When "Excessive" isn't enough... the IMSA 348

Plugzit's "Waitin" and Im "Makin". My spare time, after Workin time that used to be Typin time is now Cuttin time. I sure wish I could buy what I need to put this together but alas, no one makes it, yet.

I made my decision on the direction, put my foot down and said... That's it! I still spent my free time looking over my shoulder looking at the mock up I made based on Blower Bruce's and my thoughts.... cant shake it, CANT afford it, cant stop thinking about it. Money, Spare time and the New Wives Store price list, three things I have little control of that are pointing the current direction of this project if I am to continue trying to make a living during daylight hours. That said, there are still two engines sitting side by side on stands and what is being made for one is being fit to both. I will continue the parallel paths until I reach a point I can no longer do so.

My rough forged cam blanks do not solve the problems I have with the 345 valve train, I made them for a std 348 race engine, a big let down. Thinking WAY out of the box I wheeled the BBC CanAm engine over stared at it after work and spent my lunch hour yesterday on the phone with my machinist who has a gear hobber stashed in the back room and an old friend with Cosworth Engine Development....Oh Boy, think these engines made a wild, wonderful noise before? This is a sickness there is no known cure for but Kris has a name for those infected with it!

http://www.historicengines.com/dfv/specs.html

Careful what you wish for when there is talk of getting rid of belts! All of a sudden the countless hours of measuring the Ferrari V8 thermo expansion rates for various components just might have some meaning and reason. A long, long, out of sight LONG shot but I do have on hand two of the most important components from a long ago F50 engine project that solve the biggest problem's with a simplified version of this design..... the alternator would have to go back on the axle...

DAMN you Bruce, you knew I wouldn't be able to shake this!

 

The decision process in pictorial form,

Inie V Outie

English V Italian

Sucking V Blowin
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As big a waste of time that this mental exercise likely is... the Holy Grail of a cam drive valve train, the dampened gear to chain drive duplex gear.

Get yer pencil's and paper out Bruce and Gary. No good reason only one of us is wasting time on this foolish idea, it's going to take all of us debugging this Lunacy.
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Obviously Bruce got to you before I did. Compressors are for AC systems and Hair Dryers should stay in the bathroom... its cheaper that way

 

Don't doubt it for one moment and he has my compliments on his accomplishment!

FBB stated it very well in one of these threads, he has 400+ HP in his plastic car and still isn't able to use all of it even with his honed racing ability and talents. Chasing impressive numbers alone is a dangerous and slippery slope to be standing on. For the first 2 yrs tracking an F40 with a dear friend I was able to turn faster lap times in a Mondial 3.2 Coupe than the F40. Just couldn't use all that unpredictable power unless it was coming onto the front straight where it would be 'elbows active' even on slicks.

Instant and linier power will always win a race with the exception being at Road America and Donnybrooke (BIR) where extreme straight lengths will always hand the advantage to the high HP cars. This being a backyard McGerk effort I am doing dictates I will likely have only two completed engines, one being the Sprint and the other being the Enduro engine.

The key to building a highly competitive race car is to build a "Package" that works in unison. I don't have a transaxle or axles that would survive even 800 HP on slicks (where tire spin is something we strive to eliminate) and surely don't have close enough ratio gearing to keep it on boost when it needs to be. A very agile and competent race driver could have utilized the Sprint engine I built quite successfully... Agile isn't the first word Kris uses to describe me these days and competent on the track, that was a lifetime ago, if ever at all. To be perfectly honest there is a reason engine builders rarely are also competitive drivers. I would watch the shift light come on at 10K RPM with the Sprint engine and it might as well have been hooked up to the Wheel of Fortune bells and lights.... I know first hand what it Costs to see that light flash and I know how long it will live being there.

Being a lazy gray hair these days I want an engine that gives more than the Enduro did (remember, that was no slouch and already a winner in Pro Racing but 'some' extra should make up for this drivers poor abilities), in a more Linier manner, that is Instant when the pedal is pushed and power that is matched to the gearing at hand. I want it all for less than the cost of a major service given what I have on hand and I want it to last for at least a full season between tear downs for belt replacement only and done in a manner that compliments a historical, period correct, Ferrari race car.... Cant do that with hair dryers, that is for the 358.5.

"I Want..., I want....." Sounding like my... errr, daughter now. Time for this thread to die off and me to find my rock, this game plan is low on HP bragging rights and will get rather boring quickly. If I get to play grabass with the track queen just once at a GFRT race, the boring, sub 600 figure choice will be justified. That way I can get onto the next project while doing it under cover.

 

The 355 intake plentiums arrived yesterday and for the first time I had the opportunity to study the stack design at length in the evening. I had saved all of my known working velocity stack shapes and calculations in a note book over the years and these match nothing I have dealt with to date.... an interesting new twist. The 550 and 360 shapes and sizes are something I understand and could have predicted given the design era... these... not so. I simply have never had the time to sit and study these in a quite time, there is always a car to be finished.

