BONNEVILLE 2006
This is the crew of Total Performance in Santee, CA, who
built the engine for 2006. Greg is the tall one in the blue
cap. This engine is awesome! Runs great, makes lots of
power, made us go fast. What more could you ask? Plus, the
guys there are extremely helpful, go out of their way to
get your car right. They mostly do drag engines (Greg is
building a Mustang drag racer now) but they are
connected to LSR to some extent. It was friends from SDRC
who put me onto Total Performance in the first
place.
The
engine is a Dart block with Crower billet crank and rods
and custom Arias pistons. Lubrication starts with an
external Peterson oil pump; a full dry sump system is in
the future. The heads are Yates C3 off a NASCAR engine.
Compression is about 13.5:1. It uses titanium valves, Isky
Toolroom springs and roller lifters, and Jesel rockers. The
cam is a custom roller from Doug Baker at Integral Cams
(now defunct). Intake is a Roush NASCAR manifold
modified to fit on the low-deck-height 302 block. The carb
is a box-stock Holley 830 cfm unit right now. Seems to work
ok but there is definitely room for improvement here. This
303 cid engine puts out close to 600 hp at 8100 rpm. Turned
the old Mustang into a real hotrod.
On
the first pass on the short course, taking it easy and
shifting at only 7000 rpm, I qualified the car for the long
course and turned 183 mph. Shifting over to the long
course, we discovered that the oil was collecting in the
valve covers and we were losing oil pressure just past the
3 mile mark. After a lot of futzing, we managed to keep it
under power to almost the 4 mile mark and averaged 195.002
in this mile. The engine was turning about 8100 rpm at mile
4, just about 200 mph. We made some changes to the oil
drains from the head and hope to get a real 200 mph timing
tag at Speed Week 2007!
Something new this year -- we ran a second car. I was at an
SDRC meeting, held at JBA Motorsports in San Diego, and was
helping put the chairs away after the meeting. Noticed the
old JBA Ford Focus sitting behind the shop and asked Bruce
Tucker -- the JBA shop manager and former driver of this
car -- if they were planning to campaign it again. He said
it was up for sale. Well, one thing led to another and
there it was in my garage. The kids had been complaining
about how few runs we got each year so this was, maybe, the
answer.
The
kids took the car through tech inspection and did the
bailout checks. Put it in line on the short course and did
a few runs. Turns out that the engine was probably wounded,
very likely from the final passes in 2001 that set the
record in G/PRO. My guess is that a rod bearing spun.
Anyway, the car made a couple of undistinguished passes
(keep in mind, it is still fun, no matter how fast or slow
you go!) and then, with our friend Justin Baas at the
wheel, scattered the engine. Made a nice viewport in the
side. We are on the lookout for a Focus 2.0 engine to put
it all back together.