we know the majopr ways of making power... higher compression, nitrous, cam selection, FI, etc, etc... but what about those little things...? we hardly hear of lightening up cranks, knife edging, polishing the weights to a mirror finish, painting the lifter valley with a special paint that helps oil flow/drainback, etc, etc. hell im sure theres even power in different design windage trays, crank scrapers and even teflon coated piston and heat reducing coatings on the tops. commonguys share your secrets and your technical knowledge on the subject. remember the key is big power in small places. this is one of the reasons why lingenfelter was so good, he found power in the most unusual places that no one used to look. he did it for the Gen1 small block, lets do it with the Gen3

 

well anything that works for the Gen 1 (or other engines) should work on the Gen 3s!

i think a lot of the coating are used for longivaty rather than outright power! but i dont see why you couldn't run the engine harder and get a little more out of it!

and it is the little things that help. like making syre an engine can only breath cold air, not heated stuff will make a big diffence. running the engine a little cooler can also help (esp. on turbo aplications). low friction coatings can really help longivity. i think i read about valve springs lasting 2 ir 3 times as long and holding much more presure (due to them running cooler) when coated!

a really simple one is water injection! i have heard of N/A racers running it so they can run more timming/higher comp! but it often gets over looked when talking about NA aplications!

Chris.

 

Do you have any more information on water injection it sounds like something i would be intrested in learning more about. Thanks.

 

basicakky it would work the same way as meth injection except minus whatever FI mthod used. what would the springs be coated with?

 

Couple of things Ive read in Engine masters was ina 6qt pan. Running 4 qt's will free up some hp as well due to the crank splaching in the oil.

Another one is when dealing with head flow. You can have a 23* headflowing 310cfm@.600 but how it goes in is just as important if not more.

 

3 things that most people dont look hard enough at...

1. BLOCK WORK! A well machined block is going to give you more power and longevity than you can think. Bores being in the right spots and being cylindrical. Lifter bores being in the right spot relative to the cam tunnel, the cam and main bores being in line with each other and the bores.... the list goes on. Most people **** when they see how much money a well done block costs. I've had motors where the head porting labor and the block work and crank labor are the same amount.

2. Intake Manifolds and Headers. There is as much to the TQ curve of the motor in the intake manifold and headers as there is in the cam. In fact getting them all to work together is the key. This is how you get a motor over 85% VE.

3. Heat. Where to have it and where not to. Focusing on this area is worth a dam good amount of power. You can do it with coatings and comon sense.

Bret

 

so if you were a power junky, tastefully going at everything with heat reflective/insulated wrap is actually a better idea than ppl think?
with machining a block i knw theres more to it but the perfect main/cam/cylinder bores cuts down on the worst thing in an engines life...friction... the better lined up they are the less resistance they face. i also read somewhere that the actual amount of power any given engine produces is more than half of what actually makes it to the flywheel. is there anyway to use some sort of teflon coating on bearings and such?

 

Yep I use coated bearings but not for friction reduction as much as a safety factor if you lose oil pressure. You can reduce bearing sizes to help reduce friction but most of the friction in a motor is from the rings.

FWIW a good motor can have 10% of it's total power lost in just friction alone.

Heat wrap is a good thing but there are also things you can do with the motor itself as well.

Bret

 

Plain bearings run more on the oil film than the actual bearing surface. Don't see much being gained in that area. I've had bad experiences with heat wrap on headers. It holds moisture and will rot steel tubing. I think coatings are more practical. Coated stainless is even better since stainless transfers heat much worse than mild steel. I've often wondered why more builders don't use gapless rings. I've heard both pro and cons with them. Never used them myself but the idea makes since.

 

Just to expand on what Krexken said. Im a big fan of coatings as well. When coating things like the valves and combustion chambers will help keep detonation away. Smooth sanding the piston tops with no hard edges and smooth polishing combustion chambers helps as well.

 

Water pumps... they usually require bout 7 norsepower to pump 60 gpm at 5000rpm. High performance aluminum water pumps require 4 horse power to pump 120 gpm at 5000 rpm.they are light wieght** have high flow chartacteristics, and all parts are precision machined including the impeller and hub.

Oh yea... electric water pumps require NO horse power. but are also usually used in drag racing cars.

 

whatabout electric fans? usually lightwieght and easy to install.

 

Orrr. spark plugs..If the engine timing,camshaft,compression, or carberation is changed the nthe stock heat range is no longer correct. Spark plug gaps maybe? Modern high energy ingintion systems can tolerate much wider gaps than conventional coil ignitons. Wide plugs show an improvement in performance, since making the spark jump a wide gap increases the chances with encountring a combustible mix of fuel and oxygen...BUT wider gaps increase resistance.

 

IF your car is Carberated.... try different kinds of spacers. can adjust your power curve niclely on ethier single plane or dual plane manifolds.Open is most popular... Adding 1 inch of space beneath the Carb slows the mixture velocity. the extra distance give more time for ther mixture the time to slow down, makin it more easy to turn into intake port. The effect of this is that it usually increases top end horse power while reducing low speed torque below peak torque.....Four hole spacer can be used to improve throttle response on street driven engines.

Im done for now

 

top seal gapless rings, from what ive seen have had a 2% or LESS leakdown. its a 2 piece top ring so theres still a gap but because its a 2 piece it eliminates that gap that oil travels through. i knw the stick on wrap will rought out heades but how bout somethin like por 15 or the like? maybe even doing something as simple as painting the bottom of the intake manifold white to reflect radiant heat would help too. keep em commin guys this is just getting good.

