Once problems with rolling element bearing reliability have been chased in NASCAR Sprint Cup Series competition, is it worth trying to gain performance improvements? The rolling element bearing does consume some power. While mechanical losses are worth a little more than you might think, there are actually two gains made for every reduction of mechanical loss implemented. Every horsepower retained through eliminating loss is a horsepower of extra power available from the engine. But there...
If you talk to anyone in the camshaft manufacturing business, it isn't very long before the name of Landis crops up. Old timers might reflect fondly on such machines as the Berco RAC1500 cam grinder - "The best manual cam grinder in the business" or be rather less complementary about the Storm Vulcan machine going back into the 1950s, but the one machine that everyone agrees upon, to the point where it is now assuming the position of an icon in the camshaft manufacturing...
Some of the important design features of the con rod have been discussed briefly in the articles on the RET Monitor website, and there has also been a recent RET Focus article in the magazine on the con rod. In that Focus article, we mentioned coatings, but here is a good forum to expand on the material a little further. Looking at the thrust faces of the big end of the rod, many people choose to run without any form of coating. If the lubrication regime is such that wear is not a problem,...
The lubrication of the big end of the con rod is generally looked after very well, especially in the four-stroke racing engine as it is normally positively lubricated, i.e. continuously fed by high pressure oil issuing from the oil holes thoughtfully provided by the designer in the crankpin. The lubrication of the small end of the con rod is, by comparison, not so well provided for in terms of lubrication. Owing to the low surface speeds and the oscillating nature of the contact, we cannot...
In a previous article discussing the oil holes which are necessary in crankshafts, the author briefly discussed one of the methods by which oil is transferred to the crankpins for the purpose of lubricating the big end of the con rod and its bearings. The article discussed how the oil, having arrived at the main bearing, must make its way through the crankshaft via the oil drillings to the crankpin. We touched briefly on compound-angle drillings and axial drillings in that article, but...