Competetive 4-cylinders in Comp?

[rognelson777]

New car on west coast with 4 cyl honda engine Has gone .60 under

Josh lee H/EA Good to see new blood and manufacturer in comp


Here is link http://honda-tech.com/showthread.php?t=3012466

[Axis Racing]

Sounds like the Honda is run at 134"? How are the H/EA power numbers compared to the L/A and F/D?

I'm talking hp per inch here....

[david ring]

My engine builder (Al Ackerman) never tells me those things-since his motors have always made my car go fast, I've never really pushed him of the subject either. Plus the real value of a dyno is not what the HP numbers are but how the HP numbers change as you make a tuning change.

[Axis Racing]

I'm sorry, I'm not really looking for specifics. More so, I'm wondering if the engines in the few 4-cyl comp classes all make similar #'s. I have no idea what it takes to be competetive in Comp., but it seams that all the competetive engines are quite large for 4-cylinders. I'm looking to run a FWD car in SS, with a 4-valve combo. Due to the high weight of a SS car, and the SS/CX class' 12lbs. per cu.in., I'll be somewhere in the neighborhood of 164" or so. That in itself is a pretty big 4-cylinder, but the 200" stuff like the F/D guys seem to be running is even bigger. I'd heard that there was someone running a 122" Honda in F/D, but that would require a car that's 40% lighter than a 200" Splayed valve deal.

I would really like to talk with someone that's running a competetive n/a Comp 4-cylinder to see if my thoughts of power requirements are even in the ballpark. It does nobody any good to spend a bunch of money to NOT BE competetive.

I can be reached at brian@phenixindustries.com if anyone is willing to give me a little guidance.

[Backyard Bandit]

I have considered running a turbo-charged front wheel drive car in comp. Have you thought about that?
Here's our car

[art leong]

Tim Kish, Larry Dowty, and myself run (or have run) FWD cars in SS/GS. We have different approches to the goal. Larry ran a Quad 4 engine and a manual trans. Tim runs a 120 inch neon engine and an auto trans. I run a 150 SRT4 block and an auto trans. All 4 valve heads.
All of us have run 13.0's or better. At 18 pounds per inch. And each of us has got the index hit.
These 4 cylinders make a lot of power. But I'm not sure you can get a car light enough to run 12 pounds per inch.
And expect to get an awful lot of hand made "one of's". And they aren't cheap.
In superstock with the breakout I'm sure you can build a competive car, but in comp it might be another thing.
One big problem is final drive (gear) ratio. Most factory final drives are in the low three's. And this makes for a major problem
Welcome to the 4 cylinder world.

[Backyard Bandit]

You don't have to tell me about the one-off parts. People have come a long way with the auto trans cars recently. That's why we were considering it.

[art leong]

Originally Posted by Backyard Bandit

You don't have to tell me about the one-off parts. People have come a long way with the auto trans cars recently. That's why we were considering it.

If you are going to drive off the front wheels. The trans themselves are fine. I even have a fully functional trans brake for the chrysler fwd trans. The gear ratio is the major hurdle. I have a custom set of side gears, and the biggest we could go is a 3.94 ratio with out extensive work to the trans case.
Before people b1tch about the indexs for the front drive cars. They should think about how fast a rwd car could go if they were restricted to a 4.0 rear gear.

[Hagen Gary]

Have you looked into SS/EX?
I think you’re going to have a hard time running the 10.80 SS/CX index when you can't modify the front clip enough to make it work. SS/EX index is 10.50, you could run methanol, engine location and body mod rules are a lot more liberal, Its 11.5 lbs per inch and you won't have to compete with 260+ cubic inch V6 RWD cars that can run 1.00 in bracket mode and are only going to bring the SS/CX index down. Good luck, we need more of these cars

[art leong]

Originally Posted by Hagen Gary

Have you looked into SS/EX?
I think you’re going to have a hard time running the 10.80 SS/CX index when you can't modify the front clip enough to make it work. SS/EX index is 10.50, you could run methanol, engine location and body mod rules are a lot more liberal, Its 11.5 lbs per inch and you won't have to compete with 260+ cubic inch V6 RWD cars that can run 1.00 in bracket mode and are only going to bring the SS/CX index down. Good luck, we need more of these cars

Gary one of the problems with SS/EX is the index With a soup to nuts top notch car you can probably run 9.70's (in real good air) But that might not even get you in the field at Indy.
You still have to deal with the drawbacks related to FWD. The far better class is SS/GS (the class I run) Heavy (18 pounds per cube) but a much softer index (for now). I've run 12.70's all over the place. And I believe that a properly done effort could run 12.3's.
My car has been in the process of change for 5 years and still is. A smaller stroke would help me, and as of now (and the rest of this year) I'm running a set of street headers (no step or merge)