Motor Mod Trio

Today on horsepower. It's a quarter mile clash in Memphis and the engine tear down in the shop. But before we get to it,

we got a little experiment that should be pretty interesting.

We're gonna take a handful of popular high performance components, bolt them onto one engine and see what happens in the way of horsepower.

That's right here. We've got three upgrades for a stock small block Chevrolet that are designed to improve performance like long tube headers and oil pan with the windage tray and crank scraper and finally an electric water pump we had laying around the shop.

Ok, Joe. As soon as you're done, we're ready to run. All right, buddy.

Our guinea pig for this experiment. It's a 350 Chevy we've used in a lot of dyno test. It's totally stock except for those shorty headers which we'll later replace with long tubes. First things first though. Let's see what kind of numbers we got to work with.

All right, our stock 350 made 290 horsepower, 329 ft pounds as a baseline. Now, let's start swapping out parts and see what we can get

mechanical water pumps like this one that came on. The Chevy do a good job of cooling.

But if you could free up the crank shaft from spinning the pump, you could free up some horsepower. Right,

right now, this electric water pump from pro form we picked up from summit racing a while back. Close, 35 plus gallons per minute for adequate cooling. Plus it's made of lightweight die

castellum.

All right, our electric water pump improved our horsepower to 296 and our torque to 335 ft pounds. A pretty decent improvement

for our next upgrade. We lose the stock oil pan in favor of this upgrade from

Moosa,

the windage tray and crank scraper inside together, reduce the amount of oil surrounding the crank at high RPM. S

Here you go.

The result is improved bearing life, which we can't really measure here, but this should also help free up horsepower which we can.

Ok. We were two and two for games that time.

298 for power

and two more foot pounds of torque brings us up to 337.

You know, almost any exhaust header. An improvement over a cast iron manifold like this one

and the shorties from Patriot we've been running so far today are no exception,

but you gotta wonder just how they'll stack up against Doug's headers with the same one and 58 inch primary, same three inch collector.

But with the longer tubes, you get more scavenging ability, more bottom end torque

and more horsepower.

Now, the only real change is the motor made more torque in the lower RPM range with the long tubes, which is great for drivability.

Now, in no way was this trio test scientific, especially since all the modifications were made progressively. And of course, you can't measure all the benefits here on the

dyno,

we can measure the benefits of power on the quarter mile strip here at the door slammer showdown in Memphis coming up,

we got all the best clubs on Bill Street right here. So make sure you come here. We're on Bill.

It's Friday night in Memphis and a horsepower crew and I are here on a hunt for heads up drag racing, uh, with a stop on historic Field Street,

a place where it's cool to be a little flipped out and crazy.

Put me on TV. I wanna be on TV. Oh,

wait a minute. He's with us.

Yeah, the place is alive with the sounds of blues music,

the aroma barbecue

and the taste of a little bit of libation.

Thank you dear.

Now, what does Memphis beer, blues and barbecue have to do with the drag racing? We're about to cover.

Let me work on that.

Oh, I got it. Like the blues door slammer. Heads up street car racing as we know it was born here in Memphis back in the early nineties

and this Mid South shootout is an early season warm up.

It shows how hot some of these spirited street cars have evolved.

I could not believe it.

It's a non

series of it on a track that's been freshly ground smooth,

great for testing cars that are fresh from the winter mothballs.

The challenge is to learn how to keep the car straight

out not to overpower the track

how to stay away from the guard wall.

And in this case figure out how to stop that smoke from coming out of the blower.

They don't let the empty stands fool you. We got word that some of the heaviest hitters in street racing are here to test their stuff of the season ought to be exciting.

Wow.

But some of the excitement was the presence of a Chicago based Fast Times team of Super Street fame,

Spry

Pappas and Nick

Convo.

They're two Chicago street racing Heavies who've joined forces with their twin C 28 36 38 for both of them or somewhere in that range. Our goal is actually to come back and show the dominance that we had back in the nineties and early two thousands. And then we want to do it again in outlaw 10 5. Well, we're gonna go down South and show them that the north guys know how to race eight mile as well. Spirals is the original car that he's had for 20 some years. Mine is the evil twin.

Mine's the one with a bad attitude is what we're saying here.

