- There's no doubt that EFI has made a big impact on the sort of horsepower
levels, the ETs and the mile an hour that we're seeing in drag racing circles.
And we're here with Larry Larson, who is the owner of the world's
fastest street car, his Chevy S10 truck has gone as quick as 589 on the quarter
and it's run as fast as 244 mile an hour.
Now Larry you've been a long time drag racer and I'm guessing that you've
been brought up initially on the carburettor years,
and you've transitioned into EFI.
How hard initially was that to move from tuning carburettors
to electronic fuel injection?
- Well a screwdriver doesn't work very good on a laptop to start with.
But it was a change, it was a welcome change because like with anything
else you wanna be out there doing stuff that nobody else was doing.
So it was good, once again a learning experience for sure.
- You've been a fairly early adopter of EFI, I think you said to me that you'd
been running EFI for as long as 20 years now.
And back then the technology with EFI certainly wasn't anywhere near
what we've got today.
How have you seen that EFI market change and how has that helped
you go faster and faster?
- Well technology has done amazing things.
I was on both sides of it 20 years ago, I helped a customer with the first
EFI car in Comp Eliminator NHRA with a Motec system and then I had
an antiquated old Accel system that I purchased for my own use in '97.
So I had both ends of the spectrum but with technology advancing like it has,
then you know things just keep getting better and better and better
and it's not every year, it's every month or two now.
- When we're talking about a fairly low powered street engine,
obviously the tuning envelope is quite wide but when we're talking about
some of these pro mod style twin turbo engines being used in drag cars,
making 2000, 2500, 3000 horsepower, that tuning window becomes so much
narrower and it's much easier to hurt an engine.
So why is the EFI so critical in getting the sort of power levels
out of those engines?
- Well you can adjust everything from RPM wise to boost wise,
the things you can't do with a blow through carburettor.
So you have the ability to adjust cylinder to cylinder timing,
cylinder to cylinder fuel delivery, once again different RPM,
different boost levels.
So that really plays into it and then because of what it is,
just like my truck running on dual fuel, driving the thing on gasoline
and then racing the thing on methanol, I can change, it takes longer for me
to change the fuel system as far as the hoses and how the fuel flows into
the engine than it does for me to change, it takes about five seconds on the fuel
tank to change it on the screen, to go from a methanol map to a gas map and back.
- I wanna touch on that a little bit, but before we get more into the setup
on your truck, tuning, generally a lot of tuners require a dyno or feel like
the best results they're going to get require a dyno.
And you said to me before we started this interview that you've never actually
used a dyno.
So yeah talk to us a little bit about that, do you feel that having access
to a dyno would be an advantage, or do you see that there are more
advantages in tuning under real world conditions at the actual track?
- Well I think if you don't have any map to start out with then maybe the dyno
would be beneficial.
But once again I've never been on the dyno per se with any of my
turbocharged applications, or any customer stuff for that matter.
So I can see it being an advantage to some point but at the end of the day,
we're out on the race track or we're out on the highway and those are real
world conditions and that's what you have to tune it for.
- I think that real world conditions is a really critical part because
I've been a big time advocate of even with access to a really good quality dyno,
be it an engine dyno, a chassis dyno, or whatever,
it's almost impossible to replicate the air flow and temperatures that you're
actually gonna see at 200 plus mile an hour and that does have a serious
effect on the tune up?
- Yes correct because if you've got air inlets in the hood or don't have any
air inlets in the hood or wherever the things getting air at,
that's gonna change, it's gonna change for outside air temperature,
or if it's picking up heat off the racetrack.
And then from a drivability standpoint, you take one out and fire it up
and run it on the dyno for whatever, five minutes, 15 seconds,
whatever the number is, you can't duplicate to going out and driving
the thing and heat soaking the thing after 30, 40, 50 miles.
- OK so to move onto your Chevy S10 truck, so with EFI, and engines making huge power
actually how much power are you estimating that that engine's producing?
- I'm guessing the thing probably makes in the neighbourhood of 3300.
- So with that sort of power level, particularly when you're running
on methanol fuel in a drag event, you need a huge amount of fuel
when you're running methanol, so how are you handling that?
'Cause one thing we've seen over the last probably decade at least is the
availability of larger fuel injectors has improved, but how are you running
that system, the fuel system in the Chevy?
- I've got billet atomiser injectors in it currently.
I've got a 245 and an 850 and if I was running it strictly on alcohol and just
racing it I'd probably have twin 700s to supply the amount of fuel that I need.
But because I drive it and run it on gasoline, that's why it's got
a 245 and an 850 in it because when I drive it, it just runs on the 245
which makes it nice.
It's real crisp and clean even on methanol at part throttle.
And then the 850 is then, it's staged in at a later date and with the FuelTech
it becomes really smooth, you don't even know it comes in.
- So that FuelTech ECU, another thing that the FuelTech ECU that I'm aware of
is they run an external driver box for the injectors.
And this is a problem when you're running a V8 engine and you're running staged
injection, now you've got 16 low impedance injectors.
Each of those injectors is drawing quite a lot of current and a lot of the ECUs
with internal injector drivers can struggle under those sort of conditions
to accurately control the injectors, is that a reasonable sort of way
of explaining things.
- Yes and the other thing I like about it, is that if you were to have a driver
failure, in a lot of the boxes, the drivers are internal.
So now you've gotta send the box back, have a spare box whatever.
With the FuelTech and the external drivers each driver powers four injectors,
so you just change out that driver if you ever have an issue
which I never have but you have that capability and you're not
married to what's going on in the ECU or the unit itself.
- So serviceability at the track, the ability have spares becomes
a whole lot easier.
