Yeah, it was Blackhawk that the former Red Rat motor turned to toast. It had
7 (hard) race seasons on it. The interesting thing was that the failure was
caused by the brass restrictors in the cross drilled crank... for some
reason, after all that time, walked out and scored 2 bearings. Everything
else internal on that motor looked stellar, despite its many hours of hard
racing use.
The new stock motor puked oil when the oil filter seal blew out... something
that's happened twice in my years of racing. One time it happened in
RedRum's current race motor... going in to 1 at Road America. I was running
Redline. I shut it down as the pressure dropped, and it was fine. At
Grattan, in the incident that Ron recounts, I was running conventional oil
for break in, and it wiped the bearings when the oil decided to depart.
-----Original Message-----
From owner-spridgets at autox.team.net [mailto:owner-spridgets@autox.team.net]
On Behalf Of Ron Soave
Sent: Monday, November 14, 2005 9:42 PM
To: spridgets@autox.team.net
Subject: RE: I Love opinions...
--- "Wm. Severin Thompson" <wsthompson@thicko.com>
wrote:
> You've pretty much described my engine building
> routine...
One of the funnier moments as a pit crew member for
Flounder...Grattan, 2002...he had just toasted his 948
at Blackhawk or Mosport, I forget...he puts a new 1275
in the car, stock motor if I recall, pretty much
torqueing the head as he rolls it off the
trailer...goes out and toasts it in qualifying, comes
in, oil everywhere, his brother Don shakes he head,
looks at me, and says "Man, when he breaks in a motor,
he really breaks in a motor."
Ron Soave
"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work....I want to achieve it
through not dying." - Woody Allen
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