Optimizing A/F Mixture & Quality

[jb24 at chrysler.com]

I don't know how many of you are familiar with fuel economy record
attempts from the seventies, but at a SAE dinner a few years ago, I got
to see a presentation from a guy who holds a few of those records.  He
works for Lubrizol now, and I can't seem to remember his name.  Anyhow,
the gist of his talk was that fuel economy tricks are the exact
opposite of what you do for power.  The engine he built for the
absolute record (an old V8 no less) was inside an insulated box running
pure glycol for coolant.  A small carb (really small, like 30mm bore)
was fitted.  The car also had super high pressure aircraft tires and
never broke 10mph, and coasted a lot.  So the intake air came from
inside this box and always ran full throttle.  So he had three things
going for his fuel economy: hot coolant means little heat transfer out
of the cylinder, full throttle means no-part throttle pumping losses,
and hot air means lower density and better vaporization.  The record
set over a couple mile course was in the thousands of miles per gallon,
like 2,500.  I would also bet that he was making in the tens of
horsepower out of a V8.  I would like to know how much Yunick's engine
put out.

John Bucknell
jb24 at chrysler.com