Joe Irwin On Building The Fastest Coyote Engines And Why Most Machine Shops Fail

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Welcome back to another episode of the Street Alpha Podcast.

I'm your host, Tuques, and we are back with another banger.

So today we are in Tampa and we drove all the way to FFRE.

So we're here with Joe.

I consider him a legend, right?

You've done so much over the years.

Appreciate it.

And you're a part of some legendary builds and drag racing right now.

So before we begin, guys, let's give a round of applause for Joe of FFRE.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for making this happen.

This is a short notice.

A huge shout out to Jay.

Jay was able to make this happen within a couple of days, literally.

Yeah, got us linked up together and here we are.

Yeah, so it's the holidays, of course, and obviously, you know,

you probably want to be home with your family, of course,

but you're here doing a podcast.

So much respect and thank you.

Really appreciate this.

Thanks.

So you mentioned that your dad was big into like the offshore boat racing.

Yeah, my grandfather and my dad.

They both built engines for offshore race boats competitively.

My dad did a little stint in racing the boats for a while,

but I always wanted to be an offshore race boat, you know,

throttleman or driver or something, you know, along those lines.

So at some point I was able to do that.

You know, one of the local guys here has a couple of race boats

and one was needing an engine, you know, so I went down that road with him,

you know, and I was building him engines and they ran good

and he was winning races and one of the lower class boats,

which was a P4 boat, had a 80 mile an hour speed limit.

So yeah, if you went fast, it was like bracket racing essentially,

but on the water, you know, that kept the funds, you know,

to where everyone could kind of afford to do it, you know.

And we went offshore boat racing, you know, and I throttled and we did really good.

We finished second in the national second in the world

and we kind of used that platform to train guys, drivers for his other boat,

which was a super V light boat.

So the guys that that essentially I was throttling and drove with me,

it wound up, you know, driving for him.

You know, it was the higher class boat, you know, and a faster canopy style boat.

So so yeah, I was just like stepping stone for a lot of those drivers, you know,

to say, but it was a lot of fun.

And, you know, I got to kind of check that one off my bucket list.

And my dad and my grandfather were my heroes, you know what I mean?

Because everyone loved them and they were the boat race guys and whatnot.

And I kind of wanted to do it.

So it's kind of cool to get it done.

So one of the things that you mentioned were which I thought pretty was pretty

interesting was you mentioned that a lot of the boats that we're doing like

the smuggling back in the day were like the same boats.

So I was like, well, how would you even how would you even know that?

Like, yeah, well, these people even get access to these.

Obviously, they have a lot of money to do this stuff, right?

Sure.

But they have to be tapped in when people will know how to build them

to get those boats to go as fast as they are for a long distance too.

You're the coolest guy in the world if you build engines, right?

You could get the job done.

Right. So ultimately, that's that's what happened.

You know, a lot of those guys, we had the Mercury contract

and we also did all of the US customs boats, right?

So all the inboard big block Chevys, you know, got rebuilt at Custom Engine Service.

Well, in the same instance, you know, if you were a smuggling boat

and you needed engines, where would you go?

Right. So, you know, those guys always wanted engines

that made more power than the US customs boats.

And, you know, so so that was a thing, you know.

So Grandpa definitely supplied some engines to some people that, you know,

move some products across the ocean. Yeah.

So yeah. So today, right?

You are known to be working with some of the most efficient engines, right?

Now, those boats back then, you had to build them pretty much

to be efficient for a long period of time.

So did you kind of like pick up some of the skills or techniques

from building those engines back in the day or anything like that?

Sure. I think efficiency and reliability are two separate things, right?

So I think the offshore stuff, you need to make make them reliable

as you possibly can, right?

So those guys run for hours on end, wide open.

The props leave the water so it unloads the engine, then loads the engine.

So when the prop leaves the water, the throttleman has to pull off of the throttles.

So it doesn't over rev the engine. OK, right?

So you've got a driver and a throttleman.

So those guys have to do a good job, you know, of taking care of the engine.

Right. And the engine needs to be reliable.

So it needs to be strong enough.

All the valve train needs to be stable enough to be able to go through

loading, unloading hours at a time at the engine speeds aren't nearly

as much as what we do in the drag race stuff.

But, you know, say 6,000 RPMs, you know, 6,500 wide open for an hour and a half.

So an hour and a half, an hour and a half.

So, you know, oil cooling, right?

So you got to have a big oil cooler on them.

You got to have enough capacity oil, right?

You got to have water flow that flows through the engine.

It's it's a durability thing at that point more than it is.

Hey, let's make another five horsepower. Right.

You know, so they need to be able to last because you can't win the race.

Broke down, floating 25 miles offshore, you know, right?

The thing has to stay running at all times.

I don't know if this is a stupid question, but like, how are these boats

getting fuel in the meantime?

Oh, they carry a lot of fuel, 50 gallon with the small boats

that would run for an hour with a single engine would hold, you know,

close to 50 gallons, you know, it's a big block Chevy running wide open, you know.

So twin engine boats, you know, hold 250 gallons, you know.

I'm sure they probably have to calculate how much fuels on there as well, right?

For weight, absolutely.

And then the burn rate and how the boat flies through the air based off of that.

So a lot of the guys will have ballast tanks.

Yeah.

So Key West is one of the races where you run into the harbor

and it's completely flat, right?

Because it's encapsulated by a barrier island and the main island down there.

So you run inside this harbor, it's flat.

The winds are died down.

So you're bailing all the water out of the boat, you know,

essentially in the ballast tank.

And then you head back offshore where it's 100 foot deep or 70 feet deep, you know,

and you've got these winds and these currents that these waves build.

And, you know, if you ran the boat out that harbor in the same condition

that you did in the harbor, right, it's going to fly and be real light

and maybe fly the nose.

So you would fill the ballast tanks as you head offshore.

So when the boat leaves the water, it flies level, right?

Instead of bow high or like if you would wheelie a motorcycle, right?

Same principle, right?

So a boat as much as an airplane at that point, you know,

so you got to get it to fly level, land level, you know, and whatnot.

So and some of these boats, like were they running longer than an hour and a half?

Or yeah, back in the day, I mean, you didn't even see the offshore races.

You just had a compass heading that you would run out to

and you would turn out another boat that was anchored up, you know,

40, 50 miles this direction at a compass heading.

You had a navigator at all times.

Now we don't have navigators.

You just have drivers and throttle. Right.

Back in the day, you had navigators.

You had no GPS as you just had a compass and you had a heading

that you would just head off to and whether it would be a time based deal,

you know, and you knew that you'd start looking for something, a buoy

or turn buoy or something.

So yeah, there's always more to it.

It's not just as simple as us getting in a boat and driving on the water.

Yeah. I mean, the guys that are good, right? Winners win.

100 percent. Yeah. So, you know, so ultimately, you know, you

you run it a couple of times and you figure it out.

Yeah. You know, and that same thing applies to race

and lawn mowers or offshore boats or whatever it is. Right.

So the endurance of the boat, you know, is the dependability.

Right. You really had to build them right.

Because if you didn't, it showed its face right away.

You know, OK.

And so like even something like that, what you just said, like it seems

like it's still a part of your your brand, so to speak, right now,

especially working with Brett, everything that he's doing or has been doing

is well calculated and it's like done the right way.

So most people cut corners, right?

And it seems like he doesn't.

It seems like he does things the proper way and he's buying

and investing in all the proper parts to make his cargo as fast as it is.

Not everybody has the money to do that stuff, but I'm sure he worked hard

to obviously be able to afford those things and have the right data

to get to where he's at today and be involved with the right machine shop.

Of course. Right. Sure. Yeah, absolutely.

I think the biggest thing is getting the right team together.

100 percent. And, you know, Brett works tirelessly right at it.

Yeah, it's a lot of money to do this. Yeah. Right.

We all know that, you know.

But, you know, Brett's not rich. I'm not rich, you know, you know,

but, you know, the accumulation of the right guys in the right spot,

all with common goals, right?

You know, so every year we set our goals and we go after them.

And at the end of the year, we figure out how good we did. Yeah. You know,

so I think that helps, right? That helps a guy like him.

And and I think if you look at all the other teams that are successful

and the racing that we do, you see that, right?

You know, you see a group of guys

that are all trying to go in the same direction.

And sometimes we financially help each other.

Sometimes it's just through physical labor and work, you know,

but ultimately we're all moving in that direction.

You know, so that that makes the difference, you know,

for like guys like Brett and stuff like that. Right.

You know what I mean?

So you've seen his car transform from when he first brought it to you up until now.

Right. Yeah.

And there is I'm not sure what his car was making

when you guys first started working with him.

Well, what roughly was it?

1200 horsepower, you know, maybe 14 or 1500 horsepower at the most.

So I want to talk about pretty much the evolution of how that has shifted

to most cars today, like most cars today are making on the street fast ones.

Let's say TX 2K or whatever it is.

Those cars are making well over 1500 horsepower now, I'm sure. Right.

It's almost like you can't even go there with the 1200 horsepower car

because you can't even compete. Yeah, you're not one of the cool kids.

You're not. Not anymore. It's terrible.

So but years ago, I'm sure at some point, I can't even honestly,

I wouldn't even know when a thousand was cool.

Honestly, I'm not sure how many years ago that would be, but it's changed dramatically.

Right. Dramatic.

So how has that affected your business?

Because people who are street racing and so on

probably have a different budget than somebody who's drag racing. Right.

Sure. Sure.

Well, I think at some point, you know,

everybody started making over a thousand horsepower.

Like every engine in our shop today makes over probably 1250 horsepower.

There's every single one.

Everyone, there's not one in the shop that makes less than that.

That's in here. And I don't know.

There's you saw, there's 50 engines or 55 engines going through currently.

at some point when that hurdle changed, I think you saw

all the engine builders in the market, right?

You know, there's a lot of the LS guys that could put their stuff together.

Right. Yeah.

So there's a section for those guys.

Right. There's the Coyote guys that, you know, started with stock blocks,

you know, and stock short blocks and make a thousand, 1100.

Right. But at some point, it needs to go to a machine shop and get done.

Right. The Coyote needs sleeves put in it.

Right. An LS block might need sleeves if it's an aluminum block,

if it's a steel block, they're going to bore it and stroke it.

Put studs in it and need all this machine work.

So at some point it's got to go to that, you know, to a machine shop.

And I think where we saw our business start to flourish is at that point,

when you bring an engine to a machine shop for one,

the transparency between everybody, right?

And I don't allow anybody to just bring me their parts and

I build what you want. Right. So we've designed packages, right?

So we validated each step of the way. So that way we can offer a package

that we know is going to work.

And through the hurdles of figuring out 1200 to 1500 horsepower and 15 to 2000

and 2000 to 2500, there's all these steps and failures along the way.

So I think getting, you know, hooked up with a good machine shop that has done it

and validated it, there's a lot of value in that, you know,

and for the end consumer, you know,

guys only sometimes have one shot at this. This is their dream, right?

They save up all this money. They want to build this Mustang or Supra or RA,

you know, whatever it might be, you know, and really,

I think the biggest thing is getting with the right shop and they've only got

the opportunity to do it once, you know, so don't screw that up.

You know what I mean? So, so find, find someone that's done it and that stands

behind it and has validated it. And it's a good part.

It's a good product that you're getting. Right.

So I think that's where that's kind of pushed us a little bit more towards the

forefront is because we do good work. Now, you said all the engines in here

over 1200, right? Have you, like,

have you recently done anything that's less than that or it's just become a,

like if throughout this phase or they're going to this machine shop,

it's probably, they're probably going to do high horsepower, right?

Yeah. And I think that's what you see, right? You know, in the market nowadays,

you know, there's the guys that cater to just their general machinist, you know,

anything comes in the door, whether they build it or not, you know,

they don't say no, you know, we say no more often than we say yes, you know,

but that allows us to kind of stay in our markets,

stay in our niche, keep parts on the shelf, you know, right?

Everything kind of works well that way. Right. You know,

so, um, so that's where we fit in that market.

You see the same thing with like, say pro line, right? Okay.

Pro line is not going to build a small block full coyote, right? You know,

so, um, that's not their wheelhouse, right? But, uh,

if you want a Hemi, you know what I mean? To go in a pro mod, you know,

where you got the money to, right? You're going to, you're going to, you know,

go to probably pro line, you know, and they keep them on the shelf.

All the guys know how to do them. You know, there's no questions.

It's expectation expectations are met, right? You know,

so I think that's the difference in the market that you see now with the horse

power, you know, being something that drives that.

