Million Dollar Racers

How would you like a race for a million dollars on today's horsepower? You'll see some of the nation's best bracket racers compete for the ultimate payout.

Plus a Ford bang for the buck combo test

and a caparo of wet versus dry sump oil systems.

Ok. Let's see what you got.

Oh,

more than you did pretty close though. Hey, welcome to horsepower. When it comes to drag racing. Well, we like it heads up because it's more exciting to watch. However, let's face it for the weekend hobby racer,

bracket racing using a sportsman tree. Like this is a lot more popular. It levels the playing field, but it requires an incredible skill to be the top bracket racer in the country. So, if you think you've got what it takes to be the top dog, you need to make a trip to Memphis, Tennessee for the amazing million dollar weekend

every year at Memphis Motorsports Park. It literally rains cash.

The BT E million dollar race is a four day racing experience with multiple events featuring the nation's best bracket racers.

All competing for cash and prizes. Well, like a 30 ft optima double decker race car trailer, a proc

rolling chassis

or a $60,000 custom built pro street chopper and more,

but mostly it's all about big money.

But this is the main event where one of these racers will go home with the biggest piece of that million dollar purse. $300,000. It's bracket racing. Anybody can do it.

To me it's the Olympics of drag racing.

It's the best way to describe it

one day

in drag racing

promoter, George Howard started this event back in 1995 for serious bracket racers, confident enough to pony up a $2000 entry fee.

His dialing,

he is responsible for it. We have nothing to do with it

if he picks that number

and that number beats him.

It's his fault, not ours.

It's down to thousands of a second.

It's absolutely a phenomenal sport. These are drivers, drivers,

the driver who won it last year, basically bracket races for a living.

But winning this event was by far his career highlight. The most incredible feeling you can ever imagine as far as racing goes, uh, that win line, it seemed like it took it forever to come on. But

once it got there, you know,

no one can ever take that from you.

So that's a great feeling.

This guy will never forget that. You know, it's a, it's a big thing to him and his family and

it's a big thing to me.

No one's won it twice. And of course, no one can stand a chance without a consistent car, great reflexes and state of the art electronics.

We use delay box in it that we used to uh leave off the third bulb. We actually let off the button on the car on the top bulb.

And that usually that, that gives everybody kind of a fair shot at the tree and, and you can adjust your, your reaction times accordingly.

If you set up for,

then

you got a pretty good shot at getting to the other end in front of the other guy. But,

and it's, it's, it's a hard game. Uh,

there's, this is an all star race.

The racers get two runs to determine their dial in number, which will probably change when the track cools down.

Now, if you bracket race at your hometown track, you know about buybacks and, well, they've got them here too. You have a buy back in round one

or round two, but not both.

So that allows you to make a mistake and not go home

$500.

There's 500 great race car drivers here and everybody's got a, got a great shot at it. So, you know, you just gotta,

you gotta think that you can do it and, and if you can't think you can win, you don't need to beat the

all time trials were over. And now it's, you are done

by round three with no buybacks allowed. You could cut the tension to the night.

Better. Got a good, incredible light each round or you're out.

Meanwhile, Jeff Rx was pecking away at that unprecedented second win,

earning a spot in the finals.

But while the car is cool down, check this out on drawing among the finalists for a brand new Corvette.

When it got down to two tickets, the lady on the ride had sold hers for 16 grand.

There is 310,000 bucks on that light beam.

Here we go. It's Jeff Rx in the left lane against Greg Ses

and Ses

runs within 1/1000 of his dial in to take the wind light

and the biggest purse ever in this event, the car was deadly. All weekend car is just unbelievable,

unbelievable

like it be the,

yeah.

Well, I can't even

grasp it yet. Call a cop.

I need a beer.

I need a beer. It's been a long day.

But over there is your guy, man. He's a, he, he'll, he'll be a great champion and I appreciate a place to race like this, George Howard. Uh, put some money out and

obviously we come, they were uh 500 plus of us here this

weekend.

Both will be back

next year.

You

and you can bet he'll have plenty of company vying for this magic moment

here at the world's biggest run for the money for bracket racers.

The one and only million dollar race.

Hey, welcome back to horsepower where it's time for another test in our bang for the buck series. Now that we have our DTs engine dyno,

we can do various aftermarket engine combinations to see how much power we can make. And to give you an idea on how much money you're going to have to pay for that power.

