History question: What type of valves were in use for the 2.65L era?

[Marcus666]

For all those CART petrolheads out there, I got a question for you...

In the late 1990s and in the beginning of 2000s (2000 and 2001), the 2.65L V8s where rumoured to be revving up to almost 16.000 rpm. To my ears it sounds like these cars had pneumatic valves (because I dont believe mechanical valves would keep it up over 12.000). What type of valves did they have? Any idea?

[Dave Brand]

No reason why engines shouldn't be able to run at 16,000 rev/min with mechanical valves - plenty of road-going motorcycles do.

[GORDON STREETER]

Marcus, don't forget that all these high revving engines have multi valves (5 or more) made from "unobtanium" that weigh next to nothing.

[Weaver]

Marcus,

I was a mechanic on a Honda powered CART car from '98 to '03 when we moved to the IRL. I don't have my rule book in front of me, packed away in some old toolbox, so don't ask for rule numbers.

All valvetrain components must be steel except for valve spring retainers, where titanium is allowed. Maximum of 4 valves per cylinder. Cams and springs only, no pneumatics.

16,000 sounds a little high to me, maybe that was the Toyota limit. We use to turn the Hondas at 14,300 to 14,500 pretty regularly, without much stress. Our over-rev thresholds were 14,800 (inspection only), 15,000 (HPD consults with team and Japan), and 15,100+ (pull engine). Now don't quote me on those RPMs exactly, its been over 10 years! But I will say, I remember we had an equal amount of rod failures as we did dropped valves.

The American HPD engineers were much more conservative with RPMs. But the Japanese engineers (we called them "Jays") use to LOVE to rev the cr@p out of the engines. One Jay that would only come to the bigger races was an old-timer from the McLaren & Williams Honda days. He would just observe, never really working with the engineers, he use to hangout with the mechanics. When we would warm up the engines we use 2K to 4K RPM with a sharp 6K rev to raise the oil temp. Every once and a while he would ask to finish warming up the engine by holding it against the throttle stop for about 3 seconds, bouncing off of the soft rev-limiter, 3 foot long flame coming out of the exhaust. If he smiled afterwards we would usually use that engine all day. If he frowned or shrugged his shoulders, we usually would be changing that engine after the session.

He once heard an engine warm up on one of the Walker cars, then walked over and placed his hand on the valve cover while it was running. Afterwards he asked for a sharpie marker and made an "X" on the block at crank level. That engine had a failure during the session and there was a hole in the block where his "X" was just a few minutes before.

I wish I had that type of talent.