A redesign of the pistons was found to be in order for the 2005 attempt.

I mentioned a few months ago that I was turning the blower much too tight, two to one to be exact, which produced a manifold pressure of around 43 pounds at 4500 engine rpm. I also stated that if Don (the rider) had not turned the engines off when the throttle stuck (my fault), there would have been a serious melt down due to the nozzle size. They were calculated for 25 pounds boost at 6500 engine rpm, much too small for that kind of boost.

I found several things wrong when I tore down the engines, all due to human error. I've said it once and I ' say it again, "It's a sad dog that doesn't wag it's own tail." and it's even worse when the dog won't own up to the Doo-Doo on the living room carpet. Having said that, Max is one dog that is fessing up to his Doo-Doo. There won't be any gremlin stories coming out of this camp. They just seem to skew the reader's understanding of events. A gremlin ain't nothing more than human error, or not enough experience to figure out or trouble shoot the problem.

So where did I goof? First the blower had far more boost then I figured it would. No dyno testing was conducted on the complete redesign of the engine package, going from 2000cc to 3000cc--changing cams, ignition, you name it. Everything was improved and made better. Or so I thought. I'm changing the ignition system back to a redesigned electronic ignition. I have procured the necessary parts from DYNA ignition at cost and am in the process of building the necessary drive components.

When I tore down the engines for the 2005 rebuild I also discovered that number one piston had blown the rings and melted the thrust side of the piston going past the rings and holing the skirt below the oil ring. The other side of the skirt had only slight scoring and looked almost new. Number three piston had started to follow the lead of number one in the melt down, but didn't get to the point of number one. Number two piston and number four piston looked new. This was a bit perplexing and required some thought as to what was going on. I found several things to be the reason for #1 and #3 giving up the ghost. First there were three reasons for the lean condition, the nozzle sizes were too small for the extreme blower pressure. The blower is a positive displacement type and #1 and #3 cylinders get more air than #2 and #4 due to the 50 degree differential between the filling of chambers stage. Last the home built nozzles in the hat were made from aluminium, which the fuel had corroded, causing #1 and #3 to partially plug up. That caused the leaning of #1 and #3 cylinders.

This will be corrected by increasing 1 and 3 port nozzle size over 2 and 4. The oversize will be determined during dyno testing. The four hat nozzles have been replaced with custom built nozzles by Ron's Racing, which employ changeable jets and aeration holes for atomization. Cost $200--they will not corrode and plug up.

Now to why only the thrust side of the pistons on 1 and 3 received damage and not the non thrust sides. If it were an inadequate clearance and the pistons grew due to the lean condition, both piston skirt sides would have been scored and you would have observed "Black Death" as it is referred to when this occurs. It had to be a lubrication problem. Further investigation revealed that when the hole in the liner was moved downward one half inch to put the oiling hole just below the oil ring where it belongs, the hole fell below the crankcase bore. The liner had been grooved to provide an oil passage to the hole. As there was no crankcase material surrounding the ground passage and hole, the oil to lubricate the pistons thrust was merrily being dumped into the crankcase. Not a good thing! This was taking place on one and three. Two and four were receiving partial lubrication as the crankcase material dropped off at the bottom of the holes.

John had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure when he machined the Terry Prince special one half inch longer muffs, and installed the 90 mm bore Los Angeles sleeves, that it was done right. Which they were. He even went to the extent of boring out a set of HRD cases and fitting them up to determine the oiling holes, notching the liners for rod clearance which is required due to the one inch increase in the stroke. I was working on the engine cases here in Wichita, and had bored them to accept the larger sleeves. Where I goofed was when I took the engines to Vancouver for assembly. "Murphy's Law" showed up at work the day we assembled the top end. We totally overlooked the problem, My cases had less meat in the casting than the mock up HRD cases. Human error happens to all who "walk the walk", and that's a fact. Those who deny human error just ain't telling it like it is for reasons I can't fully understand. This paints a false picture which is not the right thing to do, especially to those who have given financial support to their project.

So what about the piston redesign change? The pistons, which are at this moment being manufactured by Aries, have the following specs. They will be the same size as the 2004 pistons, bore, wrist pin size, and compression height. The changes are a dyke stainless steel top ring instead of the chrome ring. The second ring will be a gapless ring instead of the cast ring. For those of you who don't know what a gapless ring is, it is a two piece unit, two thin rings, installed 180 degrees apart in the ring groove, eliminating the gap. This type of ring is used extensively in blown fuel engines, which helps a great deal in the prevention of the washing of the oil from the cylinder walls where large quantities of fuel injected into the cylinder have a propensity to do. This also helps in the fuel contamination of the oil; always a problem with blown fuel motors. The pistons will be hard anodized, which help prevent galding and also prevents fuel corrosion. Eight buttons will be installed in the skirt--four on the thrust side and four on the opposite side. When I receive the pistons I'll have to turn the pistons in the lathe, machining the buttons to a zero clearance slide fit in each cylinder. The buttons are made from a graphited teflon material. The wrist pin will be held in place with aluminium buttons, eliminating the spiral lock sirclips. Cost of the pistons around $800.

The new blower drive is about 80% done. I used an enclosed number 520 chain running in oil in 2004. This was all eliminated for 2005 in favor of a 1 1/2 inch wide 8 mm pitch tooth belt. The pulleys, the belts, number of teeth and the fixed distance between the rear engine crankshaft and the blower drive had to be calculated. The blower pulley is 38 tooth with a pitch diameter of 3.810 inches. The crankshaft pulley has 53 teeth with a pitch diameter of 5.314 inches. This will give me a speed ratio of 1.395 to one. I used the only known mean to calculate what I needed to achieve 25 pounds boost at 6500 engine rpm. and that was running the blower two to one, it had 43 pounds boost at 4500 engine rpm. Cost to make this change is $350 and a weeks work doing the necessary machining on the pulleys. The blower shaft, which connects the blower pulley to the blower timing gears, has been replaced with a larger shaft size unit made from heat treated 4340. The four bolt pattern, which failed in 2004 has been upgraded to an 8 bolt pattern. The belt is a Gates poly chain G.T.2 made with kevlar strands, stronger than the old steel type strands.

The blower was boxed up today and will be sent to california to The Blower Shop Monday to be professionally overhauled. It's best to leave this job to the guys that know how to set one up for racing and make it live. The cost will range from $400 to $1100, depending on how badly it was hurt in 2002 and 2004.

The transmission was totally rebuilt for 2005. $700 worth of gears and $250 worth of E.D.M. work to complete the job. The gears in the later Munci transmissions were back cut to prevent them from popping out of gear. The old style gears were in the box in 2004, which was the reason for the problems encountered.