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JUNE 2021 / EngineBuilderMag.com

ADDING HORSEPOWER THROUGH SUPERCHARGING IN THIS ISSUE ■ SHOP EMPLOYEES

■ TIMING PARTS

■ INSIDE EFI U

■ INTAKE MANIFOLDS

■ ENGINE TUNING

■ SUBARU’S WRX

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ContentsJUNE 2021

ADDING POWER WITH

SUPERCHARGERS........ 18 REVVED UP | GREG JONES .................. 4 SHOP SOLUTIONS ................................... 6 GARAGE GUY ............................................ 8 EDUCATION & TRAINING IN 2021 ..... 10 ENGINE OF THE MONTH ........................ 24 REBUILDING SUBARU’S WRX ............ 28 DIESEL OF THE MONTH ......................... 38 INSIDE EFI UNIVERSITY....................... 52 FINISH LINE | CLASSIFIEDS............... 55 LAST SHOT .............................................. 56 2 ENGINEBUILDERmag.com | JUNE 2021

ENGINE SHOP EMPLOYEES .................................14 GREG JONES | EDITOR

Greg Jones Editor gjones@babcox.com

Randy Loeser Publisher rloeser@babcox.com

Brendan Baker Technical Editor bbaker@babcox.com

David Benson Multimedia Sales Manager dbenson@babcox.com

RJ Pooch Art Director rpooch@babcox.com

Christine Perry Print Ad Coordinator cperry@babcox.com

EDITORIAL

AUDIENCE & DATA SERVICES

Frank Bird Group Publisher, Brand Operations and Development fbird@babcox.com

Brandi Gangel Vice President of Audience Data & Marketing bgangel@babcox.com

CREATIVE

Bruce Kratofil Audience Insights Manager bkratofil@babcox.com

Nichole Anderson Director of Corporate Design

DIGITAL

INTAKE MANIFOLDS .............................................40 BRENDAN BAKER | TECHNICAL EDITOR

Michael Madej Executive Director of Digital Development & Sales Amanda Wingerter Digital Ad Services Coordinator awingerter@babcox.com Randy Loeser Executive Director, Video & Content Services rloeser@babcox.com Jon Nelson Video Production jnelson@babcox.com

BUSINESS LEADERSHIP

TIMING CHAINS ....................................................44 BRENDAN BAKER | TECHNICAL EDITOR

Bill Babcox CEO Greg Cira President Mike Maleski Executive Vice President Sean Donohue Vice President of Sales Brandi Gangel Vice President of Audience Data & Marketing

Melissa Kollar Social Media and Digital Audience Manager mkollar@babcox.com

SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES Pat Robinson Audience Development and Production Manager probinson@babcox.com

ADVERTISING SERVICES Kelly McAleese Ad Services Director kmcaleese@babcox.com

REGIONAL SALES MANAGERS Bobbie Adams; Brian Ankney; Doug Basford; David Benson; Don Hemming; Karen Kaim; Cathy Kulwicki; Sandy Murphy; Scott Schumacker

ACCOUNTING

Jim Merle Vice President/Group Publisher

Beth Scheetz Controller

Dean Martin Vice President/Group Publisher

Kathy Bogdan Accounts Receivable kbogdan@babcox.com

IN MEMORIAM

O2 SENSORS AND TUNING.................................48 DAMON KUSKIE | CONTRIBUTOR

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Edward S. Babcox Founder (1885-1970) Tom B. Babcox Chairman (1919-1995)

JUNE 2021 | ENGINEBUILDERmag.com

3

REVVED UP Greg Jones | Editor

Science vs. Religion S

omething I sometimes take for granted in this industry is the amount of knowledge at our disposal. It comes from all walks of life, different ages, genders, regions, as well as from different areas of manufacturing, development, engine building, racing, you name it. We have some very smart, talented people helping spread information throughout our industry. We also have some characters too, but that comes with the territory, and who doesn’t like a little fun?

I say that I take our industry’s knowledge for granted sometimes because a lot of what we talk about and cover when it comes to engine building can get repetitive at times. Engines only have so many components, and some don't change too drastically very often. However, nothing reinvigorates you like hearing from or talking to someone with a fresh perspective, or someone who can explain complex, highly technical subject matter in an easy-to-understand way or an entertaining way.

I’ve had the opportunity over the past seven years now to speak with some of the industry’s brightest minds on nearly a weekly basis. I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with guys like Gale Banks, Pat Musi, Steve Morris, Charlie Buck Jr., Drew Pumphrey, Jared Alderson, Tom Lieb, Lake Speed Jr., Billy Godbold, Ken Tyger, and more – if I left your name off this list, please don’t feel offended. There’s a ton you smart men and women out there!

Someone I recently got to speak with a few times in the past month is Ben Strader of EFI University. He’s just one of those guys that oozes enthusiasm, pride and joy for talking about engines, racing and making motorsports better.

That’s fitting because he teaches for a living and passes along knowledge to thousands of tuners and engine builders either looking to get into this industry or advance themselves further in this industry.

Something he said to me recently that struck a chord was that a lot of engine builders and racers learn so much of what they do based on religion.

What he meant by that is most people look around to see who the fastest guy is or who’s winning all the races. They want to know what equipment they have and what procedures they do, and that’s what they want to do too.

In Ben’s words, it’s really difficult to move forward and expand the performance envelope if all you’re ever doing is copying somebody else

4 ENGINEBUILDERmag.com | JUNE 2021

and never really knowing why or how that works.

Therefore, he ensures his EFI U classes and courses have a full dose of science, math and data behind them, which is the opposite of religion.

Science refuses to accept any contradictions and always digs farther to find the result, find the answer, to find out why. EFI U uses a lot of math, physics and science as well as test data to teach its students how to never accept ‘because I said so’ or ‘because I won’ as an answer.

Many engine builders and racers get stuck in that hamster wheel of doing something simply because someone else is or told them to. Ben says he teaches a lot differently than that and I think that’s why so many people have such a great experience getting involved with courses at EFI U. It’s refreshing to learn from somebody who gives you the tools to teach yourself rather than standing up and telling you to simply take their word for it.

I thought that was refreshing and certainly captured many people in this industry. You can read much more about Ben Strader and EFI U on page 52, as well as about several other ways to gain more knowledge in this industry throughout this issue. What side of the coin do you fall on – science or religion? EB

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ENGINE BUILDER SHOP SOLUTIONS

WATCH FOR THE GROUND STRAP

QUICK T-NUTS

This happens far too often. After servicing late Chrysler Hemi heads, they’re back within a day or two. If the installer is not careful, they get the ground strap between the head and the gasket during installation. Once they are torqued down, the damage happens and leaks will appear at start up. The head will be back for repair. I try to warn the customers to be aware when they pick up their heads the first time.

Start with a carriage bolt with a head diameter 1/4˝ larger than the bottom of the T-slot. Be sure the bolt’s square shank fits easily into the T-slot. Chuck the bolt in the lathe, drill and tap through the head to a depth just beyond the end of the square shank. (If the bolt has a little run-out, it won’t matter.)

The distance from under the bolt’s head to the top of the head cannot be greater than the clearance gap of the T-slot. Faceoff the bolt head as needed. Part off just past the square shank, so the distance from under the head is less than the thickness of the upper portion of the T-slot. Finish by grinding two parallel “flats” on the bolt head until it fits easily in the T-slot. This can be done quickly and easily by eye. I often need a few extra T-nuts, or I need a T-nut with a smaller

Tom Prodahl Cylinder Head Service Minneapolis, MN

LS SPRING HEIGHT Measuring installed height on LS or any other engine with beehive or small OD retainers can be tricky without a special height mic.

