Engine Masters Challenge 2010 Coming Next Week: BangShifters Thrashing on an Entry

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: Engine Masters Challenge 2010 Coming Next Week: BangShifters Thrashing on an Entry

YA i GUESS YOU DON'T NEED TO SLOW THE BURN WHEN THERE IS NO AIR

You must buy into higher pump gas octanes are slower burning. It has more to do with lower combustion pressure because the lower air density.

all I've ever read.. is it slows the flame front and abnormal combustion,
but again what do I know..school me

Formulation of the fuel and octane rating can be indepently changed. Racing fuel, depending on the type can burn just as fast as 87 octane or slower. The difference in burn rate between 87-92 octane is minimal. There are lots of different gasolines out there with a variety of properties.

[BBR]

Re: Engine Masters Challenge 2010 Coming Next Week: BangShifters Thrashing on an Entry

BACK ON TOPIC

;D

What happened at the Engine Masters, guys?!?!?!

[SpiderGearsMan]

Re: Engine Masters Challenge 2010 Coming Next Week: BangShifters Thrashing on an Entry

thats racin '

[IRONHEAD]

Re: Engine Masters Challenge 2010 Coming Next Week: BangShifters Thrashing on an Entry

BACK ON TOPIC

;D

What happened at the Engine Masters, guys?!?!?!

D/G CALLING D/G

[dieselgeek]

Re: Engine Masters Challenge 2010 Coming Next Week: BangShifters Thrashing on an Entry

BACK ON TOPIC

;D

What happened at the Engine Masters, guys?!?!?!

I got home about an hour ago. I'm tired!

So, let's see - shortest possible version:

We couldn't get the dyno's water supply to fill our engine and wasted 4.5 minutes of our allotted 5 minutes prep time, dicking around with the dyno's sketchy water supply.

The water pump on the engine never primed.

We started it, ran it, as rich as we could with as little timing as possible, it survived 1.5 warmup pulls before catastrophic overheating, killing the motor and DNFing the team.


I'm working on posting pics, etc. Probably be tomorrow.

I have videos of the pulls too, thanks to Joe_Rocket!!

-Scott

[dieselgeek]

Re: Engine Masters Challenge 2010 Coming Next Week: BangShifters Thrashing on an Entry






Hello, headgasket!

[SpiderGearsMan]

Re: Engine Masters Challenge 2010 Coming Next Week: BangShifters Thrashing on an Entry

darned public schools

[horsewidower]

Re: Engine Masters Challenge 2010 Coming Next Week: BangShifters Thrashing on an Entry

My son asked me about the quality of the event, I told him it was one step below "Chuck Norris" awesome. The facilities were top notch, the competitors were not only fierce competitors, but also helped each other out in many ways. The students that helped were very interested in what we were doing and busted their butts helping out. Meeting Ed Iskenderian and Nick Arias, and talking to them for extended periods of time, was an unexpected pleasure. Nick was especially enamored with our early Hemi, vocally supportive of our efforts, and equally as engaged when commiserating about our demise. In general, the event staff was helpful, if somewhat bent towards pandering to the sponsors...understandable given that the sponsors paid the bills and keep the magazines being published. The dyno operator was top notch and a pleasure to talk to, the inspectors (although DG might disagree, given his experience) were helpful when I asked about some fine points. It is clear the event is run for the benefit of the sponsors and magazine, but that shouldn't come as a surprise.

Definitely a bittersweet event. We started with a major handicap, blowing up our competition motor two days before the engine had to be shipped. The fact that we were there at all was a minor victory, starting the engine on the first try was a major victory, but we killed the engine due to our inability to purge the air from the coolant system.

Danny, Scott and Scott worked their butts off making sure that we had an engine that would make it to the dyno. We were supposed to get the engine on Tuesday, but the carrier didn't get it there. After making a bunch of calls on Wednesday, Danny and Scott Courtney got a hold of the carrier and were able to pick up the engine and bring it to the event after another competitor offered the use of their truck. We jumped in to assemble the rest of the engine and to test all the electronics, Danny and I were sent off to test our injectors using the schools injector cleaning and testing station (a ruse, we learned later, to get us out of their hair!) While the Scotts worked on the wiring. We gained additional help from Brett, Nissan and (damn I'm bad with names) friend. Brett saved our bacon the next morning when he insisted on testing our intake manifold sealing with some air. We had difficulty putting the manifold on the heads, things were not matching up and seemed to wobble. We'd had help from Carlo from Canada in grinding out some intake bolt holes to allow us to pull the intake down tight, it wasn't good enough. Brett made up some gaskets and siliconed the result to the heads and intake. Everything finally sealed up tight.

