.com (Brian Kelley) Subject: Re: 351W To: fordnatics@freud.arc.nasa.gov Dave Williams writes: >-> 1) The block is a fresh rebuild (0.030 over) but I want to bore it >-> .040 over with a tourque plate. > > I was formerly a torque plate believer, but after sawing up some heads >I'm no longer as concerned as I once was. That one or two inch slab of >cast iron won't do much to simulate the load of a real head. And then >it depends on whether you use Ford or aftermarket heads, too. It may not simulate the heads accurately, but the fastener torque most certainly changes the shape of the bore. That is one of the problems with the 5.0 and why you won't find it in new cars after '96. The blowby caused by bore distortion results in unaccpetable emissions. This (and better clamp load) is why the head bolts on the 4.6L are so much longer. --- bkelley@pms706.pms.ford.com Date: Thu, 08 Sep 1994 20:09:00 +0000 From: dave.williams@chaos.lrk.ar.us (Dave Williams) Subject: Re: 351W To: fordnatics@freud.arc.nasa.gov -> It may not simulate the heads accurately, but the fastener torque -> most certainly changes the shape of the bore. True, but the torque plate is only useful when it duplicates the distortion cause by your particular head. The load paths on the stock Ford heads suck road kill through a straw. Does anyone have a good digitizer? Pretty soon I'll have photos of all this stuff; maybe chucko will allocate some space for it at the ftp site.