But if you take your standard height mic and flip it upside down, it will work. You will likely have to take a measurement without the locator installed, so just subtract the locator thickness from your reading.

Nick Jones Automotive Machine Fraser, MI

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ENGINE BUILDER SHOP SOLUTIONS

imperial thread or a metric thread than what comes with clamping kits.

Tom Nichols Automotive Machine & Supply, Inc Cleburne, TX

THRUST WATCH As engine builders we always make sure the crankshaft thrust is proper before assembling the rest of the engine. I believe we should also be measuring it again when it is in the vehicle, because there are so many possible flywheel/clutch, torque converter and transmission combinations that it is important to verify components that are coupled to the engine are not causing problems. I believe that it would be a good idea to add to the customers engine check-off list if you are not performing the install.

Dave Matton D and D Auto Machine Bloomington, MN

brushing white vinegar on the eye of the connecting rod, after heating to install pistons, removes the blue. Put vinegar in a plastic container for dipping small parts and it works quickly. A couple minutes then a rinse and dry gets the blue out. The blue finish may not hurt anything, but it’s one less thing for some customers to question.

Randy Torvinen Torvinen’s Machine Menahga, MN

Engine Builder and Engine Pro present Shop Solutions in each issue of Engine Builder magazine and at enginebuildermag.com.

The feature is intended to provide machine shop owners and engine technicians the opportunity to share their knowledge to benefit the entire industry and their own shops.

GET IT STRAIGHT When balancing crankshafts, I feel it is imperative that the crank straightness be checked and corrected before any balance work is done to ensure accuracy. I have an offset indicator that I’ve come up with that mounts right in the mill drill on the machine. If I need to straighten a crank, I do so and verify before setting up for balance.

BLUE BE GONE

Shop Solutions – The Power of Knowledge

Ron Flood Cedar Machine North Branch, MN

Metal parts that are exposed to too much heat will turn a shade of blue. I found that

To submit a Shop Solution simply mail your entry to Engine Builder Magazine, Shop Solutions, 3550 Embassy Parkway, Akron, OH 44333; or email to Shop Solutions@enginebuildermag.com. Shop Solutions may also be emailed to shopsolutions@enginepro.com.You must include your name, shop name, shop address and shop telephone number. Submitted Shop Solutions not published will be kept on file and reevaluated for publication with each month’s new entries. If you include your email address you will be emailed notification of publication if your Shop Solution is chosen.

Those who submit Shop Solutions that are published are awarded a prepaid $100 Visa gift card.

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www.enginepro.com 1.800.ENGINE.1 JUNE 2021 | ENGINEBUILDERmag.com

7

GARAGE GUY Nathan Bush | CPR Engines

Start with the Basics

T

his column is for the young folks out there who believe they have passion for automotive performance. You see the people in this industry and you really want to get involved. I get a lot of calls and emails from these younger folks who want to maybe intern or come to the shop to learn. There’s always emphasis on the fact they are willing to learn.

A lot of people imagine they need to go to school in order to acquire the knowledge necessary to be able to do performance stuff. That is somewhat concerning to me, because the people I know who are pretty proficient at this stuff are mostly self-educated. Just understanding a piston engine should not be something you need to go to school for.

I liken the big UTI programs to acting coaches who have courses for people who think they’re going to be performing across from Denzel Washington in the next six months. People might have unrealistic ambitions about where they might fit into the industry. You might lack aptitude.

A lot of people imagine education is what’s missing that will help them have a light go off and understand this stuff, but there is a lot of aptitude involved.

If you’re going to get into automotive performance and you lack the basic knowledge of internal combustion – intake stroke, compression stroke, power stroke, exhaust stroke – if you don’t understand that stuff and can’t name the basic internal components to an engine, this doesn’t mean you can’t develop into a good technician. It just means that your development might be limited.

The other problem is if you feel like you are dependent upon outside sources to develop you such as a school.

To me that is a big red flag, because it tells me you lack the integrity to get the information. You don’t possess the natural curiosity that would have you Google internal combustion engine and read about it and study it.

For me, I was ripping through my dad’s automotive repair manuals as a little kid. By 7 years old, I understood internal combustion. I knew the compression ratio, the bore and stroke of my dad’s 460 – 4.36˝ x 3.85˝, 72cc combustion chamber, 2.19˝ intake valve or whatever the case may be. I was fascinated by that stuff. I was a kid that wanted to take stuff apart and put it back together.

I think a lot of people today are wrapped up in the hype about automotive performance. You see the videos. You hear the engines. You hear the cam sound and you want to go from A to Z without doing the prerequisites. You want to jump right into watching sloppy YouTube mechanics DIY cam swaps and you have no idea what the numbers represent.

The people who say they’re willing to learn are living in a delusion that they’re going to enter a business and out of the kindness of someone’s heart they’re going to pay you to drop the productivity of the business to hold your hand and train and develop you for the next year so you can actually do something that’s valuable. That’s unlikely.

Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with school, but if you’re going to try to be kicking ass in this industry, you better be a standout student. You can’t go to UTI and get a C or even a B. You better already have the prerequisite knowledge. If you don’t have any automotive knowledge now or understand anything about an engine, I would suggest this career path isn’t for you. You may not have the

“A lot of people today are wrapped up in the hype about automotive performance. You see the videos. You hear the engines. You hear the cam sound and you want to go from A to Z without doing the prerequisites.”

8 ENGINEBUILDERmag.com | JUNE 2021

aptitude or the integrity to make it here.

You’re looking for a big brother or father figure who is going to be responsible for developing you somehow.

Sure, my dad got me started, but that was it – just the basic seedlings of understanding. It’s been learning ever since. The point I’m trying to make is if you say you’re passionate about something, I would expect evidence. If you say you’re passionate about art and you’re going to be an artist, you better not be dependent on art school to develop you.

I better see some paintings happening because there’s always going to be some savant somewhere. There’s going to be people out there who are actually driven and determined and they’re teaching themselves.

If you have internet access and resources such as books available, but you haven’t bothered to do any of that and you think you’re going to go straight to a shop to get trained and developed.

No way. I’m not interested in people who are unable to contribute. It doesn’t matter how nice you are or your story or background. If you had real determination, grit, intent, and aptitude, you’d already be developing yourself.

When I get people that hit me up who aren’t doing anything except surfing YouTube and Instagram and being inspired by cam sounds and think they want to do something, yet there’s no real evidence they’ve made any moves and they imagine that it’s someone else’s responsibility for their development – that’s the YouTube culture. The information comes so easy that people don’t seem to want to be responsible for their own hands-on development. They think if they get into the right environment they’re going to learn by osmosis.

For those of you who might have the passion and might not have the knowledge yet, it’s not too late. It might sound like I’m trying to discourage you, but I’m trying to ground you in reality. A lot

of us put ourselves on a developmental track a lot earlier by understanding the basics. Trying to jump into performance without the ABCs or terminology of an internal combustion engine is setting yourself up for disappointment and failure.

If you go to school, you can learn how to do a brake job and operate certain equipment, but if you want to be dynamic and have an expansive intelligence around what’s going on performancewise, it’s going to start with a foundation of prerequisite understanding, so you can comprehend things. You need to know more than just the right answers.

