Are All /6 distributors the same ?
Bill, is it even possible for you to post sumffin without somehow referrin to a turbo? lol
It is, but what would be the point?
I mean, the slant six has this built in horsepower "limiter" that is impossible to overcome, normally aspirated, called a
strangulated cylinder head, and the best way I know of to get decent performance out of one is to use some sort of forced induction; either supercharging or turbocharging. I guess nitrous would work as well, but seems to have a lot of problems I don't understand regarding temperature and pressure changes, so I try to stay away from things I don't understand... and that leaves forced induction.
There are two factors that point me in the direction I go; the small bore/small valve, built-in restrictions of the slant six, and its unusually robust construction which enables it to handle tons of boost without the usual problems, and thereby not be subject to the reliability issues that might plague lesser engines, like my 360 Magnum. When I say lesser, I mean in terms of how much boost they will acccept before they start spitting parts at you...
Both Ryan Peterson and Tom Wolfe have run boost levels of 28psi, or so, on their turbo'd slant sixes without hurting anything. If I tried that with my 360 Magnum, I'd be taking it home in a wheelbarrow...
And, at that level of boost, the leaning tower of power is putting out over 500 horsepower, an amount that will stand toe-to-toe with a lot of stout V8's on the street.
That kind of performance is just not possible without a hairdryer, or some other boost-making hardware.
Our engine hasn't approached that level because we weren't smart enough to seal it up (the compression/cylinder-pressure) with O-Rings, but we'll have to, now.
If I were going to build a normally-aspirated inline-six, and wanted it to get out of it own way without having to put the whole car on a starvation diet to get the weight down to, say, 2400-pounds like Guzzi Mark did, I would have built a 300 Ford six or a 292 Chevy six. Those engines both have large enough bores, (with room for big valves) and enough cubic inches in their OEM state, to make pretty good horsepower normally aspirated. The Ford has a 4" bore... The Chevy six has a 3.875" bore, both a far cry from the little 3.4" bore in the slant block.
Oh, you can put bigger valves in a slant six head, but 1.75" and 1.5" is the usual "oversize" valve size fitted (and, what our engine has) and the problem in going bigger is, there's just not much room.... and, if you do succeed in getting a bigger valve in there, the chances are its beneficial effects will be defeated due to shrouding by the combustion chamber walls.
At only 225 cubic inches, they are small to begin with, and stroking one very much is a questionable activity, because the stroke is already too long for rpm's much over 6,000... There's just no good way to make it much bigger. And, unless you can be happy with a 13-second car, looking at alternatives to the normally-aspirated slant six would seem to be not a bad idea if you want bang for your buck.
That's not to say you can't do like Mark Ethridge did, and build a featherweight race car that will run tens, normally-aspirated, but his car is/was unusually light, and not many folks are as talented as he is.
I know I'm not.
It is hard to get a normally-aspirated slant six into the thirteens, much less the twelves; look a the '68 Dart of the 805MoparKid, for example.
His car has a cam, high compression, a ported head, a 4bbl carb, headers and slicks, with a 4.10-geared rear end, and runs low 14's.
That's one heluvalotta work for a 14-second car, but the cylinder head is at the bottom of it.
If he were so inclined, I am betting that he could replace that cam with a milder one, change the pistons to some with 9:1 compression, add a blow-thru 4bbl and a turbo header, bolt on a turbo and have an 11-second ride, immediately. He might have to trade that 4.10 gear for a 2.76...
But, that's not his desire, so it probably won't happen. It's HIS choice...
I rant about turbos a lot because I see them as the ONLY practical way to be competitive in the street with a slant six...
Because of the restrictive design of the OEM cylinder head, I see trying to build acceptable performance with a normally-aspirated slant six as tantamount to running a marathon with duct tape completely covering your mouth... a handicap I don't need.
Forced induction, be it a centrifugal, belt-driven blower, a Roots-style positive-displacement supercharger, or a turbo, makes an end run around that bottleneck/head in a very meaningful way. The computer says (and, no, I can't vouch for it,) that only ten pounds of boost on a well-built 225 turbo motor, will make 343 horsepower.... enough to get your attention, and you can still run pump gas...
That's why I can't seem to shut up about it... it looks to me like the most intelligent approach to wringing significant horsepower out of our favorite engine.
Thanks for listening!:blob:
Now, aren't you sorry you asked???
