Spending money to save money

[Roland V. Johnson]

Alan, I am not sure what your definition of single source is then.

[alangbaker]

Alan, I am not sure what your definition of single source is then.

You're missing the point:

YES: Ford was a single source.

But they were a single source that was making hundreds of thousands of the parts to serve a larger market in which they had to be competitive. While you had to go to Ford for replacement parts for the Kent engine, if they priced those parts too high, people would buy fewer Ford cars. So the competition in the larger market for cars kept prices under control

This is not the case with the single source for—say—a crankshaft for the Kent engine in racing.

Can you not see this?

[Daryl DeArman]

You could have bought parts from your Ford dealership, a new Cortina, you could have went to a junk yard, Pegasus, any number of engine builders, bought a used car for the engine. . . point is there were thousands of sources you could have gone to acquire the bits and they didn't all have to buy the part from the same source either. Heck, Ford probably had more than one foundry from which they sourced the crankshafts as well.

[teamwalker]

I had an engine rebuilt by a well known engine builder and at 15.5 hours the crank broke. No, not a SCAT. No ground strikes, nor do I rev the engine to 7000. I cannot tell you how many competitors told me that they have had the same thing happen to them, and this crank weakness has been well known throughout the history of FF.

I would be more then willing to pay for a bullet proof forged steel crank that would probably only need to be replaced when it wears out! These cranks already exist and match the current specifications for FF cranks, except for weight (steel vs. iron), and would not give any performance advantage. In fact the heavy weight may be a disadvantage.

This option should be available, not mandatory, and I would support any effort to make it legal.

[Peter Olivola]

I had an engine rebuilt by a well known engine builder and at 15.5 hours the crank broke. No, not a SCAT. No ground strikes, nor do I rev the engine to 7000. I cannot tell you how many competitors told me that they have had the same thing happen to them, and this crank weakness has been well known throughout the history of FF.

I would be more then willing to pay for a bullet proof forged steel crank that would probably only need to be replaced when it wears out! These cranks already exist and match the current specifications for FF cranks, except for weight (steel vs. iron), and would not give any performance advantage. In fact the heavy weight may be a disadvantage.

This option should be available, not mandatory, and I would support any effort to make it legal.

I wonder how we all avoided the crank issue in the '70's. There were many more of us running in the class then. The resulting competition was intense throughout the country. And yet, it wasn't a problem.

[Daryl DeArman]

I wonder how we all avoided the crank issue in the '70's. There were many more of us running in the class then. The resulting competition was intense throughout the country. And yet, it wasn't a problem.

How did the SCAT FF crank come to be? Where are all those magical OEM cast cranks now?

[Peter Olivola]

How did the SCAT FF crank come to be? Where are all those magical OEM cast cranks now?

I don't know. You seem to be implying they were all destroyed by flywheel ground strike breakage. I find that difficult to reconcile with what I've heard from engine builders, i.e., normal, expected, wear, overheat warpage, etc., none of which is a reflection of the shortcoming of the crank. The biggest factor being usage time. Where is there more than anecdotal "evidence" that flywheel ground strike accounted for a significant number of failures?

[problemchild]

I had an engine rebuilt by a well known engine builder and at 15.5 hours the crank broke. No, not a SCAT. .

I am confused Craig. If you did not go for the SCAT option before, why would you have gone with the forged crank option? The problem was not that you did not have an option of a crank that won't break, but you chose not to use it.

[DaveW]

In 1987 I had the best QSRE FF engine I ever had (and maybe the best ever built). It was extremely good in that it had the torque to match any other FF engine out of the corners, but its most amazing quality was that it would rev until you chickened out thinking it might blow up. It had such good top-end power that in the 1987 Runoffs race at Road Atlanta, I did not shift to 4th down the pit straight (pretty much everyone else did) - I just left it in 3rd and it touched 7400 just before turn 1 almost every lap. Back then, they were all stock Ford cranks. So maybe the OE cranks varied in casting quality leading to crank failures.