For instance, what’s the right cam for this engine? Well, you should understand what all goes into that equation and why.

Understand how a camshaft works and the four cycles of internal combustion.

If you can’t calculate the displacement of an engine or the compression ratio then those are things you should want to understand. If you can’t explain how an engine transforms the energy from fuel into torque, then trying to jump in on performance and imagining a career there could be a dead end.

It doesn’t mean it will or that you won’t find an angel intellectual who’s going to take you under their wing and give you all the knowledge, but there’s something different about the people who are coming up today in the performance scene where they want to go from nothing to 1,000 horsepower and don’t care about the little steps in between. That’s what’s missing in people’s true development.

That’s problematic in the Information Age, and points to a disconnection with respect to what it takes or what true passion is. If you are really down for this stuff, I would expect more than “willing to learn” or someone who imagines someone else teaching them. We all learn from others and had people that contributed to our knowledge, but we have to pull it towards us. We have to be curious, not just interested. That insatiable

curiosity that can keep you up at night imagining things! If you don’t have that, you ain’t got it. EB

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9

EDUCATION & TRAINING IN 2021 BRENDAN BAKER | TECHNICAL EDITOR

We often hear from shops looking to hire new employees. They want young guns who are eager to work and have experience. Many of these same shops say there isn’t enough good talent coming out of technical schools and that they’d have to train them anyway. But our argument is, why take on a new hire who has no clue about the industry and zero experience?

Today’s tech schools are preparing students to work in all areas of the industry, from racing teams to engine shops. But, how much do they know after graduation? We talked to Paul Higgins, a longtime instructor and race team coach for the University of Northwestern Ohio (UNOH), to find out.

Higgins says that UNOH offers multiple automotive degree programs within the School of Technology. The High-Performance Program is separate from some other programs, but students may combine majors or concentrations with dual degrees.

“Students can get either a high-performance diploma or an associate degree,” Higgins says. The diploma program is 28 months, whereas the associate degree is 33 months. “There are also programs where students can combine automotive and high-performance, or diesel and high-performance, but typically the high-performance program itself is a standalone program. Some students choose to do a dual program or a multi-program.”

According to Higgins, a student may complete his or her associate degree in the college of technologies and then transfer that into a bachelor’s degree program. “When you graduate in the college of technologies with an associate’s degree, you have the option of taking an automotive management program, which you can go into and finish that out as a achelor’s degree in automotive management. If you came to the university and just wanted to take a straight bachelor’s degree in business marketing or sports marketing, or accounting, and you just did a typical college-type program, you would get into the high-performance end. But if you took the tech program, then you also have the latitude of being able to turn that into a bachelor’s program with added-on classes.”

Opened in 1920, UNOH was mainly a college for secretarial work. Over the years, the school and campus have expanded and today has about 4,000 students annually, studying everything from nursing and accounting to robotics and alternative fuels.

“Whether you’re in agricultural, HVAC, robotics, automotive, diesel, high-performance, alternate fuels, all of that is under the College of Applied Technologies,” Higgins notes. “There’s a College of Business, which is just straight business – accounting and business management programs. And then there’s the Graduate College for moving on into master’s degrees. There’s also healthcare.”

10 ENGINEBUILDERmag.com | JUNE 2021

Most of the students who come into the College of Technology are looking to either join a race team or work at a dealership or engine/hotrod shop, but some students have aspirations to run their own shop someday. These students would need some business and management classes as well as focusing on automotive technology or high performance.

“These folks do what we call the two-plus-two, which is a bachelor’s degree in automotive technology supervision,” Higgins explains. “It means taking the two-year tech classes, whichever course they desire in automotive. But, if you want to be an automotive shop owner, you’ll want to learn some more skills that will help you be a better owner, manager, etc.

Then it would be suggested to have them take the automotive tech program and add on automotive technology supervision, which goes into being a shop manager. Many students do that and then become service writers or dealership managers.”

Before the pandemic hit last year, Higgins says their attendance level was at a high. However, it’s been an enormous challenge to get through 2020, as it has been for nearly everyone on the planet. “We were doing well before the pandemic. Although, we are always looking to put more students in because we’re a private university that is tuition-driven. It’s a not-for-profit entity. Once the pandemic happened, we shut down from about April through August with no students on campus whatsoever. We did do a lot of virtual online classes for the general education classes. Many students, even though they’re in the tech program, have certain required GE classes, so we were able to teach those throughout the summer shutdown.

“Now that we have come back, the student population

is coming back too. They still have to wear masks and social distance. That can be a challenge in such a hands-on teaching environment as automotive and racing.”

Speaking of racing: the high-performance curriculum covers everything from circle track to drag racing. “We cover all the different aspects and don’t just stick to one type of racing,” Higgins says. “In our steering/suspension class, they’ll include circle track asphalt, dirt, drag racing, and even offroad racing. There’s a little bit of everything.”

UNOH also offers a driveline class in the highperformance program. “We have our high-performance drive lines classes, which I always say goes from the back of the motor to the tires,” he says. “Whether it’s a clutch-style driveline, automatic-style driveline, we go through all the different racing clutch applications, racing transmissions, both automatic and manual. For differentials, we cover quick changes, narrowing rear-ends for dragsters, drag car rear-end set up, dirt car set up all the way out to the tires. It’s basically anything from the back of the crankshaft to where the power hits the ground.”

While there’s plenty of classroom work and general education studies, the bulk of students’ time is spent working on something with their hands.

“Probably a good 70% of our classes are hands-on,” states Higgins. “They’re tearing apart everything from Jericos and Bert’s for the dirt guys to some asphalt transmissions and the Powerglide, because that’s big in grassroots drag racing.”

Higgins says they have several machining classes along with some prerequisites in engine repair on the engine side of things. “We have a basic engine machining class, which

JUNE 2021 | ENGINEBUILDERmag.com

11

EDUCATION & TRAINING

UNOH has a racing team run by the students. It’s an extracurricular activity in which students have to maintain a certain grade-point average to be selected for the team.

The Best Free Class You’ll Ever Take Aside from the High-Performance program, UNOH runs a racing team that the students run.

It’s an extracurricular activity in which the students have to maintain a certain grade-point average to be selected for the team.

“The team started in 2006, and we worked out of the back of the 600 building back then,” says Paul Higgins, who coaches the racing team when he’s not teaching. “In 2013, we moved into our own building. We have our own high-performance motorsports team complex, which is separate from the high-performance program.”

Higgins notes that the team works in the shop four hours a day during the week to prepare their fleet of racecars for the weekend events at Limaland Speedway nearby. Higgins explains to student racers every year, “It’s the best free class you’ll ever take.” And that is not a joke.

The team has its own tractor-trailer and has traveled as far as Florida for championship races at the end of the year. This year may be slightly different because of COVID restrictions, but they are still planning an entire season at Limaland.

From working on the race team and graduating from the high-performance program, Higgins’ students and racers have gone on to more extraordinary things such as IndyCar, NHRA, NASCAR, and various performance shops throughout the country. UNOH has a formula that works, and students and shops are better off because of it.

12 ENGINEBUILDERmag.com | JUNE 2021

the prerequisite would be automotive engine diagnosis and repair, where they learn to take engines apart, do the measurements on an OEM-based engine. In engine machining, we teach them the typical machine shop procedures performed in a typical machine shop: valve guides, valve seats, cutting valve seats, power hones, block surfacers, head surfacers, align hone, and things like that.

