'69 Chevelle Blower

Better strap yourself in. We've got a supercharged edition of horsepower today. Hey, glad you joined us

as a lot of, you know, blower technology was pioneered and then pushed to the limits first on the drag strips of America.

Well, today, a lot of that same technology has hit the streets in a powerful way

and we're gonna take a lot of that same technology and use it to bring our Chevelle big block build up to the next level. But before we get started, I want to bring you up to speed on what we've done so far.

Last time we brought in a GM 502 short block for it,

filled it with a special

Iy blower camshaft

bolted on a set of high flowing performer RPM heads, then added an Edelbrock air gap manifold

fed by an 850 CFM demon carb.

Finally, we back our new big block with a TCI Street Fighter turbo 400 trans.

One thing we didn't do is give that 502 some breathing room. So we're gonna fab up a custom high flowing exhaust using flow masters 3.5 inch 40 series race mufflers and their manual bent tubing.

Our plan is to hang the muffler right about here and have the pipe run into a slight angle and exit in front of the rear tires.

Well, listen to that big rat rubble. Now, is it as healthy as it sounds? Well, before we vote on the blower, let's get a baseline on the

dyno jacket.

After a thorough break in on the

dyno Jet, the Chevelle eventually cranked out 402 horsepower.

Hey, did those numbers seem a little bit soft to you? Well, I definitely believe that 502 is capable of more

and I could feel it laying down in the upper RPM s most likely because of fuel starvation. Now we're gonna have to upgrade that fuel system anyway, for that blower. So we went to air motive for everything that we needed. We're gonna get started by plumbing this dash 10 feed line and this dash eight return line.

After securing the lines to the frame rails and away from heat and rotating objects,

we go under the hood to install one of their in-line fuel filters

and pro series ef five fuel regulator.

That's right. The 502 is going to be blown and fuel injected. So it's got to have a high pressure pump

to give us the reliability and long term service we need. Now, an intake pump makes sense for at least a couple of reasons. First of all, it's close to the source to help prevent vapor lock and the fuel actually keeps the pump cool while it's working well with that in mind. We called up Rock Valley to get one of these stainless steel 15 gallon tanks. Let me show you something.

It's engineered to accept a

motives continuously driven pump that handles up to 1000 horsepower. Along with the primary fuel filter.

It has a special sump to keep the fuel pickup submerged

baffling to control fuel slush and a built in fuel gauge sending you

we're gonna mount the tank in the trunk. So all we have to do is cut a small square hole to clear the sump,

set the tank in place

bolted down using the built in blanches

and connect the lines we ran earlier.

The final component of our fuel system is this controller that governs the pump output based on throttle position.

That way it lower RPM s it's not delivering more fuel than the engine actually needs. Now, we need to mount this thing close to the pump and right about there, it looks like a good spot.

Then all we have to do is wire this thing up according to the instructions

with all of our support systems taken care of. Here's what we've been waiting for. It's a fully polished 871 blower set up for BDS. Now it comes with their intake manifold, fully polished 871 blower with an eight millimeter three inch drive. And of course, it comes with all the necessary hardware to install it.

It even includes this fuel injection plate with 1630 pound injectors,

a

valve and distribution block. And we're going to top it off with this fully polished blower hat with a built in TPS sensor

man, that's a powerful looking jewelry over there. But before we can bolt it up, we've got to remove the carb

intake and distributor that are on the

Chevelle and we will pack them up for a future project while we do this. Stay where you are. We'll get down to some serious blower business after the break.

Hey, welcome back to the shop and more of our big block Chevy blower build up.

You know, there are a lot of ways to introduce artificial atmosphere to an engine turbo charging, centrifugal supercharging and, well, even Nitrous are all good ways to make more power. But when it comes to making a big impression and big power, well, there's nothing quite like a big aluminum lung sticking out of the hood.

Well, right now I'm bolting up the intake here that's gonna allow us to adapt that blower to our big block Chevy here.

After that, we can bolt up the crank drive pulley,

install a coolant temp sensor

than a thermostat and housing.

Say before we continue, I gotta show you something pretty important.

If the blower ever sneezes the boost or pressure has gotta go somewhere right.

The intake comes with this pop off valve that opens up and gives that pressure a place to bleed off. Well, now we can go ahead and install this dual sate distributor. We showed you last week

next, we can put the blower in place.

And after cinching it down, we can vote up the fuel injector plate

followed by the injector hat

man. There's an iphone. Now, is that every gearheads dream or what?

We're ready to install the rest of the drive. Now, I've already installed this blind coupler hub on the front of the blower. Now, this blind shaft on the upper drive pulley will slide inside of that and it'll be retained to the front of the blower housing with bolts in this face plate.

This B DS set up also comes with a belt guard here that not only contains the belt if it should break, but it'll also keep those fingers from getting mangled if you happen to put them in the wrong spot.

