crate bolts on ebay

wheel spinner said:
I suspect that t.nei and others have read, heard, or experienced something to make them feel that good tech-ing is not achievable. You will need to elaborate to explain why you feel this way.
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I think good tech is achievable, but the only way to know what is inside a rebuilt engine with RM bolts is to open it back up and look, and that takes time and costs money. I don't think the weekly tracks are doing well enough financially off the crate cars to invest the time and money into tearing an engine down. That is the problem with allowing rebuilds with RM bolts; the track promoters just do not make enough money from the class to pay the purse and spend a lot of time and effort tearing engines down. They do not do it that much in the classes that are bringing in a lot of cars, so it's not realistic to expect them to do it for the crates, either. So my suggestion is to make their life easier, and give the racers more confidence that they are not racing against cheated up engines by only allowing in engines with OEM bolts.

With OEM bolts, the tech guy can look at it and be pretty certain that it hasn't been tampered with inside the bolts, because the OEM bolts are impossible to get from any other source than the factory. (There has been talk of duplicated OEM bolts, but so far no one has ever been found to have fake OEM bolts. I also think it's unlikely anyone ever will. All of the engines that have been busted for being out of spec were rebuilt engines.)

Like I have already stated, I think the cheating in crate racing is being done with RM bolts that came through legitimate channels. Eliminate rebuilds, eliminate the RM bolts, and the long term effect is to make the racers more confident that there is no illegal work being done during the rebuild, because there simply are no rebuilds. All the engines remain sealed as they came from the factory.

Something did come to mind while reading Roby Helms press release regarding David Gentry's engine, which I will quote here:

"If these seals are broken to repair the engine, they are replaced by sealing bolts marked “RM” that are only available from GM Performance to distributed only to authorized GM Performance Crate Engine rebuilders."

Now in his own words, the seals are broken to repair the engine, and the RM bolts are supplied to allow for the repairing of broken crate engines. I don't see a problem with allowing RM bolts to repair engines.

Midget Racer hit on this earlier in one of his posts too, and that is that two RM bolts on an engine would indicate a repair, so that would not really throw a red flag in tech in a series that did not allow rebuilds. That would allow for parts failures, leaks, etc to be fixed, and that is something that does need to be allowed. On that I don't disagree.

But my question is this; what exactly is Hendrens Racing Engines "fixing" when they take a brand new 604 and tear it apart, blueprint it, and then reassemble it and sell it for $1500 or so more than a stock 604 costs? The answer is obvious; nothing. They are simply taking the RM bolts they get legitimately and using it to give the racers who can afford it a performance advantage. I think that is the only conclusion anyone can come to, because they sure aren't fixing something that isn't broke or freshening up a tired engine.

My other question is this; when someone shows up at a track with an engine with RM bolts and not a single OEM bolt in it, what can you tell about that engine? It's been opened up and resealed. That's all. Nothing more than that, because no one is keeping track. You don't know who did the work, when it was done, what parts were used, what machine work was done, not a thing. You either tear it down, or let it go, and more often than not, due to financial and time restraints, the tracks just have to let it go and assume everything inside was done to legal specs.

You just have no way of knowing anything else without tearing it down, and it's unrealistic to expect the promoters to do that. So good tech is achievable, but at too great a cost to be a realistic option. That is why I am so much in favor or only allowing OEM engines in, and RM bolts only for repairs. That makes life easier on the tech man, and gives the racer more confidence that they are racing on equal terms.
 
here is a post from hendrens on 4m......


