[Ken Bonnema]

Dad, Your heart is in the right place. Much of the discussion on Spec motors I have seen revolves on eliminating the high priced motors which I am 100% against. That would be unfair to existing teams and would likely put the final nail in our sport. It does not seem that this is your focus. I hope not. I was on the BCRA Board of Directors for a few years in the early 2K's and one thing we did was to allow our older motors (V-4, Chev 2, Pontiac, VW,ect) more cubic inches. I cannot speak for the folks at Montpellier but I would bet they would welcome any 4 cyl. effort you would come up with. Midget racing (along with T.Q.'s) has always been the home of the mad scientist and folks like that (you) are the heart and soul of our sport.There are some pifalls to this and here are a few. Are you talking an iron block? If so, that will not only add weight but will upset the balance of the car. Is there Injection available for your motor? If not, you have to either get a set cast $$$$$$ or run carbs which will hurt the H.P. You're looking to start with around 300 H.P. To even have a chance at those numbers you need compression and inches so any thoughts of stock rods and crank are gone unless you want windows. And I'm not talking XP. If there is no history of this motor ever being in a Midget then you need custom Motor Plate, Pump Mounts, U-Joint, are you gonna run Dry Sump (oil pan). There is more but I think you see where this is going. Thanks to USAC once again devaluing racers equipment, there are lots of Focus Motors available but they likely have stock bottom ends and I doubt you'll ever see the numbers you are looking for with that. The ecotech is okay and at least there is history with Midgets so the bolt on stuff is available. Again, stock rods, ect and I did fail to mention the extreme Head work any stock motor needs to even have a chance to reach those numbers. Maybe the best chance is the DOHC Honda which has proven VERY competitve on the west coast. The bottom end in those motors are very stout and all bolt on parts are available. The number I heard to build a good one is around 20K but a bone stock one on alky would, I'm sure out-perform any of the previously mentioned motors. Bottom line is that no one is gonna build a Motor that will run with the top teams for 4K or anything close. I'm doubt that it could be done even for 15K but maybe if you hane enough cubes....... Right now, you can find older fontanas for around 6-8K and just bolt 'em in and race. I'll repeat what I said in my previous post. What you are trying to do is enter an arena that has many teams with huge budgets.
To quote a former engine builder, the late Don Canepa " Horsepower costs money,how fast do ya wanna go?" Keep me posted on your efforts as I understand what you are trying to do and I applaud your passion. Good luck............Ken

[DAD]

Ken

Thanks for your reply and input. Guys like you and Don who have an interest in the sport help add balance to what might become a one sided soapbox speech. I have been around racing much of my life, I am 67 years old. The mind is still going pretty strong but the old body is slowing down a tad.

My dad owned an automotive machine shop and used to joke about building his old race Flathead Fords out of junk that he swept off of the floor of his shop. He built or machined race engine for many of the local hot shoes like Bill Kimmel Sr., Harry Hyde, and Bill Clarry of Clary's Customotive Speed Shop here in Louisville. He was also friends with a guy named Al Davis, this guy was a genius. He was the guy that built the patterns for the first TQ quick change rear end. He actually built billet crankshafts for the old Crosley motors with nothing more than a 14" South Bend Lathe and an old Bridgeport Mill.

In my Young adult hood I was fortunate enough to become friends with a guy named Ralph Potter through racing Quarter Midgets with him and his sons. He built the Kurtis Quarter Midget that was so dominant in quarter midget racing from the late 50's to the 70's. He sold the Quarter Midget operation off and went back to racing Full Midgets. One of his first midgets was a VW rear engine design that USAC definitely did not like. Suffering through the VW phase of Midget racing Ralph decided that there must be a better way to build a race engine. His next engine to develop was the little Chevy V6. He spent a great deal of time and money making this little engine competitive. The culmination of his efforts was Tony Stewart's first ever national title in the USAC National Midget Division. USAC in their wisdom decided the little V6 had too much going for it and went about making rules to take away the edge from it. Ralph kinda of lost interest in Midget racing at this point and went on to finish out his racing in the Silver Crown Cars. Seeing all of this unfold I guess is what has caused me to to have a dislike of well intended rules meant to help the racer out.