In our first experiment, we used our small block Chevy Mule motor to test a simple carb and intake combination.

Later, we tried out a complete top end kit which yielded more horse power or more bucks. Of course,

today it's Ford's turn. And for a mule motor, we picked up this rebuilt 302 from our local parts store and added things like an oe style water pump pulleys balancer oil pan

valve covers and flywheel

for an intake manifold. We found a used one from the internet which got a coat of Ford blue paint just to make it look better on TV.

And while that paint dries, I'm gonna install a new set of spark plugs

and a pair of headers. By the way, these are hookers with 1 to 58 inch primaries

with intake gaskets in place and the intake manifold able to dry. We're ready to drop it in

using some supplied bolts from Mr gasket.

Well, as you can see, we're keeping everything as bold stock as possible with this mule. So we're going to feed our Ford motor with this Holly 600 CFM car

Now, this is the one that Holly specs as their oe replacement.

We next five ports of this petroleum based motor oil since there is a flat tapping inside.

Now, this thing has supposedly been run after the rebuild, but just play it safe. We're going to break it in at varying RPM. S and make sure those valves are seated and the cam shafts fully broken in.

After that, our

dyno operator mutt can make a full tilt fast on this thing.

We got 302 ft pounds of torque way down at 2500 RPM

and 210 horsepower at 4600. Good deal.

Yeah, I should point out that that's after several runs and dialing it in to get a true honest baseline.

Well, while I pull these plugs to get the distributor out of the way, take a look at what we'll use to hopefully raise those numbers first, a brand new action plus intake manifold from

Yan. Now, this thing is actually so new. It hasn't even been seen by the public yet. It's an all aluminum dual plane designed for good low end midrange torque with a top end essential of about 5500 RPM. S. Now notice how they incorporated the checkerboard pattern in the casting floor. This is to improve air flow into the runners.

Well, here's the second part of our combo this time, it's a Lena

dual pattern hydraulic flat tap at camshaft with a 262 duration of the intake 272 on the exhaust side. And that should help that Ford small block exhale better. By the way, lobe separation. It's 100 12 degrees and we'll let you make for a smooth idle and good vacuum. Now, flat tap at camshafts develop a wear pattern with their lifters. So any time you do this type of cam change, you have got to replace the lifters, reuse the old ones and you'll probably trash your brand new camshaft. By the way, these also came from lunati

to get ready for the swap. We need to remove the carb

and the intake manifold

plus the valve covers.

Then the rockers can come off

along with the push rides

and the stock lifters

after the pulleys come off,

we can pull the harmonic dampener.

Next, we can loosen the oil pan bolts and drop the pan,

then remove the water pump and timing cover as a unit.

Now, the timing chain and gear can come off the cam.

Finally, the old cam comes out

and then a fairly thick coating of this Molly based lube on the journals and lobes of our new cam shaft

as we install it, being real careful not to nick those bearings.

But now while the hands are still nice and greasy more Molly lube on our new lifters

and we could drop them into place.

Next, we're going to button up the front of the motor

then drop the push rides back in

and reinstall the rocker arms.

Here's something that's pretty important. After our baseline run, we drained all the oil out of this motor. Now I'm going to pour five quarts into the lifter valley to make sure they're all lubricated properly before we make our next run.

Yeah.

Now this powerhouse oil pump primer can help us fill the lifters with oil.

Notice how the gauge on our

dyno computer is telling us we've got plenty of oil pressure.

Then after installing the new manifold, we're ready to drop the carbon distributor into place and fire this board up.

Well, mutt, the torque increase is ok. But look at that job at horsepower 258. I'm impressed.

Yeah, man, anytime you can gain almost 50 horsepower for such a little expense, that's really cool. Well, speaking of that, here's a complete rundown on today's Ford Bang for the buck.

The

Boones again were Hawaiian intake Lena

hydraulic cam and Lena

lifters horsepower and torque gains 48 and 17 respectively. And the bucks about 475.

Ok. Well, during the break, we got an engine swap to do here in the

dyno Cell because we're using this thing for something totally different when we come back.