There are 13 different areas where the students have to test off of in that class to get proficiency on their procedures.

After that, there is a custom engine building class where we take it to another level with some more exotic equipment, CNC machining, CNC-controlled hones, etc. In that class, there are more errors they have to be proficient is solving. A benefit in that class is if they have their own project, they could then theoretically build an engine for themselves or one of the school’s training aids or one of our school race cars.”

Higgins says that most of the motorsports team engines are now built by the team. Students also have the option of taking the high-performance fuels class. “This is anything to do with tuning the engine, the chassis dynos, or waterbreak engine dynos. On a side note, UNOH used to host the Engine Masters Challenge for quite a few years, so they have a lot of understanding and a great facility for dyno projects.

“In the fuels class, we start with what makes the engine work: airflow, the combustion process, and all that. Then we get into head porting and flow testing with our flow benches. We start with carbureted engines and then move into EFI.” Higgins says that when students get into EFI tuning, they typically use HP Tuner because students will go in and edit the fuel maps. “They just want to go in and reedit stuff. We work with everything from my LS Chevy running on HP tuners to small-block Chevy’s running Holley EFI. They’re easy-to-learn systems that are fully programmable. We tune power adders too, now and then, depending on what we’ve got on the dynos.”

Higgins adds that the school has a couple of dedicated dyno mules that run on the chassis and engine dyno every day, and the students do blow them up every so often.

“We have pretty good success on the chassis dynos, but the engine dynos are more of a challenge. We built one that was a 520 hp small block that we ran on the engine dyno.

I usually figure that every class will put about 300 runs on a dyno engine in six weeks. We have classes three times a day, so that’s a possibility of 900 dyno pulls in six weeks, and we run eight sessions a year, so that motor went for four years before it finally broke.” EB

ENGINE SHOP

EMPLOYEES GREG JONES | EDITOR

You never know when you’ll be in the market for a new employee. You may be fully staffed right now, but what if you were to expand your shop, offer additional services, or need the extra manpower to handle the increased work volume? Or, what if you were to lose an employee to the competition?

In any situation, would you be prepared to handle that void and know where to begin your search for a replacement employee? Even if you did, are you going to find a qualified employee who has the skills and motivation needed in this industry to succeed?

With the goal of providing you with some insight and ideas on the best ways to recruit new employees for your shop, we asked our Instagram audience for their input on the topic, as well as a couple shop owners who have recently gone through the hiring process.

In our Instagram poll, 40% of respondents said they had hired new employees recently and 76% said it was not an easy task. Of those shops that hired new employees, 52% said their new hires were doing a good job and 48% said they were not.

We then asked where they had found their employees and the answers, as expected, varied quite a bit. Shop owners used anything from job sites such as Craigslist, Facebook, Indeed, LinkedIn and ZipRecuiter to more traditional avenues such as other shops, dealerships and tech schools. However, friend recommendations and word of mouth was still near the top of the list as the most common method. That seems to be for a good reason too.

“Those relationships in the industry hands down would be the biggest asset,” says Kill Devil Diesel owner Jared Alderson. “There’s a lot of tools out there for hiring people and

There are many tools available to shop owners to find qualified employees. However, word of mouth and recommendations from an inner circle are still rated as a top source.

14 ENGINEBUILDERmag.com | JUNE 2021

getting your position in front of a big audience like with Indeed and ZipRecruiter. Those are great, but ultimately, the people in your circle or your extended circle, are part of your circle for a reason. The more you can pluck from that circle, the closer fit they might be. Not always, obviously. There are tons of good candidates out there we don’t even know exist yet.

“However, our best hires for sure have been the people that have the drive and want to learn.

They’re not just looking for a job, they want this job. They want to learn and they want to get their foot in the door in the industry or they’re enthusiasts. That motivation factor is definitely huge.”

Alderson isn’t alone in this mentality.

Whether shop candidates have any prior experience or not, the biggest factor to whether they will ultimately succeed depends on their drive and determination to want to be there and learn in an effort to be more helpful in the shop.

The problem is finding folks with that drive.

“Everybody wants to be involved in this stuff until they realize what it takes to actually do it,” says Graham Jones of FastTimes Motorworks.

“The technical ability just seems like it’s not there with most of the current generations.

Trying to get anybody to want to do anything at all seems like it’s next to impossible.”

Not every shop has this issue, however, as many of the larger, bigger-name motorsports outfits typically get the pick of the litter when it comes to best candidates, since those shops are attractive destinations for younger talent. While this might be part of the reality, those shops are the 1% of the industry. The majority of engine shops around the country are in desperate need of additional manpower, especially today when

demand for engines and engine components is sky high.

“We’ve been very busy, which is certainly a blessing given the times, but the growth and keeping up with the overwhelming demand of orders and customers doesn’t happen overnight,” Alderson says. “Most customers are pretty receptive to that, but some customers, in the Amazon age that we live in, want instant gratification. We are still a small, family owned business here in rural North Carolina and it can be difficult to respond to growth.”

In fact, Kill Devil Diesel has double its staff in each of the past two years, and hired five employees in the last three or four months alone, bringing Alderson’s diesel shop to 16 total, which comes with a number of pros and cons.

“We’ve hired five people over the last three or four months now,” he says. “That’s been hugely helpful because that’s freed up some of our other employees to learn some of the more advanced machining to assume more of those responsibilities through the day. We could still hire another one or two people right now today.

However, we need a certain sense of stability. We don’t want to hire 20 people in a month. It also kind of slows you down before you can speed up to get them trained and get them up to speed.

It’s just part of it.”

In order to get new employees acclimated and to see if they sink or swim, Alderson says many new shop employees start in the disassembly/cleaning area.

“A lot of times we’ll start new hires in some of the disassembly/cleaning phase, because it helps show whether they have the discipline to do more or learn more,” he says. “It also allows

them to learn the parts and the nuts and bolts.

It’s a good proving ground before we can trust them with higher-level tasks like operating the CNC machine or assembling heads or assembling an engine.”

One thing on Alderson’s mind has been trying to keep up with the growth of his business, but also not growing too fast to the point where if an outside influence changed the amount of business coming in, he can still adapt.

“The hard part has been that these are uncertain times,” Alderson says. “To make the commitment to hire someone or not, I don’t want to hire someone and then six months later tell them sorry, we don’t need you anymore.

That’s not fair to them and I don’t want to operate like that.

“You could hire just a warm body to come in and help, but in this industry you’ve got to be fairly selective and that’s the hard part. We could hire someone today, but we don’t want to end up with a huge attrition rate and a huge fallout rate where you’re always training new employees.

That’s so dangerous, especially from a combined wealth of knowledge of employees.

“If everyone has been doing it for years and years and years, the combined knowledge or combined experience of everyone is that much greater. If 60% of your workforce turns over every six months or a year, you never really accumulate that knowledge.”

Despite those worries, Kill Devil Diesel has been fortunate in the fact that its team has been functioning well, which Jared credits to many of his employees’ backgrounds in Monster Jam and the success of word of mouth recruiting.

“A lot of our employees came from Monster

“You could hire just a warm body to come in and help, but in this industry you’ve got to be fairly selective and that’s the hard part.”

-Jared Alderson

JUNE 2021 | ENGINEBUILDERmag.com

15

ENGINE SHOP EMPLOYEES

Recruiting is important.

Retention is doubly important.

It’s how you build up the combined experience and knowledge of your shop’s employees.

