Tangerine Racing in the house!, Chris arrived at 1Am..... Options

[Jake Raby]

The Tangerine crew pulled in to the shop at around 1Am this morning....

Chris has come down to install his new F Production RAT engine with HAm heads that are VERY insane! We are finishing up the engine today and it should be on the dyno tonight and tested tomorrow. We plan on doing some extensive testing with this engine to scrounge every bit of power it possibly has out of it. I plan on doing some carb and velocity stack swaps, venturi swaps and we are even going to do some DTM testing with it Vs Chris' modified corvair fan arrangement both for power as well as running temp comparisons.

This is actually the least developed engine that we will be building Chris as it is the "Regular Season engine". It is still a very nasty animal that will make gobs of power, but since it's a regular season engine it also has to be much more longevity filled and therfore not as many risks can be taken with its tolerances.

The "Runoffs engine" is a different story. It only has to live for two hours for one weekend of racing so it will have every trick known to man and even crazier HAM heads.

With Chris' excellent driving skills and a pair of RAT engines with Len doing things to the heads that have never been done before to this level it is our goal to get a 914 on the podium at the runoffs and thats something that hasn't happened in about 20 years!

If anyone wants to come out to Atlanta this weekend send me an email to boss@aircooledtechnology.com and I'll tell you where we are going to be so we can meet.

[Jake Raby]

Chris had just looked at the EGT right before it happened..He saw it just over 1300 which would not have caused the issue...

His CHT isn't monitored on that cylinder (that will be changing)

If the carb did lean out with this kind of CR and the RPM he was turning no gauge in the world could respond quick enough and no driver could either..

There is also a possibility that when pulling the engine off the dyno Chris may not have tightened the plugs well enough while he was fighting the clock to get this baby installed. That would explain the entire situation. Chris was working with unfamiliar tools in an unfamiliar shop with unfamiliar people so if he did forget it it would be totally justified....

BUT like I said that carb was also a tad goofy in tuning runs, so its hard to say which happened first.... The loose plug makes the most sense because the gauges showed no problems because there wasn't any until the combustion melted through the plug/head and maybe even a Nickie....

The Nickie can be fixed and replated with no sweat though...... Len is the one I feel sorry for, he had DAYS of work in those heads.. He can also repair them but that will take more days of work....

Those heads were perfect, literally.

Len, Chris and myself are drastically different people. We are the best at what each of us does and this was a practice run for a team that needs to work as smoothly as an oil pump.... We all have the same goal but must work on the best way of attaining it. Len and I work together all the time and are an hour from each other, but Chris is a long ways from here..... Like I said, we have to refine a few things, get a schedule, kill the haste and kick ass.