I have studied elliptical shape's, parabolic shapes, full circular shapes, various taper ratio's... about everything we could come up with for tests on the flow bench. It appears Ferrari was able to circumvent a difficult to mold shape by changing the bell design/size and taper ratio OR... they went with what was easy to manufacture and left some untapped power on the table. HP bragging rights in this industry account for a great deal and I suspect it was the prior more so than the later. Ferrari is not known for leaving much easily tapped power left unused.

Gary has enough baseline flow data for the stock intake set up that we will be able to see how much can be gained by playing in this area. Tests from years ago showed the flow rate of the old design Hilborn and Weber stack shapes (heads up FBB, read that as 456/550 also) is quite near linier depending on diameter. The same can be said for the parabolic and elliptical shapes and I still have a sampling of various sizes I made over the years for the BMC race engines. I know I have improved on the Hilborn/Weber shape by a minimum of 13% with shapes and taper ratio's we came up with.... There is much to be learned here and it will directly equate to everything with a Livestock badge on the hood using 4 or 5 valves per cylinder.

I now have a new to me material on hand that is fiberglass reinforced, heat formable plastic composite where I would only need to make one master to replicate matched sets on a vacuum table OR drag Verell into this lunicy and have them injection molded. FBB has the 550 test mule and I have a few OEM 550 stacks on the shelf for initial testing, BW has the 360 intake, I have a stack of 348 intakes but question if there is an unmolested one in the bunch, maybe Plugzit has a stock one. We have a few possible outcomes to this testing. Either Ferrari dealt us a "Silly Boy's, we have already been there" designed stack on the 355 and the other 4v/5v models can be improved upon OR there are at least 2 other models than stand to gain a sizeable improvement, most notably the 348's and 550/456's.

FBB, BW, Gary... you game or is this another DOA, one off, IMSA engine thought and I need to tighten up the blinders? I can see where this could be easily incorporated into each of the 4v models with minimal effort.... heck even the QV/328 stands to gain from this.

 

I hear that!

I know the 456/550 shape can be improved upon, the 348 is a total no brainer as is the QV. I have counter bored the 348 intakes and inserted 360 style stacks but never flowed the results, never enough time. The 360 is closest to what I 'thought' was right but the 355 is such a departure from what I understand.... I just dont know, Ferrari might have designed a shape I have no knowledge of with the 355 but I do not see used anywhere else on other models. At least one or two of these is a flop and the others varying degrees of a winner. Any improvement in design with gains over 10% is worth exploring further and I have to do it for the Enduro engine regardless. I am currently building a 360 race engine that I suspect could benifit from this research

 

Hey Fatso.... A loooong wait and a lot of effort but...
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I was unable to open it

 

Injector mount decision time once the other side is mounted and I have flow and intake length calculations done

""Remember:
More Flow Doesn't Always Equal More Power !!
But
Less Velocity Usually Equals Less Power !!!""

True all, but hard to get the intake side of these engines too big without finding water. You need to get the air in as a first consideration and we are already talking far higher RPM's based on cam design. Torque? Only in a dream and pretty narrow band at that even with the Enduro set up. These are the heads the Pro Team built that ran a slide valve intake at one time. Another $15K for that is just not going to happen with this owner writing the checks, the next.... maybe.
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Yah, and along that road I seem to remember Flying Monkeys..... Where did they come from? I needn't say more

Now with one side templated and done follow up's will be quick and easy and I can start on the injector mounts, cold air tray and box. Seems that little hump on the backside of the stacks is just begging for an injector entrance port pointing right down the TB's. Still not sure which direction I am going to point the stack's, if I use these at all, and what the final length will be.

This weekend I will grab up some of Kris' modeling clay and take over the kitchen table again, (a winter ritual) we will see what Gary's bench has to say about my shapes V the factory shaped stacks. Upside, the cross sectional volume of the intakes near matches that of the ported heads.

 

That is wrong on sooo many levels! Here I have a Carbon guy right next door but do you think I can get him to wake up before 3PM?

 

More than you can ever know. Everyone is making too much $ growing weed rather than working for a living.

Now... if I pulled the hoists out and swapped them for planter boxes...

 

NO, now I am focused... I will not.....I refuse.... We will see what Gary's bench says first. Guess I could always make a dual runner, cross over..... NO!

I figure I will have enough foam blocks to shave as it stands now. I have a good bit of the PrePreg CF and S-Glass left over from past projects. All I need is enough bagging to do the cold air tray, box and snorkel. Then I can build an engine, mount a wing, install a Trans, reprogram the engine management, reprogram the dash and data systems..........

By the time the other insulator block is finished I will need to do the wing mount and hydraulics just for a mental break. There are budget restrictions for me unlike the 358 owners.