Running drag truck dry. No coolant.
 

Im currently building a 12v drag truck. and I've been trying to decide weather or not i want to run coolant. I've seen a'lot of people running dry with no rad or anything. Just wondering how long of a window the enigne can run without hurting something or getting to hot.

When they do this with pulling engines, the clearances are setup different in engine. That’s all I really know. And the ones I’ve seen knock out all the soft plugs and make a hookup to stick a leaf blower in the block to cool it back down quicker.

The guy that runs contagious diesel has driven his filled block on the street.
Shortbusdriver on here.
I read the thread again, he had a wet head.

My old pro street truck we took all the freeze plugs out and ran it that way. I would give it about 1.5 hours between runs with leaf blower and fans blowing through the freeze plug holes.

Just had an oil temp gauge and paid close attention to that for when it was cool enough to run again.

Was gonna say oil temp is under scrutiny entire time.

How long were you able to run before oil got to hot? Most of the races around here by the end of the day there alot closer together so i dont know if i should go this route or not. truck will be strictly for drags.

I ran my old truck once dry, it had a head gasket leaking down the side of the block. I was frustrated with how it was running and wanted another run, drained it dry. Made a run and pulled it back to the trailer, wasn't a problem.

Have a way to run some water thru the block at the pits to cool down quicker. And I guess you could cycle the engine oil. Dump it out and add fresh last minute, then reuse that oil on the next pass. Be messy, but just thinking, by how quick I could cool mine down then drained it.

Is cycling cool water through a hot block really a great idea though?

I hear ya, I mean after it's been towed to the pits, maybe warm water been in the sun in tanks on the trailer and recycled. Just been thinking on it

And I realize hitting a hot block with cool water, but just thinking.

How hot do you reckon the block/cylinder walls get compared to a wet block. And how much of that heat transfers to the piston?

Yep, that's why I think it's only viable circulating water thru it between rounds.

We started truck in pits and drove it to staging and parked it until it was our turn. No idle time

We would start our truck when the vehicle in front of us would head to the burnout box. Once we did our run the truck was shut down as soon as we turned off the actual track and would get pulled back to pits by ATV.