So over the past, maybe this past year, right?

There really hasn't been much engine platform development in terms of like new

engines coming out.

So are you looking forward to anything coming out soon that you're going to be

able to, to, to implement into your business or are you going to stick to the

Coyote stuff? And no,

I think we're going to probably stick to the three that we currently do,

which is the Coyotes, the two J's and the V10 stuff. You know, um,

that's kind of our bread and butter. There's a couple that are on our radar. Um,

that's some guys want us to work on some BMW stuff.

There's obviously the Nissan stuff that's out that VQ 56 deal.

You know, that's some of those guys are running, you know, so the Nissan. Yeah.

I think it's a VK 56. Yeah. VK 56. Yep. Exactly.

So there's, um, there's that. That's not even a new platform. It's not.

It's been around, but for us, it would be new. You know, so, um,

but you know, there's a lot of technology in all the new stuff, you know,

all the new engines are really good.

The castings allow us to make a bunch of power with them. You know, so, um,

like that Nissan engine, you know, I know guys are flying with that thing.

You know, they're making a ton of power. They're making well over 2000 now. Right.

You know, so I suspect that's going to be something similar like the Coyote.

I bet they go down the same path, you know,

the V 10 stuff that we do, that's really cool stuff. You know, uh,

we could do probably as much of those as we want to do. Yeah. You know, um,

but nothing too crazy coming down the line. You know,

we're working on some BMW stuff for, for one shop, but, um,

nothing too crazy new, you know,

has there been any engines that you've come across right now that aside from the

Coyote that you feel, um, have a, have a bright future ahead?

The Coyote.

I mean,

just the development stuff that we've got going on with the Coyote is so good.

I think, um, you know, with the new billet block that we've got going on and, um,

we're working on a bunch of other stuff, you know, that we've already ran.

That's good. We're just trying to get inventory of it. So, um, before we release it.

So it's, it's really a neat platform because they made so many of them.

There's so many customers. Um, it's such an efficient engine. It's a,

it's a killer. It's probably one of the best engines I've ever worked with. You

know, so I think that's why you see us put so many eggs in one basket, right?

You know, because it is so good. Um, right. And the market is so large,

you know, so, uh,

I don't think we've seen the limitations of the Coyote as a whole. Um,

we might have found the limitations of the cast factory block, but you know,

the engine in as a whole, yeah, we're nowhere near the end of that guy.

Okay. So what is it about since we're already on that topic, right? What,

what is it about the, um, the Coyote that makes it as great as it is?

I'm sure there's a bunch of different things, right? But what is the one main

thing directly that you feel is the biggest impact on why it is so efficient

and why it runs so well?

It moves air through the system better than almost any other engine I've worked

on. Okay. Right. So, um,

it's volumetric efficiency is really good. So the amount of air that it takes in,

uh, and the amount of fuel that it needs to be able to, you know,

consume all that air and turn that into combustion is very efficient, right?

There's not a lot of wasted energy there. Okay. Okay. Um,

which allows us to turn more engine speed than other combinations, you know?

So we have at least usually a thousand RPMs, more engine speed.

So, uh, anytime we could fill that cylinder more, right? And burn more fuel,

right? The engine, if we could harness that power, we're able to make it, uh,

from point A to point B quicker, you know, uh,

it's just able to accelerate usually faster. Um,

so the engine itself is just more efficient.

It's able to move air through the system, even in its factory form,

better than almost all the other ones that I've been around, you know?

And do you think that that has a lot to do with like the head flow? Of course.

Seems like it's a me from the interviews I've done and just learning.

It seems like the, the best engines out or ever seems to have great head flow,

like a K series, like, you know, like an RB 26 has better head flow than a 2J.

Yeah. We're not going to debate if it's better than a 2G or not,

but it seems like head flow is like the biggest thing that kind of makes an

engine more efficient and make more power. Absolutely. I mean,

we've been six eighties on stock head castings with no port work at all.

Truck heads. So it's the smallest port that Ford ever made.

And we've been six eighties at 212 miles an hour,

unported, you know, so take that, you know, I mean, like it's,

it moves air through the system better than any other engine, you know,

that, that we've dealt with the valve train stable at high RPM.

So over 10,000 RPMs, there's, uh,

the valve train is extremely stable. Um,

camshafts, they, they like camshafts in them, you know, um, but that's,

you know, 1200 horsepower or less. There's no real need for camshafts, you know,

you know, obviously the big power stuff, like you have to have that kind of stuff.

You know, our biggest downfall is our cubic inches. Um, you know,

it's still only 300 cubic inches, you know, uh,

we don't really put a lot of stroke to them,

but that becomes a problem spooling turbos and kind of stuff like that, you know,

getting enough, um, shaft speed in the two turbos early enough, you know,

we've only got 300 inches, you know, um, but then again,

that's why the cylinder heads are so efficient because we only have 300 inches,

right? So when guys try to make a tall deck out of them, right,

and make 360 or 380 or 400 inches out of some tall deck

coyote, uh, the intake runners get real long,

the cylinder head gets real small, right? You know,

it's like taking an athlete and put a straw in his mouth, you know, right?

You know, so he's not, not as nearly as good of an athlete as he once was, right?

You know, so, um, cause he's not conditioned for that, you know,

so not granted you could kind of adapt the cylinder head to take advantage of

that, but that's why our, the 300 inch deal is so good, right?

Cause the cylinder heads are so good. It's on a good short block.

That's not too large for the application. Um,

and the engine could stay in its efficiency range for a very long time.

Why, why don't you need a cams up until 1200?

Why are the cams good up until then? Well, that's on like a, um,

like a turbo deal, you know, you're able to have cam, you know,

stock camshafts and a turbo,

you're able to move them with the variable cam shafts.

That's probably why you have such a large area of horsepower to make with the

cams, the stock ones. Absolutely. Yeah. Cause the VCT,

cause the VCT, right? So we could roll the VCT in earlier and, and, uh,

it's like it has more compression in the engine. It has a noise, right?

That's what these ghost cams are and all that stuff, you know,

so you can make stock cam sound like it has, you know, large cams in it.

Now, maybe if you had, um, you know, a limited induction system, you know,

so a small turbo, a small blower, sure, camshafts,

there's some performance there, um,

but it's not hundreds of horsepower or anything like that. You know, it's,

it's you pick up 40 or 50, 60 horsepower, maybe, you know, right? You know,

even in their factory form, it's a great engine. You know, I mean, yeah,

1200. Yeah, no problem. Now to make over a thousand with these platforms,

you, you can run it as is,

or what do you have to do to make a thousand on?

Well, they become a little unreliable because of the rods and pistons in them.

You might bend a rod, you know, but, uh, guys have done it.

Uh, I don't recommend it because when it does break,

it usually tears everything else up in the engine, right?

So at some point, maybe 800, 700, 800 for a stock engine,

it's a great stock engine at that horsepower level. Yeah. Um,

you know, keep the torque kind of managed, you know,

out of low RPM kind of get away through the torque curve a little bit and it'll

live a long time. Um,

after that you could do some rods and pistons and that'll get you reliably to

1200 horsepower, you know, like no problem. Guys have made way more than that.

It's just once again, right? It might not be the smartest thing, you know,

um, and then really we sleeve them, you know, at that point,

and then it's endless after 1200. Yeah. After about 1200, we sleeve them and,

um,

Toyota thon, Toyota thon, Toyota thon is on. Oh,

what fun it is to drive a new Toyota today. Hey,

Jan from Toyota here reminding you Toyota thon is on.

Make your holiday wishes come true with a new Camry, RAV4, Tacoma, and more.

All right. Let's sing it together this time. Toyota thon, Toyota thon,

Toyota thon is on.

Dealer inventory may vary. Toyota thon ends January 5th.

See your participating dealer for details. Toyota.

Let's go places.

It's the same sleeve we use in a 1200 or 3000 horsepower one. Oh,

really? Yeah. There's no difference, you know, as far as that's concerned. Um,

we don't do any welding to the deck of them. We don't put any inserts in them.

Even the big horsepower ones, we don't do any of that stuff. It's all, you know,

water runs through the deck surface just like a normally factory block would.

So you're just leaving pistons, rods and normal machine main studs. Yeah.

Main studs, of course. We do main studs in them.

I know. What are you upgrading those to? Uh, ARP, you know, it's a ARP 2000

main stud on the big, big power cars. We do a larger side bolt in them.

Okay. So we'll upgrade those. That's so once you basically build your engine,

right? You build your 50, um, you pretty much are good up to 3000.

You said they're depending on the, this is dependent on the turbo and head.

Obviously packaged together. Yeah. I think it's a really good 2500 horsepower

engine. Okay. Right. I think, uh, after that,

the service intervals start to get pretty short, you know,

with the factory block. Um, and at any time, like say 2,800 or above,

you know, it's, it's kind of hit or miss, right? You might make

50 hundred is not enough, man. I know. I mean, dude, I think we may see. Yeah.

3400 or so to the tires are pretty close to that. You know, 3270 or yeah,

to the tires we've made that's wild on a factory block sleeves.

I mean, we put sleeves in it, but main studs and sleeves and that's,

that's it. Like there's nothing, you know, we, we put a receiver groove in it,

you know, an O ring wire in the head, a copper gasket,

but that combination will run 20 runs 20 at 3200 horsepower 20 runs,

you know, is what we run it. That's if you're like drag racing. Oh yeah.

Strictly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 3,000 on the street. I don't know about all that.

Yeah. Well, well, guys never, right? So like everyone always wants 2000 horsepower

street cars or 2500 horsepower and we build them and they'll make a dyno number.

I think we have, you know, probably 15 or 20 cars that make over 24 or 500

horsepower. It's out of control and street cars, street cars,

and they all turn them down, right? Because it's somewhat use, useless, you know,

rear wheel drive or all rear wheel drive, some of them are trucks, you know,

yeah, the F 150 stuff. We do a bunch of the F 150 trucks and they're fast,

you know, they're, they're real fast on the street. Those guys will get like 70

runs out of that thing, you know, at 2500 horsepower.

We just had one go 60 to 130. I don't know. I can't say how fast it went,

but it's faster than any of the, the vipers.

Well, you can't say how fast it went because you don't, you don't, you don't know.

Or yeah, I can't really say. Yeah. I can't really say.

But it's, you don't even know who it is though. It's, yeah.

It's the guys over in Texas over there. Oh, you saw midnight?

Oh, they posted one of their 60 to 130s. I think velocity,

velocity, Russell. Yeah,

that's who we built a lot of engines for. It was like a two, I want to say low

twos, man. It's fast. Oh, he posted it. It was like low twos.

I don't know. He might have. Yeah, but it's, it's fast. Yeah.

Never get in that truck. Yeah. It's, it's unbelievable how fast they are.

And I think they just have so much forward momentum with the all wheel drive,

you know, Russell's one, the Cletus shoot out like two out of three

times. I think he run it up the other time. So man,

those, those trucks are really fast. But the weight,

so the weight of those trucks. So with how much they were, well,

actually they cut a lot of stuff out of those trucks,

especially at that power, right? They do. So they're probably around one fourth,

four thousand pounds, any four or five thousand pounds? Yeah. High three,

high threes, 38 or 900, you know. So to make that power,

you have to move all that weight of course. So it's kind of like,

it kind of makes sense that they need to make that power to do those numbers.

Yeah. I mean, it's, it absolutely is making, you know, 24 or 500 horsepower,

you know, like there's no way around it. You know,

it's got to be, you know, to kind of do that kind of stuff.

And these guys aren't even on the billet, right? Cause you don't even need to,

they're all factory cast block stuff. Yeah. Wow. So, um,

do you think that they can, cause they're,

they're obviously all the drive, right?

So can they make more power and still put that down the street with all the

drive? I believe they can. Yeah. Really? They tell me they can.

So we're going to find out it's coming.

So, uh, you mentioned that up to 1200, the stock cams are good.

What do you recommend after that?

Well, we have some stuff that we're working on currently right now that we've

tested and we've ran and it's ran really good. Um,

so we have our own grinds. What I can tell you is, um,

all of the camshafts in the industry are very similar, right?

There's not like one out in left field. That's way better than everybody else's.

So like everybody's are really close. It's the fine details that make the

difference, you know? So, um,

it needs to be a set of cams that have been ran before and that's going to

work, not ran in an engine, but like that have been validated and ran in a

combination that you're going to use, right? Cause, uh,

we have some cams that we run in the big power cars. Um,

and they want to be ran at a certain RPM window, right?