Hey, welcome back to the shop. You know, our DTs engine

dyno is really starting to earn its keep. And today we've got another test unlike any we've ever tried before

for years serious racers have enjoyed the benefits of dry sump oiling systems in their competition cars.

But just how much more horsepower does a dry sump free up compared to a wet sump system?

That's what we hope to find out. Now. Just to get back to basics, here's a difference of how the two systems work that were sent to us by

also a wet sump system, by the way, is found in 99% of production cars where oil is stored in the oil pan. Now, an oil pump pickup pulls that oil from the pan and distributes it through the pump and into the engine. Now the only downfall, this is the crank shaft has to spin against the weight of the stored oil that is referred to as windage. A dry sump system uses a separate storage tank to store the oil. So the sump stays basically dry. Hence the name.

Now, this remotely mounted pump uses multiple stages to scavenge oil from the pan,

send it up to the storage tank and pump it back into the engine.

Oh, this windage screen here separates the sump oil from the crank. Now all this helps the rotating assembly spin freely to free up horsepower. Oh, by the way, these pans are usually a lot more shallow, a

wets up pan so they could be mounted lower in the vehicle to lower the center of gravity.

Our mule for this test is a race built 396 cubic inch small block Chevy with 12 to 1 compression. Some of the parts include these broads,

18 degree heads and intake, a big roller comp cam and a race steaming carb that feeds VP racing C 12 gas

underneath. It's got a standard pressure

Moosa oil pump and aluminum wet sump oil pan

after several pools on the engine, dyno,

our peak power at 647 horsepower,

547 ft pounds of torque

and that's our baseline.

Now, we need to remove the wets up pan

and pump so we can install the dry up system.

We're installing this oil pump block off plate from Moroso on the main cap.

Then we can vote on the new custom made dry

pan.

This Moroso dry sump pump has three scavenge sections that draw oil from the sump through the screen fittings

and then pump it up to that remote storage tank that I showed you earlier.

Now, there's also this section that's externally adjustable and that's for oil pressure.

We're plumbing the entire system using Russell's dash 12 and dash 16 AM fittings and hose.

Now, we can hook up a remote oil filter mount

plumb, the remote oil tank which has been filled with oil

and prime the oil system.

Another way a dry sump adds power is by creating a vacuum effect inside the engine. So to seal off the crank case, we've got some new valve covers without breathers and we'll just hook up this vacuum line to monitor it through the

dyno console.

The biggest power gain was down in the middle where we got 657 horsepower at 6600 RPM.

If you've got an all out race car that's already maxed out on horsepower. Well, spending 2 to 4 grand for an extra 20 is not a bad deal, but not for a street strip guys. Anyway, here are a couple of ways you can improve your wets up system for more performance. Now, this pan's got a stripper screen

that catches the oil that's thrown off the crank and keeps it from split

back up.

This one is a windage tray and well, it's flat with

Lers and basically it separates the oil from the crank and keeps it stored down below.

Now, here's a tip for you that won't cost anything, never overfill your system because the less oil means the less crank resistance. Now, back in the day, a lot of the old superstock racers used to run their engines about two quarts low for maximum horsepower out on the track. Now, stick with us. We got more horse power coming up

here on horsepower. We like to stay up on all the latest high performance technology, especially when we scoop everybody else.

Now, there's something inside this trick Mustang that definitely fits the bill

bully dogs famous for making power and diesel motors. But now they've gotten to the gas engine business in a big way. This is their PM T which stands for performance management tool.

It's actually an outlook monitor and a downloader all in one unit.

This thing is a performance testing tool, a scanning tool and much more plus the tuner program works whether the motor is bone stock or has a power adder like nitrous or turbo charger,

which is the case with this new Mustang. You see it's equipped with bully dog's new after cat turbo charger kit.

The twin turbos out back produced between five and eight pounds of boost without an after cooler or the need to tap for any oil lines.

The last time we had a stock 06 Mustang in here, it made 265 horse power on the rollers.

This one just made 343 on just four pounds of boost.

Well, here's some good news. The installation times a few minutes for the PM T and less than two hours for the turbo kit. Oh,

we can't tell you the prices of these parts. They're so new that bully dog hasn't set one yet. However, they will have them for a number of diesel and gas applications.

Hey, we're out of here, but next week we build a big horse blue oval race motor and vote a blower onto a hot rod caddy.