If they discontinue the bolts the different series will have there own made,at least thats what I was told by Fastrack.
G.M. is mad because other than Fastrack and storm Pay different sanctioning groups have let engine builders use non G.M. parts to rebuild the engines,thereby cutting G.M. out of the HUGE profit from selling things like rod bearings for a 604 $180.00 the parts have been a big rip off and they were loosing money. they want to stop the rebuilding by anyone but themselves and from what I have been told are going to offer a factory rebuilt engine for some amount of $$$ so they can cut the engine builders out altogether.Bill
 
t.nei, I would agree that good tech-ing would require more tear-downs than what we saw last year. I will also agree that promoters will likely not put the needed effort in inspecting cars. I suspect someone would need to win quite a few races in stomping fashion before they get a closer look. The bad news is RM bolts are here and they are going to stay (at least for awhile). I just don't see someone getting turned away because their RM motor comes from far away.From what I read it seems that ASA is doing a pretty good job with tech. I only hope UMP (and others) will do the same.

racer94, do you suppose this GM performance factory rebuild is the announcement that was promised in the first week of March? GM says they are only suppling these "RM" bolts until June.
 
Rkatekt said:
What does it matter as long as the motor is within the allowed specifications and tolerances?
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Blueprinting so far is allowed, and it puts the engine to minimum specs, and brings with it a 20-30 HP advantage. Since this class has been introduced to lower engine costs, ensure a level playing field, and not let the guy with the most dollars win, why is it ok then to allow blueprinting, which defeats all three of those purposes?

Level playing field? Guy with a blueprinted engine has a HP advantage.
Reduce engine costs? Blueprinting adds cost.
Not let the guy with the most money win? Guy with the extra $1500 to spend just bought an advantage with his money that might just get him a win.

Apparently so far, you are correct, it doesn't matter as long as the engine, if it gets torn down at all, is within the minimum specs and tolerances. The blueprinting option seems to me to be the way to stay legal and get an advantage.

The problem to me though is not even just the blueprinting, but that without tearing down an engine with a complete set of RM bolts, you don't know if that was ALL that was done.
 
If GM does end up offering a rebuild option, that solves a lot of the problems.

If it were up to me, I would allow rebuilt engines with RM bolts until Jan 1, 2010. That gives everyone with those engines a chance to use them up. After that, only allow in GM rebuilt or OEM engines, and allow a couple of RM bolts on an engine that has been repaired. That puts the whole thing back on the course it was originally sold on.
 
sidekick said:
For all tne arguing going onto set the record straight at Mongomery county we teched every night . We made them pull valve covers and checked springs,valve lift,headers to check ports,carbs to check intake side,bore scoped cylinders,cheked for siped tires,doctoring of tires,serial numbers on motors,only one car failed it had siped tires. Checked other classes and disqauified several cars two on a big money race.So come to Montgumery County you will get teched.
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Are the cars going to be teched this year? Who's going to tech the cars? How often will they be teched?
 
here is the problem with blueprinting, and i don't think guys like sean have figured it out yet; you buy an engine, take it somewhere, spend $1500-2000 bleprinting it, which means bringing it down to to the gnat's-*** as far as min. specs, run it for 20,30(pick a number) nights, now it's tired, needs freshenened, NOW YOU HAVE TO 'THROW IT AWAY'; BECAUSE NOW THERE IS NO ROOM FOR ANY MORE WORK TO BE DONE.it's already to it's limit. the guy has to spend another $5200 for a new 604, plus blueprinting it again, what did that gain him? sean is so much on here worrying about saving the guy's engine from having to buy a new one, guess what? now he's got to buy a new one. that is, if he is wanting to stay legal. if the engines go thru minimum or no tech, then who cares about legal? can't get caught if you are never checked for anything other than presence of the right bolts in the right places. if engine cost economy is the point of some on here, blueprinting took that away.
 
If a team in this class goes to the trouble and expense of having a motor blue printed to the min specs to keep it legal then they are most likely not in this series to keep their cost . Also, if the motor is printed with the min specs they will probalby be lucky to get 20-30 races out of the motor.

As far as tech, I know that there are more ways to check the motor then looking at the bolts. Tracy Cottrell will be enforcing tech this year with FASTRAK. At our National Banquet FASTRAK held meetings for the tech guys and directors of things to look at other than bolts. We also have the expertice of HVH and Rick (national tech guy) a phone call away.
 
I've been following this thread pretty closely, as it interests me, even though I do not run Crates. I do run sportsman's and see the exact same concerns about cheating. In the sportsmann class, an engine can not have any port work done to the heads, but how come when you look in the classifieds at a sportsman engine for sale, it always states that the engine is "Allied Legal" and that the heads have been ported. Whose lying here.