They might be a little harder to spool.

So they might need a little bit different starting line strategies, you know,

to build the amount of starting line boost that we need, right?

But that camshaft runs really, really good once we let go of the button, right?

So, uh, we have to deal with those characteristics. Um,

so that, that set of cams might not be for everybody, right? In other words. Um,

and then we've got another set that's a little bit smaller.

That kind of is a general purpose cam. It works with almost all combinations,

you know, it's able to spool a set of 80 millimeter turbos or 76s or even a single

98, you know, or something, right? So it, it works with all of them.

So we only have really two options that we have as far as camshafts are concerned

and that's a testament, you know, of how well, obviously the whole platform is,

it, right? There's not that much advantage from all of these camshafts, you know,

what are you guys doing as far as duration on, on the, uh, on the coyote platform?

As far as how much? Yeah. Yeah. On the cam, um,

250s to 40s, you know, uh, somewhere right around there, you know, um,

and as far as lifts concerned, they're all usually under 600,000 lift.

What, uh, you know, what is that in like millimeters? I have no idea.

When I think about that, this is a millimeter thing. I don't know.

The Australian guys get me all that time with that, you know,

with the metric system, but yeah, I'm not too sure how big it is. 13 or 14

millimeters is what it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

So like 11 and 11 and a half is like high lift pretty much on the airport side.

Yeah. I think it's 13 and a half 14. It's right in there. Yeah. Between 13 and 14.

So now you, um, you mentioned that you still run VCT or you don't, we do.

Yeah. I mean, we currently run VCT on the intake side. Oh, okay.

So we're able to advance the camshafts to create more cylinder pressure.

So that's able to spool the turbos a little bit easier, you know,

stuff like that makes a little bit more power earlier in the RPM range.

We don't use it long, right? It's not like once we let go of the button, right?

We don't really use it much, right?

Essentially just rolls back to our intake centerline, which is, uh,

like if we fix the camshafts and we've locked them out,

that's where it rolls back to that position, right? You know,

so we only really use it for starting line strategy, you know,

stuff like that as far as the race cars are concerned. Right. Right.

That's, um, a little bit method that cause I have a 76 on my car and, um,

it's spools a little bit late. So I think it's like 5,500 RPM.

And the only way to get a little bit more spool or sooner is to advance the intake

cam mechanically. Sure. Cause there's no,

yeah, well that's going to take some performance away or some RPM capability,

right? Uh, and move that down a little bit, right?

So like for us able to use the variable cam timing,

we're able to advance that thing. Yeah. And, uh,

and it really sounds like a real engine when we do that, you know, boom, boom,

boom, boom, boom. Yeah. It doesn't sound like a dump truck and, uh,

does a good burnout, right? The tune up stays clean, right? The plugs stay clean.

Um, it's able to get on the converter a little bit better because it's making,

you know, 30 more foot pounds of torque or whatever the case may be. Um,

so that helps, you know,

when it comes to the, uh, the, the VCT,

the oiling is not an issue at high horsepower at all.

It doesn't affect any of that. Well, we don't have that problem. Uh, you know,

some people might write, but, uh, we don't have that problem. You know,

so we, um,

run probably more spring rate than most with the VCT and

we have no issues with it. What I can tell you is you have to have good oil,

good quality oil,

meaning the oil that's going into the engine needs to be not air rated. Okay.

Right. You know, so you got to have a good dry sump system.

So it's, it's pulling all the air in the oil out of it and it's putting it to a

good tank and it's allowing the air to separate from the oil and the oil that

you're putting, you know, that's what a dry sump tank is, right? Yeah.

But do you guys dry sump these? Yeah. Oh yeah. I didn't even know that.

Yeah. At some point we go strictly to a dry sump. Yeah.

We'll run all the way six stages.

So we pull four out of the pan, one to the turbos,

and then obviously one pumps it back into the tank and then the engine. Yeah.

So the oil, you got some point to run variable cam timing under that spring

rate, um, at that engine speed and whatnot, you know,

like you got to have a dry sump system on it and, uh,

you got to have good oil, you know, and what, you know, right?

So it can't be air rated it cause it'll want to move around and everything else.

So you got to have a good pump, right? Good pan, good tank, you know,

and it's got to sit in that tank long enough for the air to separate away from

the oil, right? So if it's still running through so fast,

it doesn't have enough time to separate itself. There's got to be enough levels.

So yeah, you got to have a good system at 1500.

Roughly around that area is when you need a dry sump because the oil starts to

aerate of course, right? Sure. What about the coyotes? Yeah. I mean,

we run them up to 20, about 22 or 2,400 horsepower or anything without past.

Yeah. We still run an internal, um, yeah, oil pump.

We do put oil pump gears in it. That's why we have this oil pump tester, right?

So we put these gears in it, we run it and we validate the pumps good.

We do go to larger capacity pans.

Okay. What you have happen on the internal wet sump stuff is it pumps all the oil

to the heads. So we've made multiple different orifice,

restrictors. So we limit the amount of oil that gets to the head.

It still has enough oil, right? To supply the cam journals, the lifters,

the follow or stuff like that,

but not an excessive amount of oil that it's not able to run back to the pan.

Right. Right. So, uh, we do oil restrictors in the heads. Um,

there are probably a little different orifice than some. Um,

and then we put a larger capacity pan, right? And, and the cars,

what you'll see happen is when the cars leave the starting line and they're so

fast, yeah, um, the oil washes up the pan a little bit. We have all these,

you know, trap doors and windage trays and all this stuff in it.

But the reality is you're running 11 or 12 quarts of oil.

It's going to go somewhere, right? It's,

it's going to mitigate and go up the back and is it a beer cell? It is. Yeah.

Okay. So you have a little bit of advantage there already. We do. Yeah.

We've got a good area in the back, right?

And we've got all this stuff to kind of hold it all there.

But when the cars get so fast,

you'll see a dip in oil pressure and then it starts to come back and, you know,

that's part of what's going on. Um, right now. No, with the, you know,

at the 2200 horsepower range, 24, right? And then at some point you're like,

Hey, we're making so much power. We can't have that dip, right?

Because it'll tear a bearing up or, you know, kick a rod out or something bad.

So, um, you know, we'll go right to a dry sump system. You know,

so like there's almost a hard line in the sand, you know,

on almost all the plafth or packages that we've created, there's,

you don't want to cross that line. Yeah. You know what I mean? So it's pretty

similar. Um, you're saying all this stuff and I'm, I,

this is the same thing with the RBS.

We do our oil restrictor on the block though to block off one of the ports

to cause all the oil pools up in the head. So we prevented from doing that.

We also have baffles and the valve covers too.

And then we have extensions because the oil pump flows a lot higher or more

oil volume, um, volume, right? So, um,

you have to have the extension there to have more oil in there.

It's exactly the same pretty, but the power that you guys are doing it at is

different. So engines are engines. Yeah. Right. They're, they're just air pumps

and, uh, you got to oil them to keep them alive. Right. You know,

but they're all air pumps. Yeah. Some are better than others. Right. You know?

So now what about the, the limitations of the cast, um, on the, on the, uh,

coyotes? Well, you know, it's that hard line in the sand thing, you know,

I on Brett's car, you know, um, at 3,200 horsepower,

it's not a great engine, um, in a cast form because you don't know when it's

going to break. Okay. And, uh, there's a lot of liability there. It's dangerous.

You know, stuff like that. And the last thing we want to do is hurt someone, you

know? Um, so I would say the, the factory coyote predator cast block,

you know, uh, is probably a good 2,500 horsepower engine. You know,

you could, you could invest, you could buy it. You could invest in that and say,

okay, you know, this thing's going to last me a good long while.

I'll get a good service life out of it. And, um, it's going to be all right.

You know, but, but after that, things get a little tricky, you know,

the service interval goes down after 3,000 horsepower. It's anybody's guess.

You know, I mean, a guy could kill it right away. Yeah. You know? So, um,

yeah, I think that would be my limitations. Like, eh, I wouldn't try to go over

about 2,800, you know,

damn. So it's 1200 horsepower coyote. Like you're good. You don't have,

you're just chilling if it's built, right? Of course.

Yeah. I mean, I've got guys that make 16 to 1,700 of the tires that, you know,

they've had their stuff out for five or six years. Just chilling.

We've not even, you know, seen it back, you know, and they drive it almost,

you know, two, three times a week.

Now a lot of these dailies by chance or some of them are, yeah,

that is wild. So now with the predator, right? Those come in the GT5 fundus,

right? Correct. Okay.

So are those more expensive to, to get your hands on or? Yeah.

The blocks are, you know, another $1,200 more compared to a gen three block,

say, right? But a gen three block, we've,

we've made 23, 2400 horsepower with a gen three block, you know,

it's a thousand dollar block. Yeah. You know, so like it's a killer value.

Let's put it that way. You know?

So now why do you guys run the five two as opposed to the five oh,

what is the biggest difference? Aside from the casts, of course,

you guys have already experimented with that and you know,

and it makes more on the cast,

but what other reasons are there for running the five two? Well,

well we don't actually run 5.2 liters, right? We still run a five liter,

right? So the heads you take from the predator. No,

the block and the heads we take from the predator,

the predator block is a 3,700 bore from the factory. So three,

three inches, 700,000 is the bore. The early generation,

five liter coyotes are 3,630. Okay.

So we take those predator blocks and we sleeve them and we leave them at that

3,630 bore because there's more material in the sleeve.

The sleeve is extremely, you know,

strong at that thickness compared to, you know, uh, the 3,700 bore.

We're only able to bore so much parent material out of the block, you know?

So like to make that sleeve any thicker,

we're going to get into the water jackets, right?

And that's the last thing we want to do, you know? So, um,

we can't go too big and obviously we don't want to, you know,

make the sleeve too thin. So we sleeve them back down.

Now like in Brett's car,

once that bore gets over in a factory block, 3,650,

our crankcase pressure numbers start to increase, right?

And essentially what that's saying is, you know,

you don't have enough material there to hold that combustion anymore.

Okay. Right. You know, so, um,

what happens is the block and the sleeves themselves start to balloon right

through the middle. They barrel shape because there's no support in the middle.

There's support in the top from the deck and the bottom from the mains,

but in the middle there's only water, you know?

So we run water under pressure, right? To help that. Um,

but it's still kind of barrels, you know? So, um,

that gives you an example of why you shouldn't bore the blocks, you know,

when you have a block sleeve,

you shouldn't go straight to a large bore on it because you have no service life

left, right? Where ours, you know, you could go from 3,630, 40, 50, 60,

80, you know, you could, you could service that block six times.

It could be freshened up six times before it's out of its service intervals and

needs new sleeves or a new block. Right. Um,

but it's, it's a lot stronger like that, you know,

so that's why we do that.

Now with the packages,

that's pretty much the only blocks that you use for it,

or let's say if somebody wanted to just build a 5.0,

like is that something you guys do too? Oh yeah. Yeah.

We do all gen one, twos, threes, any generation coyote block we use,

it's just for the high, high horsepower stuff.

We prefer to use that predator block because it's,

it's the right block to use.

And what about the cylinder heads? Well, the cylinder heads,

as the generation in the years went on, they got better. Okay. Um,

so the gen three heads are a direct injection head. Um,

they move the best air as far as like the standard GTs or like a truck head or

anything like that. Like those are really good heads.

And then you go to a voodoo or a GT 500 head, a predator, you know,

and those are the same cylinder heads.

There's a difference in an exhaust bolt pattern, but it's a dual pattern.

So none of it matters. It's, it's the same, same head. Yeah.

They move the same amount of air.

They've got the same parts in them, same CNC program from the factory.

So all those heads are already CNC ported from the factory. Okay.

So the only difference between those in the stock form is just a flat plane crank,

of course, on the 350 on the 350. Yeah. As a flat plane compared to a cross.

Yep. Okay. Cause under my assumption, it was just like, Oh, well,

if five two, it already has, it's already boosted.

So like it should be a stronger material or it should be well made for that.

Sure. Well, the blocks got better.

So the voodoo block was a 12 millimeter short head stud.

The predator is a 12 millimeter longer head stud.

The stud goes down towards the mains.

That's how you want them to be. I'm going to be able to pull from the main area.

So the deck got a little bit more closed in. I showed you that a little bit.

The water holes got a little smaller and they got a little more support

throughout the deck.