Ralph financed his Midget racing with the help of 5 very successful Muffler Shops he and his son's run up in Indy. He was also my business mentor and helped me start a shop down here in Louisville. The advice he gave me on advertising was to never spend more than 10% of your gross on advertising unless you were advertising on a race car.

That brings me back to me and Mini Sprints. A big reason Ralph got out of racing was the cost involved in building a competitive race car. I knew that if it was hard with 5 gang-buster shops it would be impossible to do with one so so shop. When my son got old enough to start thinking about racing we tied up with a friend Bill Felker and his son Tony "AJ" racing 600cc upright Mini Sprints. That was a race car that I could afford to race and race right. The 600cc cars were the little brother to the 1200cc Mini Sprints and we were kinda of looked down on. They were powered with the little Honda FII motor, a new compact design with a much more efficient head design than motors in the past. We ventured up to Brownstown Indiana once to race with the 1200cc cars and low and behold AJ finished 5th in the feature with an engine one half the size.

At about this time in the late 90's the 1200cc class was dying a slow death because of the cost of modifying these old boat anchors to be race worthy. They left a lot of room for improvement in those things and this improvement work was expensive costing $10,000.00 + to build a good race engine.

Fortunate for us Mini Sprinters the Japanese chose to develop the 1000cc motorcycle engine next. In 2004 the race began between the bike makers to see who could build the fastest bike and has continued til this day. A stock off the bike 1000cc cycle motor would run circles around these older motors at 1/5 the cost. The reason these little motors were so powerful was all in head design. Your mentions of windows is quite true I have made a lot of them over the years. The advantage to the old sand cast HD midget castings are when you made a hole a good welder and a TIG could close it back up again. With the light weight permanent casting cycle motor the thickness and weight is not there so you just junk it and buy another motor.

In a high performance motor we talk about another "Window". That is the window made by the opening of the intake port and the valve head. Unfortunately this window in an Focus or Echotec is not very large because the port makes almost a 90 degree turn before getting to the valves.

In Quarter Midget racing back in the late 50's a guy named Carl Shoji saw this problem also in the Continental engine used in racing those cars at the time and went about curing it with a piece of steel tubing and a couple of pounds of brass welding rod, correcting the bent port problem and making what was known in the day as a Shoji side valve or side port "AA" motor. They were very very fast.

The the small 4 cylinder 2000cc engines developed today were developed for fuel economy, the manufactures started depending on V6 motors for their performance cars like Mustang and Camaro and yes even the LS Lincoln and Jaguar motors are powered by a 60 degree V6 motor. These motors fall a little outside the displacement deemed acceptable by USAC and other Midget race organizations. for a 4 valve head they set the limited to 2000CC's. The little V8 Sinergy motor is 2000CC's but expensive and to be honest the heads are old school Suzuki Hybusa designs and way out of date.

Auto maker build motors to meet their requirements and not those of some racing organization. It would make sense to me then that the racing groups would work their engine specs around what was currently available from the manufactures instead of working off of 50 year old specifications.

The design of the modern 60 degree V6 necessitates that the intake ports be set in at more vertical angle to the valve angle making for a much bigger window for the intake port, this translates into better Volumetric Efficiency and that translate into more Horsepower for the engine. How much I don't know, but it should be better than the Esslinger and we would be doing this with much smaller and easily controlled valves, this translates into less time and money replacing very expensive valves and valve springs.

Esslinger recognizing that straighter ports improve VE and makes more Horsepower have made a patch for their engines in the form of what they call the "Tall Head Design". By making the head taller they straightened out the intake ports thus making more horsepower. The problem is they still have that one enormous titanium intake valve to pass all of that intake charge through and because of this factor they are limited in the amount of improvement they can achieve without going to a larger bore piston.

Our Mini Sprint motors develop 200HP per 1000cc's If we developed our V6 to this stage of tune that would be 600+ Horsepower. I am shooting for 400 or so thus this motor is way below it's potential. With tires available for midgets 600 HP just might be a little overkill and not required. I am sure there would be people that shoot for this 600 mark that is what racers do.

The trick to the hole deal is make it stock block and cylinder head only, maybe allowing welding of the head to make VE a little better yet, for us tinkers. Let the block dictate how much power you can work safely.

The biggest problem I see is much like Ralph's V6 Motors the powers that be>> hopefully not Brian and Harold will regulate the motor out of existence in favor of the people that pay their bills.