I feel the same will inevitably happen in this class.

I do have a remedy though. If Fastrack would require that if you want to race in their series, you must obtain an engine from them. Basicly, rent and engine from them. You bring your car to the track, with an engine you paid a deposit to fastrack for the use of it. Now it's your job to maintain it, because when Fastrack askes for their engine back, and it's out of tolorance or has been modified in any way, or abused, you don't get your deposit back.

By doing this, Fastrack could then implement an engine swap rule. Say if a car wins a feature, it has to either trade engines with an extra brought to the track by Fastrack, or swap with a randomly drawn competitor.

No one can protest at these rules, as they don't own the engine, modifying it illegally will be obviously found, and if it's modified and has an advantage, it would be taken away and another driver will be racing your advantage next week.
 
theplummer said:
I've been following this thread pretty closely, as it interests me, even though I do not run Crates. I do run sportsman's and see the exact same concerns about cheating. In the sportsmann class, an engine can not have any port work done to the heads, but how come when you look in the classifieds at a sportsman engine for sale, it always states that the engine is "Allied Legal" and that the heads have been ported. Whose lying here.

I feel the same will inevitably happen in this class.

I do have a remedy though. If Fastrack would require that if you want to race in their series, you must obtain an engine from them. Basicly, rent and engine from them. You bring your car to the track, with an engine you paid a deposit to fastrack for the use of it. Now it's your job to maintain it, because when Fastrack askes for their engine back, and it's out of tolorance or has been modified in any way, or abused, you don't get your deposit back.

By doing this, Fastrack could then implement an engine swap rule. Say if a car wins a feature, it has to either trade engines with an extra brought to the track by Fastrack, or swap with a randomly drawn competitor.

No one can protest at these rules, as they don't own the engine, modifying it illegally will be obviously found, and if it's modified and has an advantage, it would be taken away and another driver will be racing your advantage next week.
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50 racers times 5000 equals an outlay of $250,000 up front to buy engines. I don't think a racer would pay $5000 to rent an engine, and when it's used up, the sanction would then have to do something with all the engines coming back in. That is not a project I would think any sanction can afford to undertake. Plus, if an engine is found to have been modified, you could not reissue it to another racer without upsetting every other racer still running a stock rented engine.

I think that is a great way to control engines in a series, but it would be incredibly expensive, and I don't think any of the sanctions are making hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is what they would have to be making to be able to afford to do that.
 
Your correct t.nie. That would be a large outlay, at first. But, if you use drop shipping, delivery on the engines. The racer would actually be paying for them. Then the initial security deposit would cover the purchase of the engine. Then a prorated chart of return of that security deposit would have to be implimented. Say, if an engine is designed to last 100 races, you know that the wear is roughly $50 per race. If you only use that engine to race in that series, and only race 50 times and decide to stop racing, you'd get half your deposit back, then that engine could be rented again as a used engine for half the deposit.

The neat thing is, Once you get an engine to last longer than 100 races, every race it lasts past that is like putting money back in your pocket at $50 per race.

What do you do with your engine now when it's worn out or broken. Either rebuild it, or sell it. If you have to return your worn out or broken motor to Fastrack, They can have it rebuilt to their standards and then you know it's a legal motor when it gets the RM bolts on it.

This may be a little more expensive in the long run, but it eliminates the ability to cheat. And the car owner doesn't have to worry about off season maintainance.

Poorer race teams could rent a used engine, and be in the hunt for even less.

If your caught cheating with Fastrack's engine, guess what, you lose all of your deposit, plus additional punishment. That engine could then be sold to another series(after the seal bolts have been replaced with standard ones) to recover some of the costs incurred with managing the eingines.

Nascar does a similar thing with Goodyear tires. Raceteams bring their car to the track with a set of their tires. They buy tires from Nascar for the Practice, qualifying, and race. Their documented when they go out and checked when returned. Once the race is over, the tires are returned, used and unused, and the original set the car came with go back on the car.

