1000 horsepower junkyard motor builds?

In reply to klodkrawler05 :

Racing at least at my level is about having fun. If we have fun and finish mid pac I figure we've won.  Granted it would be  more fun to have fun during the race and win, but winning isn't ever going to be my primary objective. 
I've won in the past often enough to know the pleasure of it.  

In the 1980's Jaguar raced BMW in Group A  and was dramatically faster than the BMW.  But Jaguars were  much thirstier and often had to pit one or two extra times in a race. The result was really exciting races that the outcome often wasn't known until the last lap.  
 My memory isn't that sharp but I think Jaguar won enough races to win overall for the season 2 maybe 3 times.  

I feel like you keep saying contradicting things then. If the objective is fun, why add a bunch of extra complexity and failure points (turbos) instead of the K.I.S.S method?

I thought the idea was to make enough power to win. Driving a racecar is fun whether you win or not. Being in the pits repairing blown couplers, turbo oil leaks and refueling is not very fun when you paid good money to be on the racetrack.

In reply to klodkrawler05 :

I understand your confusion.  
The simple choice would be to buy some newish faster car that  doesn't carry penalty points and just prepare it.  

Yawn!!!!   but why?   Why would I spend the money?? The time?? And risk everything to do what I've already successfully done repeatedly which is race and win. Aren't those national Vintage race wins against the Aston Martin factory team enough? 

As a young man landing a plane on a rolling bouncing aircraft carrier in a storm was about as much fun as I ever had.  Flying in combat wasn't thrilling or rewarding just very scary.  ( no I didn't  fly fighters or bombers) 

Racing  A car I had built up from scratch turned out to be as close as I would get.  The satisfaction that I did everything right . And drove well enough to beat others was both fun and satisfying.    Then much, much faster against much much better drivers.  Etc.  

During the recession  of 2008  I sold all those toys to survive.  But I've recovered,   not back to my earlier days but enough to have some choices.   
 

I don't see the risk/ reward being worthy doing autocross or SCCA TRACK NIGHT.  

I do hear everyone on this site say No, No, No!!!! 
you are wrong!  That's not how you do endurance racing. 
 

And Miata. Miata, Miata !!  Thousands, heck 10's of thousands guys racing Miata's.    
More than a few BMW's  as well. 

BMW is faster than Miata  but what's faster and cheaper than them both? 

Have you looked at the pictures of my house?   Hardwood timbers ( Black walnut predominantly )  14 inch thick walls. I did that,  nobody ever builds a house like that.  No where near that.  

With great challenge, comes great reward.   However there is reward even if you fail 

I've driven many Jaguars  and they handle brilliantly. Someone said like a bigger faster Miata.   
People  look at magazine articles and forget that in 1975 it was an honest 150 mph car.  That weighed over 4600 pounds.  I know it's possible to loose 1600 pounds.  I've already built the twin turbo car decades ago and it's still running around.  Horribly kludged up  and definitely not nice to look at  ( are any champ car/ LeMons cars?) 

Why  add complexity  to a V12?  Why not?   

I figure you'll get the car as lightweight as possible anyways, but from what I've read in this thread at least getting the Jag as light as possible should be more important than making some extra power, especially if that extra power comes at the cost of worse gas mileage.  Some mild mods to the V12, enough to get it around 300hp reliably, would probably be enough to put you towards the front, considering the types of cars most people run there.  Either way, all I ask is that if you do this, please run straight pipes on the V12, because that engine sounds amazing. 

In reply to infinitenexus :

I'd love to run straight pipes but for those pesky sound meters,

 When  I was going to  run it with carbs I was sorta hoping I could just aim the exhaust at the ground aimed towards the middle of the car and I'd hoped the under car turbulence would tumble the sound enough to beat the decibel meters. 
 

I'm not sure  people understand three things,

 1 going to a larger diameter pipe lowers the noise level but doesn't hurt the pressure into the turbo.  

2 the turbo itself muffled the sound somewhat and if the exit pipes are bigger  actually help  power output.  

3 Alcohol  is quieter than gasoline because of it's slower flame front.  
 

Now  I'm really hoping I can dump the exhaust out behind the driver but under the car and let turbulence get me past those pesky sound meters. 
 