Honest Dad himself

[PatrickMead#13]

Pick and pull motors might work too. Turn up the fuel pressure, throw some e85 in the tank, and focus on setup and driving. Around here, an ecotec can be had for $189 with injection. Doesn't get any cheaper than that...... Just a thought open for discussion. 😁

[jjones752]

My opinion (for what it's worth):
I ran with the IMRA Saturday and competed with an amazing mix of low-dollar Ecotechs, a Quad-4 and a good variety of motorcycle-powered, chain driven race cars. For the sake of argument let's call them the Blue Circuit. Over in Belleville, Kansas, USAC ran on the High Banks and featured the high-dollar, highly-stressed, outrageously expensive equipment that is an earmark of an elite league; let's call them the Red Circuit.
Both approaches have their place; if you have the inclination and the money to spend you run the Red Circuit, and if you don't have the finances and the lazer focus to "run with the Big Dogs" you choose Blue as you primary color.
Occasionally a Blue may want to dip his toe in some Red waters (see Johnny Murdock's Zero racers at Belleville); sometimes, a promoter catches lightning in a bottle and finds a way to come up with a handicapping system that successfully mixes Red and Blue (See Harold Hunter @ MMS). This is a rare, exotic event, like Purple Rain (apologies to the Artist Formerly Known as the Artist Formerly Known as Prince). However, in most cases, Red is Red and Blue is Blue; run whatcha brung in the Blues, but leave the innards stock; injection, plumbing and spark are free but keep the rotating assembly as from the factory.
As soon as you start monkeying with the rods, crank, cam, ports, etc., etc., etc, I'm sorry boys, you're gonna have to go petition the Reds to let you in (the exception being Montpelier Purple). As soon as you open her up you're also opening Pandora's Can of Worms (mixed metaphor intentional), because somebody's going to try to find a way to outspend you. In the history of Motorsports I don't think there has ever been a clear winner in a game of "Can You Top This?".
I've said my piece. Carry on...

[DAD]

Jim

Huh????

Could you send be down some of that stuff, then after giving it suitable time to take effect I'll come up with a response. I sure appreciate you jumping in, you add another dimension to the conversation, by being one of the Montpelier Chain Gang.

A stock 2004 and up gsxr 1000 will run circles around the older oil cooled rigs. That is because Suzuki built the race right into the bike. With high compression pistons, titanium valves, super port work etc.

On the other hand a V6 designed to power a stock type street car is also designed to run 200,000 miles plus on regular gasoline and give no problems. With 9 to 1 pistons we are going to need a little help to get up to speed running on Methanol and without Methanol overheating is going to be a problem. I think stock cams w/o variable cam timing should suffice, however we are thinking about speeds about 2000 RPM's over the stock 7 or 7500 rev limit. The powered rods might have stress problem there also. If the red team wants to go hog wild then let them these little V6 motors in a mild tune will still be cheaper than the new replacement cost of your cycle motor, and the way newer cycle motors are being priced right now, they could be cheaper than one of them also.

I don't see this motor ever racing USAC because they have a different way of looking at things. They like exotic even if exotic is a 50 year old designed motor.

I always thought that the red and blue shows was both the same, just different cities on the schedule>> goes to show you>>> that "a sucker is born every minute".

I do appreciate your input. I was never into singers and bands that much, and I guess I am like that old "Okie" or "Hill Billy" My high of choice was "Jack Black and Coke" and i refrain from that stuff now.

We in the blue camp should try to stand together. Our outlook desires and expected outcome are quite different than those of the red camp. Your and my desires are also possibly quite different I respect you for your views.

In the end we are both looking for an enjoyable pastime and experience without going broke in the process. I like the tinker side Doug like the driver side.

From what I heard they only had 15 cars at Bville for the show so I guess he did pretty good. Wonder why the car count was so low?? I heard it was because TRO was behind on production and a bunch of the teams was behind on their payments.

The secret to the 1000cc mini sprints popularity was and is that they left the factory in an amazing state of tune. Two Hundred Horsepower per Liter is approaching Formula I in proportions of horsepower per Liter, yes and there are still people that want to throw more money into them or think that their competition is doing so. You can't rule out rich, however a Midget at 400 Horsepower is rapidly reaching the point of diminishing returns in terms of tires and usable race track, Big Bville not withstanding and a few big pavement Joints.