So when you come out the first time ever like this,

what's going through your head? What?

Tighten every bolt?

Yeah, seriously. I mean, all we want to do is not have something fall off the car and look like an idiot whose controller on

and, uh,

just to turn the fan and water pump on.

Ok.

You dyno

a motor, it makes power, but that doesn't mean it goes cleanly up on the brake. That doesn't mean it doesn't burn out cleanly. That doesn't mean it transitions 60 ft good. So, so all these things are the things we're about to find out. This is the moment of truth.

Both fast times drivers made soft passes on their first qualifying runs. No surprise there.

But Spiro, well, he was here to do more than just test his combination

and this quarter mile run in round two made his the fastest single turbo outlaw 10 5 car in the world.

We

got,

well, it was a record breaking day for other racers too

on drag, radial tires.

Shannon Ren became the first of his class to go 200 miles an hour on the quarter mile strip car is pretty new. So we're still working on trying to get it down the track

and uh new uh boost controller and

some uh, new tires, Mickey Thompson tires and everything's working pretty good.

Uh What's with the hood graphics there, Shannon.

Uh, we drink a lot of Jager so we figured, uh, that'd be a good scheme color scheme for a team.

Bill Fletcher's twin turbo Camaro broke a track record for this run

and became the second fastest 10 5 car ever.

How did that pass feel?

It's all pretty strong, real good. Invariably. I got asked the question. Are you gonna try to beat that?

I don't think so. I think we're gonna try to just maintain what we got and try to win. The race.

Decided not to go out yesterday in the second round,

we blew off

a two line that feeds the boost controller by the time we found what the problem was, the second round had come and gone.

What can you do?

I guess just go out and try to compete in elimination.

Jimmy Blackman also beat his teammate who red lighted here in semi finals

and although f

seemed like a shoe in, in his class,

he broke a rod on this round and Blackman coasted to a solo win

is a win and it's always good to start off with the

win.

Yeah, I mean, second race of the year we win

in the semis at the, the first race and we're done pretty good. Well, the new record holder Shannon R

earned it the hard way fighting his way to the finals and although the final round wasn't pretty,

it was good enough for a trip home with the top money.

I shook the tires real bad. Had to pedal it a couple of times, but I've seen that he blew up or whatever happened over there. So I just drove down through there.

It was great.

Well, congrats to all the racers who won broke a record or found a season tune up.

Oh. And

Mr Jaeger

Meister, I think you owe these guys a sponsorship.

Just a thought.

Another engine for another shot. All right.

All right. While Joe was living it up in Memphis, take a look at what buddy and I got dropped in our laps. It's a tired old small block that came out of a pickup that the trucks guys are working on next door.

The truck is a 66 C 10. Kevin and Ryan bought to build a classic unique daily driver. Everything was bone stock including the 283 small block

several months ago. They shortened the frame to make a short wheel base truck. All right, back to this

283. Now they want us to rebuild it again for a fundamental. No frills daily driver. Now, of course, we've got to tear it down first and we're gonna show you that process and also what to expect. Any time you get a small block ready for the machine chop,

we'll get started by draining the oil. Now, this motors pan came with a butterfly plug which makes for a slow drain

when you're done. Remember to recycle the old stuff in an oil only container

when using a band style oil filter. Wrench. You don't want to place it in the middle because it can crush the filter if you wanna place it at the top or the base.

Ok. Next plug we want to pull out will be the block plug to drain the water out of the block. Now, sometimes

like this one here, you don't get any water out of it

and there's a lot of crows you behind the plug

where you gotta just

chop it all out

and then it goes water.

After replacing the plugs, the front accessories can come off like the fan,

the alternator,

the front Paley and Bell.

Now we can remove the exhaust manifold.

Ok. This water pump was showing signs that was leaking out of the wheat pole, but you should always replace your water pump. And any time you do a rebuild, the $30 pump will take out over a $3000 rebuild.

Might as well pull the fuel pump next along with this cover plate and the piston behind it

followed by removing the plug wires, distributor

and spark plugs.

As you can see the back spark plug has got more oil burning on it than the next one due to warn rings with this old of an engine.

Ok. It is a cast iron intake manifold with two barrel carburetor on it good on gas mileage. But does nothing for performance. So we're gonna get rid of both of them.