One of the problems with the voodoo's is where the head bolt location ends at,

you've got these knock sensor pads on the valley and it's right in line with

those. So as often, I mean,

we've seen it four or five times where those blocks crack, you know,

in that area. So out of all the blocks,

the voodoo block is probably been the block that we've seen crack the most.

Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. So when it comes to blocks cracking,

let's say if you have high coolant temps a little bit longer or higher,

higher than normal,

what would that directly affect in terms of like the life of a block?

Well, we crack our blocks through movement more than through a thermal

expansion problem. Okay. So the cooling system on the factory forge is really

good. The mechanical pump, it moves good water through it.

We could run them at 200 degrees and they're okay.

So we're not like overheating them as far as that's concerned. Um,

although some guys do, um, you know,

these things are getting put, you know, like I said,

like everyone makes over 1500 horsepower just about, right?

So then they get put in a street car and then next thing you know,

the guy puts a picture up and he's wheeling it, you know,

two or 300 foot, right? So the things all twisted up and the car has no,

you know, it's just got stock motor mounts or fixed motor mounts right in the

center of the block. So, you know, at some point motor plates become a thing,

you know, block twisting, um, in our instances,

sometimes it's ballooning the cylinders cause we're making so much cylinder

pressure or we're trying to, you know, shove the mains, you know,

like over 3000 horsepower,

you're literally trying to just shove the mains out of the block, you know,

so the cranks trying to come straight out the bottom. And when we do crack

those, we take them apart and all the fasteners come out and the block just

kind of falls apart. It didn't spin any bearings.

It didn't tear any cranks up. It didn't do anything. It just,

it's just giving up, right? It's just falling apart, right? Um,

so you're just pushing on it too hard is what happens, right?

You're trying to move that part too much and the material that the block is made

out of can't withstand that. It's not elastic enough, right?

So it fractures.

That's where you get these cracks from or these broken blocks. Um,

if it was cast iron,

then you could maybe talk about this thermal expansion and overheating it,

right? Because cast irons, uh, not nearly as good of a conductor, you know,

can't get rid of the heat as well, right?

So it's got to deal and manage with that heat.

So that's maybe when that becomes a problem.

How much boost do you guys running into these, these engines?

I would assume it's not as high because the head flows pretty well.

62 pounds or so, you know, you know,

and what, what are you making at 62 power wise?

3,200 horsepower or so.

Damn, that's actually really, that's impressive. Yeah. Yeah. So that's,

that's crazy. Yeah. I think John Lund's car, you know,

makes probably 26 or 700 horsepower and right.

57 pounds of boost with his 58 pounds, you know,

so that's with a six R 80 transmission.

That is factory transmission. Yeah. They've been six fifties with it.

420s, you know, heavy too, you know, real heavy.

So with the drag racing stuff, like launching,

do you see at high horsepower levels and talking about, um,

where it's affecting maybe the crank or anything like that? Yeah. I mean,

obviously the harder we run these things, the more movement we see, right? Uh,

you know, so when we take these engines apart, you know,

our job is to look at them and to see what they look like, right? Uh,

make sure the engine was broken properly, right?

We could see that and determine if that was done. Um,

we could see the where, you know, that is on the parts themselves, you know,

so, uh, you pull a piston out and it's got a wear mark on it or a bearing has a

wear mark on it. Well, what does that tell you, you know, uh, what,

it's like a crime investigation. Yeah. You know, it's exactly that. So, um,

you know, and then based off of what we see,

we make adjustments to that, right? So do we need a different part that's

stronger? Do we need more clearance because this is deflecting so much now?

You know, um,

you've really got to pay attention to the parts that are coming out.

That tells you everything. Yeah. You know, um,

obviously the tuner and the driver, they always tell you something,

but the parts never lie. You know, like they're always honest with you. You know,

so, you know, uh,

if you take it apart and you saw that the surface on the cylinder wall was laid

down and it's real shiny, um, you know,

well they might not have broke the engine incorrectly, right? Um,

you know, they didn't do a good job at seeding the rings in, right? Uh,

maybe they had it over fueled and we could determine that. Um,

when we were running out of stock crankshafts and we were running, um,

2,500 horsepower with a stock crankshaft,

crankshafts flexing and moving so much that we were starting to tear a couple

bearings up, you know, and, um,

before we actually spun bearings and destroyed stuff, you know,

we saw what it was trying to tell us to do.

So we would just open up the clearance in the three center mains and now the

crank flex, but it doesn't touch the bearings down, right?

So that's just an example of one of the things, you know, uh,

but every single spot on that engine or in every single part tells you a story.

So, you know, look at it, pay attention.

So now there's probably people who are taking their engines, of course,

to their local machine shop and so on, right?

And you guys seem to have your procedure locked down. It's very like legit.

Everything's clean. Uh, everything's legit.

You guys have everything marked down, written down, and you get like a whole

sheet. You hope you show me the whole report and the last stuff, right?

So I would assume that most machine shops are following the same procedures,

but there may be some that don't have different, you know, methods. Um,

where would you think that most machine shops fail?

Really has to do with, um, what the machine shops take on, right?

And, and I, and I say that like at some point, I took everything that came in the

door. Yeah. So it could have been a big block Chevy offshore race boat.

Could have been a 9 59. Mucy could have been an old pro line,

you know, Hemi or 41 X, right? And, um,

you can't get the parts for it, right? You don't,

you're not an expert in any one thing, right?

So I think that becomes a thing when you go to a shop and it might just be a

general machine shop and you're wanting them to work on your special import

engine, right? There's two J or RB, right? Uh, you know, I'm not an RB guy,

you know, so don't most people aren't, right? Right. Uh, yeah,

I have not had a very good success with the RBs. Uh,

I probably am not your RB guy, right? You know, so, so don't bring me your RB,

right? Cause I'm not the expert in that, you know, uh,

and I haven't devoted my time and attention to that, you know, uh, platform.

So I think that's where a lot of machine shops, um,

fall short is that they're not trying to perfect their craft with,

um, a particular package, right? Uh,

and another thing is most machine shops,

one guy, uh, just bounces around and runs around, right?

Everybody's able to do kind of anything, right?

And they just, Hey, here's your tasks for the day or this or that,

where you look at our shop, all of our guys have their own area.

This is the crankshaft guys area, right?

This Adonis runs all the crankshafts, right? Miles runs the CNC,

AJ and, you know, uh, in the assembly room, you know what I mean?

They're in here with Zach and, um, you know,

so like my cylinder head guys, right?

So they become perfectionist in their trade, right?

They know when something doesn't look right, uh,

they could feel it for that matter, right? Um, you know,

they could hear when their machine's not running correctly, you know,

we don't have any stereos or speakers out in the shop.

Nobody's walking around with headphones on, you know, like,

you got to listen to the equipment run, you know? So when you're,

um, working in a particular task and area,

you're able to find any failures because you know it, you're an expert in it,

right? So I think that's the difference between us and most other engine shops,

you know, um, is, you know,

all my guys are professionals in their tasks, you know?

So what, what are some, um, some red flags, um,

because honestly people really probably don't even know that there's issues

happening at their machine shop until it's like a year later when their engine

still at the machine shop and they had an expectation of like three months,

right? So what are some red flags to look out for? I guess,

I don't even know if you, when you drop your engine off,

if you can even inspect everything,

because most of the time you're not even in the shop,

you're like just dropping it off here, right? Sure. Well,

I think a couple of things, expectations, right? Lay it all out on the line.

What are you looking for? What are you looking to get done?

What are your expectations and what are your goals? You know? So like,

when someone comes to us, we ask them those things,

what are you doing with this car? Maybe you don't need this stage four package.

Right? You know, yeah, you might have the money. You might want to buy it,

right? Cause Brett's got it. I get it all the time. I want what Brett has.

You don't want any part of what Brett has. You know, so,

um, you know, so, so figure out those expectations. You know what I mean?

Like what do you really want out of this? You know, uh,

are you going to try to take the wife to dinner or are you going to do this?

Right? Like how much do you really need? Right?

So, so get those out on the lines.

And then if the shops wanting, you know,

this big huge deposit and everything else right up front, you know, uh,

that's always sometimes a red flag to me too. You know,

we very rarely take on deposits, you know? Um,

and I think that you see that happen a lot, right? Guys give deposits,

right? And then their expectations aren't met, right?

And the timeframe gets longer and then they ask for an update.

Maybe they don't have all the parts or they don't have this and it just gets

drawn out. Um, these are things that I've had happen in our business early on,

right? That we've moved away from, right? You know,

that I've seen and I've done myself, you know, so like, um,

we've gotten away from all that. And I think those are some of the things that

are the red flags, you know, that, that come up, you know? And then next thing,

you know, the end user, you know,

is pissed off at the machine shop or the engine shop.

They've got their money. They don't got an engine, right?

And then they push on the guy and then the guy rushes and gets it done.

And it's not the kind of work that you're looking for. You know,

that's another problem, right? So I think when you go to an engine shop,

lay out your expectations on what you're looking for. Hey,

this is my timeframe. Are you able to or not do it? Um,

have faith in that engine shop that you're going to, right?

It should already be a place that you have faith in and that you know is able to

do what, you know, you're, you're looking to get done.

And it's in their wheelhouse, you know, um,

don't bring a big nitrous engine to the import guy, you know, and vice versa.

Right. You know, so, um, but yeah,

I think those are some of the hurdles that, you know, you got to look out for.

Okay. If you have all the parts, right?

How long should it take to build an engine from actually starting

the build process?

Well, we have like a 12 week lead, right? So like that's ours.

If you come in the door, it's 12 weeks, usually before it's in your hands.

By that time you have an engine, right? Uh,

as far as the physical labor and the amount of time that that engine, uh,

is getting touched while it's here at our shop is 40 to 80 hours

based on the engine. Okay. Okay. So, uh, these v 10s, they,

they take a lot longer. It's four days to assemble one. Yeah. You know, three,

three days, you know, it's a four days to get one of those done where,

you know, a coyote isn't quite as long, you know, it's a little bit easier to

get through. Um, so, you know, like a coyote going through the shop,

you'll probably have 40 to 50 hours in, you know, um,

on a standard build, right? You know, um,

we have four to five hours and just deburr work on a coyote long block from

deburring the block, from deburring the main camps,

from deburring the pistons, um, the cylinder head castings.

Like we've got that much time. Just need to deburring it, you know,

where, you know, maybe another shop doesn't deburr the block at all. Right.

You know what I mean? So, uh, you know, that's just some of the differences.

You know, we talked about hone in the sleeve or hone in the blocks prior to

putting the sleeves in it, you know, so we can get as much heat transfer. Uh,

you know, that's hours, you know, that most guys that do coyote stuff,

don't do, you know? So, uh, I could right off the top of my head,

there's 15 hours that we do that most other coyote guys probably don't in

each coyote engine from start to finish, if it's a long block, right? You know?

So what's that time? You know what I mean? It's a lot. Yeah, it's a lot.

So now do you guys deal with customers directly?

Like a customer can walk in here and get their engine built,

or do you have to go through like, I know some shops are like where you can only

deal with them through a, uh, another company that's a performance shop or

something like that. Yeah. No, uh, you could come direct to us. Um,

we prefer that on the bigger builds, right? Because like we want to know exact,

it's a little more detail oriented. Yeah.

We want to make sure that you're getting exactly what you need. Um,

now we do have obviously the wholesalers, you know, like real street velocity,

FM, um, and those guys down south. Um,

you know, and there's a few other guys, you know, but, you know,

they move those short blocks that usually keep them on the shelf, you know?

So if a guy with a Mustang, you know, blows an engine up or something,

there's not a six month wait, you know, they could get something, you know,

going. So, uh, yeah, you could kind of just come either way, you know?

So now how much does it cost to, to build,

let's say a 1200 horsepower coyote or above?

Um, short block wise, you know,

if you just wanted to do a 12 to 1500 horsepower, you know,

street Mustang deal, you just need a short block that are going to be 12,

five to if you got a GT 500, you know, full max effort deal,

15, you know, five. So that's for a short block and long block,

depending on if you have castings or not, right? I mean,

it goes up pretty quickly if you don't have the castings,

but if you have castings, you know, you could get a 20s, you know,

18 up to, you know, 32 or 38,000 depending on the package,

you know? So.

And that'll get you up to 1200 plus. Yeah, of course. Yeah.

I mean, if a guy comes in with a, you know,

2012 or 13 Mustang and wanted 12 or 13,

1400 horsepower, you had to be probably 18 grand or something like that.