Now, to mount it,

all you need to do is remove some of these bolts here on the blower case and replace them with this stud here and this billet spacer.

Now that'll put that guard right over the pulley

where it'll do the most good.

And once we get all that set up, we can install a belt, set the tension

and check everything for clearance

and that clears the way for our blower electronics. We got our harness and ECU from fuel, air spark technology or fast for short.

Now, this is a complete electronic fuel management system to control fuel and spark delivery

for a computer. We got their latest XF I version that can fire those injectors bank to bank sequential or in our case batch.

Now, the system also includes a wide van 02 sensor for more precise fuel control. And we got these water tight connectors so we can drive that blown ride in all kinds of weather conditions

to install it. We've drilled a two inch hole in the floorboard to pass the harness through.

Then we weld a bung to the hater collector for the 02 sensor.

Then we plug in all the connectors under the hood

and wire up the ignition.

The

smell's throttle cable was way too short to reach up here to the hat. So I'm going to replace it with this universal throttle cable from low car.

Now, I've already attached it to the pedal up inside the car

and bolted this bracket here to this blower stud. Now, what I've got to do is determine the right length for this cable.

Cut it off.

After that, I bolted up the cable end to the throttle arm,

threaded the cable through the lower bracket

and the cable end then secured it with the end stop set screw.

All right, no binding. We got full throttle looks like we're doing good over here.

Hey, we're good in here too.

I just mounted that fast ECU in the glove box and

you know, location for that thing is pretty important. You wanna make sure it's a place that stays dry and away from excessive temperatures or vibration.

So, does that mean we're about ready to fire up this blown bow tie or what? No, not at all there blew breath.

You still got some hoses to fab up there

now, while Joe takes care of that, why don't you take a look at some of these messages and we'll be back to fire up this bad boy right after the break.

Hey, welcome back to the horsepower shop. We're just about to put the wraps on our blown big block project. Hey, before we fire up this uh super charge,

Chevelle of Chuck's, let's take a look at our progress so far.

Our foundation was a GM performance parts 502 short block capped with performer RPM heads.

Today we installed a complete a

motive fuel delivery system, stainless steel tank from Rock Valley,

a fast electronic engine management system.

And last but not least our B Ds blower set up

that should bring you up to speed. Now, if our works up to speed, this monster is ready to fire

and we just loaded a basic program into the computer here and well, that ought to get us up and running and we'll dial in the fuel and spark curves later on. But right now it's show time for that big blown rat.

After the first fire up, it's important to check for fuel, oil and coolant leaks

and to make sure the belts and pulleys have plenty of clearance.

The fast program has fuel

and timing tables that allow you to make adjustments and get the injection dialed in

to show you the difference. Here's the tune up we started with

and here's what we've got. Now,

we've already spent the time to get our program pretty close. Now, we need to strap her to the

dyno Jet and put a load on the motor.

Wow. This thing made 713 horsepower. That's a pretty big jump from the 402 we did earlier today. And one thing you've got to remember, we're only running about seven pounds of boost of this thing and it'll do that all day long on pump gas. 93. That is, you bet. Now those are some big numbers to be sure. But this tune up still needs a little bit of tweaking and to do that. Well, you just got to get out and pound the pavement with a buddy behind the wheel while you sit there and hammer on those computer keys and dial everything in.

Now, once we get all that stuff done, we're going to take this monster to the track, we're going to see what it'll do

and when we do, we're going to swap out those old Mickey Sportsman Pros for these new ET streets. Now, these things are dot approved, but we're not fooling anybody with a tread design like this. These things are bound to hook up a lot better up front. We'll mount up a pair of these

Aly sportsman to support that big block Chevelle. Now, these are a little heavier than a real race tire, but they're also street legal and oh, check out how we've mounted up both of these on a set of their et drag rims. Now, if you're planning a blower build up of your own, better set aside the whole weekend, the blower itself is nothing more than a glorified intake swap, but

that fuel system upgrade and the electronics work will eat up most of your time.

Well, I think it's time to take this thing out on the street and eat up some pavement. How about you

earlier today? We showed you how a blower could add some pretty impressive power to a street machine like Chuck

Chevelle. Well, now how about a close up, look at how super charging and these other amazing parts can help a racer get down the quarter mile track in about four seconds.

Yeah, this is the latest version of the Matt Cottle's Funny Car. A fierce competitor in the world of N Hr A drag racing

last season with Whit Basore

behind the wheel. This car set a record of 333.25 miles an hour with a 4.71 et

the man behind this amazing monster is Lee Beard.

Well, we're lucky enough to have Lee and the car here in the horsepower shop today, man. Thanks for coming by. Love the new paint scheme. But I gotta ask you one question. I've always wanted to know

when it comes to winning. Is it the driver? Is it the crew? Is it the car?

