Heat is the mortal enemy of anything transmission and torque converter related … it kills more parts than brute horsepower every racing season. Turbocharged cars that flow epic amounts of horsepower through their torque converters are already building a lot of heat in the driveline, and add in someone trying to burn them down at the starting line and things will get ugly real quick. Neal Chance Racing Converters has developed a new billet steel pump for their torque converters designed to increase strength and fight the ill effects of excessive heat in turbocharged applications.

Turbo cars naturally are more open to the issue of heat buildup in their torque converter due to how they must build boost before a run. Every second the car is building boost is more time heat has infiltrated the transmission and fluid; as this happens it transfers to the torque converter where the effects can be catastrophic at higher power levels.

Marty Chance from Neal Chance Racing converters explains why they developed these new billet steel torque converter pumps.

“Since aluminum gets soft at about 450 degrees, the building of boost in turbo cars, especially cars that make a lot of horsepower, can become a problem. We were seeing temperatures around 900 degrees, and when you reach that temperature level it will damage the converter. What we did for the turbo cars was we took our billet aluminum programs for the pumps and converted them to billet steel to create a billet steel pump impeller to fight temperature issues like this.”

This billet steel pump setup gives the turbo racers the ability to withstand higher temperatures in their converters while making them stronger. Chance says these new pumps are able to withstand more heat-induced abuse while working with any Neal Chance converter. Currently, Rick Hord and Jim Bell’s NHRA Pro Mod cars are using the new pumps with much success.