You'd get a sleeved built short block, um,

rods, pistons, rings, bearings, main studs, sleeves, O-ringed, you know,

the cylinder heads get springs, valve springs, a valve job.

Obviously all the cams get checked for straightness and size and fit in there.

We put valves in almost all of them, um, you know,

the full treatment. Yeah. So you're walking in here.

That's just for the long block pretty much. Yeah. And that's for like,

Hey, I have everything. I just need you to supply a short block in a,

and you know, some valve springs and stuff like that in the heads, you know,

and that'll make 12 to 1500 horsepower. Now, when you get over, you know,

if you don't have a cylinder head casting, there's four grand, you know,

or something, right? Like things start adding up, Hey, I need a,

I want to make over 1500. Well, now you need a different oil system, right? You

know, like so, um, the hard line in the sand once again, right? You know,

you really got to know what you want. And then we could kind of perfect that from

there.

So now how much does it cost to build a six second coyote?

The whole car. I mean, who knows, man. I mean, you know, some guys,

you know, there's some budget ones. I mean, uh,

there's some budget cars that probably have, you know, 80, 90,

100 grand in, in the car, you know, that could go sixes, you know? Um,

and then there's guys that have 250 or 300 grand in the car, you know?

So, uh, there's a, there's a big window,

six 80s and slower. That's, that's fast. Don't get me wrong, right? But that's

really fine. It's somewhat obtainable for quite a few guys, right? Uh,

anything faster than that. And, um, the price starts to go up very quickly,

you know, in the effort and the, you know, um,

the service intervals go, you know, down drastically, you know, at that point.

So now you mentioned some people call up and say, Hey, I want exactly what

Brett has, right? So if you wanted something close to that, or if somebody

said, Hey, I just want to build something close to what he has,

just a long block alone. What would that cost? You think his,

with the dry sump billet block right now is a 52 to 58

based on a couple of little options, 58,000 58, 52 to 58,000. Yeah.

Dude, that's so, that's to me, that's like, that's a great. Damn.

I spent close to it. I spent around that for mine.

Yeah. I'm not making no 35 hundred horsepower. Dude,

it's the most bang for the buck. I mean, it's, yeah, I kid you not, man.

It's the most bang for the buck. You know,

the coyote platform by far is the most bang for the buck.

But then there's also the other side of things. There's, there's suspension,

there's ECU, all that, all that. There's the 50,000 is just a small portion

of one step along the way. That's it.

That's pretty impressive that you can just spend that and you can have an engine

capable of making that kind of power. And is that, is that billet or is that

cast? No, that'd be a billet block. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

I think somewhere right around there. Wow. That is crazy. All right.

Well, it might be time to come to the domestic side pretty soon.

We're turning a lot of people over. Yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty wild. Um,

so I want to, I wanted to ask you about, um, there's, it's not a myth.

I don't know if it's a myth, but a common,

a common thing that people say is that if you have a high displacement engine,

you can't really rev it that high, right? Um,

now these engines seem to rev pretty high, right? Yeah.

Normal, honestly, for, for what they are,

they rev higher than anything else I think, right? Yeah. 10,500 RPMs.

Insane, right? Now, uh, the displacement,

I'm sure there's plenty of engines that have much higher displacement than these,

but it's pretty common that people know that, like, look,

you can't really rev or you shouldn't really rev a high displacement engine,

um, to a certain RPM. Now, is that true? I know you mentioned in the previous,

um, podcast that, you know,

you can pretty much make any engine do what you want to do.

If you want it to rev to 10,000, you can make it rev to 10,000.

How long it's going to last? We don't know, but, um,

is that just a myth or is that something that, you know, it's true?

No, I mean, it's, it's, I think it's true, right? And a good example of that would

be a NHRA pro stock engine, right? It's 500 cubic inches,

naturally aspirated. So, you know,

it's 200 cubic inches more than these and turns the same engine speed as

these, right?

And it's probably one of the most efficient engines in the world, right?

So it's able to move air through the system, right?

So what happens is, is when you increase, uh, cubic inches, right, um,

you have to fill that cylinder, right? This goes back to the athlete, right?

You know, so now you have to have enough lung capacity.

You have to have enough cylinder head capacity, right? Port volume, uh,

port, you know, air speed, right? To fill that cylinder. If you have that,

it's no big deal, right? You have all the metric efficiencies there, right?

It's just where that turns the corner at, you know? So, um,

when you go up in cubic inches,

you have to work on the induction system even more.

That's just what it boils down to, right? So it's able to fill that cylinder. Um,

and if you do that, it could be just as good, right? I mean, that's a

fine example of it, you know? So like anybody that says otherwise is probably

wrong.

So now what about the LS stuff, right? I know obviously that's not really your,

your thing, um, but I'm sure you've worked on the LS's before, right? Sure. Um,

now with the push rod, as opposed to like a, um,

a dual overhead cam system you have here, right? Uh,

wouldn't that be the biggest limiting factor to the RPM and being able to rev

higher?

Well, sure. You have deflection from a push rod. So as, you know,

if the push rod's not perfectly straight and it's at an angle,

then you have deflection, right? Um, the push rod's a pole vault also, right?

You know, so, um, you know,

you have all of these losses through that kind of valve train and through a

follower system like what ours is where it's got people call them rockers,

but they're followers that follows the cam lobe.

Um, look at the mass in that it's,

it's a quarter of what a push rod and a fixed rocker would have, right?

So just in general, the overhead cam is a lot more efficient, right?

The valve normally sees the full valve lift, right?

So whatever you grind the camshaft to, right? Um,

if you didn't mess the geometry up in the head, um,

which a lot of guys do do, uh, with the coyotes,

but if you didn't mess it up, then it sees pretty much the theoretical valve

lift, right? So it runs good where the push rod stuff's not usually that way,

right? Uh, rarely will you have that. And, um,

in order to get that you have to have a really good valve train system, you know,

one piece stands, you know, a shaft system, rockers, you know,

all this and that. So it's this high end stuff that you have to buy after market

stuff to make that work. You know,

another thing with the LS stuff is if you took that engine and you made it

330 or 40 or 50 inches at your RPM capabilities go up, you know,

and then now you want to make it a 427. Well,

you don't have enough cylinder head for it, but if you,

if you adapted to that 427 inches ago, okay, I need this port volume.

So instead of a 200 cc port, I need 220 cc port, right? Um,

you know, uh, and normally when you go to that cylinder head now,

the port's going to be taller. It's going to be raised.

It's not going to be a real low port. The push rod,

where the push rod goes next to the, uh, port doesn't intrude into the port.

You know, the port shifted over now and uses an offset, you know,

rocker and whatnot. So you know, at some point with a domestic push rod style

engine, you know, once again,

you have to overcome the hurdles to be able to run more cubic inches efficiently

at a higher engine speed. Right. You know, it's all about filling the cylinder.

That's what it all comes down to, right?

So now you did the engine masters recently, right? Where you, uh,

built an engine that was capable of like 14, I think it was 14 hundred horsepower?

Yeah. Yeah. That's what we wound up making was a 14 19, I think. Right. Um,

with it. So, uh, essentially that was an L T L M E built in L T,

5.3 liter versus a gen three Ford Coyote.

Okay. Um, which was our standard short block that we build. You know,

anybody could get it. Um,

our auto media came to us wanting to do that deal and we were supposed to put the

engines together, run a single 76 millimeter turbo,

ultra street turbo. And, um,

is the HPT right HPT. Those guys were great to work with. Um,

going into C 10s. Okay. Which maybe you saw it at PRI show,

the white C 10 72 C 10 with the Coyote, um,

power auto media booth. I'll show you some pictures of it, but yeah,

it's probably, I saw one C 10 tan white and with tan accents.

I probably walked by it. Yeah. Beautiful. Uh, truck. Um,

Eric did such an amazing job at putting the engine in the truck, you know,

and putting a Ford in a, in a Chevy.

Pissed a lot of people off, but, um, and then they had to do a hundred mile

cruise, you know, so it was like a drag and drive. And then, uh,

I think the best of three passes and whoever got the best average, you know,

wins that right. That's not released yet, but, uh,

you're going to want to watch it for sure. It's not out yet. Yeah. It's not,

but it's coming. I think there's one more episode.

So the engine dyno stuff, um, that started,

those guys, uh, ran theirs prior to ours. We were the second day.

We got it all running. That turbo, um, was a T four flange. Um,

it was, uh, originally I think going to be an ultra street turbo.

And then we wound up with that turbo,

which is a little smaller than what LME built their engine for.

And the same thing with us, you know, we were expecting to have a little bit more

engine speed, um, than what we were able to use.

Ultimately, uh, we started making some dyno pulls with that thing.

And, uh, we were having some problems with the dyno itself,

trying to hold the engine at certain engine speeds. But, um,

what you see with it is,

is it was just pissed off when we were trying to run a normal curve with, uh,

say it's 7,500 RPMs. Right. And we just had too much back pressure.

Our back pressure number, we were at 92 or 93 pounds of back pressure.

We only had 28 pounds of boost. So once the back pressure,

your pressure ratio changed, it was over three to one, you know, anytime,

you know, we were in overlap, you know,

it's just running back up the intake track, diluting the engine.

So how we combated that and got around it to get the wind was

we turned less engine speed.

We didn't have to fill the cylinders as much at 7,500 RPMs. Right.

So let's try to turn it at 5,500 RPMs. And, um,

so it took quite a bit of runs to get the dyno to be able to, um,

hold that engine and that torque at that engine speed. Right. Um,

so after we got that figured out,

we started moving in the right direction because we got back in the efficiency

range of the turbo. Yeah. Um,

we just ran the turbo till all it had, you know,

the turbo would only make 1,400 and some change. So like,

we put a bigger turbo on it makes, makes more. You know,

so the engine was able to probably make 17 or 1,800 horsepower pretty easily.

Um, we just made as much as the turbo would make.

You guys both had to run the same identical, even the hot side and everything.

Uh, we had a T four flange. They had a V band, uh, clamp on it.

But it was, it wasn't divided, right? No, uh, no,

I don't think it was a divided turbo. No. Okay. On yours. Yeah. Mine was not. No.

Okay. And is there any difference between the, the, I mean,

I think they might've had a little bit more area. Um, okay. So, you know,

going back, we probably would have done that, you know, exhaust side, you know,

cause it has a little more area. Yeah. Um, but you mentioned it was, you know,

obviously the back pressure. So I mean,

there's the hot side were probably the only thing that directly affects that. No,

it does. Yeah. Usually. So, uh, usually that camshaft sometimes a little bit,

you know, so we tried to mechanically move the cams a little bit and we couldn't

get away from it enough. So it just, you know, we had what we had, you know,

but yeah, we got it done. So it was good. So, um, did the LS impress you?

Yeah. Those guys built a good engine. I mean, yeah, I mean, it's best of the best

of both platforms pretty much. Yeah. I mean, and they put a lot of effort into

trying to, um, not only beat us, but you know, um,

run really good with a lot of engine speed and both engines didn't do that. Uh,

we had a normal dyno curve. We had like a, you know, 14 or 1500 RPM dyno curve,

you know, that we pulled it. Um, theirs was real small.

They had like a 200 RPM window that they were just trying to, or 300 RPM window.

They were just trying to get a number. Yeah.

And I think that they were running into the same struggles that I ran into, you

know, on the dyno. We just stuck with it. You know, uh,

I didn't take a lunch that day. None of the guys that worked at West tech took a

lunch like, man, I ran them hard that day, but you know, it took 40 runs, you

know, but we were able to get it done.

I think that's what was pretty controversial was the amount of runs you guys had

compared to what they had, but then, I mean, you guys had issues of course.

Well, they did too. You know, we just worked through them instead of just

getting rid of it, you know, like, uh, instead of, uh, not worrying about that,

you know, we just worked through those problems and that took quite a few pulls,

you know, to get that done. The dyno didn't want to hold it at a certain, um,

engine speed. I had, um, Tommy,

which I had not used prior Tommy tuned the engine for us. That was on Holly.

I'm not a Holly guy, but, um, Pete Harold was going to tune it. And, uh,

that Friday prior to showing up, I showed up in California Monday. Pete,

um, he didn't have the little star on his driver's license, I guess, you know,

so he wasn't able to fly. So like, dude, I showed up Monday with no tuner,

you know, and then Tommy from California local guy out there, which,

which tunes a lot of Holly stuff,

he was great for us and did a fantastic job. Um,

so thankful that, you know, he was able to help us out with that. But, um,

yeah. So, you know, like, uh, it was just like a bunch of guys,

we threw together to try to get it done, you know, so for one,

we had to kind of gel, right? And get kind of how we all work together and,

and, um, at the end of it,

I went back to just reading spark plugs, you know,

and you started picking up power cause once again, the engines don't lie, you

know, uh, they always show you what's going on.

