Early in my racing career I was running a 454ci Chevy with Aluminum heads and a L88 solid cam.
As with all big blocks over heating was a problem. While working in the Bodyshop I came across a Ford truck fan, 7 blades and lots of pitch. So onto the car it went.
Shortly thereafter I started to have a problem with the engine spitting fan belts. Now this isn’t just a little thing. I was racing 3 nights a weekend and as it turned out I would spit a belt qualifying, then in the heat race, and in the feature event. And it was doing it all three night in a row.
Its bad enough I had to deal with the problem but it also meant that I had to drop out of the heats and features….each night. No seat at the pay window and no laps around the track that I really needed at that time.
So I changed pulleys, and the type and brand of belts….I even took the pulleys and belts off the tow truck at one time as I had run out of spare belts. All to no avail
This went on for at least 4 weeks, maybe longer. Work all week on the car…making sure all the pulleys line up perfectly and load it up to go the track only to put in a hot lap or so and bang…off goes the belt.
Finally, while qualifying and as I only had a screen for the windshield I caught a whiff of rubber smell as I entered the corner.
By now you have figured out that it was the fan. Turns out the fan had so much pitch that when I backed off from wide open throttle the blades would grab a bunch of air and stop the fan (sorta) and off could come the belts.
I stopped at the local junk yard and got a cheap aftermarket fan with wide shallow pitch and the problem went away.
My brother Tim often came to the races with me and as this was during his photography hobby period he would take photos.
The shots below were taken at Dayton Speedway a ½ mile high bank asphalt (31 degrees at the top) while he was on the hauler. The timeline is about 3 weeks into the ordeal.
Enjoy Ken
This me once again looking at the problem
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