BIG BLOCK BUILD, ROW - STANTON, MI

Today, we're going to build a bracket race 502. That'll live on pump gas and kill the competition

today on horsepower TV, we'll set out to build a 502, 600 horse big block bracket motor complete the hydraulic roller cam and valve train plus a set of

rock performer. RPM heads their dual plane air gap intake and 800 CFM car.

It's great to be here. I'm just happy to be alive

in our race of the week from a fiery near fatal inferno

to an incredible comeback in motor city. You'll discover a veteran pro street racers, amazing triumph.

So hang on for horsepower TV.

Welcome to the shop. You know, the big block Chevy has been around since 1965 with a well earned reputation for making lots of power and winning races, but it left its biggest mark on the street in cars like my 70 Chevelle Ss right here. Now, this one came from the factory with a 375 horse 396 and a

MFO speed

and of course with a convertible body style. What you're looking at here is probably one of the rare Chevelles ever built.

Yes. 70 was a good year. All right. Also the first year of the fame 454

and you specked it out with the LS six option where you had yourself 450 horsepower. The most of any production motor of that time.

Well, these days, whether you're bracket racing or building a stout street machine, the 502 has become the benchmark and today we're gonna build one here in the shop, you bet. Now we're starting with a GM performance parts, short block 502 right out of the crate. And the reason that we like it is because it starts out with a bunch of good parts, for instance, check out the four bolt mains and the steel crank plus the big rods with a 7, 16 inch bolts. Now, up top here it uses forged pistons and hey, with parts like that and we've got a solid foundation for a 600 horse bracket race motor.

Yeah, one of these days we'll drop it into that 66 bel air bracket car you got at home.

Now, the 502 comes from the factory with this oil pan that's really designed for trucks. In fact, right here is where it interferes with the cross member of most cars. So to make our 502 fit, we got this replacement pan from Moroso that's got side kick outs for more volume and extra ground clearance.

But since the sump is not as deep as the factory pan.

We're gonna need to install this new pickup on through the oil pump. Now, we're dealing with an interference fit here, but

I got a hot little tip that'll make the job easier.

Put the pickup in the freezer for an hour or so

and put the pump in a 250 degree oven for about the same time.

Then you can make the two by gently tapping the pickup into the pup. There we are.

Now, it's an old racers trick to weld the two together here, but this one has a tab on it

so you can just bolt it right into place and it'll stay put.

Hey, man, that's a pretty cool tip there. I'm glad you warmed up to

them.

Now, before we put the pan back on, we're gonna be replacing the camshaft with a bigger one. So let's get started by removing the bouncer and the timing cover.

Then the spider assembly

and finally the retainers and lifters.

Now with the timing set out of the way, the old camshaft just slides right out of here.

There we go. Now, we're gonna be replacing it

with this comp cams hydraulic roller piece. And, well, it's got a lot more lift and duration than the stalker that we just took out.

Now, it makes its best power between 3200 and 6500 RPM. And since it's a roller, well, it gets the valves to max lift a lot quicker and holds them there for a longer period before snapping them shut. Now, just check out that big fat nose there,

coat the bearing journals with camshaft lube

slide, the camshaft home, being careful not to nick the bearings,

then reinstall the retainer plate.

Well, I guess we're ready for this thing. Now, we're using comp cams, single roller timing set. It's gonna give us more accurate cam timing with less friction and more reliability. Now, it's got multiple key ways to advance or retard timing. We're gonna install ours straight up.

Ok. We just line up the dots,

slide the sprocket into place

and notice how it's got this little button here that makes agreeing the cam a lot easier.

Let me take this Allen wrench and show you how it works.

Put it in the button,

turn it

and it turns the cam. Of course, we're gonna put ours

right there in the middle

before we bolt up the oil pan. I wanna show you this one piece gasket that we got from Fell

Pro. Now it's rubber. So it's reusable and a whole lot easier to install than those old court gaskets.

Now, I'm gonna put a dab of silicone down in each corner here just to make sure everything seals up good.