So the spark plugs, the last thing that, that shows you, right?

That's like what's going on in the engine,

how much air and fuel is going through that engine, right? Um,

how much ignition timing is on that strap, you know,

so this engine might be able to run more than that engine, right? Uh,

well who knows that nobody knows that unless you look, you know, so anyways,

we just went back to reading plugs towards the end.

We started picking up what's your power, you know, so,

so now if you guys were able to pick the,

whatever turbo you guys wanted, or let's say if it was larger turbo,

do you think the outcome would have been the same? Yeah. Without a doubt,

I think we would have shined even more for sure because obviously,

because the coyote is still obviously king for the most part. Well, yeah,

it, uh, it's a more efficient engine than theirs. Theirs was close. I mean,

don't get me wrong. There, theirs was a great engine. You know,

I just think if we were able to turn more engine speed,

like we had planned, uh,

then I think you would have seen our shine more, right? Right. Um,

both engines were very comparable at the engine speed that we were running at.

They could have made 1,419 horsepower. There's no doubt in my mind, you know?

Um, now how long theirs would have lasted? I don't know that, you know, um,

I'm sure it would have been just fine, you know, but, but, uh,

we made 40 runs out of ours and, uh,

I kind of knew how much power they made. I didn't know the number by no means,

but I can read the room, you know, I'm here with these guys all day, right?

You know, and like you could tell when it wasn't going right,

like everybody's head was down a little bit. And then like,

as we started picking up power,

you could tell the mood in the room changed, you know,

like they were getting more excited. And once we got over 1400,

like I could, like everybody was, you know, like,

I saw you were pretty excited. Yeah. So I was like, I knew we got it at that.

We had to have, right? Because you could just, it's like when someone makes a

catch in a field goal or something, like, dude, when that thing turns,

you could see it. So, you know,

I kind of had an idea that that was enough, you know, and then, um,

the next poll we made 12 more horsepower. So we made like 14, 19.

I think we could have made another, probably could have made 14, 40 or 50.

I think, you know, but like at that point, why, you know,

so a hundred percent. Yeah. 1,400 is no, is no, uh,

no slouch for sure in any car I think constantly nowadays between both of them,

whether LS is in any chassis, I feel like that's a lot. Oh yeah. Yeah.

That's more than enough. Yeah. So, uh, you do, um,

a bunch of other platforms that you also, uh, build here.

You do the V 10 for the Huracan. Yep.

We used to do the V 10 for the, um, the, uh, Vipers.

Yeah. We did some stuff for Calvo, um, early on, like it's 1300 X packages.

And then, um, we did some of the big power stuff, you know,

but real good friends with Calvo and, uh, he does them all now,

but yeah, it was a good engine. It was pretty cool engine.

So is there any similarities between the two at all? No, no,

a complete different. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Just because it's a V 10 doesn't mean it's the same night and day difference.

Yeah. The technology in one is, is light years ahead of the other one. Um,

the Viper is just a big dumb engine, uh,

compared to the, you know, Audi engine for sure.

Audi is probably for sure more advanced, but, um,

a lot of the older stuff, like I said earlier,

like they're not coming out with too many new engines.

A lot of the stuff we already have is really good. Um,

and I'm sure the Vipers are making big power, right?

What would be one of the biggest things that makes them make the power that they

make? Well, I mean, uh, the Viper, it,

it's got a lot of filling cylinder filling capacity, right?

So it's a lot of cubic inches, right? Um, so they make a ton of torque, you know,

you'll see a Viper make another 800 foot pounds of torque more than any other

engine in the shop, maybe even more than that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean it'll make more than a, you know, a regular like Hemi deal,

like a Proline Hemi, it'll almost make as much as that, you know,

and that's making 5,000 horsepower, right?

But a V10 at 3600 horsepower, those Vipers,

they're making 2800 foot pounds of torque or something. It's absurd.

So, you know, obviously they have a lot of filling cylinder filling capability,

right? They've usually got a fairly big head on it.

Big valves in them, stuff like that, but they're heavy.

So the rotating assembly is heavy, the mass in the engine is heavy.

So that takes a little while to get going, right? That's a thing, right? Um,

same thing with the cylinder heads. You've got a big rocker arm, a push rod,

lifter, big lifter in it, diameter, as far as that's concerned. A camshaft,

that's, you know, this long and that twist from front to back,

you know, there's all, all kinds of stuff, right?

They scuff the cam journals. So there's, there's all kinds of stuff.

Why that engine's a little bit outdated compared to the newer stuff, right?

You know, you look at this Audi deal, it's a lot more compact.

It's got a dry sump system on it. Um, all the water pumps mounted to it,

it's got all the scavenge sections, you know, run back.

So the oil from the head doesn't run back into the oil,

into the crankcase area. It's a separate system. Like it's very advanced.

Yeah. It's extremely advanced.

And then look at the weight of all the valve train stuff.

It's a quarter of the weight of a V 10 viper, right?

You know, so anyways, that's true. That's a huge thing, right?

It allows it to accelerate.

It allows it to be stable and all the parts staying in contact with each other.

Right. You know, so like, man,

it's just the evolution of stuff is all that it is. You know,

it's just like your camera equipment, right?

It's all gone better and smaller and more compact and,

and it does a better job, you know, than it used to. So it's,

but that's the thing too. Like I was just talking about kind of like this on the

way here in the car is like a lot of the stuff that I have now,

I've had for five years and you get to a point where it becomes marketing

at some point. It's like, you don't really need all this AK stuff, right?

You're fine with 1080, but the newer stuff will make the job easier,

but you can get it done with, you know, the older stuff, right?

Look at all my equipment out there. Right?

We were looking at it. I'm like, you don't,

you think that because you're involved with some of the fastest cars in the

world, like it'd be some crazy, and I've been to some crazy machine shops,

but I appreciate the fact that it can be done with less because I'm the same way.

It's the guys, man.

It's all about the guys and the people and the team that you've got doing it.

You know, that's what it's all about. Yeah.

So it's definitely something that I definitely commend you on for sure.

Being able to pump all these engines out of a smaller shop and do your thing.

So you do the 2J stuff as well, right?

For Big Vic, for Victor. Yeah.

With the 2J, I've talked about 2J plenty of times in this podcast.

It's more so an import podcast because I'm into imports. Sure.

But we're trying to make our way over to the Messick side little by little.

So you've built these engines, right?

And one of the things that people are starting to,

I guess move over to is like the Dart stuff.

So how advanced is that compared to the stock casting?

Like when do you need to run that block?

I don't know if there's a need so much.

The problem that we have is the fact, otherwise. Yeah. I mean, you know,

at some point the, you know,

the factory blocks move around so much, right? You know,

so like 1500 or above, right? You know,

where the Dart block would probably live a lot longer of a life, right?

At some point when we take the factory 2Js apart,

there's a coolant crossover in between them,

like a steam hole essentially between the two cylinders.

You see those lines all the time in the bores, you know,

when you take them apart, right? Well, that's all that stuff moving around, you

know, that's water or steam coming through there.

And then the bore moving around because there's no support in that area,

because there's a channel behind there. You know,

we constantly have the decks of the blocks crack on those things in a head

bolt hole, you know, so like, you know,

we do a ton of 2Js for Victor and he gets all of these stock cores.

So the first thing is to take them apart, clean them,

magniflux them, right?

And that's to magnetize that block and to see if there's any cracks in it.

Cause it's steel, it's iron, so you're able to magnetize it. Right. Um,

so that's the first thing. And more often than not,

there's cracks in the decks going to a head bolt hole from a little coolant

hole, right? So that becomes a thing, you know,

what I could tell you is if you overheat a 2J,

the decks of the block won't be flat, you know,

particularly towards the back of the engine, cylinder six, five, you know,

that stuff starts to move around where the dart block,

there's a lot more material makeup in there, the deck of the blocks thicker.

Right. Um, you know,

we've checked all of the material thickness on that dart block when they first

came, you know, Mike Panetta sent me one from dart. Um,

I think Victor was the first one to send stuff to dart, right?

You know, like me and Victor and, uh, and send cores so we could start this

project. And, um, we got them back, we checked thickness of them and they're,

they're a lot thicker. The cylinder bores are able.

The first one we did was 88 millimeters. I think we,

we ran it really big to see how well it would hold up.

And it held up fantastic.

Crankcase pressure was locked in way better than it was with the factory block.

You know, and, um, that's a direct indication that, you know,

the foundation, the casting is more stable. Yeah, it's better. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, so, um, I'd say 1500 horsepower or above. It's a great idea,

you know, for sure.

And now it seems like a lot more people are trying to push towards that rather

than like a billet block, right?

Well, I think that no matter what,

you have more cooling capacity in the dart block, right?

Than any of the billet blocks. It's hard to put water in anything billet.

It requires plating.

You see all the plates with the holes and the O-rings on the side or welding.

And the amount of water that you're able to put in a billet block is usually not

that much. And the routing of the water usually is not that well.

Where the cast block, you know,

you're able to put that all into the casting box and, um,

you've got plenty of capacity of water. You've got the correct flow of water,

right? Um, and if you do it right, the water stuff's amazing.

I mean, it could take you really far. You know, I mean,

water is a fantastic thing to have in these engines, you know,

you just got to do it right. Right. So.

So when you mentioned overheating,

what would directly affect that in the 2J?

Like what's meaning someone running it? Yeah. Like, well,

cause you can run several things too hot and you can run oil, hot water. Oh yeah.

Yeah. So like for one cylinder too hot, right? So the tune up,

right? It's just too naturally hot, right? So, um,

maybe you don't have enough fuel, right? In the cylinder,

maybe you have too much ignition timing.

Maybe you're just shifting the car in the wrong spot and the converters lugging

the engine down, right? But maybe you have a lockup and the timing for the lockup

shifted at the wrong time, right? So there's all these instances that could

cause, you know, heat, right? In a cylinder,

an injector driver going bad, right? You know, like all this stuff. Um,

so that could be something that overheats a cylinder and the results of that are

melted pistons, rings that become soft and lose their tension. Um,

head gaskets that are depleted, you know, and you could,

before you have these problems,

you could catch it through sensors and data and stuff like that, you know?

But that's one instance, you know,

another thing is the guys that do the highway pulls or the road racing, uh,

you know, um, stuff like that,

those cars don't have enough capacity to do that kind of stuff,

cooling capacity to do that. And what I mean by that is you go out and buy a

Mustang and it's got a cooling system that's designed to drive 60 or 70 miles

an hour on the interstate, right? And drive it around town, um,

within those demands, right? You know, it's generating that amount of heat.

It's moving that much fuel through the engine. It's creating that much heat and

that's what it's able to dissipate because that's its efficiency range.

Well, now we're making 1500 horsepower or 2000.

We have the same cooling system, right?

Same amount of capacity of cooling system. So it's inadequate at that point.

Well, did we upgrade an oil cooler? Did we not? Right?

There's all of these things.

So, so that's when that starts to become a problem is when guys take a street car

and then they try to make it into a race car,

they try to go as fast as a race car and they don't have the peripherals to go

with it. We see that all the time. Guys, you know,

take a 12 or 1400 horsepower Mustang and they're out there and they're going

eights or sevens, you know, and they're like, well, I want to go faster.

Well, then they cross that line in the sand and now they need a fuel system,

maybe a different ECU, different transmission, gear ratio, converter,

you know, rear gear, right? To, to, to accept that turbos, right?

Like there's all these things that happen, right? You know, so, um,

and if you don't make those changes, well,

then that's when you can run into these situations where something's inadequate.

Right. So, so that's when you could overheat something multiple different ways.

And so how fast can you like ruin an engine technically?

Like how long would you have to be overheating the engine before it becomes a

catastrophic issue?

Well, there's a couple of ways that you could know, right? Um,

and through some of the data, right?

So like a coolant pressure sensor, a crankcase pressure sensor, uh,

an oil temperature sensor, right? So, so through some of those.

So for instance, like a coolant pressure sensor, right?

If I'm running 40 pounds of boost and I have 10 pounds of coolant pressure,

so whatever is in the cooling system, there's only 10 pounds.

Well, that means that none of that combustion gas has gotten to that cooling

system. Right. Okay. Vice versa, right?

