Drake Racing: 16v vs 8v

[Scott Williams <sfwilliams@home.com>]

Bill Scarince wrote:

> Can anyone explain why he would say this?  What is his background or point
> of view that would make this a reasonable statement?  When you contrast his
> position against the fact that we're not all talking about tearing out our
> 16v's to do an 8v swap, something seems odd here.

Consider that Drake Racing was an 8v specialist and that their capacity for R&D
waned along with their market share. They were edged out of business by the
"California tuners" -the Neuspeeds and Autotechs of the industry. Drake was
kinda like Techtonics but without any marketing skills and with a lot of pompous
attitude as I recall.

IMHO, Robert Collin's article is borne from his frustration with a changing
market, evolving technology, and his firm's inability to keep up with it. He
*does* make a few points, however. VW did create a run of 16v heads back in the
mid 80s only to scrap them because they kept cracking. Some of his points about
the 16v head not being optimally designed are also accurate. We could have more
power from our heads if VW hadn't compromised as much on lowering production
costs and for easier packaging. However, what we did end up with was a far
torquier/ less peaky motor than the Japanese equivalents.

Drake's approach to making 8v heads breath was to do a lot of expert porting and
to run big valves. Their excellent craftsmanship made for some very hot little
motors. However, we're talking about taking the 8v to it's ultimate limits to
make it exceed the 16v. When mere mortals attempted this kind of work the result
was usually a foul-running motor that weazed its way through the lower revs and
then screamed up top.

Given average talents much more can be done with 16v motor than an 8v. Elite
massaging and tuning of both motors will still put the 16v on top.
--
Scott F. Williams
NJ Scirocco nut
SCCA ProRally driver
Hotrod Rabbit GTi

Check out our rally team's website!
http://www.usrallyteam.com



--
Email problems to: scirocco-l-probs@scirocco.org  To unsubscibe send
"unsubscribe scirocco-l" in the message to majordomo@scirocco.org