Well, that buttons up our bottom end, but the bottom line is we need to take a short break. We'll be back with more of our 502 bracket build up after this

B and M spells performance B and M has the ultimate shifters race or street stick or automatic B and M will shift your ride to the next level of performance log on now to BM racing.com or call for your free brochure.

Hi, welcome back to the shop and more of our 502 bracket motor build up. Well, as you know, we started this project with the GM performance parts, short block added the new oil pan timing set and cam. Now it's time to take on the top end.

That's right. We're gonna cap off our cylinders with a set of Edelbrock performer RPM heads. Now, they're available in either oval or rectangular port configurations and well, since we're gonna be feeding a 502 cubic inch engine that'll probably see the high side of 6500 RPM on a regular basis. Well, we chose the larger rectangular port versions. Now, these heads have got combustion chambers that speck out at 100 and 18 CCS, which is gonna end up giving us a pump gas friendly compression ratio of just over 9 to 1

and inside those combustion chambers, you're gonna find valves that spec out at 219 on the intake and 188 on the exhaust over here on the intake runners, the long runner specs out at 315 CCS and the small 1 300 CCS.

Now, I know that sounds like a lot of runner, but I'll tell you what it does. It gives us the option of adding more cam timing later on

should decide we need it.

Well, now just check out the intake manifold we're using,

it's

Brock's RPM air gap for rectangular port heads.

This dual plane design promotes mixture velocity and offers good throttle response. Now it's open under the plenum with no heat crossover and of course, that means a cooler denser charge and more power.

We're gonna seal the cylinder heads to the block with these

fro performance gaskets. Now, we like to use them because they'll seal things up real well with these silicone bead imprints around each one of the water passages and a stainless steel ring around each one of the combustion chambers.

Hey man, while you're there, I want you stick around and help me.

Hey, it'd be my pleasure. You know, the best head gaskets in the world won't help you unless you got the right hardware.

So to make sure our heads torn down evenly and hold their values, we're gonna use some of these A RP bolts. Now, make sure you use some of their Molly Lube on them,

that'll keep them from galling on you and give you an accurate torque reading.

Now, another reason that we like these head gaskets is because you can do a cold ret toque on them. That is you go ahead and torque the bolts down, then let them set for about 10 minutes and bust them loose and ret toque them again. Now, since we're using aluminum heads, the torque value on those bolts is 60 ft pounds.

Well, the heads torqued down, we're ready for the rest of our comp cams valve train.

Since we're using a roller cam,

we just need to lube up the lifters a little bit before we slide them home.

Now, the 502 has tall lifter bores.

So make sure that the spreader doesn't come in contact looks like we're ok here. Otherwise you might have to clearance the block if there is interference,

an extra drop in the chrome moley push rides

followed by our roller rockers. By the way, we're using a set of pro magnum roller rockers to complement our cam shaft.

They're made from 8650 Chrome Molly, which is three times stronger than aluminum and almost as light that ought to give us the strength of stainless steel at a much more affordable price. Oh, by the way to hold our valve lash settings, we're using these Perma

lock rocker adjusters from A RP.

Hey, great timing. I just got silicon on the ends here and it looks like you did a good job too. Now, I'm gonna drop this intake straight down on here. We don't wanna move the gaskets.

There we go.

Now, we're gonna be using stainless fasteners to hold the intake manifold down. Of course, any time that you do you wanna go ahead and put a little bit of anti seize on them that way, those stainless fasteners won't gall inside the aluminum intake.

Say we haven't told you about the carburetor we're using to feed our 502. We ordered Edel Brock's new 800 cfmeps car

designed especially for high performance and large displacement motors.

And now, besides that high flow capacity, here's something else that's pretty cool. You can change the jets,

adjust the floats and even swap out the needle and seat in this thing without draining the fuel. Now under here is a square flange which means it's gonna bolt up to just about any intake manifold. Well, while chuck boats it up to ours, don't you bolt out the door? We're gonna wind up our bracket motor build up right after this.

