Re:I RTFA yesterday when I saw it on the Firehose (Score 1)

Let's not give up on the traditional valve train just yet. A friend of mine was active in sports car racing in California in the 60's. He was given a Fiat-Abarth, a nice budget, and told "make it win" by the importer. This required a complete re-build (titanium flywheel, crankshaft, and pistons, etc.) which took about a year. Result: the fastest car on the track, until it blew up (always some accessory problem, not the engine) since it rarely finished a race. I should point out that in H Production class, nobody cared if anyone else was cheating. Everyone was just out for fun, and this car was VERY popular with the fans, as well as with other teams. The mods were against the rules, but there never were any complaints. The accessories were shells with a shaft running through them, nothing else inside. The big problem was that pulleys for the belts kept exploding! Not aluminum or steel pulleys either; titanium pulleys! But NO problems with the valve trains. This little four-banger would routinely turn between 16,000 and 20,000 rpm during each race. A 16,000rpm tach was mounted at one race, just for fun, to see how high the rpm would top out at, but the tach only came off the peg when the driver was shifting. Above 16,000 rpm all through the race, with no valve float! Also, ignition components were off-the-shelf items, nothing unusual. There is no need for new valve technology, just some good solid engineering and mechanical insight can provide the answers. By the way, the stock diameter pulleys were used so the engine would appear to be a stock item (at least on the outside) smaller diameters would have prevented the explosions, but would not look like a stock engine.