The firing order of a. V12  works out that the exhaust pulses are 60 degrees apart.  And cam be spaced so  they are broken into 4 cast iron manifolds. ( each weighing only 4 pounds but because of the timing of exhaust pulses almost as good as headers .  
in fact real equal length racing headers properly designed and built make less than a 5% difference. 
 

The weird part is when you listen to a V12 at idle you'll swear it's racing,  sounds like 1400 RPM. But check the tach it will be rock steady at 650 rpm 

The reason it sounds so fast is you hear all 12 pulses. Unlike a V8 which basically you hear 6 and a stumble.  That's because adjacent cylinders can be between 90 degrees and 270 degrees apart. 

Jaguar doesn't sound like Ferrari's of old. That's because Those were only 3 liters and to fit equal length headers Enzo's team undersized the tubing.  Making the engine scream. 

a 5 liter +sized Ferrari sounds like a 5 liter Jaguar.  And the bigger the engine the lower the exhaust note 
 

So when is this getting moved to the build threads section? 

In reply to 1SlowVW 

This week is MEA week.  That means no school No school means bus drivers don't get paid.  A financial set back I'll try to  overcome by working extra charters whenever they're offered. 
in the mean time I'll continue to do what I can.  Just don't expect a lot of pictures.  

klodkrawler05 said:

Driving style can also drastically affect MPG as well in our experience. At Daytona with a bunch of time attackers driving (i.e. guys whose primary objective is to set a fast lap) the Honda fit we rented could get about 60-65 minutes before the fuel light came on and you needed to pit on that lap or would fuel starve. (meanwhile the slower cars in our class were doing 2 hour stints and gaining 2 laps on us every other hour)

We figured this out mid race and started driving in a way to help save fuel. tucking behind other cars even if they were slightly slower around the banking/straights. coasting up to corners rather than jamming on the brakes. etc. Driving in a conservative manner we could stretch fuel out to about 85-90 minutes and according to data once drivers got the hang of that and could link up with a car running similar lap times they were only about 1 second off their best pace while also extending fuel nearly 50%. (the draft is real at Daytona) losing 1 second per lap compared to losing 5 minutes multiple times is an easy choice to make. 

All that to say, I wouldn't get terribly hung up on fuel yet, build the car, then do testing and figure out what your drivers do and how long fuel lasts with that particular nut behind the wheel.

I wonder how long until energy recovery becomes a real thing in beater class racing.

In reply to ProDarwin  
Isn't there an additive that reportedly increases fuel mileage significantly?  I remember the Formula1? Boys were adding significant amounts of it until it was banned. I know it's horribly toxic and probably expensive but who knows maybe it's a waste by product or there is a world wide glut of it!?!?  

Well, since the only limitation is the size of the fuel tank, you could use Plutonium 238, which has a density of ~43 million MJ per liter (Gasoline is 34.2 MJ/liter).  That would extend your mileage by approx 1.26 million times.

More realistically, Diesel fuel is 38.6, not to mention its got a small thermodynamic advantage as well.

ProDarwin said:

klodkrawler05 said:

Driving style can also drastically affect MPG as well in our experience. At Daytona with a bunch of time attackers driving (i.e. guys whose primary objective is to set a fast lap) the Honda fit we rented could get about 60-65 minutes before the fuel light came on and you needed to pit on that lap or would fuel starve. (meanwhile the slower cars in our class were doing 2 hour stints and gaining 2 laps on us every other hour)

We figured this out mid race and started driving in a way to help save fuel. tucking behind other cars even if they were slightly slower around the banking/straights. coasting up to corners rather than jamming on the brakes. etc. Driving in a conservative manner we could stretch fuel out to about 85-90 minutes and according to data once drivers got the hang of that and could link up with a car running similar lap times they were only about 1 second off their best pace while also extending fuel nearly 50%. (the draft is real at Daytona) losing 1 second per lap compared to losing 5 minutes multiple times is an easy choice to make. 

All that to say, I wouldn't get terribly hung up on fuel yet, build the car, then do testing and figure out what your drivers do and how long fuel lasts with that particular nut behind the wheel.

I wonder how long until energy recovery becomes a real thing in beater class racing.

Remember they are racing $500 cars.  So your answer is whenever cars with regenerative braking become worth about $500