Hey, welcome back to the wind up of our 502 bracket motor build up. You know, a good ignition will go a long ways towards helping us hit our horsepower mark. So we're using a complete MS D set up including their pro billet distributor, 8.5 millimeter superconductor wires, 40,000 volt blaster Ss coil and their digital six

control box. Now, this is a brand new piece that

is controlled by a microprocessor and below 3300 RPM, it actually fires a series of sparks that'll burn in the combustion chamber for up to 20 degrees of crank rotation. Now, since we're going into a bracket racer with it, we'll be able to take advantage of its dual rev limiters and that single stage nitrous retard

with number one cylinder top dead center. We can go ahead and drop the distributor in

and we can go ahead and measure

and cut

the plug wires to length.

After slipping the boots on,

you can strip the insulation

and finally crimped the terminal.

Well, cooling down between rounds of racing won't be a problem with the S

Brock aluminum water pump. It's got AC NC machine, high flow iron impeller inside along with heavy duty bearings to handle the high RPM. S

Well, speaking of high RPM s, we're gonna need an efficient way to evacuate our exhaust.

So we chose these hooker super

comps. Now they've got two inch equal length primaries that feed into this 3.5 inch collector down here. Plus we pop for the optional ceramic coating. Now that's gonna help out their thermal efficiency

and keep them looking good for a long time.

Yeah. Well, here's something else that's gonna look good on that motor starting with the Chevrolet racing valve covers from GM performance parts.

Their tall design clears most roller rockers and even a stud girl if you wanna use one. Now, we got ours with this black powder coat to match the block.

Now to cap off our carb. How about this pro

flow air cleaner? It's got a triangular design that clears most ignitions, including the G mh E I oh, by the way, it comes with a K and N element.

Now, I gotta tell you, man, this is one good looking rat motor and I can't wait to get it bolted into my bed.

Well, I guess that means we're not gonna

dyno it today because I gotta cover a race. Well, tell you what, in a couple of weeks though, we will install it and we're gonna strap it to the

dyno Jet back there and take the Bel Air to the track for the ultimate test. Good idea. But don't you make tracks? We got a lot more horsepower TV ahead.

Get ready for a motor city muscle car. Shoot out. It's our race of the week and it's next

horsepower TV. S race of the week is brought to you by Wyotech. The nation's premier technical training school

this week. Horsepowers come to Motor city for a shoot out among the top street fighters of NSC A.

The air is good. Humidity low. And uh so are the qualifying ETS

a

pro outlaw record holder, Mark d'antoni soaring to a 680 qualifying run at 207 miles an hour.

And another outlaw stalwart Steve

Rebeck with a 688

Pro Streeter Ross Stump

mash

the gas here on a 691 pass

and NSC A points leader Pat H

with a 682 at 206.

But in addition to a weekend of fast times on the track.

It was a weekend of special comebacks for several veteran street racers

like Danny Scott last year's NSC A champ who came out of retirement with runs like this sizzling 699 at 200 miles an hour. Another comeback kid was hometown hero Mike Moran who quit racing

weekly to start his own performance business.

Mike was back in his six second form. Thanks in part to a new Craig Liberty tr

that he was debuting here at Stan.

It's a little different on a Linko. You have to grab each lever and pull them and let go of that one and pull another one on this one. It's a vert

shift. You never take your hand off the shifter. It's forward, backward, forward, backward.

What could be easier, right?

But the biggest comeback of all involves the owner of this 67 Camaro, a veteran racer who began the fight of his life and an, a bit just like this

back in the spring of 2000

pro street competitor, Mark Tate was staging for a qualifying run in Saint Louis. When suddenly it happened, a

nitrous fire that spread rampantly into the cockpit of his car. As a stunned crowd helplessly watched.

I can remember being in a car,

I can remember

panicking to get out when I was in Gulf with flames. It was hot breathing, but

I don't know how I get out of the car

after beating the odds mark faced months of painful recovery and therapy before a comeback. That was nothing short of miraculous.

I got about 80% of my strength back and,

uh, I, I'm a very lucky person to be able to come through what I come through,

uh, as unscathed as I did. So I'm, I'm happy. He's amazing. He's our miracle man.

He

sure is.