What do you think?

Hey, Joe, drag racing is really a team sport, but bottom line is, the car has to perform. I'd say it's about 80% race car. 20% driver. Yeah. And the crew chief has a little to do that. Right. Just a little something. Yeah. Well, listen, we're anxious to learn some of your horsepower secrets. Did you bring us any goodies? I brought some really cool exotic parts for us to look at. Let's go

and I guess a good place to start the short block.

Yeah, Joe, this is one of the short blocks out of that mac o'toole's funny car.

The block is a forged aluminum block based on Chrysler's 426 Hemm

design. This particular one is 500 cubic inches and it produces about 7500 horsepower. That's a lot of power. Well, when you're burning nitro methane, I guess that puts a lot of stress and heat on the rod and piston. What about this design here? Well, to withstand those types of stresses. It requires a heavy duty, forged aluminum rod and a forged aluminum piston

that is quite a hefty piece. Well, move it along

will lead to make that kind of power. What's your secret to get enough air into that motor,

Joe? It takes a really large cam shaft to go along with these new state of the art cylinder heads.

They have massive ports that are done on a computerized milling machine. So they're all exactly the same along with the combustion chambers. And speaking of that,

I know two plugs per chamber going in there.

Yeah, Joe, it takes a tremendous amount of spark to burn all that fuel. Well, look at the size of those valves.

Well, how about a little blower comparison? Now, earlier before you got here, we bolted up A B DS just like this one on Chuck Chevelle.

Now this thing's got 16 inch rotors. How about yours? This one has 18 inch long rotors, ok. But in terms of boost, now we're talking 4 to 5 pounds with this one. This one's gonna make 50 pounds of boost, 50 pounds of boost. That's where all the horsepower comes from.

Well, ours is prettier at least

Joe. All that air that, that super charger pumps has to come in through this injector scoop.

Ok. That I get this, I don't get. What about all these lines going into it?

There's some injector nozzles here that spray fuel on top of the super charger to keep it cool and to help lubricate it. Well, it is pretty cool. Let's go to the car. Now,

now let's talk about feeding fuel to that monster.

Well, Joe, this is the real heart of the fuel system. The fuel pump, this particular pump will pump about 90 gallons per minute.

In other words, it would empty a 55 gallon drum in about 30 seconds.

How much fuel is that on? One pass down the track when he's on the starting line and he goes to wide open throttle to the finish line burns five gallons of fuel. Yeah. What kind of mileage would that be? That's about 20 gallons per mile.

Well,

we're no strangers to Harley's over the years. We've squeezed some extra horsepower out of a few big twins. So when we heard about Milwaukee's latest offering, we knew we had to show you.

It's the new Harley Davidson Street Rod right up our alley. Huh?

It's based on the B ROD platform, but this is not your typical cruiser. It's a new and different riding experience that we're offering with Street Rod. The mid mount controls, the flatter handlebars, the high performance suspension, the inverted front forks and the Brembo brakes actually give you an

exhilarating ride.

It is a different, more aggressive type of riding position than the laid back cruising style motorcycles that we're typically used to.

The street rod gets that aggressive riding position by placing the foot pegs further back on the chassis

using an inverted fork that sits at a 32 degree angle giving the rider a better position to attack corners.

The inverted fork not only puts you in the right position, it also gives the street rod an aggressive look

using big beefy 43 millimeter legs and massive triple clamps. The street rod definitely starts a new chapter for Harley, but that's not to say it doesn't have history really. What started this platform was our VR 1000, our road racing motorcycle

which we started racing in 1994. We said, wouldn't it be great to take that performance, that power

and performance of that engine and put it into a street bike

which was the V ROD and the Street Rod really takes it another step forward in that it marries

a chassis that has agility

with a motor that has phenomenal performance.

That performance comes from a 69 inch B twin revolution originally developed for the B ROD. It's a 60 degree liquid cooled fuel injected five speed that pumps out 120 horsepower and 80 ft pounds of torque making it one of the most powerful production Harleys ever. It's the platform that the screaming Eagle drag team used to win N Hr S Pro Stock championship.

The street ride does its breathing through a set of free flowing pipes that are pointed more Skyward giving it a 40 degree lean angle. Eight more than the V Rod. All of this makes the street ride a serious performer, which means there's more times when you need to grab a fistful of break

for this

is using a four piston brimble caliber clapped to a 300 millimeter rotor mounted on 10 spoke cast alloy wheels.

The final result, a bike that's more street fighter than cruiser

Harley's targets. Riders who are ready to step up from traditional sport bikes.

MS RP on the 06, street rod starts at 16, 4, 95.

And for that, you get Harley Power Harley style and a lot of Harley attitude,

a winning combination on the strip and the streak.

Well, we've got a winner of a horsepower TV in store for you next week.

Why don't you come back and check us out?