This all but eliminates cheating. Could you imagine the fine involved with finding that a team had illegally treated the tire compound of a couple of sets of tires......
 
Crate engines

Hi I am from Oregon and I would like to comment on this crate engine tech topic. Recently some competitors from Oregon traveled east to compete in the end of the year Fastrak races and were a bit disillusioned. Seems many of the back east crate motors so overpowered thier motors they were not competitive. How can that be? Take a look at a website called keevanmotorsports.com and look under posts in the Warriors of Dirt forum (Fastrak competitors) and read what the locals from here say about going east to race. I have talked to Stan Lester myself and have tried to be an authorized engine repair facility for this series. The engines in Oregon were not competitive and they would like to know why. Richard Childress prepped engines seemed to be the most in question. Seems "blueprinting" adds more than a mere 20h.p. or these engines are just flat illegal.They sounded different, ran different, and pulled way more r.p.m.'s. Now I wasnt at these races myself and am going on heresay but I know that Rob Ireland the head of West Coast Fastrak Racing commented on the horsepower difference as did ALL the Oregon competitors so something was different. Yes to the question would a competitor know an h.p. difference in a crate engine. Many did. Anyone care to explain why certain engines had WAY more power than the west coast engines? Curious.
 
Tech

I was wondering, everybody is talking about the cost involved in teching a motor because of the cost of the bolts. Couldn't you just put the motor on a engine dyno. These are 400hp motors + or - with some legal work you can get 20 to 30 more out of them. Couldn't you pull a motor, dyno it if you get a hp number that is reasonable you give it back without tearing it down. If you get a hp number that seems fishy then you tear it down and tech it. The sanction bodies wouldn't even have to buy a dyno just make a deal with a enginge shop that has one. This is just an idea.


t.nie said:
I think good tech is achievable, but the only way to know what is inside a rebuilt engine with RM bolts is to open it back up and look, and that takes time and costs money. I don't think the weekly tracks are doing well enough financially off the crate cars to invest the time and money into tearing an engine down. That is the problem with allowing rebuilds with RM bolts; the track promoters just do not make enough money from the class to pay the purse and spend a lot of time and effort tearing engines down. They do not do it that much in the classes that are bringing in a lot of cars, so it's not realistic to expect them to do it for the crates, either. So my suggestion is to make their life easier, and give the racers more confidence that they are not racing against cheated up engines by only allowing in engines with OEM bolts.

With OEM bolts, the tech guy can look at it and be pretty certain that it hasn't been tampered with inside the bolts, because the OEM bolts are impossible to get from any other source than the factory. (There has been talk of duplicated OEM bolts, but so far no one has ever been found to have fake OEM bolts. I also think it's unlikely anyone ever will. All of the engines that have been busted for being out of spec were rebuilt engines.)

Like I have already stated, I think the cheating in crate racing is being done with RM bolts that came through legitimate channels. Eliminate rebuilds, eliminate the RM bolts, and the long term effect is to make the racers more confident that there is no illegal work being done during the rebuild, because there simply are no rebuilds. All the engines remain sealed as they came from the factory.

Something did come to mind while reading Roby Helms press release regarding David Gentry's engine, which I will quote here:

"If these seals are broken to repair the engine, they are replaced by sealing bolts marked “RM” that are only available from GM Performance to distributed only to authorized GM Performance Crate Engine rebuilders."

Now in his own words, the seals are broken to repair the engine, and the RM bolts are supplied to allow for the repairing of broken crate engines. I don't see a problem with allowing RM bolts to repair engines.

Midget Racer hit on this earlier in one of his posts too, and that is that two RM bolts on an engine would indicate a repair, so that would not really throw a red flag in tech in a series that did not allow rebuilds. That would allow for parts failures, leaks, etc to be fixed, and that is something that does need to be allowed. On that I don't disagree.