Well, we have a lot to be thankful for. We got 13 grandchildren and five sons and

four daughters in laws and

we had so much support from everybody. I mean,

friends, relations,

racers were great.

Mark's names on the passenger side of his old Camaro. Now, that's because his longtime crew guy and protege

Dale Pittman has taken over the wheel. I put my family through enough and

I have no desire to get in the car again and they deserve it if they wanna go out and have some fun with it. I don't care.

I've always been hanging back in the,

the back light in the shadows and waiting for any chances to drive. And I've always jumped at the opportunity like any

person would. So

it really worked out well that he gave me that opportunity.

Dale is running the 67 and MS Cas hottest class Nostalgia Pro Street

with a full 16 car field this weekend.

And here on his second qualifying run, Dale breaks into the seven second club with a 786 but the top qualifier of the class would be a local racer, Darryl Thomas driving his mentors 69 Camaro with a nitrous fed 632 inch motor.

My goal this weekend is to run fast

and then take it back home to one piece,

especially the one piece.

Well, here on Sunday, they are still good. The track's great. Should make for a fantastic finish.

Hey, you guys ready for some eliminations.

Me too.

Dale drove Mark

Camaro through Moore seven second runs on his way to a spot in the finals of Nostalgia Pro streak.

Meanwhile, it was d'antoni here running a weekend best 679

heading toward a showdown against an also strong reback.

And at Pro Street, it was Bussey paving his way to a face off against the comeback kid himself, Mike Moran here eliminating Scott.

So it's the mid Michigan finals and it's Moran winning Pro Street while Mies seemed to have trouble planning the power

in Outlaw Street. It's another local hero Grebeck getting a whole shot to come out on top

and in the closest race at the event, Thomas itches past Pittman to win his first ever Nostalgia Pro Street contest.

Yeah, that's tight race. I've been in a long time. It was so tight. I didn't know who had one down there.

Meanwhile, with his car, a new driver coming in second.

The biggest victory may belong to the racing old timer who came to Michigan after one of the most incredible comebacks in life or the sport of drag racing. You still love racing.

Oh, yes,

you have to like it. It's,

it's great. I don't know what I'm gonna do now for kick. So I guess just come to the track. I'm, I'm happy,

I'm just happy to be here. I'm just here.

Horsepower TV. S hot parts. A close up. Look at the latest in high performance hardware.

A lot of people use gas logs in their fireplaces, but here's one you can use under your hood.

It's Mallory's fuel return log that's adjustable to fit most dual inlet Hollies including the dominator

also has an adjustable return regulator and analyze couplings for little flash as well as function that's compatible for either gas or alcohol simply by swapping out the old rings. Of course, you'll have to swap out some cash too about 100 and 75 bucks.

Hey, when the pressure is on at the track, now you can check it with moroso high accuracy tire gauge. It's available with 1560

100 P SI limits.

And the four inch face gives accurate incremental readings as low as 1/10 of A P si.

The housing is made from a high tech plastic that absorbs shock to protect the internal mechanism. And if you need to adjust the pressure, you can do it with this built in bleeder. Now, if you just gotta have one of these for your toolbox plan on bleeding, your budget for about 100 and 40 bucks.

We're gonna cap off hot parts with a look at these torque thrust wheel caps from American racing.

They're made from die cast aluminum and available with a variety of logos to personalize your ride, whether it's a mustang goat or any other road animal for that matter if price matters though. Well, plan on laying out about 42 bucks a piece. Hey, now I was planning on laying out next week, but I guess we've got a show to do instead.

Here's a look,

sport compacts are hot and here to stay, but not just for racing. We'll give AC Rx an amazing makeover with a cool body kit. A

radical rear wing and a lowering kit for a cool stance

in our race of the week. We'll head to Florida for an annual event of nine second front wheel drive racing,

cooked out import show cars and even some two wheel thrills

and remember, high performance fun is what this show is all about. Hey, man, hurry up, jump in. Let's go check on that bel

Air

for information about the products used in today's show and more. Check us out online at horsepower tv.com

Horsepower TV is an RTM production.