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The diesel engine as a viable performance option

58K views 543 replies 78 participants last post by  Powerstroked162 
#1 · (Edited)
First I’m primarily a gas racer; I cut my racing teeth as a Competition Eliminatorcrew member, and racer. I get a woodie when I put my foot on the throttle of a 11,000 rpm small block.

I was stranded without a affordable and competitive engine program at the end 2001 season, after a fairly successfully 5 years of campaigning a D/ed with a Splayed valve V6. I stumbled in to the diesel performance world, and found it to be a new found passion.

The diesel engine development curve is where the gas world was 30 years ago. I speculated it would rapidly catch up, and it’s coming along, there are a lot of inovatators in the diesel couminity .
When I first started with diesels, mentioning cylinder head and cam development was laughed at. They stated that boost would overcome it all. 6 years later the shop that I begged to do my head, and build a sheet metal manifold has a 3 month waiting list to get a head and manifold.

So is the diesel engine as a viable power plant for a muscle car, bracket car, or even race car .
I don’t mean the typical smoke belching engine, but well refined engine programs. The diesel engine has made huge gains in this arena with the advent of electronic common rail high pressure with 20,000 to 30,000 psi fuel systems.
With the CR systems you can tune around destructive peak cylinder pressure as the engine goes thru peak torque. The solution to this before, on mechanical fuel systems was to reduce compression ratio, killing low eng cylinder pressure, and this worked on all out engines, but killed bottom throttle response. These lack of bottom end , also effected the AR selection on turbo’s

The advent of cylinder heads that in effect doubled air flow (Cummins stock 144 CFM ) ( Duramax stock 140 CFM ) to both heads flowing close to 250 CFM on streetable heads and 300+ CFM on all out race heads.

Cam design, which I made one of my pet projects, was way behind. The major player would grind BBF RV grinds on the Cummins 54.5 mm core, the events were to big , and with way to much overlap
Problems was the turbo diesel engine cores were on at best 102 to 106 LSA and the overlap was one of the greatest no no’s on a diesel . The diesel engine has little scavenge with 1.2 to 1.5 boost to turbine inlet pressure ratio’s . The tipical street cams would open the intake 10 ATDC and close at 2 or 3 ABDC . I use a cams that is 230 230 on a 116 in at 116 . and do it on 60 mm cores


So to the latest in Chevy Duramax engine for a street engine
First forget the huge injectors, twin pumps and compound turbo’s. A stock short block Duramax with a good cylinder head, and cams program will breath well, and make 600 hp and 1000 ft lbs of torque, and rev to 5000+ rpms and last forever. The great part about doing the heads and cam, on a entry level engine is, that now this good breathing engine will make a good power curve at low boost levels. The great part is no need for an intercooler at this boost level. Just use Water injection on the street.

This engine in a muscle car will run good, smoke free, and get 40+ MPG on # 2 diesel fuel. Go ahead and put a good set of rods in the motor and the hp level is close to 1100 hp with nitrous , which doubles as an intercooler.

Here are some pictures of the NX Mustang and My Dragster and their engine programs based around the Dmax diesel engine.

Oh and I love this forum, the knowledge level is humbling.













 
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#541 ·
G-Code this needs to stay up for the rest of YB to see. We do not need anymore misinformation and fibbing, you can see for yourself how he just disappeared from here and started another thread about comp and how he is a pioneer at that too.
 
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