Carnage was going on with all the rest of the engines in the competition. Most people were blaming the specially blended 91 octane Rocket brand gasoline. Detonation was out of control, with some guys removing as many as 9 degrees of ignition advance trying to control the knock. When we arrived an AMC was blowing its guts out on the floor of the dyno room. It wasn't to be the last.

On top of that, many of the folks running efi were new to it. The anxiety level was over the top. It was funny to watch the folks gather around and watch the Scotts reproof our wiring. At one point we must have had half the folks in the room gathered around our corner as the guys ohmed the wires and made sure all the connections were valid. Scott Courtney found a screwed up relay connector and fixed it. We had problems with a couple of coils, which gave us the opportunity to watch the same Scott get zapped by an LS truck coil that shot out a good 3" and use him as a ground. I was having too much fun watching him twitch to shut off the power, so DG did the favor.

Thursday morning we were met with the sounds of an engine that would not start on the dyno. The poor guys had a factory rep look at their stuff the night before, the engine had run on the dyno before they stuck it on the truck and made the drive. But, that morning, no mas. They were DQ'd. Our buddies from Canada, Carlo and Rob, decided to do a jet change during the 15 minute tuning session for their 426 hemi, and didn't quite get it finished, another DQ. During the event, one competitor had the gas line dump gas all over their electronics, the guys from ICE ignitions drove 4hours one way to get them a new ignition setup so they could retry the next day. 11 out of 40 competitors either didn't show, DQ's or broke. The School of Automotive Machinists broke a rocker arm while testing, got the engine back together just in enough time to drive the engine to the event and then failed to achieve oil pressure during the warm-up. They were done.

We were first up after lunch on Thursday. We'd gone in to the makeshift photo studio and had our pictures taken and the students hauled the engine over to attach it to the dyno. Photographers and videographers were crawling all over the dyno cell. Things were a bit chaotic. Prior to going into the cell we discussed the changes to the 387 cubic inch map that we needed to make to scale it to the now 304 inch Chrysler Hemi. We settled on a reduction in fuel of 19%, wanting to come in fat during our 3 warm up tunes, and then lean it out during the 15 minute tuning period. We decided to set the ignition at 24-25 degrees. Everything pointed towards a safe and soft tune, hoping to have this never before fired engine live through the first three pulls.

Let me stop for a minute and explain what the dyno procedure was. You have the engine hooked up to dyno, then you have a 5 minute time period to the check the timing, warm the engine coolant and the engine oil. Upon reaching the proper coolant temperature, they shut the door to the cell and proceed to give the engine three warm up pulls. You are not allowed to do anything during that period but watch and pray. If at any time you ask them to stop, you DQ. If you break you DNF. Then you have a 15 minute tuning period where in you can do anything and have the dyno operator pull the engine for you, anyway you want. At the end of that 15 minute period, all bodies have to be out of the cell and the operator proceeds to make the three competition pulls. Those pulls are averaged for horsepower and torque, those numbers are added together, taken times a factor and divided by the engine displacement. If at any time you stop the dyno operator, or the engine breaks, leaks or simply doesn't start, you're done.

With the engine on the dyno, it was filled with oil, and (we thought) water. Scott Courtney had to do some wiring to get our wiring system to work with the dyno's. That being done we started into our 5 minute timing and warming period...immediately Danny noticed a problem, no water was flowing out of the purge for the engine, in fact, the water was running backwards. The lead inspectors told us it was our problem and not the dyno's so we'd need to decide whether were going to DQ or go to the pulls...until Danny pulled the dyno supply line off and showed the inspector that there was NO water coming from the dyno's system. People started scrambling. Now it wasn't our problem, it was theirs. The folks at UNOH jumped to try and fix the problem but we never saw the 80psi supply that people had experienced earlier in the week. At best we had a weak flow through the hose. The inspector put us back on the clock, and Danny only received a couple of minutes to try and repurge the engine. In the end it wasn't enough.

While Danny was trying to deal with the water purge, the Scotts were trying to figure out our cam synch and its timing. We were trying to run sequential and we needed the cam synch for both the ignition and fuel. Fortunately, the MS3 that Scott built has a limp mode that would allow us to run the engine on wasted spark and batch firing. Still, the Scotts changed the cam phasing three times, miraculously getting it correct. Scott Courtney observed the timing at about 21*, about 3* short of the goal, but we were ordered out of the dyno room and told that we had to start our warm up pulls.

So here we were, almost 11 months of work, 125+ pulls on a test dyno, three cams, two different sets of heads, three different intake manifolds, three different sets of injector placements, pounds of epoxy and aluminum filled and ported, two different computer systems, two different fuel systems, three different wiring harness, one blown-up 387 hemi contender...and would the 304 that had been thrown together at the last minute even start...

