quote:Originally posted by mike the snake:
My new 72 Pre-L Snow White has one hell of an engine.
What I know it it cost $26,000 in parts alone, carillo rods I think, Scat crank, special Yates C3L tall heads, custom exhaust, ITB's (individual throttle bodies) so it has those 8 sexy velocity stacks under the air cleaners, 10.5 compression pistons, but controlled by Haltech with modern fuel injectors. Apparently the cam is a pretty hot cam, but the injection has the idle ticking over more smoothly, but when you floor it, OH MAN does this thing go! All this is supposed to be older Nascar engine stuff. My guess is between 500-600 horsepower, for real.
Heads are Yates C3L, and require specail manifold and headers, Jesel rockers (aparrently big $$$) solid roller cam (although the motor runs quiet as a mouse-Roger said he'd adjusted the valves 3 week ago) which surprises me because I could ALWAYS hear a solid lifter motor from the clacking lifters.
The engine is deceiving because the idle is not lopey and rough, but when you push the go-peal it fricking hauls the mail!
SO, my question is this. I have this awesome race engine in my car, probably 500-plus whp, and I'm driving all easy on it (mainly because I'm waiting fot the oil temps to get up to operating temps), but does it matter how I drive this engine?
Should i be winding it out to redline to keep the motor happy, or is it content with my normal driving around with the occasional "run through the gears" or occasional showing off, or God forbid, a street race?
The engine's a full blown Nascar style race engine, I;m just wanting to know what it prefers as far as how it's driven.
Any thoughts or advice is greatly appreciated,
Mike
NASCAR engines get completely rebuilt after every race.
Are you sure this is a solid lifter engine? Lots of people are using cam grinds similar to the CompCams "Weber" grind, because of the IR intake. Hydraulic roller lifter cams are very popular too.
If you know what you are doing with solid lifters, they will be much quieter than the old "anti-pump up" hydraulic lifters.
The biggest issue with these engines is going to be the valve springs.
If you are into over .600" valve lifts, roller lifters, then you probably have very high spring rates.
Springs these days are MUCH better than those of the '60s BUT the higher the valve lift and the higher the spring rates, the quicker they will wear out.
You can't put a mileage figure on that. Here today...gone tomorrow. Just hope you don't drop a valve and wreck those nice heads?
Other than that, it is made to beat on. Clevelands can make power, big power, but you have to drive them like you hate them.
It probably is quite capable of mid 8,000 rpm runs BUT if you drive it like that, you will break parts. Especially in the valve train and that can get very, very expensive instantaneously.