Why Famous Racers Preheat Their Racing Engines

Why Famous Racers Preheat Their Racing Engines 

Who chooses to benefit?

F1, F3, Indy car, NASCAR,World of Outlaw Sprint car and Dirt Late Model, USAC and others…

Some racing customers ask me “sir, why do we need one of these car motor heaters” and I reply, because all of the top series teams use them.  Seriously now, today they are affordable, making it practical for any team or racer to own one.  From the super cost effective, small engine block heater, the CUBE systems www.cubeengineheater.com starting at only $169 bucks, or for large engines, our PRO units, seen here, will only set you back $1400.

We’ve traveled to events so we can learn from our customers and answering questions, that is, what they have learned and know keep their aluminum engines alive and producing peak power. We learn how they protect, in some cases, “priceless” engines safe with our Hot Head engine heaters.

One weekend we responded to an invitation from Leena Gade to visit Laguna Seca raceway in Monterey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeatherTech_Raceway_Laguna_Seca.  where there was a American Lemans event coupled with a Historics Reunion 

The pride-full visit with the Leena, Patron’s team engineer was quite the experience, learning why such a premier team chose our product.

Motorsport Commission Ambassador Leena Gade

We are venturing off of the technical track here but not quite in the gravel, that is, Leena Gade (View Forbes Article) has an amazing back story and has been rewarded with success and respect.

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She was Patron’s original contact with us and I remember her as a very blunt and practical person, not concerned with cost but as an engineer, focused on specifications and performance. Among her interests were compactness, efficiency, and the importance of our system not losing cooling system pressure when connections were made to her cars. Again, this nugget of info coming from her is exactly what I repeat to others over the years, that is, other engine coolant heaters have a tank or reservoir which can lose critical cooling system pressure when connections are made. This important (high) pressure increases the boiling point of engine coolant.

The afternoon stroll through the paddock made for more entertaining and informative visits with customers. Again, the Historics were at Laguna Seca as well.  https://classicmotorsports.com/news/2021-monterey-reunion-feature-dedicated-historic-indycar-group/.  Hit this link and you’ll see what’s heating up out west. 

This is where I learned about the history of preheating.  The history of insuring life and power.

“Our systems are so reliable and un-intrusive that they find their ways onto priceless cars like the 1965 F1 winning Ferrari.”

While others famous, customer cars are only worth only a million bucks!

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Many engines have little or no main bearing clearance when cold. 

Another customer’s historic race car was originally designed to absolutely require preheating with a car motor heater before starting.  The Factory Nissan GTP road racing machines, and most every modern racing engine require engine coolant heating practices.  These particular Nissan and complementary Toyota GTP engines are designed to have optimal main bearing clearances at racing temperatures, so when aluminum racing engine blocks are cold, bearing clearances are insufficient (too tight), basically zero, I mean zero! The crankshaft will not rotate when the engine is cold. Learn about the engineering and math behind why engineers and builders minimize clearances and improve critical engine geometry by heating during final machining.  See our Preheating for performance and survival. This is a high-level, technical primer while exposing an amazing story of how Audi marketing executives demands for preheating led to the first diesel to win the 24 hours of LeMans!

 See ya at the races

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To learn more about engine heating products

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