G2 Radios presents The Waterford Speedbowl Message Board

Can anybody maybe explain to myself and perhaps others without the knowlege? What is a dowel pin and is stafford makin them selves look like idiots? Read the article by shawn and it sounds like a bad rule change. But i dont understand the technical part of the whole deal. Does the bowl allow them or thompson? I just found it interesting and curious what it all really means. Looks like a pretty expsensive change for alot of teams

fair question to ask here. I just dont know the answer.

me either..... perhaps someone here knows what the darn things are

The dowel pin they are speaking of locates the cylinder head on the block. With a straight pin, the rocker arm geometry is not in an ideal location so additional machining is needed. I'm not completely positive about what machining needs to be done, but it takes a lot more time. With an offset dowel pin, the valves and rocker arms line up better with the pushrods. Once again I'm not sure on the details of it exactly. When Stafford came out with the Spec engine, one of the things outlined was that you would only be able to use straight dowel pins. So when they pulled heads last week and saw the 3 built engines had offset dowel pins they were surprised. However there has never been anything in the rule books delineating whether or not you could use offset dowel pins, so it's been a gray area of sorts which people have been stepping in since pretty much the beginning of the SK's. I know for a fact that at least one if not all of the engines that were in tech that night had heads pulled in tech at one point or another at Stafford in tech, so it seems like its something that the track never really thought of until they came up with the Spec package. As far as Thompson and the Bowl goes, they most likely had nothing about dowel pins in the rules, although I expect that might change.

cool thanks ben. Kinda sounds like maybe allowing the spec engines to use them instead would make more sense and save these guys alot of money. Even playground either way no?

At that point you are penalizing the teams that are within the rules, so it goes the right other way. 10 of the 23 cars in the field this last Friday night ran Spec engines so it wouldn't just be a few teams having to make the change. Why should we be penalized for someone else testing the gray area and the track finally figuring it out? We were guinea pigs for their new program and we have finally hit on a good combo with it along with some other engine builders.

Maybe i misunderstood your explanation. thought you said straight pins require more labor and machine work thus costing more money. while the ones in question make for an easier and less costly engine. Rather confusing to the common guy to say the least. I guess i still dont understand..... Thanks for the insight

The word on the street is that the OEM straight pins align the head in a not totally correct position for straight on cam, lifter, push rod & rocker alignment. But if you use a 0.30" (or something like that) offset dowel pin that the world of valve movement aligns like the stars and the motor is happy. The people I am involved with that build motors have the lifter bores drilled and bronze bushings installed and that corrects the alignment of the lifter over the cam and do not run the offset pins. This is more expensive than dowel pins but it is explained to me that the lifter bores in stock blocks are not always correctly positioned over the cam lobe to allow it to rotate and for minimum friction.

The only thing that sounds strange to me is that motor builders are machinists which make a living selling machine work, so if there is no horse power gain and it is only to make the valve train happy why would you sell $0.15 dowel pins instead of the machine work that pays the bills? Not saying that motor builders are not nice people.

I will go out on a limb here and say that I would bet that the lifter bore correction drilling and bushings are done to these motors and the offset dowel pins are for moving the chamber and valve placement over the cylinder bores for better flow or burn, but that is total speculation on my part.

Hmmm seems a little to complex for me but thx for tryin to explain it alittle bit. Hope im not the only dumb a** here that cant get a grasp on this stuff. Guess will find out this weekend and see if these top running cars go any slower. While i still have no understanding of this engine thing i just cant see a little pin to cause TC,Keith woody and so on from out handling everyone in the corners. I dont really ever see anyone just flat out pull people on the straights at stafford but i sure do see people get beat in the corner every week. Will be interseting to see what comes of it.

Well i went to stafford last night and if that was the result of these dowel pin things, gotta say from what i saw it changed absolutely nothing. Still dont quite understand the whole thing but the same cars ran up front,same cars midpack and the same cars trailed. Keith and TC with everyone trying to play catch up. I dont know much of mechanics but it just looks to me like those 2 just out handle everyone. If Keith is doing something TC is doing same thing and vice versa. I remember last year when they were suspended and while that nights race didnt have the same ecitement level the race in general was actualy more competitive. I dont know just sayin maybe those guys are just that good??