Now, we can go ahead and start removing the valve train, starting with the rocker arm nuts. Now, this is extremely important. If you plan on reusing these pieces, it's an organizer tray,

we're not gonna be reusing any of this, so we don't need it. But if you don't put the stuff back in the original order, it came out,

you could get excessive wear

with a valve train gone.

We can remove the cylinder head bolts except for a couple we leave loose on each end.

This keeps the head from falling off while you're breaking loose from the gasket,

then remove the bolts and then remove the head.

Unlike later model blocks, the early GM blocks actually had a breather baffle located here in the Lifter valley. Now, that's because the valve covers didn't have breather holes located in them and it allowed the block to breathe out of the rear here

using a telescopic magnet from Matco.

Remove the lifters.

It works most of the time

I knew it had to be one of them

stuck. Ok. We've shown you how to tear this engine down to a short block and now it's time for us to take a break.

Yeah. And when we come back, we're gonna show you how to finish tearing this tied 283 down to its core. And let's go get a burger. All right, man. Let's do what we can do it. Take a ride on the car. Yeah, let me take a ride on a magic box here.

Ok, let's go.

We crashed.

All right. With all the fun aside, we're back to tearing down Kevin and Ryan's 283. Now we're showing you the proper way to disassemble a Chevy small block and get it ready for the machine shop in case you just joined us. Here's a look at what we've done so far.

We started by removing the front accessories

like the alternator pulleys and finally, the water pump followed by the heavy intake manifolding carb,

then the valve train components

and the cast iron cylinder heads. Now we need to remove the harmonic balancer

using this removal tool that also came from Mao

and done.

Ok. Next, we'll roll the engine over to give us access to the bottom

after removing a few bolts and a little persuasion take off the oil pan,

which is one of the few parts we are going to save

the oil filter adapter comes off next

and don't forget about the bypass housing

followed by the oil pump.

Now let's move up front

to unbolt the timing cover,

believe it or not, a timing chain can stretch out like an old lady's knee highs and this one here looks like it's been the way too many bingo games.

Now let's remove the chain and cam gear

and use that gear as a handle to remove the camshaft.

Don't worry about damaging the bearings because we're gonna replace those anyway.

And done.

As you can see, these rods have been numbered already. Number three,

you want a number, both sides of the rod,

top and bottom.

All right, if your connecting rods are not stamped, like these were, get yourself a set of number stamps like these.

If you don't have access to number stamps, I'm gonna show you how to do it with a simple center punch and a chisel.

You can use the chisel to mark the rods pointing to the front of the engine,

then use a center punch to number the rods

and done.

Now we can remove the rod caps.

They saw bolt boots to protect the crank

and remove the pistons and rods.

After un

bing the main caps, we can remove them.

Don't forget to mark them like we did with the rods

and done.

We're gonna be taking this gear off once we get the crank on the bench.

As some of you can tell with the larger parting line, it's a steel crank. If it was a cast crank, it would have a finer parting line

man. There are a lot of parts for your hands being so clean. Yeah, I believe in soap and water.

All right. Now we've got a torn down small block that's ready to go to the machine shop. Now it's gonna go for a long ride with buddy. So he can do all the machine work and he'll bring it back, ready to reassemble and go back in that C 10 over on trucks

and done.

If you're using an A E I ignition system, the key to better performance is a good distributor and coil that work together. Now, that's what patrons

had in mind when they introduced the flamethrower distributor and coil combo. Now, compared to original OES, you get 67% more energy out of the coil for a 45% faster spark breakdown. Now, they had this set up for all your domestics

in both street and race applications.

Now, if you want to pick up one of these combos contact summit racing for prices on your application. Every engine needs wiring to work, especially in the if I motor like this, but it doesn't have to look messy. Thanks to a new kit from painless performance. It's designed to protect and clean up any wiring harness installation.

These ladder to cut braided wraps

can close up wiring bundles like this one

without the need of tape

or any additional fasteners. Of course, the kit comes with wraps in different diameters along with the supply of plastic ties to complete your professional looking neat installation price of the kit is just over 200 bucks.

Well, we're just about over our allotted time here on horsepower. Join us next time though, when we try out some cool new stuff on a pair of GM Motors. We'll see you then.