HorsePower's First All-Alcohol Small Block

Ok, ladies and gents, it's our turn on this block of power. Now, normally we build a lot of street and strip type engines to appeal to the journal performance enthusiast.

Well, for example, like our 69 Royal Bird Firebird Chuck 69 Chevelle with the big blower motor, our 98 Ss Camaro with the pro charger, the Monte Carlo and even the Edelbrock track car.

But today we're focusing on a race only engine and we can't do that without talking about alcohol. Now, it's not the kind that'll put you under the table, but the kind that'll get you to the finish line faster.

Pure Methanol, also known as methyl alcohol is a required fuel used in champ cars, monster trucks, usa sprint cars and dirt track series like the world of outlaws. It's also used by all types of drag racers, whether it's a 70 index car or a wild outlaw 10 5 call

before you play with it. You need to know the history about it.

Now, ancient Egyptians actually used a raw form of Methanol and some other chemicals for their embalming process back then. Methanol was a by product of wood it wasn't until 1923. German chemists found a way to convert synthesis gas into methanol. It didn't take long for racers to figure out that King tut had something going for them too.

Power crazed open real racers figured out it was a fuel that made the cars faster and it was safer to burn than gasoline.

In fact, in 1964 the American Indy Car Series made the switch to Methanol after a bad crash and explosion at the Indy 500 it killed two drivers

and they kept that mandated for 42 years.

In 2006, they made the switch to ethanol.

The largest use of methanol by far is in making other products. Now, about 40% of methanol is converted into formaldehyde from there. It's used in products like plastics, plywood and even solvents. Now, if you're a person from a cold area, it's also used a windshield wiper fluid to keep it from freezing up.

Now, they also used it as an engine coolant back in the early 19 hundreds. And the Germans even used that as rocket fuel in World war two.

That's some of the history now, back to our world and why racers like to use it so much.

Now, Methanol actually burns cooler and slower than gasoline and an engine burning. Methanol will actually burn a little more than two times the amount of fuel than a gasoline engine.

The more fuel you can get into the cylinder and burn efficiently.

The more energy you're going to create

the spark plug gap will have to be tighter. So the spark is more powerful to light off the extra fuel.

When you mix that with the cold dense air charge, the alcohol makes the engine is going to make more power and a lot more torque

running. Alcohol won't always gain top end horsepower, but the torque gains can be massive and you'll see it where you need it. Most, a lot more than gasoline

tuning is simple. Most alcohol racers go off VGTS and spark plug readings to tune their engine plus alcohol only costs about $2 a gallon race gas 5 to 7.

So over a three day event do the math. You're gonna save some money.

The cooling effects of the fuel are huge. It's really hard to overheat an alcohol engine plus the density altitude changes don't affect the alcohol as much as the gasoline engines.

Another reason to run alcohol over gas is gas is dirty,

you'll end up getting carbon build ups, foul plugs and sooner or later the smell is gonna become part of your persona. Now, if all this alcohol stuff is new to you, it's really not that scary. Here's the easiest way to tackle it first, we teamed up with a company called Patriot Performance and earlier today we took delivery of one of their crate engines.

It's a 383 Q

can small block Chevy designed to run on alcohol that'll make 600 plus natural aspirated horsepower.

The best of all you'll be able to buy it as a crate engine direct from them

to make that kind of reliable power. It uses a dart S HP block Patriot heads, Eagle Fords rotating assembly with flat top pistons

and a Howard's +47 swap solid roller camshaft.

But the only way to show you the design of this engine compared to a gas burner is blow it all apart. And that's exactly what I did. Now, when we come back from the break, we're gonna take you to Patriot Performance and show you how they design and machine their custom parts. Then I'll reassemble it, show you how all the components work together and prove it on the

dyno.

Welcome back to Horsepower's Alcohol Engine project.

Today, we're following the lead of a lot of outlaw racers who made the move to Methanol for its power potential.

Of course, no matter what kind of fuel you use, racing is a pricey passion.

Money may not buy you happiness.

Uh But what else is gonna get you that new set of tires or engine part you need. My heart's always been a racing love racing race for years. I couldn't afford it. Marty Wits been there

and that's the reason behind the philosophy of his Cove

Patriot performance,

offering quality and performance that's affordable to the average guy

today. This company is one of the largest suppliers of ported heads

for small block Fords and Chevys. Big block Chevys LS and modular Ford Motors

is five CNC machines. See, very little downtime

getting the flow.

That's like black magic. I mean, it's a touch and feel.

I did it out of my house before I had a flow bench.