If I'm at 40 pounds of boost and now I'm at 28 or 30 pounds of cooling,

you know, pressure, well,

it's starting to get close to that number. And once it hits that number,

that means the gasket's depleted. So you've blown the head gasket. So, you know,

I tell guys when they get an engine,

the first thing you should do is, is make an easy run, make a run, you know,

if like, if you don't know any data from a previous engine or combination,

make easy runs and then get that information. So get your standard,

get my car with this cooling system in it,

makes X amount of coolant pressure and based on the ambient temperature and how

I heated up or where that coolant temperature is,

might be the starting point of my pressure number,

but I only want to see the rate of increase the same, you know?

So like if it increased 10 pounds at 800 horsepower,

when I'm making 1600 horsepower,

I want it to only increase 10 pounds or maybe 11 pounds, right?

It needs to be within that range. If it increased 20 pounds, well, we, you know,

we knew we got something going on. We're past that limitations.

And the same thing with the crankcase pressure, right?

If you get your engine back from me and you get it all running and we're making

a pound of crankcase pressure, well, all right, cool.

You've put a hundred laps on it. Well,

now it's at three pounds of crankcase pressure all of a sudden. Well,

we've lost our ring seal somehow, right? We've, we've overheated our rings.

We've pissed it off. The piston's upset. You know,

something's going on in the engine somewhere to move that combustion gas,

pass the rings into the crankcase and increase that number.

So when someone says, well, when do I freshen an engine up? Like,

how do I know when to freshen this up? Well, that's how you know.

Right? You need a coolant pressure sensor, a crankcase pressure sensor, um,

oil temperature. You know,

if your oil temperature is all of a sudden doing something crazy and it's

way high, you're probably creating heat.

So you're tearing a bearing up or a cam journal or something along those lines,

right? Because it, the oil has to dissipate that heat, right?

So it's in contact with that part.

Now that number is going to be higher.

That rate that you've are used to is not the same, right?

So when you get an engine and you just, like for us, when,

when Brett gets an engine back in, if it's not that good, Job tells me, like,

dude, this thing is a pile of shit. Like it's, I'm just being honest with you.

He's not sealed up, right? And Job will, Job will tell me every time.

And sometimes we got to take it apart and freshen it, you know,

like hone it and off it goes again, you know, but, um,

it's happened. It's happened to everyone, you know, but that's how you know.

That's how before we even make two or three laps in that thing,

we know if it's the right one or it's not, you know what I mean?

Or the condition of that engine based off of that information.

What about the oil pressure? Because technically you mentioned bearings, right?

So wouldn't the oil pressure, if there was something going on,

let's say with the bearings, right? Wouldn't the oil pressure technically read lower?

Sure. Yeah. We look for, um,

an oil pressure that is a consistent and not on the oil bypass spring.

So in other words, like when you start it up,

if it's cold and everything's cold,

it might have so much pressure that it's just on this bypass spring and it's

bypassing the oil because the engine is so tight that it can't move that much

through it. So it's the pressure is higher. Okay.

So sometimes that's a hard number to kind of reference.

I like to reference a hot idle oil pressure.

So like if my car idles at 180 degrees of coolant temperature and it's got 30

pounds of oil pressure at 750 RPMs. Well,

every time it's 180 degrees, right?

And the temperature, the ambient air temperature, similar, right? You know,

like that thing should have 30 pounds of oil pressure or within a few numbers of

it, you know,

but if you saw a 15 or 20 pound drop or anything substantially different,

that's that indicator. Right. So like you have to get it to where the oil pumps

just running on itself and not on a bypass. You're not,

you don't have like this abundance of oil, right?

It needs to be just running on its own circuit and not bypassing.

And then that's a good number to reference. You know,

so like dude, your car, when you're sitting in traffic, look down,

if it's 50 pounds, it's 50 pounds every time we're good. Right. If it's 20,

we know we got something wrong, right? Or if it's, you know, 10 less,

then you could go to your oil temperature.

And if your oil temperature is not some drastic number, well,

then maybe it's just a little bit of ambient temperature.

I'm sitting in July and Florida out of streetlight, you know,

like that's what it is. But, you know, vice versa,

if that oil temp, you know, is 30 degrees hotter, 40 degrees hotter,

and it's raising, it's not trying to stabilize, you know,

you're creating some kind of friction or heat in the engine.

Is that a standard for all engines? Doesn't matter what, like temperature

should be pretty much like if it's, if your oil temp is at like, I don't know,

240, right? Across any engine platform,

then that should be something to look at. Yeah. I mean,

it's just the standard deal, you know, so like it could be, yeah,

what temps and it all needs to be the same.

And that's what I mean by like when you get an engine from any engine builder,

the first thing that you should do is validate all of these systems and

standardize your numbers, you know,

so you have an idea of what it was when it came to you, you know,

and if you've already been running Coyote engines or 2Js or whatever it might be,

like you have an idea of, you know, what you should see, you know,

and just work off of that.

Brett's running all these sensors, right? In his car?

More than you could ever. Yeah. More than I even know, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Cause you mentioned the crankcase, uh,

the crankcase pressure sensor? Yeah.

Crankcase pressure sensor, coolant pressure sensor, right? You know,

then oil temperature.

That is different obviously from a back pressure sensor, of course, right?

Yeah. That's just another one. And that tells you, you know,

obviously when you're out of the efficiency of the turbos.

So like when our back pressure gets past our manifold pressure,

we try to change turbos. We always want to run in to the efficiency range of

that turbo, you know?

So I don't know if it's a budget thing, um,

but why do you think people, um,

fail to add the correct sensors or even try to skimp out on certain parts,

especially sensors,

because not everybody's going to want to run every sensor on their car.

Maybe it's just a street car and so on.

But like some of the ones you mentioned, a lot of people don't really have.

Yeah. I think they're invaluable to be honest with you. I mean,

we would have torn so much stuff up if we didn't have all those rife sensors on

the car is just

20 or 30 engines. Like we would have destroyed if they didn't catch them

prior to them hurting themselves. You know what I mean? Like,

so and that's the, that's the key to it, you know, is doing that,

but you got to have enough input and outputs through an ECU.

So like what happens is if you have a factory ECU or, you know,

Hey, maybe I have a Holly or,

and I only have X amount of inputs, you know, like, um,

that's true. So they can't get there, right? You know,

so then at that point I've recommended some guys like, you know, separate,

you know, boxes, like a race pack or something. Like,

you could just buy a sportsman race pack and put all these inputs in there and

pull that up, you know, and just see, right?

So there's ways to get it done.

Lund has a couple of different ways for his factory ECU cars that they could

implement some of that stuff. And, um, and that helps because,

you know,

what if a guy all of a sudden changes a torque converter in a car and it's super

tight, you know, and then now the coolant pressure, you know,

raised, you know, or something like that. Well, you're like, Hey,

you're getting ready to knock the head gasket out of that thing because you've

got this real tight torque converter, you know, nothing about anything.

You just changed a torque converter and now the engine's pissed off because the

tune-up's hot. You know, so anyways, like, it's just how,

I know it's a lot. I got your head spinning, but, but that's,

that's the reality of it, man.

And that's what you got to do to stay ahead of it, stay ahead of the failure,

stay ahead of the problems.

And then that's only a couple of sensors to keep the engine alive until the

condition of it.

There is a lot more sensors that we use for all kinds of other things,

you know, right? But those will be the main ones to kind of keep the engine

alive. That's right. Keep moving forward, right? Yeah. That's right.

What are some of the things that people mess up in the break-in process when

they have a fresh engine build?

Well, one of the biggest thing I think is foreign material in the engine.

Foreign material. Foreign material. So like, for instance,

you came to me for what reason you came to me because did you blow an engine

up? Did you hurt an engine previously?

And then I build you something.

You put it back in your car with all of the peripherals that you tore the last

engine up with. So that's probably the biggest thing that people could really

mess up, right? On break-in. So, you know,

if you ever get an engine that blown up, you tear it up,

or something has happened to it, you need to replace or thoroughly go

through all of the peripherals, the covers, the oil coolers,

anything that has had oil touch it, anything that bolts on that engine,

turbos, intake manifolds. I've had engines blow up and there's intake valve

stuck in the intake manifold and they put it on a brand new engine and it

runs right through it and the thing didn't run for one minute and has had

all this foreign material run through it, right?

So, so I think that would be one of the biggest things. Um,

in the coyote stuff and the V10 stuff that we do,

it's all roller valve trains. So we really don't have any embedding or any kind

of stuff like that, like with the RB or 2J with a bucket, right?

That bucket has to start rotating or it starts to gall itself up. Right.

Um, so, you know, you, uh, that's something that needs to have probably a little more

zinc in the oil is that kind of engine that has a flat tap it style,

you know, camshaft system. Um,

and then as far as, uh, really the coyotes,

really it's just all engines, it's seeding the rings in. Um,

and essentially if you look at the rings when they come out of the engine,

there's going to be some embedment all the way around it.

So there'll be a wear mark all the way around the ring. Yeah. Well,

sometimes that doesn't happen because the ring's not all the way around or the

bore is not perfectly round, right? More often than not, it's the rings aren't

round. Okay. And, uh, there's light tight gauges for that.

We have light tight gauges to check that. But essentially you need to run that

engine through a break-in procedure, right? To make that ring all the way around.

So it seals up, right? That's, that's how that deal works. Okay.

So the rings rotating and you have all these valleys and peaks on the cylinder

wall. Okay. Uh,

the valley is what holds the oil and the peak is the load bearing surface,

right? So essentially, um,

imagine the oil getting flung up on the cylinder wall, right?

And it running down the cylinder wall. If your valleys are real flat,

right? Like real smooth. When you say valleys,

what do you mean by that? The cross hatch pattern. Okay.

So when you see the pattern in the hone, right on the cylinder wall,

all these scratches, okay? The depth of that scratch is the valley.

Ah, okay. Okay. The peak is the mountain top, right? Right. Right.

So the valley and peaks. Well,

when the ring comes across and rides on any surface,

it takes that peak off, right? Cause it wears,

that's what wearing in the rings are, you know? So it's taking some of that

peaks off. We plateau hone to do that prior to the engine having to do that.

Yeah. But that's something that engine builders do. Um,

and then the valley is what holds that oil. So you need to get enough engine

speed to get the oil pushed up onto the cylinder walls. Right.

So the ring has something to ride against it rides against this real small

film of oil, right? It goes up and down. Well, in the meantime,

it's knocking those peaks. If there's any that are left that are sticking past

that oil. Yeah. Right. Oh,

there's a little peak sticking out of that layer of oil clip, right?

And that's, that's betting the rings in, right? That's making the rings round.

That's breaking an engine and seeding the engine in bearings.

Don't need anything. Okay. Uh,

any kind of valve train that's rollerized doesn't need anything really just

flat tap it stuff and seeding the rings in the race car engines have no break in

time. Like the thing starts, we push it to the starting line, you know,

and off they go in a lot of instances. So, you know,

we want to make sure that those engines when we put them together,

that those rings are really round, right? Like everything is perfected as

possibly you could because there's not a lot of service time prior to running it.

You know, the engines that you guys drag race with. Um,

do you notice a different pattern with the cylinder walls on those as opposed to

somebody who's just like street driving the car? Sure. Yeah.

The street cars seal up usually better. Oh, okay. Yep.

Because they do a better job at it, right? Uh,

they put the time and effort into sealing them up and usually the engines aren't

subjected to as much fuel. Um, for instance,

like Brett's car, right? It needs 3,200 horsepower worth of fuel,

methanol, right? To go through it, right? That's a ton of fuel, right?

And that methanol, if you pour it on the ground, it evaporates, right?

Well, that same thing happens in the cylinder. You pour it in the cylinder,

it gets down the cylinder wall. It tries to take the oil that's attached to the

cylinder wall and removes it, right? I mean, it's like cleaning.

It's actually washing the cylinders away or washing the cylinders out, you know?

So, um, you know, in an instance like that, you know,

you're subjecting that thing to a lot of fuel. Well, that's hurting you, right?

For seeding rings, right? Um, same thing, right? Uh,

you're taking that thing and you're putting all the cylinder pressure and you're

pushing it out against the cylinder walls. Well, how hard are you doing that?

Are you doing it real hard or not? You know, so, um,

some of that plays a factor in it, um,

on how well it's able to seal it up because you just don't simply have enough

engine cycles, right? The engine hasn't ran long enough, right?