But my question is this; what exactly is Hendrens Racing Engines "fixing" when they take a brand new 604 and tear it apart, blueprint it, and then reassemble it and sell it for $1500 or so more than a stock 604 costs? The answer is obvious; nothing. They are simply taking the RM bolts they get legitimately and using it to give the racers who can afford it a performance advantage. I think that is the only conclusion anyone can come to, because they sure aren't fixing something that isn't broke or freshening up a tired engine.

My other question is this; when someone shows up at a track with an engine with RM bolts and not a single OEM bolt in it, what can you tell about that engine? It's been opened up and resealed. That's all. Nothing more than that, because no one is keeping track. You don't know who did the work, when it was done, what parts were used, what machine work was done, not a thing. You either tear it down, or let it go, and more often than not, due to financial and time restraints, the tracks just have to let it go and assume everything inside was done to legal specs.

You just have no way of knowing anything else without tearing it down, and it's unrealistic to expect the promoters to do that. So good tech is achievable, but at too great a cost to be a realistic option. That is why I am so much in favor or only allowing OEM engines in, and RM bolts only for repairs. That makes life easier on the tech man, and gives the racer more confidence that they are racing on equal terms.
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here is what i think. I think the tech needs to be strickly enforced first. Then if you are protested, and found legal, the guy that protested you should pay to put it back together. If you are found ilegal you are gone deffently and you pay to button her back up. And when the series techs after the feature, if you are legal the series pays to button her back up, if ilegal you are gone for good. Just my two cents, I know it would never go that way. I know that the tech needs to be strickly enforced. I am currenty putting a crate car together. It will not bother me to protest. But here is the biggest part of it. What is 30hp, what it alll boils down to is Set up and whos hands the car is in. I know with a crate car you have to free the car way up. Its just like Harry said "loose is fast but on the edge of out of control"
Just my two cents for what its worth.
 
I think they should forget the bolts and tech'em like any other motor. I know that Austin Dillon won a $10,000 to win show "out east" with a motor right out of the crate, never was touched from gm. It got claimed and torn down and was perfectly legal. All chassis. Bopper
 
The Oregon racers found out there was more to it than just chassis setup and driving. Many east coast motors had WAY more power to the point it was a huge advantage so there was something different enough about the engines to make it unfair. More so than just chassis and driving. Every Oregon racer that competed in the Fastrak final race said the same thing---we were down on power to the point we were not competitive. Yes these racers were racing at a new venue and rookies at these tracks but they know enough to tell when they are so down on power that there is more going on than chassis setup and driving. Proper tech is one outlet but if your going to allow ANY modifications to the motors then it isnt stock anymore. When you allow someone like a Richard Childress Racing to open these motors up and do what they want it changes the whole spectrum of having a crate engine in the frst place. One probelm I have seen with any spec engine class is it ususally ends up costing more money than if just left alone. Something needs to be addressed though in this Fastrak deal or you will loose car count. Now that these west coast racers know the power can be had it will start happening here too--meaning way more money spent on engines.
 
tech is the only thing that will make this crate deal work,otherwise it is gonna be like any other spec class,worthless.....anyone that doesnt beleive these motors are being cheated up has blinders on.i have seen these cars for 3 years now,and you can deffinately tell a difference in the guys spending money and the guys that are not..
 
True story-- tech with stiff penalties is the only answer. Problem is doing a complete and thourough tech of these engines is almost impossible for most sanctioning Fastrak race tracks. In my area the tech inspectors themselves are not capable of a complete tech inspection. Meaning here in Oregon the price of a crate engine is going to go way up as there are competitors here that will take advantage. I have talked to some Nascar tech inspectors I know about this and all they say is good luck, it will be very hard to police a crate engine series. If thats so good luck with keeping engines inexpensive. Allowing so called "blueprinting" to minimum specs will drive the cost of these engines way up there is a TON of things that can be done to these engines to enhance performance and they will still pass tech. I have tried to get involoved with the crate engines as they are becoming more popular all the time and would be an addition to my business rather than just losing performance engine sales. Seems it will be very hard to keep these motors cheap though. There are much simpler ways of keeping engines cheaper that are better for everyone rather than letting Chevrolet monopolize and dictate thru a crate engine probgram.
 
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