Chevy smallblock ???? (Page 1 of 2)

CSB have a fatal flaw.  They froth the oil in the pan.  In most other motorsports, you can take corrective actions with larger pans, windage trays, etc.  This lack of lubrication manifests itself as overheating and not spun bearings so it's hard to diagnosis.  As a side note, most CSB cooling systems are hopelessly undersized. 

So the cars will be driving along, making passes, having fun, then when a yellow flag comes out he cars temp starts to spike quickly.  Turning the engine off will only make this worse, so they overheat and warp the heads and blow headgaskets.

So are you saying that a windage tray and larger pan doesn't work to minimize oil frothing with a CSB, or just that the budgetary considerations of this particular series rule them out?

We were told our SBC had no chance of lasting in the race...especially with the auto tranny. Its a 305TBI w/ 700R4.  We ran MAM (Omaha in August) without a single problem. Running all out would cause the temp to slowly climb, then we would back out of it for about 3 laps and the temp would be right back to normal. We have an aftermarket (cheapo) gauge to watch coolant temp. Our trans temp never saw over 220F.

We are using the stock radiator. We are using a very large aftermarket trans cooler we pulled from a suburban at the junk yard. We are using a trans cooler from a explorer for an oil cooler, and a power steering cooler off of an F250. Needless to say, we went borderline overboard with junk yard cooler and it payed off.

The other thing helping us is that auto trany. It shifts at 4k rpm. When you are making less than 150hp and shifting that low, there is less heat to reject out of the system. I bet our setup couldn't handle 300hp, but it doesn't need to. We weren't as fast as some on the straights even with the V8, but haveing zero issues makes for alot of fun out on track.

Its a Firebird. We are actually going to rearrange our coler setup a little to see if we can improve it for the next race. Oh, the other thing is the fan. We made a fan shroud out of a refrigerator door and had a fan good enough to keep some good airflow in there. We also made a pretty stout airdam (out of an oven drip tray) to draw in fresh air at the bottom. Check out the pictures below.Like I said, we went OCD on the cooling stuff with coolers, airflow, and gauges. It worked.

Here's a like to a couple galleries. One is during the build, and one is at MAM.
http://picasaweb.google.com/LandsharkMZ3/BigOilRacing
http://picasaweb.google.com/LandsharkMZ … fOmaha2010

I think if most guys would go the low rpm route, their v8 would last a long time on track.

The guys across from us were shifting a JY (200 K miles?) motor at over 6000 rpm.  No wonder it broke.  Granted, a screaming V8 makes a great sound, but you've got to be realistic.

We fluxuate between 20-30psi on track. At least that what our cheap mechanical gauge says.

We had an aluminum radiator left over from a wrecked circle track car and a big transmission cooler for our turbo 350 automatic trans. Everything else was stock. We ran the car at two events and the motor ran great until the radiator cap let go in one race and in another race spun a bearing after a guy tried going 100mph in 2nd not drive and over revving the motor.

We also ran a truck oil filter and overfilled the oil by one quart. It seemed to keep any heat issues away from our car. You also want a good shroud for the fan that seals well to the radiator. Ideal spacing for the fan is half in, half out of the shroud.

With that all said, we're switching from our SBC car to a Chevette because the fuel mileage flat out sucked in the V8. We burnt through 250 gallons of gas at the last race and that got old.

Just yesterday I was trying to talk my team into putting a Ford diesel truck motor into our firebird. It would be an unholy union, but hilarious. We were afraid hitting the brakes would cause us to do a nose stand in every braking zone.

Our 305 is going into it's 3rd race, including one full 24-hr. Agree with everyone on the cooling, we're running the heavy-duty dual fans from an IROC.

street use =/= endurance racing.  there are plenty of 20-year-old Hondas running around out there with perfectly fine head gaskets, but hammer that same engine on a track for 9 hours straight and the results are often quite different.

i've run 2 races in a firebird and it has failed to finish twice, but neither was engine related.  shifting at less than 4000rpm because the power drops off the map probably helped

I believe there is a secret way to make SBC's cool very much better but I don't think it's Lemons legal and I wouldn't want to be accused of even thinking of creative rule interpretation...