Why yes it did!!!

The sense of relief was fantastic, we were "high-fiving" all around.

We settled down and proceeded to the warm-up pulls. And got knocked down to reality. Severe, ear damaging, gut wrenching knock. Not the "oh shit I got a bad load of gas" knock... on no, the "oh shit, we aren't going to be able to survive this, bb rattling, rocks in a tin can shaken at the speed of sound" knock. From first hit of the dyno 'til the operator finally mercifully got it over the 6500 rpm limit. What a shock. Danny had told us that he had never heard one of his Hemi's knock, not ever. Yet here was the most pronounced demonstration of knock any of us had ever heard. It was shocking.

And Danny said, "pull it again."

And it started all over, you just knew it was going to die and that they'd be mopping up Hemi guts for a week. Everyone looked stricken...like listening to the death of a noble beast. As it screamed and rattled and rocked its way up the rev range, I finally saw a piece of glowing engine fling itself at the corner of the dyno window, and then it was finally peacefully silent. We were done.

Looking through the window, you could see water pouring out between the head and block. The gaskets had mercifully let go on both sides. When we pulled it down later, to satisfy the curiosity of all of us before we left for California, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania, we found 6 of the 8 cylinders had blown out their gaskets around the bore. One piston looked like someone had taken Thor's ball peen hammer and dimpled the piston right in the middle of the intake valve cut out. As DG would say, Missy Daisy took all she could and then couldn't take no more.

So what did we learn...engines need coolant, you never know which thing you didn't plan for will bite you in the ass, that winning is great but the experience is more important, that car guys are great all over the place, that help comes from unexpected places, and that the internet is a great place allowing you to bring together folks from all over the country to work on a common goal.

But most of all, that we love what we do, and next year can't get here fast enough.

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: Engine Masters Challenge 2010 Coming Next Week: BangShifters Thrashing on an Entry

That's a great write up Bob. The ending was sad, but a great write up.

[realsteelfreak]

Re: Engine Masters Challenge 2010 Coming Next Week: BangShifters Thrashing on an Entry

Sounds like a great experience, could have only been better if the engine had lived.

[Brian Lohnes]

Re: Engine Masters Challenge 2010 Coming Next Week: BangShifters Thrashing on an Entry

Bob, that was friggin fantastic to read. Don't get me wrong, the ending sucks, but that is one HELL of a great story.

First beer's on me at SEMA.

That Hemi died with its boots on!

Brian

[BBR]

Re: Engine Masters Challenge 2010 Coming Next Week: BangShifters Thrashing on an Entry

Great story!! It seems like the people conducting the event should make 100% sure all competitors are correctly connected to the dyno (fuel, 12v,and water) before starting your time.

[dieselgeek]

Re: Engine Masters Challenge 2010 Coming Next Week: BangShifters Thrashing on an Entry

pics from the past few months:


ALIVE!!! IT'S ALIVE!!


dyno prep in Chico, CA (at ProMachine - home of fast LSR roadsters)



at the event:








Heavy hitters:


Dove's entry. Not big power, but the FIRST efi engine I saw to make clean pulls. The young guy is their tuner (the "neighbor kid" according to the Dove guys, very nice people)


Nick Arias. Interesting guy, spent lots of time BSing with him and Ed Iskenderian, who wanted to know all about our home-made EFI system


One "Non-Data Acquisition Innovate LM-1a Wideband" - coming right up!!I brought the entire geek kitchen on this trip:


In the dyno cell with Chris Campbell, photographer/writer, bangshifter


My buddy Greg's daughter, Vivian - an angel, totally content while we thrashed



Some people don't believe this VE table. 2nd and 3rd order tuned harmonics are why it looks this way. This came from the 387" version of the engine which scored 2560 on Pro Machine's DTS dyno




Um, yeah, well... that sucks







joe_rocket, on the right, performs teardown. He is highly motivated - and a great guy





Stick a fork in... I mean, under her.

[SuperBuickGuy]

Re: Engine Masters Challenge 2010 Coming Next Week: BangShifters Thrashing on an Entry

great stories are made with insurmountable odds... so why do they only allow a 5 minute connection verification time? seems a bit short from my arm chair.

[horsewidower]

Re: Engine Masters Challenge 2010 Coming Next Week: BangShifters Thrashing on an Entry

Great story!! It seems like the people conducting the event should make 100% sure all competitors are correctly connected to the dyno (fuel, 12v,and water) before starting your time.

You'd think it would be in their best interest. There isn't really a story if the basics aren't covered. I understand the need to keep the show moving, but they aren't well served by engine failures caused by those kinds of simple issues.