Route 66 Revisited and Secret Power Tips

Hey, welcome to Horsepower. Today we're gonna do a build up on this Ford 351 Windsor short block and do a performance test on the

dyno.

Now we're also gonna show you a few cool engine building tips along the way. But first, we've got to catch up with old Joe who's reliving the glory days of America's Mother Road. The legendary route 66

from the late twenties through the sixties, it was the nation's symbol of four wheel freedom from mid America to L A. Route 66 was lined with roadside attractions

and two lane memories until the interstate system drove it into the history books.

Well, there's one thing that interstates will never replace and that's the spirit of Route 66 celebrated at car events like this one, the Mother Road festival in Springfield, Illinois.

It all begins on Friday night with a tradition, a cruise into town along a small stretch of the original road.

It's fantastic show. First time here I'll come again

this year. Over 1000 cars from all eras of route 66 history made the journey

some driven here from hundreds of miles away

and some people traveled even further just to take in the monumental weekend.

I came specifically here to see the, uh, the Route 66 Festival. Read a lot about it. Seen on the website, I got a book for my birthday.

I've got some old cars back in Christchurch, New Zealand. So I just wanted to, uh,

follow my dream on a little bit more and see more of the type of cars that we've got back home

next day. Old downtown Springfield was the one giant car show with everything from blown bow,

power muscle cars to well ever seen a 32 H

Mobile. How about one powered by an LS one?

What's this? Well, it's an extremely hot, rotted 58 Crosley driven here from Iowa,

like several other towns along the legendary highway. This one started celebrating the legacy back in 2000

because that was the way you got from, you know, you got from Chicago to L A, you know, just like the song

and uh the popularity of these things, the fact that uh communities all along the old route and the old road uh are celebrating uh that uh slab of concrete

that took people out west. Why?

It's

one of the things that makes America great

officer. Could you tell me where the Mustangs are?

Oh, thanks

George and K Stegner drove their 268 Mustangs here. A mixed blessing. When you drive all the way from Kansas,

we got to drive from the other side of Saint Louis to here, 100 and 50 miles yesterday with the top down. That was fun. I like that.

But the thing about trailer in a car is you don't have to be cleaning on it. Once you get here, you're able to go out and enjoy the, what's going on. So, yeah, but that's like driving them. Is there nothing like driving them? We really, really like to drive the cars. What do you guys have against blue and yellow?

I have nothing against blue and yellow. But my husband bought this car. Then he came home and told me he bought this Mustang and it was Grabber blue and yellow and I was like, that is awful. And so then he took me to the garage where it was and I went. Yep, that'll do. I like it. It'll do.

I'm gonna play a little trick here.

Whose wagon is this?

Well, how did you get that dent on the other side?

Well, I don't think I fooled these Chicago gear heads who have an unfaltering allegiance to 55 shoe boxes. They're nice looking.

They got uh nice uh flowing lines and everything.

Fiberglass

and you can get every part for them.

You know, this one here is almost all fiberglass

walking around. You see every kind of car with a different car story for everyone.

You also meet car people with some unique passions for even the more obscure rides. Well, like the Opal, it, it's a die hard group. It's not a car that's ever gonna be extremely valuable. It's never gonna be,

you know, a Barrett Jackson car. But if you got one and you love it,

you got a crowd of people who think the same way and love these cars and take care of them and every year with a new one emerges and something new comes up and they're just beautiful cars. It's a 1970 Opal GT

and I named it a Spider. Although Opal never made a roster version of the Opal GT,

the top was cut out and the sheet metal welded in the side windows were removed, custom tunnel cover made, custom interior done, stereo air suspension. It's got a lot of modifications done to it. It's uh definitely one of a kind,

understandably, most of the car people who remember and Revere route 66 are older.

Well, I'm gonna start

hammering in this like wooden mole,

but this visit to restoration alley assured me that younger gear heads are into the car culture and craft.

Here's a little bit of one.

Yeah.

So what happens next?

Well, after this, you guys sort of start on the English wheel over there. The real way to smooth it out is if you kind of go in a bunch of different directions,

but after this year,

it's done and you're ready to cut it out and

close,

close. We gotta do some like finishing touches.

I also learned that some call it Route 66. Although most call it route 66.

Is it the song? Route 66? There you go.

There you go. That's what the

song was

playing

it.

You got your

KS out Route

66

and you still can. It stops like this along America's one and only mother Road.

