by moore1 | Jun 30, 2015 | News |
By Vic Moore: ChumpCar has been a well-head of cost-effective endurance competition for the road racer since its founding in 2009. It introduces hours of valuable road racing experience with a special emphasis on long distance driving and affordability. The race cars are converted road-going machines mostly from the nineteen-eighties and nineties with strict cost limits in place to control spending. Competitive Dirt Late Model race cars often consume four sets of expensive racing tires on a weekend unlike ChumpCars that typically run two endurance races on one set of tires by rotating them. The principal safety measure consists of a specified roll bar structure. On the first Saturday of summer, I had come to Atlanta Motorsports Park. A mere seven miles from our office, I was there to compete with the Borg Warner team from Asheville, North Carolina in a 12-hour race organized by ChumpCar rival World Racing League. AMP’s compact 2-mile course is one of contrast. A short straight that runs past the start-and-finish line connects a seemingly unending sequence of undulating third and fourth gear corners. In my ignorance I had wondered why so many drivers missed their apex at Turn One. Now I understood: situated on falling ground it’s almost impossible to see and appraise the tricky turn from a low racing seat! On this occasion five of us would take the wheel of a 1984 Mazda RX7. For the Borg Warner team, who thrive on five or six endurance races each year, preparations had come together by the barest of margins. During Friday testing with ambient temperatures nearing three figures and humidity levels similar,...
by admin | Jun 30, 2015 | Published Stories |
Here’s a for instance for you. You’re sitting in your car at a red light, your foot pressing the clutch pedal firmly against the floor. You plan to annihilate the tires on your car as soon as the light turns green. You know your car can do it; you’ve got a turbocharger, a performance tune, and a set of gears to make it all happen. As soon as the light goes green, you side-step the clutch and start your smoke show. But, something doesn’t seem right. Read Randy Bolig’s article in Mopar Muscle magazine on Ram’s performance clutch upgrade on a Dodge...
by moore1 | Jun 26, 2015 | MGI News Briefs |
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by moore1 | Jun 26, 2015 | News |
∇ New one-piece seal conceived for use on Ford 429-460 big-blocks; Boss Nine; and P51 engines ∇ Simple assembly; reliable service ∇ See installation sequence below Winder, Georgia: Without wishing to diminish the performance of any current rear main seal for the Ford 385-series engines, Jon Kaase wanted more. “We had to go out of our way to find it,” he says. “In fact, we had to go out of the country—to England—to get the quality we were searching for.” Using the same manufacturing source as the Sprint Cup teams and following several years of testing, the seal makers produced the tooling, the prototype seals and now the production items exclusively for Kaase. This new seal is a one-piece device that replaces the conventional two-piece arrangement. On its face there is a dot—a small indentation—that represents the exact place to cut the seal with a razor blade for installation. Once cut, the seal can be wrapped around the crank and a daub of silicone sealer placed in the joint. Before lowering the crank into the crankcase, apply a light film of silicone to the outer perimeter surface of the seal and rotate the joint such that it is positioned in the main cap. There are numerous causes for rear main seals that leak: insufficient lubrication at the sealing lip edge, shaft roughness, lip hardening, lip softening and so on. But what offends the racers and hot rodders most is the indignity of having to do the job twice, which is often a day wasted if the oil pan cannot be removed without raising the engine half-way out of the...
by moore1 | Jun 25, 2015 | News |
By Mary Maglone: When Robin Buck, wife of noted engine builder Charlie Buck, recently posted “Can anyone identify these men” on her Face Book page accompanied by photographs of two Caucasian males, she succeeded in recruiting 589,000 individuals in short order. Some responded immediately telling of resemblances to persons seen on the television series Street Outlaws while others cast about assembling a reward in an attempt to catch the criminals. Engine builder Reher Morrison’s recent contribution brought the total to $20, 110. Around 10:30 on the night of Thursday, June 18, 2015, thieves broke into Buck Racing Engines of King, North Carolina and stole eight engines valued at just under $500,000. Earlier that afternoon two unknown men had visited the shop inquiring about a short-block for sale. Their photographs had been captured while in Buck’s office area. Although the intruders occupied the building for five and a half hours, they operated in darkness in the attic for the first two hours with flashlights. Crawling along the floor in military style they inspected the wiring to the alarm and phone systems. Once the two systems were immobilized the intruders either sprayed the lenses of the video cameras with paint or destroyed them. Nonetheless, further concealed cameras continued to monitor their movements as they set about selecting their illicit prizes. Although two of the engines stolen were built for high-performance street cars the thieves focused chiefly on the nitrous-assisted engines, the most expensive of which was valued at $100,000. Interestingly, a supercharged engine remained under their scrutiny for an hour and a half, but ultimately they replaced its covers, deciding against...
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