16 ENGINEBUILDERmag.com | JUNE 2021

Jam, as did I,” he says. “That gives us a little bit more of a unique, broad and diverse skillset that makes it easy to be flexibile. I’m able to have different guys run different machines or do tear down or machining or assembly. People can float a bit and cover where we’re busy or where we need help.

“We’ve been very fortunate that we have a very good group of guys. They say everything happens for a reason, so some of the other ones who didn’t call, didn’t show up and didn’t work out, hopefully that was for a reason. In hindsight, as bad as we needed them that day, I’m maybe glad that it took a couple weeks longer to find the “right” person. We haven’t gotten rid of anybody. There’s been some learning curves along the way, but we’ve been very fortunate that everyone has worked out.”

Not every shop is as fortunate to have finally come across the right employees for their open positions, and in some cases, those shops just have to keep on operating as is. An example is David’s Machine Shop in Georgia. Owner David Linder has had numerous employees come and go without making much of an impact.

“We haven’t found an avenue to get reliable employees,” says Linder. “After trying all these things, we’ve kind of resorted to the fact that we’re going to just stay a small shop. We’re going to stay four employees and stay six months behind on work.”

Something Alderson is excited about that should have benefits for his own shop employees and potential future employees is a partnership with a local community college.

“The College of the Albemarle school here by us has seen some of the same void that we are experiencing here looking for CNC operators in our area,” Alderson says. “They know there’s opportunities to teach people these skills, so they have a handful of CNC machines there and programs to teach the kids Fusion 360 and Mastercam and manual machining classes. We’re working with them on a two-way partnership to send some of our guys there who maybe know the nuts and bolts, but don’t have any formal machining experience to get formal training.

Also, we would love to work with them on an internship at our shop, so we’re trying to fine

tune exactly what that program will look like.

We’ve been in contact with several graduates or soon-to-be graduates from the program.”

As with any avenue for finding employees, schools aren’t always a sure-fire success. It still depends on the individual and, as stated before, whether they have the proper drive.

“I don’t think it’s the school’s fault,” Linder says. “I think they’ve got the same issue – they’ve got problems finding qualified people to go through their schools. I’ve looked at the knowledge and the technology [available in these schools], and it’s a killer deal. The students who are good at engine building don’t stay in your shop for long. The good ones have all kinds of opportunities.”

No matter what strategies you put in place in an effort to find new employees, just be sure that you cast a wide net and ensure that you find someone who has the desire to be in the shop, no matter what role it may be. That will ultimately be the differentiating factor between a successful employee and the one looking for yet another new job.

“Recruiting is important. Retention is doubly important,” Alderson says. “It’s interesting comparing notes with other people in the industry to try and get affirmation that we’re on the right track or we’re not the anomaly or an outlier when it comes to hiring new employees. Everyone we’ve talked to is trying to hire or has hired and they’re just trying to keep up. It’s been crazy. It really just highlights how important those relationships in the industry really are.” EB

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ADDING POWER WITH

SUPERCHARGERS GREG JONES | EDITOR

Whether it’s an OEM engine or a performance-built engine, the use of power adders continues to be a popular choice. Turbocharging, supercharging and nitrous are the primary options for adding power to your engine, and in a majority of builds and applications, turbochargers and superchargers are what people rely on most. You might be wondering why go with one over the other and what makes them different?.

Both superchargers and turbochargers serve as a replacement for displacement and help force more air into the engine.

With a turbo, you’re using the heat energy from the engine’s exhaust. A supercharger is driven off the engine’s crankshaft. Turbochargers capitalize on ‘free’ energy that would otherwise be lost through the exhaust.

Driving the turbo does increase exhaust backpressure, which puts some load on the engine, but the net loss

tends to be less when compared to the direct mechanical load that driving a supercharger involves. What most people notice is that superchargers can provide their boost almost instantly, whereas turbochargers typically suffer some lag to build pressure.

Obviously, in certain applications, wasting valuable time waiting for exhaust pressure to build isn’t an option, so a supercharger is employed.

In other instances, folks can’t afford to lose horsepower, so a turbo is a better option.

No matter how you choose to add boost to your engine, both superchargers and turbochargers can be great options depending on your engine and application, but we want to spend some time talking superchargers.

Supercharger Styles

Screw-style and Roots-style superchargers deliver instant horsepower.

18 ENGINEBUILDERmag.com | JUNE 2021

Superchargers have been in the market for a long time and there is a large variety to choose from to suit every need, car and budget. Your basic Roots supercharger is usually installed right where the intake manifold is. It uses spinning mesh lobes that throw air from one end to the other and the pressure builds up inside the intake manifold, letting in a gush of air in bursts.

A twin-screw supercharger whirls and draws in the air in a corkscrew

fashion. The air is compressed and then forced into the engine this way.

Then, you have centrifugal superchargers that use an impeller that distributes air by a strong centrifugal force where a diffuser turns the air into high pressure. Brands such as ProCharger, Vortech and TorqStorm are examples of this style of supercharger.

Centrifugal superchargers force air into the engine in a consistent stream rather than bursts.

“We’ve worked with all kinds of supercharger brands and companies,” says Doug Aitken, owner of Prestige Motorsports in Concord, NC. “We use a lot of side slingers or your centrifugal superchargers such as TorqStorm, Vortech and ProCharger. We’ve also dibbled and dabbled with your screwstyle superchargers such as Magnuson, Whipple and Kenne Bell, as well as your older Roots-style like Blower Shop or BDS.”

Pros and Cons of Superchargers

When it comes to superchargers, clearly there are a lot of options. These days, the customer usually has a desire to use a certain style of supercharger or might have a brand loyalty.

“If a customer asks me, what should I use? It just comes down to what the expectations are,” Aitken says. “We focus on accessory drives. Are they running AC or power steering? Do they want the power right now or to come in gradually depending on how the rest

of the car is built? Or, is it a drag piece?

Those are the main things, but a lot of times I think it’s just the customer saying what he wants and we give him pros and cons depending on what the rest of the car entails.”

As with anything to do with engine building, the pros and cons depends on the customer and their expectations and application.

“With a turbo, you’ve got all this plumbing,” Aitken says. “You’ve got your hot side and cold side and a lot of stuff going on, which not only costs money, but adds complexity to the system. Whereas with a supercharger, it’s going to retain all the accessories as well and you just bolt the blower on.

It doesn’t really disturb too much and you don’t have a whole bunch of extra piping complexity.

“But, when you get into certain combinations like an F3 ProCharger, which is a drag race deal, and maybe the customer is going to street drive it and wants AC, there’s really nothing out there for a front drive system. You have to make that stuff. A lot of customers want to be able to have their cake and eat it too, and it depends on what they’re doing and what their budget is. The reason we do so many different superchargers is mainly based on consumer demand.”

One downside to superchargers is in order to increase or decrease the amount of boost and power output going to the engine, you have to mechanically change pulley options.

“The nice thing with turbochargers

Supercharger types depend on the engine, the desired horsepower output and the application. Beyond that, some customers have certain brand loyalties. over any supercharger is you’re using a wastegate to control your boost.” he says. “That’s nice because you don’t have to mechanically work on changing pulley options and stuff like that. That’s a drawback to superchargers.

“However, if it was strictly a drag piece, I would go with a crank-driven ProCharger or a TorqStorm. Not only does it come with the entire front accessory drive system, but if you want 1,000 horsepower or so, TorqStorm has dual superchargers. That has less load on the crank and they’re running serpentine belts, so you don’t chunk belts all the time.

