A common problem — depending on where you live — is getting the best fuel for your car. Fortunately, in our area, we have 93-octane gasoline, which is okay for our street cars to get around town. However, when we want to crank up the boost, we then resort to race gas for off-road use. You’ve heard that E85 is all the rage at the pump, but we don’t have that option. The nearest E85 station is about an hour away. In this article, we will test some additives and fuel options, and fill in the gap between pump gas and race fuel with the help of VP Racing Fuels. We will also see how much more power we can make on VP’s C85 fuel over pump gas.
Inside Ford Performance’s New Sprint Car Engine — The FPS 410
Original article By Mike Magda | August 04, 2020
Not since 1995, when Dave Blaney drove Casey Luna’s winged sprint car to the season’s title, has a Ford engine captured the World of Outlaws (WoO) series-championship. Racing a Ron Shaver-built 410ci engine, Blaney won 12 feature races that season — third-most of any driver — and kept his car in contention for most of the other events to win the crown by 142 points. Luna’s car also won the 1989 WoO championship boasting a Blue Oval powerplant. However, it’s been a Chevy playground ever since.
That Bowtie domination will be severely challenged this year as the No. 15 Tony Stewart/Curb-Agajanian car with Donny Schatz behind the wheel is leading the Outlaws championship after the first 24 races. He has three wins, twelve top-5s, and eighteen top-10s (as of July 23, 2020).
ACL Engineering Bulletin
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CLEARANCE CONTROLOne of the most critical variables that determine the success of a performance engine build is bearing clearance (also called oil clearance). In simple terms this is the gap between a bearing and the shaft in which the lubricant maintains separation of the two surfaces. The size of this clearance influences:Plug Wires: Build Them Right
Spark plug wires are the arteries of your hot rod; Providing a path for electrons to flow to the spark plug and creating a spark across the plug gap to initiate the combustion process and power stroke. If this path is ever interrupted, a misfire will occur, robbing your engine of power and creating driveability issues that will drive you crazy. ![]()
It doesn’t matter if you’re running a distributor or coil-per-cylinder ignition system, plug wires have a lot of external forces working against them. They live in a brutal environment of extreme heat, they’re whipped around from underhood air currents, have oils spilled on them and during tune-ups, they get yanked and pulled around. All of this while carrying thousands of volts to the plugs. How To Set Up A Cylinder HeadOriginal Article from Dart Heads Website While many Dart cylinder heads come assembled with valve springs, sometimes it can be necessary to spec your own set that pair with your camshaft of choice. Here’s how to correctly set up a cylinder head.Building a unique performance engine often demands an equally custom set of heads. These cylinder heads may not fit within the confines of a specific off-the-shelf part number. Or, you may decide you’d like to assemble the heads yourself to create a specific combination for a race or street engine. With help from a few affordable tools, almost anyone can custom assemble a set of performance heads. We’ll show you how it’s done.
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