The Red Baron achieved its first land speed record at El Mirage!
The instrument panel of The Red Baron shows the engine performance throughout a race run. In this record run, The Red Baron exhibited partial detonation in the rear cylinder, shown by the cylinder head temperature (C.H.T.) spiking from 400-degF to near 600-degF in the later stages of the run.
Instrument Panel Layout:
- TOP, left to right: oil pressure (psi), intake air temperature (F), digital speedometer, cylinder head temperatures (F), front and rear, and air-fuel ratio (not used in this run).
- BOTTOM, left to right: intake manifold pressure (inHg), before and after the supercharger, battery voltage, tachometer (x100 for RPM).
The CHT probe is located next to the spark plug, reading the “worst-case” temperature in the cylinder. When Smitty shifts, the temperature drops momentarily before climbing again.
My favorite instrument:
The intake manifold pressure gauge is the most dynamic, and captures the increasing boost with increasing engine RPM. At wide-open throttle, the intake manifold pressure before the supercharger is equal to the ambient pressure, approximately 27 in-Hg (labeled with L). The supercharger then boosts the intake air pressure up to 54 in-Hg (labeled with R), producing approximately 13.25 psi of boost pressure.
When we race at different altitudes, we change the supercharger pulley, and therefore the supercharger rotational speed, to maintain 54 in-Hg of intake air pressure to the engine.