“The problem you run into with a lot of your side slinger stuff, whether it be a Vortech or a ProCharger, is in order to make that same power on a single blower, generally speaking, you’re running a cog belt, which just don’t last. If it’s a street car, it’s not conducive to high durability over a long period of time.”

However, there are crank drives available with gear sets where you’re not even running a belt, so that takes the durability factor away. You don’t have to worry about that with the gear drives and you very rarely see them fail.

“If it’s an F3 or F4 for a full race application that’s crank driven with a quick-change gear set, that’s definitely the ticket,” Aitken says. “And Vortech also has an offering for that kind of application.”

In the street market, twin-screw superchargers and Roots blowers are great options depending on what the customer wants, if it fits under the hood and if he wants his power right now versus one that builds boost with rpm.

“With the Whipple superchargers there’s a lot of front drive accessories designed around those, so all of your accessories are included,” he says. “The Whipples are nice for the guy who wants the power right now, and maybe they like that Whipple whine. There is

JUNE 2021 | ENGINEBUILDERmag.com

19

SUPERCHARGERS a drawback based on trying to keep it under the hood, depending on what it’s going in. That’s also where ProCharger, Vortech and TorqStorm really shine because you’re able to keep those

Centifugal superchargers such as ProChargers are becoming popular options.

07EB_20LibertyHowards50.qxp 7/9/20 3:32 PM Page 1

superchargers underneath the hood.

They’re smaller and lightweight and are attached to the engine as opposed to the intake manifold.

“In comparing superchargers, the screw style has lobes and rotors that are heavy. The heavier that stuff is the more drag on the motor. You obviously aren’t going to net as much as if it was turbocharged. A lot of people get hung up on the fact that superchargers cost you horsepower.”

The fact is, every supercharger company has excellent offerings and sometimes it just comes down to favoring one brand over another.

However, the application, the budget and the space available under the hood, should be the driving factors for your supercharger decision.

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Horsepower Gains

When it comes to boost and supercharging, there’s a huge misconception nobody really talks about. When you hang a blower on the side of an engine, the limitation of the motor making power, assuming it’s got all good parts, is all reliant on the blower itself. It is the primary air pump and it can only move so much air.

“A YSI blower can move X amount of air, so if I put that on a 427 or I put it on a 363, the peak power will be the same,” Aitken says. “No matter what camshaft you’ve got in there, it will be the same. The only difference is at what level of boost it makes that power at. The 427 is a larger motor, so that gobbles up the air and might make

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SUPERCHARGERS 1,100 hp at 12-lbs. of boost. Whereas the 363 would make the same power at 16-lbs. The boost is a measurement of restriction. Some may argue that you need to spin the blower harder. Well, if you’re already at max blower speed, you’re done. We’ve proven that over and over.

“It’s a little different in your turbocharged world, but in superchargers, you’re limited by the size of the blower itself. We’ve done quite a bit of work with TorqStorm and their twin superchargers on three totally different engines. We had a 540 big block, a 427 Ford and a 427 LS. Those engines are totally different architectures, valve angles, valve sizes, manifold arrangement – everything is different. They all made within 1% of power of each other.”

There’s a lot of stuff surrounding power adders such as superchargers and turbochargers that people don’t fully understand. One of the biggest examples is that bigger is not always better.

“Sometimes technology exceeds the bigger is better theory,” Aitken says. “What I mean by that is Whipple

TorqStorm’s dual superchargers are capable up more than 1,000 horsepower.

22 ENGINEBUILDERmag.com | JUNE 2021

has a 4L and a 4.5L supercharger that will net you somewhere in the 1,100 horsepower range. They’ve also got a brand new 3L and it’ll make 1,100 hp. You have to ask the question, why would I buy a 4.5L blower when a 3L will make the same power? It may be an application thing.

“The 4L is a rear feed, so in a sand car, the motor is turned around and they’re sucking air from the front of the vehicle. They don’t want to be sucking up the sand. That would be a reason why you would use that blower. But, if it’s in any kind of street car, I’d be using the 3L or their new 3.8L over any 4L or 4.5L, because they make more power.

“There’s new technology in there – the rotor design, rotor material and air entry is all different. The technology has surpassed the supercharger just being larger. We can make just as much power in a smaller blower. I think all of these companies are constantly trying to push that envelope.”

When it comes to TorqStorm’s offerings, they have one blower and that’s it. They’re all the same size, so it’s a matter of either running one or two.

“In our testing on a single, we were able to build an engine in the 750-horsepower range and it only robbed 40 horsepower from the engine,” he says. “You can generally see a 200 horsepower increase in most cases on a single supercharger from them. If you hang the duals on there, obviously you can make over 1,000 horsepower.

“When you get into ProCharger and Vortech, there’s a lot of different compressor sizes and styles. On the low end, using a single serpentine belt you can make 700-800 horsepower. If a guy wants over 1,000 horsepower, then you’re going to step up to a YSI or an F1R for ProCharger and something like a V-30 for Vortech.”

Key Component Upgrades Keep in mind that running a supercharger means more stress on the engine and higher engine heat, so make sure your components can handle it to ensure longevity.

“When you’re supercharging an engine, you need good internals,” Aitken says. “We like using forged cranks, H-beam rods, ARP 2000 or better bolts, and forged 2816 pistons with a severeduty heavy wall pin. Outside of that, depending on the engine itself, would be the head gasket area.

“Engines like the LS are very similar to the Ford in that they don’t have many bolt holes per cylinder, until you go to the aftermarket block and cylinder head options. Depending on what we have for clamp load, we might introduce a fire ring instead of just a traditional MLS gasket to have some peace of mind. We always know that people are going to push the engine harder, especially if they change the pulley out, and now they’re making 1,100 horsepower and we’ve got a head gasket issue if we didn’t do the upgrade.”

Lastly, because superchargers generate heat, you’ll want to make sure you’re using an intercooler to help cool the air coming into the engine from your supercharger. Superchargers with higher boost will create a hotter discharge, so as you increase your boost, the effects of the intercooler become more and more noticeable. No supercharger alone will ever begin to match the efficiency of an intercooled supercharger.

The bottom line is that intercooled boost is substantially more powerful and safe for your engine than hot, nonintercooled boost. Intercooling reduces intake temperature, provides full timing, allows for more low-end boost and horsepower, an expanded power band, and did we mention more boost? EB

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Engine of the Month31G Shop

Two-Cylinder V-Twin Chevy Johnny Gardner | Little Rock, AR At Engine Builder, we get a decent amount of emails from readers. Folks like touching base with us to either give us praise for an article, ask us questions, sometimes express some displeasure (fortunately not often), but more than anything, they like to tell us what they’re working on. We’re always intrigued to know more, especially this latest email that Johnny Gardner sent me about a month ago or so, referring to his two-cylinder V-Twin Chevy engine.

24 ENGINEBUILDERmag.com | JUNE 2021

He also piqued my interest even more with a photo of this unique engine build. We got to talking and Johnny told me about his background in motorcycles and race engines, and how this V-Twin build came about.

“I have been riding motorcycles for 55 years,” Gardner says. “I’ve been building race engines, mainly dirt Sprint Cars, for 40 years. I build engines for racers, but not full time. I have a new 2,000 sq.-ft. shop in Little Rock, AR called the 31G Shop. We used to have

two separate shops to house mine and my son’s race cars.”