- Yes the only downside is it's a little bit more stuff to mount,
but in the same token the actual ECU for the FuelTech is considerably
smaller than anybody else's ECU that I'm aware of.
- Now with the other drive we've seen in drag racing circles,
going back 10 years or so we've seen cars with multiple electronic boxes,
one's for fuel control, one's for ignition control, bump boxes et cetera.
And now we're seeing with more technology being applied to the
aftermarket ECUs available, everything's been brought down
into one box, can you talk to us about how that's affected your own car?
- Yeah when we first put the truck together, we had multiple systems.
I had a separate boost controller, a separate bump box,
separate ignition.
Basically the FuelTech at that point in time just did the EFI part of it.
But now with the technology that's been, and the updates that they've done
and the new FD600 that they brought out in the spring,
now I've got the FuelTech, the 600 just running everything.
It does the bump box, the traction control if I wanna use it,
the boost control, it'll do coil on plug, it will do everything,
which makes it really nice that you don't have to plug into three or four
different modules or three or four different systems and then chase
that around on your laptop trying to decide what you wanna do.
On top of the fact that it also has the data recording capabilities now
that we installed one in a customer's car this spring and used it for
the complete data recording capability, doing converter pressure
and shock travels and everything, so now you've got one system
that does everything so you're not floating from screen to screen to screen
which makes it a lot faster and less complicated from a tuner standpoint.
- Now you've also just mentioned there boost control and you've mentioned
traction control, I just wanna dig into those two topics a little bit.
So particularly when you've got potentially 3300 horsepower, there abouts,
certainly off the start line, you're not gonna be able to get all of that power
to the ground.
How critical has accurate boost control become as the power levels have increased?
- Well it has to repeat because with the turbocharged stuff,
if that thing varies a pound of boost that's a lot of power,
and so if it varies then you're chasing your tail.
And it's bad enough on a prepped surface, if you go out and run some
of this no prep stuff like we've been running this year,
it becomes very critical so you need something that will repeat
and that you can manipulate to do what you need it to do.
- Now in terms of making adjustments to that boost pressure run to run,
what are you looking at?
Are you looking at sort of whether or not you've got wheel spin and then adjusting
the boost pressure to try and maximise the amount of traction you've got
available at the track?
- Yeah you're looking at, once again, like on the no prep stuff,
or even the prep races, you're basically racing the racetrack.
I mean you're trying to go as fast as you can go at the racetrack.
So you're looking at what the wheel speed's doing, what the G meter's doing,
and just trying to apply as much power to it as you can.
With that becomes gear ratio and converter and everything else.
But it's still a matter of trying to produce as much power as you can
and repeatable power.
- OK so now in terms of traction control, so obviously you're going to try
and tune the engine to produce optimal power for the amount of traction.
But obviously sometimes you get it wrong, maybe the track's gone away slightly
and you do end up in a situation with wheel spin.
So what's your take on traction control, is that something that you rely on?
- You know I've been around that since probably '03, '04 with the big stuff units
back then and Mike Moran helped a lot in some of the earlier years.
And the traction control, to me is a fail safe.
It's never the fastest way down through there.
It may be the, it will save a run but it's usually never the fastest way.
So for me I feel as a tuner, I wanna tune this thing where it shouldn't need
the traction control.
If I'm at a really sketchy surface or a really high dollar race where I wanna
make sure that I don't do something foolish then I may turn it on.
But a lot of these guys use it run after run after run and use it for a tuning tool
which you can but my pockets aren't deep enough to be replacing engine parts
and some of the stuff that it has a little bit of an effect on using it repeatedly.
So I try and stay away from them but it's there to use and it works really well.
- Can you just talk a little bit about how sort of relying on that traction control
and running on it continuously can potentially hurt engine components?
- Well what I've seen and what my engine builders have told me at Pro Line
is that what they see is if you run one on the dots as they wanna say,
where the thing's constantly pulling timing in and out and or maybe
misfiring the engine to keep everything in check, is that it gets really hard
on crankshafts and crankshaft dampeners, and they've even seen it so bad at times
where it would try and weld the crankshaft hub to the crankshaft.
So they've done some things there to make that better from that standpoint.
But once again for me I take more pride in trying to run it without it if I can
but that's not everybody.
- I just wanna rewind a little bit and just talk about some of the capabilities
with the EFI in terms of the individual cylinder tuning capabilities.
And this really comes back to what I was saying before.
When you're running these sort of engines at that sort of power level,
that window for tuning becomes much much narrower and it's really important
to make sure that all eight cylinders are receiving a safe air fuel ratio.
So how are you going about making those sort of adjustments?
- Well depends on what combination you have, if it's a blown combination,
or a nitrous combination.
You know you can run a lambda and O2 in every pipe but a turbocharged
application you're basically running one behind each turbo.
So the cylinder to cylinder you're relying on is still reading
the spark plug, you can look at some EGD stuff.
The EGDs will give you an idea but it's still, depending on placement in the
header and all that, it's never the same engine to engine.
So at the end of the day you're still looking at a spark plug and trying to make
everything as close as you can that way.
- So technology's moved on but still some of the old school ways of reading plugs
is still critical.
- Yeah absolutely.
- Well look it's been really interesting getting some insight into what
makes your car tick there Larry and we understand you're going back
to drag week to try and run into the fives next year, is that correct?
- If the tracks will, they're supposed to announce later on.
So if the tracks are good enough that I think we can pull it off,
then yeah that's why I'll go back 'cause nobody else has been able to do it,
so I think, I hope we can get it accomplished for them.
- Well if the tracks are to your liking and you do run back next year,
we look forward to seeing you run that first five second pass,
thanks for the chat.
- Absolutely thank you.
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