Welcome to Part 2 of our look into maximizing your driveline efficiency in order to get more power from your engine to the rear wheels. Now that more and more racers are involved in classes that require crate motors, spec motors, or just horsepower-choking two-barrel carburetors, there has lately been a greatly increased emphasis from race teams on eliminating as much driveline resistance as possible. And we're definitely on board with that.
When assembling a new rearend, try to get as much put together with the rearend on a pair of jackstands before hanging the entire assembly underneath the car. This will make your life a lot easier.
In last month's Circle Track, we ripped apart Bulldog Rearend's new CT-1 closed tube rearend for stock car racing. Previously known for its excellent live-axle rearends for Sprint Car racing, Bulldog's new CT-1 quick-change rear has several features designed to reduce rolling resistance. But during our teardown and inspection we also found several well-thought-out design upgrades that should provide for lots of trouble-free racing. We've also outfitted the rear with a pair of Bulldog 31-spline axles that are polished and gun drilled which should make for both strength and a lowered moment of inertia.
Along with the rearend, we also took a close look at a pair of new billet aluminum wide-five hubs from Joe's Racing Products in the last issue. These billet hubs are stronger than the traditional cast units, and the idea is in the event of a hard hit the hubs will absorb more of the energy from the impact instead of breaking and allowing more of the energy to be transmitted to other components. In addition, these hubs are designed to allow you to choose between packing your bearings with grease or filling the hubs with lightweight oil to reduce rolling resistance. We'll take a closer look at that in this article.
For our braking package we’re using Wilwood’s forged Superlite calipers along with its excellent rotors and pads. Wilwood offers a even lighter Dynalite caliper, but driver Chris Hargett feels most comfortable racing this caliper/pad/rotor combination and has a lot of confidence that it gives him a consistent braking feel lap after lap, so we went with it.
Finally, we'll complete our buildup with a set of rotors, calipers, and pads from Wilwood to provide a little "whoa" to all that "go." We'll also get everything mounted up in the car with a J-bar from Joe's, birdcages speced out for our chassis by Stuckey Racing Enterprises, and a few other odds and ends. So settle in as we get a rearend installed with a minimum of hassle or aggravation and get ready to go racing. Even though we're working on a Mastersbilt by Stuckey Dirt Late Model chassis, many of these same tips will work no matter what brand of chassis you are working on.
AMSOIL: Superior Lubrication
Bulldog sends a gallon of gear oil along with its rearend, but we prefer to run AMSOIL Severe Gear SAE 75W-110 because we're confident in its ability to provide superior lubrication and also pull damaging heat out of the ring and pinion gears.