We're back in the horsepower shop where Mike and Buddy have been busy getting this 351 small block ready to test some performance parts on

our

dyno.

And at the same time, we'll give you some tips on how you can do a better build. Well, here's the combination we're using this time.

And for heads, how about El

Rock performer RPM s with machine profiled intake and exhaust runners for better flow and performance combustion chambers measure 60 CCS

valves come in at 202, intake 160 exhaust. Now, perfect match for that. Of course is their air gap intake manifold that gets its name from this generous space between the runners and the heat of the lifter valley.

We're using a hydraulic roller set up for this engine starting with this thumper cam shaft that has a duration of 235 on the intake 249 on the exhaust and that's at 50 thousands lift.

Now, we're also using a set of their hydraulic roller lifters and high energy push rods. These though they're from crane and they're a full roller, I 1.6 stud mounted rocker arm, they call this cam shaft the thumper because of a design that allows for early valve opening

and long exhaust duration plus overlap of intake and exhaust. Now, that allows for a healthy exhaust note without affecting the power output.

Now, since this is a hydraulic roller, there's no need for assembly lobe to break in the lobes. Just a little oil on the journals does the trick.

Next thing to go on is this double roller timing set from cloys? And

here's another little tip for you, put some oil on the pieces of this fuel pump sent

kit.

Otherwise it'll squeal like a pig. When you first fire up the motor,

each pair of these roller lifters comes with a guide bar and well, the first time you install them, you may ask yourself,

hey, self, which way do these things go like this

or like this?

Well, the rule is always bar to bar.

Otherwise

you install them this way

this bar here could scrape against the block and cause some damage.

We're using

fro gaskets that only go on one way which are stamped at the front. Now, the way the water travels through the block as it comes out of the water jacket goes through the cylinder head and exits into the radiator that's for optimized cooling. Now, we can go ahead and install the cylinder heads.

Now, with number one cylinder top that

we're gonna show you a way to visually tell if the push rides you ordered are too short, too long or right on the money.

All right, let's try this push ride first

with the rocker in place.

As you can see, the roller tip is right on the inside edge of the top of the valve stem.

This one is way too short

and here's what happens when the push ride is too long,

rocker at the wrong angle

and on top, there's not nearly enough threads to engage the poly

lock. Now,

here's how much thread you should have to properly cinch down a rocker.

Here's one of the push rides we ordered for our combination.

This time,

the roller tip is just off the center of the top of the valve stem.

Well, since these are the correct size, we're gonna install the rest of them with assembly lube on the lifters

and on the tops of the push rise.

Well, we'll finish up when we come back and

make some noise in the dyno stick with us.

Hey, we're back to finish up the build up of this 351 and do some dyno runs to test out the top end package. Now, we just finished up installing our rocker arms from crane and right now I'm gonna grab some intake gaskets while buddy shows you the correct way to adjust your valves. First, you rotate the crane shaft till the exhaust valve opens,

then adjust the intake by loosening the nut,

then tightening the nut to take out the free play

and tighten it another half turn

and lock it all down with the set screw

to adjust the exhaust valve, rotate the crank shaft until the intake opens and starts to close

and repeat the same steps as before.

With that done, we could drop on the intake over gaskets from Mr gasket.

Now, the oil pan could have gone on after the timing chain, but if we dropped any boats into it,

yeah, we'd have to do it all over again.

Now, we can roll the motor into the cell

connected to the

dyno

and install new spark plugs

in our case, a set of E three diamond fires.

All right. This parts combination does not come with a carburetor. So we opted to go with a Holly 770 Street Avenger with electric choke and vacuum secondary. Now they ship it with a 72 jet up front, 75 in the rear, right out of the box. The only thing we have left to do, set the timing and make some dyno.

There you go. 419 horsepower at 6000 RPM. 406 ft pounds of torque at 4400, check this out good power and torque all the way through the RPM range, making that an awesome little street motor. Now, this entire top end combination minus the carburetor is available through performance parts.com and here's a rundown of the parts

we used

perform RPM heads

and

Brock air gap intake manifold. A comp cams, thumper cam shaft comp roller lifters and push rods,

crane rocker arms, Chloe's double rolling timing set

gaskets from Fell Pro and Mr gasket

and A RP bolt kits for the heads and intake manifold.

We made 419 horsepower and 406 ft pounds of torque.

The whole combination goes for $2895

might want to point out that we use flat top pistons in the bottom end of this little motor, which probably played a big part in those performance numbers. Well, coming up, we go to another speed merchant and see some high tech car and truck gauges in the making. Stay with us.