[John Merriman]

I find it very easy to believe that the stock cranks had their limits....limits like a ton of racing hours of causing fatigue, like, say, a bunch of over-rev 'situations' and, uhm, maybe, like, assorted out of balance parts causing oddball vibrations. Oh, and how about the added stress of many, many poorly timed upshifts and down shifts combined with a heavy flywheel mixing in the action? The fact is that the reduction of flywheel weight was THE signature accomplishment of Jake Lamont's huge and valued efforts to make the Kent engine more reliable. (I know because I was supporting Jake in that effort...) So yeah, I'm thinking those are the factors doin' that damage to many of the OEM cranks. Now, let's ask ourselves whether some of them lived a long time while others pooped out after three hours running? Answer: Yup. Castings are casting......their quality varies. They have their flaws.

I also have one more anecdote to add to Dave's: At my very first school at Bryar in the Spring of 1983, half way into the Sunday afternoon mini-race to end the day, I managed to get off line and, yes, you guessed it, I ran over an asphalt curb....dead center. (this is actually in my race log) Amazingly the engine kept running and when I heard the pronounced "chatter" sound from back there, I shut it down. Turns out that I weighed 25 pounds more that the previous owner of this MACON MR-7B (1982 Club Ford Championship car in the RCCA ) who happened to be Chris Fahan. And I knew not a thing about ride heights on my first weekend on track.The engine still ran in the paddock when we tried it for ten seconds and when Ted Wenz took the crank out, the break was found to be across the journal and there was no other internal damage.

As to the origin of the SCAT crank, I confess I cannot recall just now how it came about. I believe Jay was involved and possibly someone on the SCCA Comp Board too. I just might dig back into the FFU website archive I have on a CD and if I find anything I'll post it.

Cheers

[Daryl DeArman]

I don't know. You seem to be implying they were all destroyed by flywheel ground strike breakage.

I don't know how they were all (mostly) all destroyed or why the class felt a need for the improved unit from SCAT. That's why I asked. You stated that there were tons of them in use in the 70's, while also implying they were being stress tested at a high level without failure.

I'm guessing enough were failing that folks wanted a better option. Now it seems some feelers are being put out to learn if there is desire/demand for an even better crank.

[DanW]

I find it very easy to believe that the stock cranks had their limits....limits like a ton of racing hours of causing fatigue, like, say, a bunch of over-rev 'situations' and, uhm, maybe, like, assorted out of balance parts causing oddball vibrations. Oh, and how about the added stress of many, many poorly timed upshifts and down shifts combined with a heavy flywheel mixing in the action? The fact is that the reduction of flywheel weight was THE signature accomplishment of Jake Lamont's huge and valued efforts to make the Kent engine more reliable. (I know because I was supporting Jake in that effort...) So yeah, I'm thinking those are the factors doin' that damage to many of the OEM cranks. Now, let's ask ourselves whether some of them lived a long time while others pooped out after three hours running? Answer: Yup. Castings are casting......their quality varies. They have their flaws.

I also have one more anecdote to add to Dave's: At my very first school at Bryar in the Spring of 1983, half way into the Sunday afternoon mini-race to end the day, I managed to get off line and, yes, you guessed it, I ran over an asphalt curb....dead center. (this is actually in my race log) Amazingly the engine kept running and when I heard the pronounced "chatter" sound from back there, I shut it down. Turns out that I weighed 25 pounds more that the previous owner of this MACON MR-7B (1982 Club Ford Championship car in the RCCA ) who happened to be Chris Fahan. And I knew not a thing about ride heights on my first weekend on track.The engine still ran in the paddock when we tried it for ten seconds and when Ted Wenz took the crank out, the break was found to be across the journal and there was no other internal damage.

As to the origin of the SCAT crank, I confess I cannot recall just now how it came about. I believe Jay was involved and possibly someone on the SCCA Comp Board too. I just might dig back into the FFU website archive I have on a CD and if I find anything I'll post it.

Cheers

John,

I completely agree. The flywheel weight on the crank, along with spinning them to 7K causes fatigue failures. I broke two cranks. The initial fractures were at the web between the #3 crank pin and the #4 main bearing. I had a metallurgical engineer examine the first one. He showed me the fracture beach and the ratcheting. Gray cast iron tensile strength can vary widely and be much lower than cast steel. It is more subject to voids, porosity and inclusions too.

Dave Bean also had cast steel cranks built at the SCCA's request and the SCCA screwed him.

I'm grateful to Dave, Jake, and Jay Ivey for their passion and perseverance to get the cast steel cranks approved.