To, to get all embedded and happy, uh, just because we go right at it, you know,

how many miles do you say on a street car it would take to,

to actually fully, um, seed rings? Uh, it could be,

if a guy has it right, it could be within 20 miles, you know, uh,

if a guy doesn't have a tune up right and it's getting a little bit of this and

little that he's driving it, you know, slow, like you,

you need to get some engine speed up so it gets oil up there.

If he just landed idle, maybe like 5,000 RPMs. No, 2,02500.

You just need to get enough windage right to where it's starting to throw a

little oil everywhere. It's pushing oil up the cylinder walls,

just from the viscosity of the oil running up there.

The rings are pulling it up, you know, um, the pistons do for that factor a

little bit as well. Um, so yeah,

you need to get enough engine speed to get the oil up there. Cause if not,

then you'll, you know, the, the rings riding on the cylinder wall, right?

So then, you know,

that takes all those peaks and lays them down and then the valleys aren't as

deep. They're, they're a little less. So like, uh,

if you took a eyedropper of oil and you dropped it on the top of the cylinder,

it's going to run down.

If you have a rough crosshatch pattern and a lot of valley,

that oil isn't going to just run straight down.

It's going to slowly run down that cylinder wall because it's getting in all

of those nooks and crannies. Okay. Well, if it was a mirror smooth,

right? Or a hundred thousand miles on that thing, right?

And there's no valley left in it.

You took that oil dropper and you put it on the top of that cylinder.

It's going to run down really fast. It's not holding any oil, right?

So when it leaves here, it holds a lot of oil, right? It's, it's,

the end customer's job is to do a good job and it continues to hold good oil

and it doesn't mitigate the oil up the cylinder and into the combustion

chamber and smoke. And I mean,

we've all seen catch cans huffing, right? Well, that's part of it. You know,

so I know mine now.

That's all right. Ain't nothing wrong with a little bit.

When I first started up, I think for the first,

I would say for the first two days and I was stressing about it and I had to keep

asking Lee who built the engine. I'm like, dude, is this normal?

Especially if you're running ethanol too. For sure. So, um,

but people always like, like people don't know anything about cars at all.

They're just like, yo, you think smoking, man, it's blow up. It's all right.

Well, it dude, like the crankcase pressure stuff tells you that. Like if you had

that data, you can be like, man, this is the same as the last one. Like it's,

it's locked in the last one lasted me X along, you know, like,

so you'll be able to know that or maybe, Hey,

this one's a little looser than that last one, right?

This is the why it's huffing a little bit out of the catch can. Right.

So for those guys who are building an engine right now in their garage,

probably listening to this podcast or watching it, right? Um,

what, what is one of the biggest things that, uh,

or biggest pieces of advice you can give to those guys in terms of making sure

that their engine is put together well. And some things, obviously you spoke

about some, some red flags on machine shops and some things to look for when

you're building an engine, of course, but for those guys, what would you,

what would you say to those guys as far as advice?

Take your time. Okay. Right. The biggest thing is take your time and learn how to

do it. Right. You know, read,

there's plenty of stuff out there to educate guys on how to build an engine

correctly. Yeah. Uh, a forum, Facebook,

that's not the place to look, right? You know, uh,

Instagram, right? Like whatever, bro. Like that's not the place to look,

you know, so, um, there's plenty of expos, you know, and like technical stuff on

YouTube of like all these engine builders given technical advice,

but ultimately learn how to do the basics. Okay.

Learn how to read a micrometer,

learn how to set bearing clearance, file rings,

and attention to detail is the most important thing.

No engine leaves here unless it's a hundred percent perfect. So like,

just cause it's Friday, it doesn't mean they got to leave. You know what I'm

saying? Like they leave when, of course it is, right? Cause like, Hey,

we got to get stuff out the door or Hey, we got to make this race or Hey,

you know, we're putting my engine together tonight. So come over and like,

we got to get it done. That's not the way engine building works. You know,

so attention to detail, learn how to do it correctly, take your time.

There's no stupid questions. So call an engine guy,

call a good engine guy and ask a simple question.

And I promise you they'll give you good advice, you know, um,

but learn how to learn how to read a micrometer, you know,

you know, learn how to read a micrometer,

learn how to do bearing clearance, file rings,

learn how to torque something, you know,

you're just not screwing something together. Right. You know,

this is a very, very, very, um, technical piece,

you know, so treat it that way. And in the same instance,

engines are kind of dumb, right? They only do what you tell them to do,

right? You know, so like if I make this thing loose or I put a bunch of

compression, well, it's going to be a nasty thing or if it's loose,

it might not have a little pressure. Like it only does what you do to it,

right? They don't have a mind of their own. Yeah. You're the cause of it.

So take your time, do it right.

Timing an engine, right? That is one of the things that I don't really understand.

You probably can't even break that down. That's probably like,

I need to watch a video on that course, but, uh,

I see that tool over there. You got degree wheel. Yeah.

I think that, that is probably one of the things that intimidates people who

are probably getting into it. Um, and I've, I've watched a couple of videos on

that, but it's like, I, I don't even understand that whole concept. Yeah.

Using that. Um, and some people just use like the marks and stuff like that to

kind of sure, but at what level would you need to use that?

Is that just to make sure everything's like perfect, perfect? Well, yeah.

I mean, we use it on everyone, right? You know, so like, of course,

for a guy in the garage and maybe you don't have that, like,

well, you know, I think it all boils down to what you're trying to do, right?

If you're just building a 350 small box Chevy or an LS that's makes three or

400 horsepower. Yeah.

Who cares if the cams two or three degrees this way or that way. Okay. Okay.

Yeah. Nobody knows any different, right? It doesn't matter.

Now, if I take one of these engines that is in out of Luns car,

John Luns car, right? And it's running the number and everything's as it

shouldn't. I put it back together in the timings a couple of degrees off.

They're going to know it. Like it's going to, it's going to run different.

Something's going to be different. You know, so that's why we have to do it

every time. Okay. Um,

now what I could tell you is there's a lot of variances in all these parts,

right? Um, we have right here,

I just made that chain length gauge. Okay.

So it has a hundred pounds of my buddy Pat made it for me,

has a hundred pounds of air on it. We put the timing chains on it.

It compresses, you know,

pulls them apart and it has a dial indicator on the end of it tells how long

that chain is. So if that chain stretches or not, well,

what we've found is a variance in all these changes chains.

So we take 50 chains out of the boxes and we check them all and there's a

variance in all of them. So if you don't check your timing with a degree wheel

and you just do go link to link that bank,

that's longer is going to have a different timing camshaft timing than the

other, right? So there's too many variables with these

engines to not do that. Okay. Um,

so if you're doing a fixed lockouts or anything,

you got to put a degree wheel on it. If you have a variable, uh, VCT,

then it's kind of no harm, no foul, cause you're able to move it, right? Yeah.

If, if you do a crank learn and a cam learn where the cams at,

you can say, okay, it needs to be a couple of degrees advanced.

You could just do a different duty cycle on the solenoid and roll it ahead or

behind, you know? So, um, so we're able to move them, but when they are fixed,

you know, we have to do it, you know, for sure. Um,

what I can tell you is it's fairly easy once you understand it, right?

Once you know that the crank goes around in a circle, right?

And you're just trying to get this mark, uh, in line with that mark, you know,

uh, a certain particular number. It's fairly straightforward.

You're advanced in it or you're retarded in it.

I think it's just because I saw numbers and I'm like, Oh man, I,

yeah, yeah. Like he's writing stuff down. I'm like, all right, man.

You don't need to know that, man. It's not, it's,

and they got calculators so you could, yeah,

I saw people writing stuff down. I'm like, all right, man.

This is, uh, I'll just have to figure that one out and maybe you have somebody

kind of show me how to do it or maybe I'll FaceTime somebody FaceTime J or

something like that. Yeah. When we're doing them here, like you have,

when we're doing them, we'll have all the Sharpie marks.

There'll be numbers all over the top. Yeah. That's super intimidating to look at.

No, that's not bad, man. So what right now,

what, what do you think the future is for Brett's car? Um,

obviously you guys are working with the billet stuff now, right? Um,

you just used that at FL2K for the first time you said, right? Yup.

You have you used three of them or is he still in the same one? No,

the same block. Yeah. Yeah. We're still running the same block. Yeah. Okay.

So where are you guys trying to push this, this block to,

and what are you guys expecting to, to run with this,

with this engine block, the billet? Well, um,

I think we're going to concentrate a little bit on some eighth mile racing

something this year and see how fast we could get it to go. Um,

really just trying to perfect the package that we currently have, right?

The car, um, the package that we have, um,

try to get a little bit more laps out of it and cycle time out of it between

fresh and ups. We're in a really good spot.

Everything that's coming out of the engine is looking really good.

So we could extend our service intervals a little bit further, you know? Um,

so that'll be really good. You know,

we'll have to work quite as hard on that. Um, and man,

I, I think just trying to, you know, set our goals, you know,

we're going to try to, um, when the LDR championship this year coming up,

you know, that's our goals, when as many races as we can,

when as many rounds as we possibly can. Um,

and then I'll think you'll see us at a couple of the quarter mile races this

year doing like the Texas 2K and, and, um, the World Cup deal.

You know, I don't know how fast you're going to see us go at those quarter

mile races. I don't know how, you know, I'm sure you'll see some five second

passes, you know, but I'm not too sure how much faster than that will go.

You know, I don't know how much faster the promoters want those classes to be

either, you know? Yeah. Um, at some point it's getting really fast. You know,

I think we're going over 240 miles an hour now. So in a quarter mile. Yeah.

Yeah. We're going 196 to the half. So it's,

it's almost 200 to the half. You know, so it's crazy. Yeah.

Now is he, is he the only one running this, this block right now?

He is the only one currently running the noon in block. Um,

we've got 11 more, um, that are on their way. You saw, you know, yeah,

out there. Um,

so we've got some more in production for customers currently.

And that block is the one you mentioned that was like around 50.

If you want to do that whole setup or that's the previous,

no, this is it. Yeah. I mean, the previous one could get that high.

I mean, it could get up there pretty high, you know, by the time,

because really the only difference would be a block change. Right.

You know, we're still using all the same parts other than the block, you know,

so it's just a, but then you have, uh, it's more of a safety thing, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when that thing breaks, it's not, it's not good. You know,

it's not going to, it's not going to be good. You know, you're, you've got a bomb.

That thing makes 3,400 horsepower. There's a lot of combustion happening. So,

um,

I don't want to be driving it when it, when it breaks at 3,400 horsepower.

That's for sure. So that was our big push to get the billet block done. You know,

um, I think we could go as fast as we want to go with the cast block,

but you know, for what? Right. Right at that power.

For sure. Man, this has been great. Uh, thank you so much for all the, uh,

knowledge, uh, all the, it's,

it was probably one of the more technical podcasts for sure,

but it's a machine shop and, you know, and I'm sure my,

I'm no for sure it can be way more technical in terms of numbers, um,

partner numbers and so on. Like, you know, we spoke about before, but, um,

I think for general base knowledge,

I think it was a really solid interview in terms of people understanding what

you do and what it takes to build an engine at any power by the 1,000,

maybe even 500, 3,500. A lot goes into it. It sure does. Um,

so I do appreciate your time and, uh,

thank you so much for sharing with the Street Alpha podcast. Uh,

if you can let the viewers and listeners know where to find you,

if they're looking to work with you and they want to get an engine built, um,

buy FFRE, how do they reach out to you? Uh,

you can check us out on the website at fast forward race engines.com. Uh,

we've got Gina and Ashley in the office there,

or you could give us a call at 727-847-5777, uh,

for whatever you need. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Joe.

I really appreciate it. Appreciate it.

For those of you who are listening and watching,

make sure you guys hit that like button and also make sure you guys subscribe.

Um, and if you are listening right now,

make sure you guys are continuing to listen on all streaming platforms.

Until next time guys, we'll catch you on the next one. Peace.

Toyota thon, Toyota thon, Toyota thon is on. Oh,

what fun it is to drive a new Toyota today. Hey,

Jan from Toyota here reminding you, Toyota thon is on.

Make your holiday wishes come true with a new Camry, RAV4, Tacoma, and more.

All right. Let's sing it together this time. Toyota thon, Toyota thon, Toyota thon,

dealer inventory may vary. Toyota thon ends January 5th.

See your participating dealer for details. Toyota, let's go places.

Joe Irwin On Building The Fastest Coyote Engines And Why Most Machine Shops Fail

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