Johnny’s full-time work was in repairing oil and gas equipment, but he always built race engines on the side in his spare time. He says he retired from his oil and gas repair work just a couple years ago.

“For most of my adult life, I’ve had a shop of some kind where I worked on our family race cars and built engines.

It’s something I’ve always enjoyed doing,” he says.

The idea and the drive to build this unique two-cylinder V-Twin Chevy came from some spring cleaning at the 31G Shop.

“My youngest son worked with me for a couple of years in the shop,” he says. “While he was cleaning the parts room, he started to throw away boxes of blown up engine parts. With me being a mechanical hoarder, I came unwound and gathered all of it up like it was gold. He told me I would never do anything with the stuff, and I took that as a challenge.

“I thought about it for a while and then started looking on the web for modified Chevy small blocks. I found every kind of modified Chevy small block, but not many for a V-Twin. I decided this was what I should do and so this build began.”

According to Gardner, the Chevy V-Twin build was an exercise in problem solving from start to finish. From cutting the crankshaft, camshaft, block, heads, blocking off oil and water passages, balancing the rotating assembly, timing the camshaft and the ignition – and that was just the start.

“For this project, I did all the design, machining, painting, assembly, including the engine balancing in-

house,” he says. “The only thing I didn’t complete myself was the leather covering on the seat. The block was initially rough cut with a sawsall, then I machined it to finished dimension in a Bridgeport mill. The crank and head were cut in a band saw and the heads were finished on the mill. Then the crank was finished on my lathe.”

The engine block is a stock Chevy with Milodon main caps. The crank and rods are aftermarket parts. The pistons are from JE and the rings are from Total Seal. The bearings in the engine came from Clevite. The cylinder heads were made from a single Brodix ASCS spec head.

“On the head, the middle cylinders were messed up,” he says. “It was cut so that the two ends of the cylinder

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Engine of the Month31G Shop head were used. I also used a Wulff dry sump oil system and a Shaver-Wesmar gear drive with a Huggins camshaft, stainless valves, and roller rockers.

The fuel injection is Hilborn and uses

alcohol.”

The Huggins cam was the same as what Gardner would use in one of his Sprint Car engines. It is .665 lift with 292 duration at 106. As for the bike

itself, Johnny says it was built to be a cool display stand for the engine more so than a rideable bike.

“It was built from old Sprint Car parts,” he says. “It uses a splined rear

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axle, brakes and rotors, and the front some dyno runs soon. The headers and rear wheels are from a Sprint Car are handmade from bends bought too. The engine is a structural part of from Speedway Motors using a case the frame, which was made from 1 3/8˝ backhoe turnout on the end.

Drawn Over Mandrel (DOM) tubing. The “I made or modified every piece frame, like the engine, is a one-off build. on this thing. It’s the only one on the Every part of it is unique, except for planet,” Gardner says. the 748 Ducati front forks. The bike is We have to admit, this V-Twin build rideable, but I have to admit it is scary!” is awesome, and we’re glad Johnny Gardner estimates the bike weighs decided to make the first of its kind, around 400 lbs., and the full build and share the details of it with us! EB took him about a year and a half from the time he started doing drawings to Engine of the Week is sponsored by figuring out how to go about it to the PennGrade 1, SCAT Crankshafts and finished bike. He was also still running Elring – Das Original. his business and racing a Sprint Car full If you have an engine, email Editor time during the build.

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The two-cylinder Chevy V-Twin engine makes an estimated 180 PM Page 1 02EB_20Elring50.qxp 2/3/20 3:16 horsepower, and Gardner plans to do

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REBUILDING SUBARU’S WRX GREG JONES | EDITOR When the Impreza WRX debuted in the fall of 1992, Subaru chose to continue their long-standing use of the boxer engine – it’s infamous flat 4-cylinder that would see great success on the World Rally Cross stage. In fact, Subaru adopted the name WRX to stand for World Rally eXperimental. While markets such as Japan and Europe got to experience the thrill of Subaru’s new turbocharged WRX platform, North American markets never received the WRX version of the first-generation Impreza.

It wasn’t until 2002 that Subaru decided it would share the WRX with the rest of us in conjunction with its launch of the second-generation Impreza. All WRXs (1992 to present) feature rally inspired technology, including all-wheel drive, stiffened suspensions and turbocharged 4-cylinder engines.

In 1994, Subaru introduced Subaru Tecnica International (STI badged) versions of the WRX in Japan. These models were upgraded from the standard WRX in many categories, including blueprinted performance-tuned engines, transmissions and suspensions. The STI versions of the WRX were immensely successful in rallies and popular among street racers, but again, were only sold in the Japanese market until 2003, when it came to the U.S. following Subaru’s big splash with the WRX the year prior.

Obviously, the WRX has been around for quite some time as Subaru’s flagship, four-door performance car. Since the engines under the hoods of these vehicles pull from decades of racing heritage and are often atop the list of import performance-enhanced vehicles, we decided to take an in-depth look at the WRX engine architecture, the pros and cons of some of the engine variants for North America, and what it takes to build these engines up to handle serious horsepower.

The Engines in the WRX

W When the Impreza WRX debuted, Subaru’s EJ four-stroke engine family was selected as the powerplant. All engines of this series are 16-valve horizontal flat-fours with configurations available for SOHC or DOHC. Both naturally aspirated and turbocharged versions were available, however, the EJs for the WRX are all turbocharged and DOHC. The first WRX models to hit domestic soil had an EJ engine known as the EJ205, which was a 2.0L DOHC turbocharged engine that produced somewhere in the vicinity of 227 horsepower factory rated.

This engine was very reminiscent of any other EJ platform that had come before it as far as how the block looked physically and how it went together. The EJ205 features a 75mm stroke and a 92mm bore.

In 2006, the U.S.-marketed WRX model changed engines to the EJ255 – a 2.5L variant that was also present in the Forester and Legacy models.

“They dubbed it the EJ255 and it was almost identical to an STI block or an EJ257,” says Justin Anning, owner of Nemesis Performance, a Subaru-focused shop in Manitoba, Canada. “The difference with this engine variant was that it was now upped from a 75mm stroke to a 79mm stroke, which is shared with the STI (EJ257).

The same with the bore, which is 99.5mm and is the same as the STI as well. The EJ255 came with D25 cylinder heads and a less aggressive

28 ENGINEBUILDERmag.com | JUNE 2021

STI-badged WRXs debuted in 1994. However, it wasn’t until 2003 that these higher-performance vehicles made their way to North America. profile camshaft. It also came with a smaller version of the STI turbo.

“This engine was also when Subaru introduced the AVCS (Active Valve Control) system to the WRX. It has a hydraulically controlled cam advance on the intake camshafts using oil pressure and oil control solenoids.”

As mentioned above, another well-known WRX variant of the EJ family is the EJ257, which is also a 2.5L, but is only found in the STI models. The EJ257, like the 255, features a 79mm stroke and a 99.5mm bore. It also has a factory forged crank, forged rods and a single-scroll VF48 turbocharger.

Between 2008 and 2011, Subaru would make some minor adjustments to the WRX engine, specifically moving to a plastic intake manifold and a plastic intercooler tank. It still had the same injectors and it still had a small turbo until 2011, when they switched over to what’s known as the VF52 turbo, which better resembled what STI owners got.

