We just finished another ACRX race motor and were able to correct some valvetrain issues we have had on the production ACRX build, as well as find the HP limit of these motors with the Mopar VVT cam.
In the past, we have had lifter and camshaft failures, in as little as 1 season. If these engines are run consistently between 5500 and 6500 rpm in race conditions, they experience valve float and can damage the lifters and cam.
The VVT system on the Gen 4-5 engine is limited by valve spring pressure. Too much pressure and the VVT will not function properly, too little and they go into valve float.
In order to run more spring pressure and still use the VVT system we made some major modifications to the valvetrain and heads. This included custom short travel lifters, stronger pushrods, lighter valves and shaft mounted rocker arms. The bottom end was built to motorsports specification with a nitrated crankshaft, better rods, pistons and bearings. The end result was an engine that will rev to 8200rpm without any durability issues.
We added a dry sump system to reduce windage, increase oil volume and give us the ability to adjust the oil pressure perfectly for the VVT system.
We did quite a bit of work to the heads, adding beryllium valve seats for heat transfer and extensive porting. It turns out that there are limited gains from porting with the stock camshaft, the stock heads can support 800hp, but with porting we can get more power, even with the stock VVT. Raising the compression for race fuel only, we hit the hp wall at 715hp with the stock VVT cam. We could run more lift and much more compression, but without a cam profile change I would doubt we will see more than 20hp. In the future we plan to regrind the VVT cam for more power or go with a single profile VVT delete cam for big numbers. Sticking with a modified VVT is really neat project for a track car as the this cam gives a really smooth torque curve without the big dip around 4-5000rpm, which we see on all the single profile cams.
Dry sump 1.jpgDRy Sump 2.jpgDRy sump 3.jpgDRy sump 4.jpg
Torque output from a VVT cam from 1000 to 3000 rpm beats anything a single profile can do, with a modified VVT profile torque could be optimized through a 8000 rpm range, that's a really wide power band!!
I hope this is interesting to those thinking of making Gen 4-5 modifications or building a competition engine.
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