If I was there moving through a head that's, you know, I, I'd want the easiest route in the smoothest way and that's

how I used to do it

here. They designed their own special CNC programs for runners and combustion chambers,

got everything that we need

to do it correctly and uh and get what we need out of start from a raw casting in with a nice finish piece of,

you know, the end of the day, you know,

these days, it's not just about heads, they also build engine packages for all kinds of enthusiasts,

even a couple of horsepower guys hoping to try out an alcohol burning small block. You'll see all the parts we're using for hours later. But now a closer look at some of the work that goes into it.

In addition to CNC, porting heads are carefully detailed to remove any slight leftover roughness.

Cylinder head porting is more about how well the air flows than it is about port side.

The same goes for combustion chambers. The material removed should not increase the chamber size by more than AC C or two.

This company has spent a lot of time developing a proprietary valve seat design for heads as well.

Marty's facility also has a flow bench that gets constant use, verifying the quality control of finish race ready heads.

The guys here not only supply heads and engines to racers. Well, they walk the walk too.

For example, engine assembler, Neil Hawkins here races this beautiful Mustang in

Oska's modified street class.

Marty just built a new car to compete in limited street.

Plus he spends many hours supporting part time racers at tracks throughout the south.

It helps. I think a huge amount of being out there with the racer supporting them. Uh Putting on racing.

Yeah, a lot of grassroots racers stay on track with the help of a little homegrown company in Alabama.

Bunch of your heads who never give up their quest for the perfect performance cylinder head and

I've been doing it for 18 years

and I still learn stuff once I start on the head and design a new intake runners or whatever. I learn stuff every day that I do it

to ensure all the engines make the rated horsepower and the parts stay consistent every fourth or fifth engine is actually ran on the dyno. Now, that's good quality control. Now, when we come back from the break, you're gonna see us assemble our small block running on our dyno on alcohol. Make sure you stay tuned

today. It's all about alcohol

moments ago. You saw some of the science and skill involved in prepping the right parts for a small block alcohol engine. Now it's time for us to put this one together.

The rotating assembly gets planted in this cast iron block from

that comes precision machine and clearance for 375 stroke.

It's got a priority oiling system which means oil is directed to the mains. First for more complete lubrication.

It's got an extra thick deck for good gasket ceiling and all the boat holes are blind.

The crank is an Eagle Ford steel piece with a 375 inch stroke and radius rod journals. One major characteristic of an alcohol engine is the high compression ratio.

Now, with all the extra fuel being introduced to the cylinder, you're gonna take up more volume. Now with the mixture of a lot stronger spark, you're gonna make more power than gasoline engine. It's gonna force the piston down harder and you're gonna make more horsepower and torque.

Getting more compression starts with these forged flattop pistons with valve reliefs.

The rods are forged H beams and we'll hold the caps in place with a RP bolts

and torque them to 63 ft pounds.

The cam is a solid roller from Howard's operating range is 3200 to 7000 RPM and duration at 50 thousands lift is 260 on the intake 264 on the exhaust plus it's ground for +47 swap which we'll get into a little later on.

Naturally. This engine uses a double roller timing set

and with the cover bolted up, we can finish up front with the balancer

and aluminum high volume water pump

back on bottom. We're installing one of Mel's

high volume oil pumps before bolting up the seven quart pan.

Next, an oil filter adapter in place, finishes up the bottom end

with lots of lube, we can drop in a set of howard solid roller lifters.

And with this set up, remember the tie bars go inside facing the cam shaft.

Here's something kind of interesting about these

fro 1094 steel shim gaskets. They've got a compressed thickness of only 15 thousands

and they require the machine surface of the block and heads to be 60 R MS or smoother. Now, that's basically a scale used to measure the smoothness of a surface, for example, glass

as an R MS rating of four

as a rule of thumb or thumbnail. I guess if you can't catch the machine surface with your fingernail,

you should be fine.

We know we're good with these Patriot performance cylinder heads because they have a rating of right around 50.

Now, of course, you saw how they were reported and polished. Now, as far as the sizes go, we have 225 CC intake runners and the 64 CC combustion chamber. Now, mixture of the piston height, the combustion chamber is gonna give us our 12.5 to 1 compression ratio.

The valves measure in at 208 on the intake, which is gonna allow us to get more air and alcohol into the cylinder. And as long as we can burn it efficiently, it's gonna make big power. The exhaust valve measures in at 160.

The springs come with Titanium retainers and can handle a max lift of 700 1000th of an inch.

We're using a RP assembly lube and their bolts

torquing them to 65 ft pounds

to move those big valves. We've got a set of hardened push rods

and for Rocker arms, a set of scorpions with a 1.5 ratio.

