Opinions on no water on a water engine.

I need to drop some weight, and a thought that comes to mind is removing my water system. Blown Alcohol drag car no real run time besides warmups in the pits and making the pass, tow up and back otherwise.

THe motor is a SBC with iron block and almn heads. Are there any cons to running the whole setup dry?

 

Not really.
Watching the water temp during runs is a good way to watch your tune-up for too much heat. The water also helps disperse the hot spots in the heads a little.
But I have done it both ways, and there really is no downfall as long as you are not hot-lapping the thing and you know where you are in your tune up.
But certainly a good way to save a dozen pounds.

 

Water or no water

Hi there, we ran a similar setup dry (Blown Alky BB Chev)and managed to soften (and effectively destroy) one of our heads. I accept that it was really too lean BUT the water does even our temps and provide a small safety margin. I would not run without water anymore, maybe dont eat the day before recaday !! Cheers Graham

 

Was that with water heads or solid heads? With solid heads you have no choice of running water and it works. No issues.

 

We've run circulating water just to the heads on our small block for almost 6 years now and completely eliminated the center cyl issues on heads common with small blocks.

It really depends on just how hard you're pushing it.
Without water we were hurting the gaskets nearly every pass. The ole 4-6, 3-5 gasket leaking between cyls deal. A couple of times got the head as well.
Most of the time the leak was minor but always had to replace gaskets for the next race.

Since water, no issues. People ask me if it's cooling the heads?

In my opinion, NO. I believe it's only eliminating the hot spot that forms between the two exhaust valves that are next to each other in a small block.
At the end of a run, the water is hot but well below what your fingers can tolerate.

We're now running 90% blown nitro and still no gasket/head issues. If it works, don't fix it.

Bob

 

water

I have been told that running without water will egg shape the cylinder walls a couple of thousandths. Having said that, I have been running a blown BBC water heads, water block for 3 years without heat issues. I've had some minor bearing issues but I don't think that's related. I have even hot lapped it a few times. (i.e. 3 runs in 30 minutes) I've even driven it back to the pits a couple of times. There has been more of an issue with the trans than with the engine. Just my .02

Joe

 

X2
We run a mopar wedge motor and tried running water heads dry, it didnt work well at all, I have a stack of head gaskets with the center between 3-5,4-6 pushed out. Those center 2 exh ports just cooked the head/gasket.

Now we circulate water through the heads and havent hurt a head gasket since.

 

Hi, this was with water heads - they were AFR 357's. Cheers

 

I spoke to Rick Santos regarding this and he advised against it just because of the siamese cylinders, said even with solid heads people were still sinking the centers on the heads running no water. Said what I should do is ditch my radiator, fan, cooling system ect and run a small 1-2 gallon tank and just circulate water, no need for the cooling setup, just dump and change between runs, (this is what they used to have for their Dragster setup back in the days) maybe add ice? never the less, running a BIA SBC you're dammed either way with the center holes because of the heat.