Heres the deal, GM makes sealed crate engines where you cannot remove the intake, front cover, oil pan, heads.. What would you do to find more power???
You can run basically any fuel, I have heard of people getting the timing covers off, turning engine upside down to change cams but you cant put a higher lift cam in or it could be found. Have to run same valve train including springs, rev limit set at 6200, any holley carb but have to use a certain part number spacer so a dominator is out of the question.
I have done a-lot with 602 crate. Know this....GM No longer supports these engines with sealing bolts or repair parts! You can get bootleg sealing bolts anywhere online. Stock cam works good advanced 4 degrees. Use a demon or HP holey no more than 700cfm DO NOT USE RACE FUEL. Replace the module in distributor with something else that is aftermarket but stock appearing. If they only check #1 cylinder in a lift check you can put 1.6 rockers on the rest and gain some.
Put a rv990 spring on it with damper removed adds about 20#'s of seat pressure keeps float down at 6000+ rpm.
Locking out the timing is worth 10 lbs of torque down low.
that's about it without busting it open. if you want to go there PM me and I will give a list of "liberal rules interpritation" modifications.
LOL actually I race on a 1/4 mile asphalt track, "yes like the madhouse show" and mine makes more power than needed, I actually put on a vacum secondary carb and a lazy timing curve to smooth and dampen it a little. I was tossing some thoughts around my head the other day "a little un-conventional" and thought I'd see if anyone here has tried them and to throw out new ideas without cracking this engine open.
Ohh gotcha, yeah i have a few friends that race modified dirt class. Crate 1 is the sealed motors and crate 2 is "modifieds". I don't know of any secrets for those sealed motors, you'll have to get damn creative. Is your class limited with a 6k chip?
its a msd soft touch box.. used with factory gm hei. They check the box and sometimes supply their own chip, check wiring and such. CANNOT hide the wiring, must be open for inspection.
Obivously a cost save for the average Saturday night late model racer.
Making a LOT more power with those engines & getting it through the tech barn undetected has been the practice for several years now, even when they are "serviced" at most of the "authorized" rebuilder locations.
The $12K price tag listed above isn't out of line at all and the sad thing is $12K will buy you a tweaked-up pile of mostly Chinese and cheap parts that really aren't worth saving at time of rebuild. All of a sudden the $5K upfront cost for an engine becomes $12K and rebuilds are at or above $2K.
Compare this to a cost of around $30K for a real engine with real parts in it that can be run at 8K peak RPM on a 1/2-mile for 10 or more seasons with the same rods, crank, block, rockers, cam, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
Now turn the RPM down on the good engine to where a crate POS can run without blowing itself apart......How many more seasons without changing parts, and how many additional parts won't need to be changed with any regularity?
I personally hate crate engines with a passion. There was and will never be a completely effective way to police sealed engines and they will cost more over the full lifetime of an average racer (approx. 7-10 years).
Car companies should stick to developing, building, and selling vehicles for transportation. No reason for them to kill the local engine building shops by throwing substandard packages out there that misleadingly appear to be low cost. Upfront, maybe. Long term, no way.
There is a much cheaper way to give the racers good motors and some flexability for low cost... one day some tracks will wake up to a restricted 5.3L GM Truck motor and these things will be cheap again. For some reason these rule morons who think flat tappets, iron heads and 2bbl's make open motors cheap need to wake up!
Im thinking more of things that can be done EXTERNALLY to the engine, ya know, more of a clever way to coax more power out of it.. Not really intentionally opening the motor and cheating, looking for more gray area type stuff here.
LOL "crate" is the only engine you cant claim in IMCA. If you build your own its 425 bucks to buy someone else's engine!
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