 

well... im might be stating what alot of thers already know, i will say it anyways...... HEADERS-- Primary pipe diameter is far more important to ulimate engine power than lenght. Headrer size ia a comprose between exaust gas velocity and pipe diameter suffient to handle mass flow of exaust gasses. Smaller header pipe increases gas speed at low RPM which effeciently evacuate the chamber at the low speeds. aloso helping low speed toruqe. BUT these same smaller pipes become restiction at higher engine speeds.... A large promary header pipe tends to be "lazy" at lower speeds with lower gas speeds at low to mid range engine speeds. this allows a portion of exaust gas to remain in the chamber as the exaust valve closes. it cant be burned twice so it contaminates incoming a/f charge, lowering cylinder pressure on next cycle./ results in less power. The DD of most people tend to spend all there time at low to mid range sppeeds. i say stay on the smaller side of inside primary pipe diameter.......o hyea Tri Y headers usually increase mid range power slightly over 4 tube. and are also easier to fit into tight spaces.

 

#3 is really the key to the whole "making power" part.
I've heard of guys running some hot coolant and insolating blocks or blocking off airflow to it.

Getting oil at the correct temp is HUGE. 90* oil is going to ROB you of power at the cylinder as it cools down your heat charge and it will also have higher pumping penalties- not to mention it wont boil off the condensation

turbo guys (not rare, done for a while) will have thermal covers for their turbos. Impressive gains there.

Some debate still lies in cryo-treating stuff

ceramic coating is always worth a few ponies

Things like good bearings, gears, fluids etc are good ways to increase reliability AND power AND gas milage. GM just upgraded to some kind of alternator that shuts off when not needed. More power, less gas, less load. sweet.

*Edit* that was fuel saving, not power

Polishing your combustion chambers, piston and rounding any sharp edges will allow for more compression or afford you the opportunity to advance timing further if benificial.

Just keep in mind, there seems to be a pretty tough "thermal gain" barrier. I had (have, working on an ind. study) a prof that did R&D for GM back in the day. They tried to be new by doing what Franklin did in 1914- get 120+mpg by making an adiabatic engine block. Franklin ran across long island on 0.8 gallons of fuel by running the block at 900* or so. It lasted exactly once.

Same old story, someone "today" thought "we can do that now because of material and manufacturing advances, we can call it new technology." Unfortunately, it didn't work this time. The ceramic engine just dumped the heat into the exhuast with very little worthwhile gain going into power production

 

yea they do mate! it just they pull it from the battery or the alternator! and on anything other than an all out drag car, where the pump will pull from the batteries not the alternator, the power will still come from the engine! just not directly!

but they are still good as the are only used when they need to be, ie at higher speeds the pump runs slower! also you can get rid of the restrictive stat! plus they are normaly machined better than the stock stuff andrun more efficently (i think)!

as for the valves, i read about a friction lowering coating (teflon and other stuff i think).

there is an advantage to coating the bearings! oil on steel has a higher coeficent of friction than oil on these low friction coatings! therefore less friction and less heat being put into the oil, smaller oil cooler, less air resistance, lower power to pump oil, etc, etc, etc.

but you dont just have to think about the engine! think about it, what is the point in doing all these little mods/things that will make youa little more power and cost quite a bit when you could just shave 100kg off the weight of your car and make it go stop and turn faster??????

it might just be becasue its what i have been brought up on but weight in the biggest enemy!!!!!

Chris.

PS. that dont mean that all these little likes are not a great idea and worth invetigating. but sometimes its good to take a step back and see the whole picture! power is great, but its power to weight that wins the battle!!

 

I did some testing of my own with tech-line brand thermal barrier coating and I got not postive results whatsoever. A couple of my friends don't think my testing method was valid for a piston coating, and that's partially right, but I still think the results are very telling.
I used a propane torch an inch away from the center of the piston deck and a thermocouple placed against the underside of the deck held in place by a given mass of playdough.
Each test started cool at a measured room temp, and lasted one minute with my torch at its fullest setting.
The coating survived the torch which did surprise me, but showed no reduction in temperature at all... zero.

This isn't how a piston operates, but I still think a thermal barrier should at least slow the heat down to some measurable degree.

On a positive note, I tried the old-school method of polishing the piston top to a mirror like finish and tested that. The results were amazing with a very large temp drop over the control tests. I'll look at my notes when I get home and give the exact degree and percent drop. I did test each way at least twice on the first run, and then twice on a second run. That meant roughing the surface back up, testing again, then coating & testing, then re-polishing.
The results stayed the same, so I know I didn't goof it.

After thinking about the conditions of the test I tend to think that my test used more conductive heat from the air to the piston, than radiant heat. I'm pretty sure that if I used only radiant heat in the test that the polished surface would have made even more difference. My point being that I think it is radiant heat from the burning mixture that primarily heats the piston in operation. Maybe I will rig up another test for this.

I have read about the ceramic coating and I know ceramic is a great insulator, but I've also heard rumors that the thickness neccessary to provide working insulation are too much, and that it will not stick to the metal in operation due to a large difference in thermal expansion rate.
If anybody knows the real story please add what you know.

 

Primary pipe DIAMETER determines at what RPM the torque peaks, but not necessarily the amount of torque. Bigger diameter means a higher rpm torque peak, and vice versa. That helps explain the "laziness" of large diameter headers. Primary LENGTH basically determines the AMOUNT of torque. Obviously you need to match the valve timing (cam) to the intake and exhaust lengths and diameters.

4>2>1 (Tri-Y) headers can do a couple of good things for tuning. They get around the uneven firing on the banks of a V8, and depending on the primary and secondary lengths, they can shape the torque curve, and therefore the hp curve. Every engine combination needs it's own design of 4>2>1 headers so "universal" ones aren't always better than 4>1.