This message was edited on
May 16, 2008 at
10:38:46 AM by cubicdollars
(Taken from Len Sammons’ column in this week's Area Auto Racing News)
Up until now, Chevy's Midget racing engines were based off the Chevy II four-cylinder engine from the mid to late-'60s. GM's Pat Suhy said today’s 410 Sprint Car engine goes back even further to Chevy's first small block designed and built in 1955.
"It's a clone of a small block Chevy," said Suhy discussing today's current Sprint Car engine. "If you look at what we've done with our NASCAR engine we've kinda gotten away from that fundamental architecture and took advantage of what rules that NASCAR had out there. We hope to apply the same philosophy to our new 410 Sprint Car engine that we're going to build."
Suhy felt the new Sprint Car engine could be designed and built, like the Midget Engine, in about a year.
"That's our next frontier," said Suhy. "We're in the preliminary stages now of looking at design concepts and based on what our ability is I think within a year or earlier we might have something on the race track."
Look for some gains.
"The design tools have obviously changed drastically since the 1955 Chevy engine was built," said Suhy. "We now do a lot of things on the computer in the design phase to cut out what you would have normally done once you made the first part. Then you would have to widdle on it to make it better and better. We now try and do it all on the computer and optimize the design which helps speed the process along. It's a matter of us supplying these modern design principals to the formula for a Sprint Car engine."
Chevrolet has jumped with both feet into the highly competitive Midget Engine building battle with Ford, Toyota and Mopar. While they dominate 410 Sprint Car competition with Mopar their only main competition, the rumor mill has been stirring that Toyota will soon have an engine on the market that could make the competition obsolete. Chevrolet now seems ready to step up to the plate.
(Tony) Stewart's participation in (Chevrolet's) Indianapolis, IN, press conference further shows his strong ties with Chevrolet. This year, for the first time in his career, he's driving a Toyota on the NASCAR Sprint Cup circuit for car owner Joe Gibbs. With his contract with Gibbs running out after the 2009 season, it seems to me it's just a matter of contract negotiations before he returns to a Chevrolet on that circuit.
 Click here, for link to article on Chevy's new Midget Engine.
They don't even know how to spell sprint car
much less chromoly...http://www.ycmco.com
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