The power to qualify
By Larry Cothren, Stock Car Racing Magazine
September 21, 2001
3:46 PM EDT (1946 GMT)
Whenever Ernie Elliott, a top engine builder in the NASCAR Winston Cup Series, speaks of the differences between qualifying engines and actual race engines, he uses basic hot rod lingo.
"They're basically just, inside the rules, hopped-up a little bit more than a race motor would be," says Elliott, owner of Ernie Elliott Inc., a company that builds engines for the Winston Cup teams of drivers Stacy Compton, Jason Leffler and Sterling Marlin.
By this season's midpoint, Elliott's company had produced two pole-winning engines from its shops in Dawsonville, Georgia, and Concord, North Carolina. Compton was the fastest qualifier in the spring race at Talladega, while Marlin, the most consistent driver in the Dodge stable this season, was fastest at Daytona during July.
NASCAR rules limit what a team can do to a qualifying engine, but there are areas in which engine builders push the limits of power-and sacrifice engine durability. Being "hopped-up" and winning poles comes at a cost when building qualifying engines, however, as engine builders sacrifice durability in favor of speed.
"They're a little bit more on the edge as far as weights of the components, the camshafts," says Elliott. "There's not a lot you can do. I mean, there's only so much you can do to the cylinder heads within the rules, only so much you can do with the manifolds.
Basically it just boils down to what you can do to the valve train, as far as camshaft design, valve-train weight and overall component weight. Everything is lighter. The biggest deal is component weight.
"You also run your clearances a little looser. Everything is done for just firing the motor up cold and cutting one fast lap."
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A weekend ritual for teams is pulling out the qualifying engine and replacing it for the one that will provide power during the actual race.
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While not willing to give up specific trade secrets, Elliott offers insight into how his company handles qualifying engines.
"You're more aggressive on the camshaft than you would be on a race motor because obviously a qualifying motor has got to run a maximum of 30, 35 miles per event, and generally a qualifying motor will last three events," he says.
"So you put somewhere between probably a minimum of 75 miles and, depending on how close the car is, a maximum of 125 or 130 miles. That's pretty much the range where that thing is mileaged out. Then the power starts to diminish and you need to freshen the motor up to get it back to an acceptable power level."
Preventative maintenance, in fact, is a priority to ensure that power levels stay high enough to field a competitive qualifying engine.
Between races, the engines are leak-checked to insure that cylinder compression stays within an acceptable level, bore scoped so mechanics can detect any potential problems internally, and valve lash is examined for problems.
"Obviously you checked your filters when you pulled it out of your cars, so you know if there's anything going wrong in the bottom end of the motor," says Elliott. "By pulling the valve covers off we visually inspect the camshaft from the upper side, just to make sure we don't see any problems starting to happen.
"You don't have to finish the race; you only have to qualify. Obviously, as hard as it is to qualify for a Winston Cup race, these are things you have to do to have good qualifying performance out of a car."
Once an engine has passed the requisite quality checks, it's used for qualifying then sent back through the cycle, preparing it for the next event.
"Let's say for instance that you use it at Loudon," says Elliott. "Then we would most likely use that same motor again at Bristol, and then probably Richmond and at Martinsville. If you don't put a lot of time on a motor, and every time you leak-check or re-dyno it the power level stays acceptable, you could use it at all four events. They're fragile but they're not a one-race deal."
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