What I see is an engine package that could obsolete both old worn out Midget motors and cycle motors alike. They should be cheaper to build even with a few special innards and the maintenance period should be like every couple of years for a freshen up. The other side of the coin is perhaps the high dollar Midget racers might decide to leave the low budget racers alone, choosing not to play with them anymore.

Honest Dad himself

[Bill May]

Dang it ! Dad, Build that motor (engine), I'm getting tired of reading these long winded (very well thought out) posts and subsequent replies, if all else fails, maybe we can revive the old Brown County, Ohio 1/4 mile and start our own" Extreme Midget " show.
or, somewhere in southern Indiana.

Just a thought,but, that's a beginning.

Bill May

[jjones752]

Sorry if I lost ya Dad; here's a little history lesson:
"Following World War 2, midget car racing exploded in the State of California, with the United Racing Association (U.R.A.) running two circuits, the ‘blue’ circuit reserved for Offenhauser powered cars, and the ‘red’ for V8-60 and motorcycle engine powered racers. The“V8-60” 60 horsepower flathead V8 introduced by the Ford Motor Company in 1937 was a more economical alternative to the larger 85 horsepower flathead V8. With its smaller size and lower cost as compared to the purpose-built Offenhauser racing engine, the production-based V8-60 engine presented a chance for many returning veterans to go midget racing."
So you see, there's nothing new under the sun; we still have the "Haves" and the "Have Nots". I applaud you for wanting to try something different, but the problem is that tinkering now costs way more than it did back in the Forties and seems to breed more tinkering and more expense. I do see a lot of parallels between USAC & POWRi with the old Blue Circuit and IMRA, IRS and maybe Johnny Murdock's new BAM series with the Red Circuit, with Montpelier and Gas City as a sort of middle ground.
I know I'm fighting a losing battle with my Yellow Zonker but heck, I'm just in it for the fun now anyway; when she blows I think I'll look for a scrapyard Ecotech myself, and maybe you can help me carve an adaptor to slap my modular Hilborn on the thing.

[DAD]

Bill

Thanks, some of this is just me fighting off oldtimers disease, part of it is the old school teacher in me and the rest is a passion for the little cars we refer to as Mini Sprint or Midget.

Times are a changing. Cycle motors in low mileage 2012 and up are drying up and prices are going up. Mini Sprinters are starting to get like other racing organizations, thinking just like our government that there is nothing that they can't fix with enough rules. Midget racing is killing it self with too many rules to try to keep the old technology in play, all the time disregarding the nose on their face that Japan, Detroit and even the Germans are developing power plants that could be very easily be made to work in a Midget at a fraction of what it is costing now.

I am working on "AJ" right now and perhaps if enough bright young back yard wizards read these posts we might between all of us come up with something that works.

Honest Dad himself

[Andrew S. Quinn]

I didnt think there were that many "tinkerers" these days. Been to many shops,and no lathe to be seen,and a drill press is the closest thing to a Bridgeport.No Tig welder in sight either. Most just buy parts and bolt on. Or take their cars to shops to be worked on.

[DAD]

Dang it Jim

You Left coasters are all alike. I thought you was talking about the old Barnum and Bailey Circus red and blue units. Old Ed Eskidarian did pretty good against them 110 Offies in his day with that little V8 60 of his. There problem was also overheating, thus the ugly grill required to race them.

Anything can be taken to extremes especially by racers. I am looking for an engine package one up on the echotec or motorcycle. There used to be an old joke about women's b00bs. It went something like this "Anything more than a mouthful is wasted" the same thing holds true for horsepower. We are racing people that know they are getting beat by horsepower, when the fact could be nothing further from the truth. Midgets belong on small 1/3 and preferably 1/4th or 1/5th mile race tracks would be better.

I kind of like to explain racing and horsepower in the terms of GO Karts them being one of my first experiences in racing. A dual engine Kart is not twice as fast as a single engine Kart but the kick in the Butt sure is a whole lot stronger. The same thing holds true for bigger race cars. We could run with 1200cc cars with a 600cc car BUT the 1200cc cars sure get there faster and that is what the drivers are looking for. Keep them on small tracks and a good 1000cc car will run with a mediocre Midget. Take them to big Bville or Eldora and the Horsepower wins out all the time.

Honest Dad himself