In this episode of Racing Insiders Podcast, Kate and Steve discuss Valve Springs, Fan Blades, and Fiddy Two Chicken Wings. This weeks topics also include Steve's 2023 engine recommendations coming soon, 2 barrel carbs, pen grade oil, Pippi needing his own podcast, fan blades, 84 pound valve springs, How to Train Your Dragon, valve spring preload, AV Gas, valve spring changes, magic durometer numbers, John's hatred of Steve calling a grill a barbeque (we're in the south, come on!) and Kate's delicious margaritas. 

What is your favorite ease of maintenance modification you do to your car's ease of maintenance? (6:24)

Ease of maintenance? Have my kid do it? I mean, that would be my suggestion. I mean, yeah, stand there. Watch them do it. Make sure they do it, right. I really don't know. Wash your race car, wash the engine. It's much easier to work on a clean race car than a dirty car. 

When using a Holley 4412 on a six a two or 604 - what RPM Do you see the power drop and the vacuum ramp up? (11:28)

I'm sorry. Nothing we do requires a 602 to have a 4412. So I don't even know that we've dyno'd one before. So I honestly have no clue that would honestly be a better question for Willy. If you call him, he'll be willing to talk to you. He's good friend of mine, he'll be happy to answer the question. Yeah, just nothing we do here in our realm requires that. Well, I mean, in the dirt late model world, or nothing in the most of the street stock world that I that I deal with. Usually, the rules that I've seen where they're required two barrel is gonna be an asphalt kind of scenario.

What are your thoughts on using pen grade? 20W50 on a 602? (12:56)

Do not. Yeah, I'm not a fan of that at all. I'm certainly not a fan of running 20w50 in a 602. Yeah. So that is a power killing deal. And that's not the greatest oil in the world. So, just from my, what I know about oil. And from our dyno testing, I've never actually dyno it tested or 2050. But I know what 2050 weight oil does. And it just robs power. And there's no reason to run a 2050 you know, an engine that essentially has stock clearances. So 1030 is what we normally recommend. 1040, 1540, 540. Yeah, but not a 2050. No, 2050 oils work best in actual race clearance to engines, which is going to be you know, super late model kind of stuff or, or, you know, built motors.

Does the Gorsuch six blade fan pull more air than a GM four blade? (14:14)

Yeah, and it sucks about five or 10. Sucks about 10 more horsepower off the engine at the rear tires. Then the four blade Jim, I assume you're talking about the 19 inch fan. So in my testing, I don't know what kind of engine you have. But on a 604, if you take no fan at all, and you make a pass on the chassis dyno. You get let's just say X amount of horsepower. That's your base case, your that's your base. You put that four blade GM fan on there and you lose 20 horsepower at the rear tires provided that that your that your front drive system is 100% Positively driven. In other words, you've got no slippage. Okay? If you take that off and you put the Gorsuch six blade on there, you'll lose 30 horsepower at the rear tires. So yeah, that that is a horrible power draw. I mean, that fan belongs on a super late model at El Dora at El Dora in the middle of summer, where its main event time and no power matters because you're already in the slick you know, that kind of thing? On a crate car. Now you're just you're putting yourself behind the eight ball so to speak.

He says what amount of valve spring preload do you recommend on a 602 engine? (15:53)

So if you're talking about like rocker setting, then we go with three quarters of term preload. So about valve, not valve lash lash, but preload. Okay, we do that on the 604 in the 602 as well. Well lash, I mean, you can run it you can run on the old school method was running with zero. Which I mean, that's, you know, old school stuff. But now we run three quarters of turn preload. So in other words, you're going to zero, turn the nut, three quarters a turn, back off about a eighth of a turn, tighten on the center adjuster come back up and your three quarters of turn preload lash would be your running distance between the rocker and the valve. Lashes required normally on a solid lifter kit.

Recommended valve spring change on a 602 and an IMCA hobby stock that runs a Rochester 2 barrel stock exhaust manifolds with a 6200 chip? (17:11)

Generally, I think in that application, you get away with a little bit more than what we do out here. Because we're running, turn those motors 64. And most of these guys are on the chip, you know, by the end of the straightaway, pretty hard, depending on the scenario, and I'm normally recommended every three to four races. So at 6200, we're you're limited like that. I'm going to say you can get away with at least another three races after that. Yeah, just stop pushing them and then don't buy into the whole. Please don't buy into the whole you know, $384 set springs that measure 84 pounds. That's that's all bullshit. Yeah. Yeah. Don't do that. Plenty of people out there advertising those.

I have the GM metal 4 blade, what do you suggest? I'm running a race gas with a double pass. (21:00)

Generally, so what I go for now is that race fan. So that race fan, it is a hub with a blades that are attached to it. So you can like basically turn it around the cooling that you need. Generally on gas, I mean, if you got a good shroud built up, you can get away with like a probably a, you know, if you want to use a 19 inch, depending on what you got for a shroud. So let's, if you got a four Blade 19 inch, you probably got a 19 inch shroud, you can probably take one of those drop down with three blades. And that'll work just fine. But you've got the opportunity or the option to go to two blades, if if you can get away with it, where you can go up to four blades. Yeah, and it's great because like they the center hub is CNC machines, you know, T six or 6160 T six aluminum, and it has all these holes in it. And those holes correspond with the blades around so you can go with two blades, three blades, four blades, or six, which we would never do in a crate. No, we wouldn't do that. And then also then you can you can really tune it because we've got blades that will make it a 15 inch fan, a 17 inch fan or a 19 inch fan. So essentially what you want to do any crate application, I don't care what it is, you want to run the least amount of blade diameter and or number of blades that you possibly can. 

Because any fan is going to take horsepower away. So if you take a 17 inch two blade compared to having no fan on there at all, that basically draws about four and a half five horsepower off the rear tires. So that's your best case scenario. I mean, yeah, you can get down to a 15.  Again, you gotta have like super shroud built to do that. And which we haven't done that. I would imagine take off like maybe another horsepower or something like that. But essentially you want to hover on that five horsepower at the rear tires is what you want to take off the engine.

What is the magic durometer number for who's your tires or any example of good tire reading of a racing tire? (27:19)

I don't think there's a magic number. I mean, it depends on the track and the tire and the the exact scenario. I mean, gosh, I mean yeah, there's there's no magic number. Because it's like what do you want the tire to do? I mean, when do you want it to fire? How long do you want it live? It's there's yeah, there's no magic number. So yeah, the compound to the track surface means everything. And you know, how you agree with how you SIPE it, whether you're needling it or not, I mean, there's so many different different variables there. It's insane. Tires are a science. You know, as much as the shock, guys, because I think, I think the most important guys today right now we're the shock guys, when it comes to dirt late model racing, at least. And really, I mean, you know, Crate Racin' USA street stocks or mods or whatever. I mean, the shock guy is, the guy. But you also have to have a damn tire scientist, working for you. Basically, if your allowed to groove, sipe, needle, you know, everything else. 

You know, it'd be interesting to I know, talk a little bit about this with Matt Henderson. We talked about how if you can have somebody in your crew, that every time you come off the racetrack, that they get temperatures from all of your tires, from the outside, from the center, and on the inside. And that data can be incredibly useful for your shop guy, and how you how you can see how your tire wear is going. And obviously, there's a lot more to it going down. You may or may not want to switch to that kind of thing. Yeah, I mean, it just there's sounds like there's a lot to and it'd be a very interesting next time we get Matt on the show. We'll have to ask him some more detailed questions about that.