Thread: tonight on NASCAR

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It is interesting to me that Toyota developed a completely new V8 for NASCAR, but how many do they have to put on the street to backup thenew erngine. I just returned from a round trip to York PA, Phila PA and back to Richmond in the last few days and I looked for Toyota V8s on the highway but only saw two. It is interesting that they destroked the crank design of the SBC-type for higher rpm and that the recent problems the Gibbs team has had with horpepower calibration were due to trying to hide the HP of the Toyota at over 640 HP. I am trying to understand that situation and my take is that Toyota got a lot of breaks that were too successful and the team was trying to keep their advantage by hiding what the true HP was. I also thought the block limit was 355 cu in (silly me) when it turns out that they use 358 cu in. Thus with a shorter stroke the Toyoto V8s must have larger diameter bores and pistons. Even so it is pretty amazing that all the NASCAR engines are running at close to 2 HP/cu. in. Just for the record I enjoy watching Carl Edwards and the Ford team must have something under the hood because on that last lap pass, he stayed ahead. Just for Dave's curiosity, I am an old Fordnatic but I just don't have the money for a modern flathead or the patience to messaround with the long snout water pump on the Ford SBC so I took the easy way out with a SBC.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Has been a mandate for several years for all makes as well as the bore and stroke to get there....I do agree that without the post race fireworks it was a pretty boring bristol race.. I was at the race when DW jacked up Davey Allison and the fans covered the track in beercans...Gotta love Nascar The thing I remember most about Bristol was not being able to hear for like 4 days after that...

The wife and I were there last night. Awesome finish. Scanner traffic was out of this world, wish I could post what Gordon and Stewart said on the radio, but very graphic.....LOL! e-mail me if you want quotes.....LOL!

I wish Kenseth would have won too, but I'll take edwards. Actually I'll take anyone over k busch right now. LOL!

Originally Posted by Don Shillady

It is interesting to me that Toyota developed a completely new V8 for NASCAR...
Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Don, if you read the history when Toyota knew they were getting into NASCAR they looked at all of the engines that NASCAR had approved in the past, looking at everything from the basics of bore, stroke and crank angles to details of valve angles and rocker ratios to understand what worked and why. Chevys, Fords, Chryslers, basically every engine that had races was part of the research project. Armed with that they developed their engine for the trucks and did OK after a tough learning curve. This was with TRD in Orange County, CA as their engine works. I have not seen it but understand that their new facility in NC is top of the line, including not only engine manufacturing but a wind tunnel for testing their racers from trucks to cars. It seems to me that they have invested a bunch of money here in the US, and are doing OK on the track from an engineering perspective. Just my $0.02 from a distance....