Here's a little automotive trivia for you.

Do you know that the

tachometer in your car has its roots back in 1903 and an inventor named Charles Veer.

Well, obviously his invention has come a long way to this modern day high tech version.

Right now. We're gonna take a speed merchant journey to a place where tax and other gauges are made by a company that's been well dedicated to dashboard devices since 1957.

Every high performance machine worth its salt needs performance

and for 50 years, most of them have been built in a small Midwest community. About 60 miles from Chicago

Sycamore is a modern day Mayberry

surrounded by cornfields. The pace here is low key conservative.

Probably the last place you'd expect to find a movie for two bucks

at a time when many companies are going offshore. Sycamore remains home for performance gauge maker, auto meter.

And

our

end customers want American made product and we've made the decision that we're going to optimize our operation

and be able to compete with anybody anywhere in the world on performance racing instruments and we can do that right here in Sycamore, Illinois.

We got to go behind the scenes to see how they do it.

First, graphic designs are created and transferred to a silk screen.

Workers use just in time scheduling to screen different gauge faces,

custom control panels and housing

the heart of each gauge is the control board.

The laser router gang scores the outside dimensions of each board.

The tool shop makes these steel templates used to print circuit layouts on the boards.

After flux is applied to the boards, resistors, diodes, capacitors and transistors are automatically installed.

Next boards are re lasered for precise alignment

and a solder paste is applied before they get heated in a furnace that melts the solder at 400 degrees, ensuring solid connections.

After cleaning sets of boards get tested with hundreds of fine contact points

that confirm everything functions.

Then they're delivered to assembly cells where teams start the assembly process.

Here it's transmission temp gauges, workers marry electro

mechanical movements, bases and needles

to reduce parallels. A camera magnifies needle accuracy.

Another cell builds liquid filled racing gauges.

Many of the steps are the same but these water temp gauges will get a silicone liquid to dampen vibration.

Their final test,

no bubbles means no leaks.

After packaging, everything gets a trip to storage racks

where they're ready to be pulled for shipment.

This is where Auto meter's flagship product. The Monster Attack is made t

are very, very popular. They've been in our product line for over 30 years and the Monster Attack is and will remain the standard in the industry.

The T

cells are fed motor assemblies by flow racks.

Each motor is first tested and programmed

and faces are screwed on and tack needles attached using a force gauge.

Then the assembly gets a housing

and the glass and a bezel are crimped to the housing.

Finally, each is tested for calibration

and ship light accuracy.

The monster tech was designed by John Westberg in the mid seventies today, his son heads up engineering. One of the fun things about autometer is we develop products for a variety of different markets, automotive truck, marine motorcycle.

And so we're working on products for all those different markets all the time.

Autometer supplies GM Ford Chrysler and Toyota,

but also smaller O EMS like big dog motorcycles.

Building a custom speed over these 100 horse V twins requires a flexible technical and production approach.

But whether it's a single Speedo on a bike

or a dash pull on a race car. These guys know performance gauges and now you know how

and where they do it,

BBK is mostly known for EF I performance and Mustang applications. But now they're making that cutting edge technology available to Mopar guys as well, like with this cold air induction system that's available for the new Dodge Charger and Chrysler 300.

Not unlike most cold air kits that use a molded plastic tube. BBK uses a chrome plated tube that runs all the way from the throttle body to the air filter and not only looks good but makes power to the tune of 12 horsepower at the rear wheel to free up even more horsepower out of your Mopar BBK offers these direct bolt on shorty headers that are available in either full stainless or mild steel with a chrome or ceramic finish. Now, they use engine three quarter tubing that all tie into a single one piece flange and they claim they make 10 horsepower at the rear wheels. Now, they're available in either shorty like this or long to the shorty start out at 199. A good set of headers needs a free flowing exhaust to finish the job like this cat back kit from Magna flow that can free up an extra 13 horsepower.

Now, they're stainless steel with mander

bent tubing and they come with polish stainless steel tips. They're available for a ton of applications. This one's for the late model Camaro for about $500. Well, Magna Flow also offers these polished stainless steel tips that clamp on and give you years of show quality looks. The boat assemblies are zinc coated, so they'll stand up to all kinds of climate conditions

and they'll fit a variety of pipe sizes and vehicles. A pair will set you back about 85 bucks. Well, we've exhausted all of our time here on horsepower. We'll see you next time though. Please join us.