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6.5L Land Speed Racer

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In 1978, Bill Heath envisioned himself racing at Bonneville. That vision remained out of reach until last Year. Now, he plans to race there this Summer – in a 6.5L GM Diesel of course...

Bill Heath has visited the annual Speed Week event at Bonneville for the last 30 years. This Summer, when he steps onto the Bonneville Salt Flats International Speedway, he will arrive as a registered contestant and not a visitor, a distinction that makes all the difference in the world to him.

Given Bill’s dedication to the 6.2/6.5 GM diesels, you might have guessed – even if no one else has ever done it at Bonneville – that Bill will be racing something powered by a 6.5L diesel. As it turns out, that something is a full-sized Chevy pickup.

maxxTORQUE plans to join Bill and the Heath Diesel team at the Bonneville Race Week as he pursues his dream of setting a land speed record with the Heath racer. As Heath Diesel rushes to prepare for the August event, we slowed Bill down long enough for him to share his dream of racing at Bonneville, why it has taken three decades to get there and a little about the truck he plans to do it in.

6.5 Land Speed Racer

Excerpt Feature: Winter 2007

Direct Oil Cooling, Part One

The fish are in the freezer, and with that, it is time for my annual reel cleaning and vehicle servicing regimen; an oil change is always part of it. I am reminded of what that oil went through on all those fishing trips. It all started with a realization that my thermo-viscous fan should not be such a common occurrence. I seemed to fly effortlessly up steep mountain grades with my big camper load, on a 103ºF Arizona day, in air conditioned comfort, and in complete complacent silence, dreaming of bass boils. Then I awoke, eyes wide and startled, to the sound of a 747 landing on top of me… THAT FAN!

I wanted to silence that fan, and all heat issues its aural signature represented. I remember the first time I heard it, going 70 MPH on slight, rising terrain with NO load. On a 114ºF sunny day, it doesn’t seem to shut off. Adding insult to injury I know I am losing two to three miles per gallon whenever it is in full spin. I have heard the statement, “that fan is normal, be glad you have it,” a hundred times. I am glad. Glad I don’t have to believe that any more. What if I said that you are an oil overheater, and you have never seen it? Crazy am I? Do you have an oil temperature gauge? If you knew what your oil temp was when you towed through my back yard, you would own one. The oil overheats on every summer camping trip. Presently, oil is cooled indirectly at the stock engine mounted oil-water cooler. Oil heat must be conveyed to the coolant, then to the radiator, then to the atmosphere, making it indirectly cooled.

Excerpt Feature: Spring 2008

Direct Oil Cooling, Part Two

Turbodiesel Direct Oil Cooler In Direct Oil Cooling – Part One, we discussed indirect and direct cooling methods and we examined oil’s new role as a coolant, rather than a mere lubricant, with new technologies such as under-piston oil squirting shifting more – up to 50% more – of the turbo diesel’s total cooling burden to the oil. We observed worst-case oil temperatures exceeding 360ºF, causing oil pressure to plummet and rendering oil, as a lubricant, virtually useless. In Part Two, we’ll look at the science behind indirect and direct oil cooling and discover why direct cooling, properly engineered, offers the only solution that can control:

Oil temperature,
Viscosity, and
Flow rate

to design specification limits under those same high load/high RPM conditions; and, substantially expand the overall capacity of the cooling system. In doing so, we will discover a host of benefits that can be realized only by directly cooling your oil.

Fact: As we saw in Part One of Direct Oil Cooling, GM has chosen to design and implement an indirect oil-cooling system for the Duramax engine. One result – other than living with scorching oil temperatures – of this OEM system that is not able to keep oil temperature under control during times of high combined work loads and high RPM is a host of after market solutions that promise to atone for the cooling system’s shortcoming. Unfortunately, many of them simply attempt to beef up the existing system with a bigger radiator or another fan instead of providing a solution based on a sound engineering approach that does not create undue burden on the overall system. That is, they continue to try, piggyback style, to cool the oil indirectly. While these would-be solutions may succeed in reducing oil temperature, for example, from 360ºF to (only) 330ºF, they do so at a great burden to the Duramax electrical system as well as taking a toll on precious fuel economy.