Since the valve train is a solid roller set up, we need to lash the intake and exhaust at 24 thousands.

Finally, this billet Girdle goes on the studs to prevent them from deflecting under heavy loads.

Edelbrock Super Victor intake manifold is a favorite among guys who race with alcohol. The direct line of sight flow path means more air flow

and the extended cross sectional area. The runners is good for making torque in the three grand to 8500 RPM range.

Well, Mike gets the motor ready to swing over to

a dyno cart.

I'm gonna drain all the gasoline out of our Dinos

fuel cell here. That's to make way for this.

It's a 55 gallon drum of Methanol

like natural gas. Alcohol has no odor.

That's why some guys somewhere adds a stink to it for safety reasons.

Alcohol also has no lubrication properties

and that can cause cylinder wash down and excessive wear. Well, some real smart guy came up with a solution to both issues.

A bottle of this stuff. It contains a lubricant. It also adds an odor. So you know, you're handling alcohol instead of well, water,

you can get it in all kinds of scents. We went with cherry bob.

You can also get strawberry blueberry watermelon, pina colada.

Hey, what do you want?

All joking aside, you need to be really careful and avoid splashing this stuff on your skin or handling it in a confined space.

If enough build up is allowed, it oxidizes forms formaldehyde and causes blindness and even insanity.

Like we said earlier, an alcohol engine will burn over twice the amount of fuel as a gas burner. So you got to step up the size of the carburetor as well. For that. We went with the Ha Haley HP series race car. It's 950 CFM. And the main difference from the gas version is larger circuitry and the calibration to flow more fuel.

So are the jets 100 and 40 fours compared to 70 nines on the gas. 950.

The squirters are also larger measuring 55 versus 30 ones for the gas.

Plus it's got stainless steel throttle blades and needles to help prevent corrosion. Now, when we come back from the break, we'll show you how to complete that +47 swap on the camshaft.

You're watching horsepower for a DVD copy of this episode. Just go to Power Block tv.com and order your copy for just 595 plus shipping and handling. Start your own horsepower collection delivered right to your door from the power block

horse. Power is on alcohol today. At least our small block Chevy is and we're about to wind up this project with the ultimate power test.

We started out with a trip to Patriot performance where our aluminum heads were CNC machine

hoarded and polished.

These guys have developed a race ready alcohol crate engine which we blew apart to show you how it goes together

complete with a Stroker crank flat top pistons

and the cam specially ground for a 47 swap

after boating up their heads and finishing the foul train,

we dropped on a super Victor single plane intake manifold.

Then came the juice, a barrel of Methanol we enhanced with cherry scented top in loop for more fuel flow. We opted for this highly HP race car

before our first all alcohol engine test. I'm dumping the mechanical water pump and installing our electric pump that's already plumb for the

dyno.

This bronze gear drives our MS D pro billet distributor that's got a mechanical advance and high output pickup to trigger the ignition.

We mentioned the cam is ground for a 47 swap. What that is really is a firing order change that moves the power stroke from 4 to 7 and well, vice versa. Now, to complete it, you also got to swap out the seven and four plug wires

here on the distributor.

Some engine builders claim they get a lot more horsepower with high performance engines with this 47 swap. In fact, we made eight more on one of our test motors a few years ago,

maybe the same critical work on this thing.

We don't usually use headers with egt bugs in here, but this time we're gonna tune our engine using exhaust gas chip, your readings from our plug.

That's about all we know about making power with alcohol except of course, how much the Chevy can make in our dyno Cell.

Wow.

591 horsepower, 560 ft pounds of torque. A

good start.

That is just with 33 degrees timing.

Let's push it up all the way to 39 degrees. This time,

588 we're down. It didn't like that much more timing. Shut her down.

Go read a plug,

alcohol racers tune at the track by plug readings. Now, you can tell by this plug, the ground strap has a discoloration towards the inside of the strap that's showing we're a little bit too far advanced. So let's take out a couple of degrees and see what happens.

All right, we're going in the right direction. We sure are 602. We're getting closer to that sweet spot for sure.

Let's see if 35 degrees. Is it

all right? Let's see what she'll do.

So take it to six grand,

6 16 575 ft pounds of torque.

That little thing is making some power 383 inches.

That thing was grunting for a little small ball.

It's probably a couple more horses in there and we could find it if we had time to look for it. But think about this,

that's about 100 60 horsepower. More than a same size gasoline engine with lower compression. Of course, basically the same parts and same price.

No wonder racers are hooked on alcohol.

Well, you just passed your alcohol 101 test.

Now you can go out there and use that knowledge. Oh, but don't forget to come back next time. We'll see you.