Fast forwarding to 2015, Subaru made big changes to the WRX engine by introducing a new engine family known as the FA20. This was an entirely new animal from the EJ family. A direct-injection,

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REBUILDING SUBARU’S WRX twin-scroll turbocharged engine, the FA20 for the WRX featured revised camshafts, rocker arms, boost pressure, intercooler, and exhaust to increase peak output from previous variants to nearly 270 horsepower. It was also no longer over-square, but rather perfectly square, featuring an 86mm bore and 86mm stroke.

“These FA motors are just wildly different than an EJ, even though on the surface they may appear the same,” Anning says. “They have a cam cradle rather than cams just sitting in the head. There’s an actual bolted cradle system that drops the cams in as well as a lower girdle on the block. All of the things that seem to be an issue with the EJ seem to be addressed with the FA.” The FA20 engine is still being used on WRX models today, and people are beginning to figure them out much like they did with the EJ WRX and STI engines.

The Pros and Cons

A According to engine builders like Anning, who work on WRX engines regularly, the EJ205 is a very stout and strong engine, even in stock form. In fact, Anning says this variant has increased durability over the EJ257.

“The EJ205 is down on displacement, which is a bit of a con because you lose a little bit of that torque, but the power delivery is quite linear when it comes to upgrading them,” he says. “They bode well for the track and road racing. For whatever reason, they don’t seem to suffer from some of the known problems that the EJ257 and

To make serious horsepower, Nemesis Performance does closed-deck conversions for added strength.

30 ENGINEBUILDERmag.com | JUNE 2021

In stock form, WRX engines are pretty stout. With the help of some good machine work, they are true performance platforms capable of high horsepower.

EJ255 have.

“They’re a plentiful, cheap, easy-to-build engine that seems to be more durable than a 257, but the cons again would be a smaller turbocharger and the power output capacity is a little less than a 257 or 255.”

When the EJ255 was introduced, immediately, you stepped up W from a 2.0L to 2.5L, so WRX fans gained torque and were offered an easier to drive vehicle.

“People like torque, so that’s why they went to a 2.5L, especially for North American consumers,” Anning says. “You got that extra half liter of displacement, and with how over-square it was, it produced torque really well. It had a better turbocharger, but some of the cons were the classic Subaru ring land failure and oiling issues that started with the EJ257 STIs.” These newly designed EJ255 engines started using a new head casting designated D25, which were 51cc compared to the EJ257’s 56cc B25 heads. They still had AVCS on the intake cams only, and they also saw the introduction of secondary air induction that required new ports in the heads.

The new engine had a compression ratio 8.4:1, which was just a slight increase from the 8.2:1 in the STI. With the smaller head volume, the new EJ255 kept the bump in compression (8.4:1) to a minimum by using pistons with a deeper dish. Aside from those differences, the case, crank, rods, and camshafts are the same between the EJ257 and EJ255.

Due to the difference in piston dish and combustion chamber volume, it is not recommended to pair a D25 head with an STI block, or one that was designed to work with B25 heads. In 2007, the STI (EJ257) saw the introduction of secondary air injection, which required Subaru to make a new head casting designated V25. The

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REBUILDING SUBARU’S WRX only difference between the previous heads was the addition of the secondary air ports.

In 2008, the STI received a more significant update to its engine, that mostly involved another redesign of the heads to include AVCS on the exhaust cams in addition to the intake cams. These new dual AVCS heads are designated W25 heads, and they also support secondary air injection. The combustion chamber volume is still the same, so the EJ257 still runs an 8.2:1 compression ratio.

Looking at the short block of the 2.5Ls, in 2009, Subaru introduced a nitride-treated crankshaft, which can be retrofit into older blocks as well. When Subaru introduced this new crankshaft, they also put in new rods in the STI, which were designed to be slightly stronger than the previous rods, but still don’t match up to most aftermarket rods.

When it comes to the first generation of the FA20 direct injection W twin-scroll turbocharged engine, this was quite a change for the WRX as far as engine design.

“With the FA20, immediately you had an engine that has today’s “W technology in it,” Anning says. “Subaru jumped from a 20-yearold design to something that’s a little bit more modern. You have a hydraulic roller rocker valvetrain system, you have AVCS on both intake and exhaust. You have a Garrett Honeywell turbocharger, which is a very durable turbocharger compared to the turbos on some of the older models.

“The twin-scroll turbocharger helps retain a good, low end torque and it’s proven to work quite well. It’s what we call a low-mount turbo.

It sits underneath the oil pan and in front of the engine. In the older variants and in the STI, the turbo sits between the engine and the firewall on the passenger side.”

Some of the cons of the FA20 include asymmetrical connecting rods. They are known for being weak, so you have to watch how much torque you’re putting out with them. From a tuning standpoint, however, the WRX has always had a good ECU with a lot of capability.

“In my opinion, the WRX ECU had good feature saturation,” he says. “They always came equipped with things like EGT sensors in the up pipe, which from a tuning standpoint, is a very useful tool. These FA20s kept that, but they also have an oil pressure monitor and they have a true wide band oxygen sensor made by Bosch. When you’re looking at it from a tuning standpoint, they came with a lot of great factory equipped options that are accessible and monitorable and make tuning them really nice.”

A final pro for the FA20 is the equal length header, which is a straight shot that comes from each bank towards the center and where the turbocharger mounts.

“You’re going to have quite a velocity increase of the hot exhaust “Y gas to help spool that turbo up in such a short run,” Anning says. “The hotter the air and the shorter the run, the less it can cool down and keeps expanding into the turbocharger.”

32 ENGINEBUILDERmag.com | JUNE 2021

If you’re looking to make more than 300 hp with a WRX engine, aftermarket pistons and rods are a must in order to make reliable power with no issues.

Building WRX HP

In stock, factory form, WRX and STI engines are no slouches. They are good, reliable powerplants that pack a punch. Because that’s the case, they’re also prime options for high-end performance applications, which means more horsepower. The different engine variants clearly have their pros and cons, but they all can be built up to handle a great deal of power using quality aftermarket parts and some good machine work.

According to Anning, when it comes the EJ205 engine, an A upgraded piston and rod combination is where he starts.

“I would do a torque plate hone job for a .5mm oversize piston to ensure that the bores are straight,” he says. “We don’t use drop-in pistons. We want to control our destiny, so we’ll bore and hone to our specs and upgrade the piston and rod combination.

“If you’re feeling up for it, you can also build a stroker motor by stroking them up to about a 2.1L using an STI crank in that 2.0L build. The power capacity is 227 horsepower from the factory, but with some careful tuning and the right modifications, you can make over 500 hp no problem.”

Building up the EJ257, which is in the U.S.-marketed STI, you already start with a factory forged crank and factory forged rods, but the pistons are not forged, which leads people to upgrade the engine due to failures. The rod bearings are also a weak point to watch.

“Typically, what happens is they’re consuming a lot of oil because “T they’ve cracked a ring land on the piston,” Anning says. “The vehicle

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REBUILDING SUBARU’S WRX still runs fairly well, especially when the turbocharger comes online, it creates enough compression that you don’t really notice it, but at idle you can tell that it’s hurt. We always tend to look at the pistons right away as well as the rod bearings. They tend to be a failure point. They end up spinning rod bearings quite often.”

When EJ257s come into Nemesis Performance, the shop W completely strips them down and blueprints them for proper oil clearances in performance-minded applications.

“They’re outfitted with a fresh set of new connecting rods if the build has a horsepower output higher than what the factory rod is capable of,” he says. “One hundred percent of the time we’re doing pistons no matter what, because that is the next weak point. If you didn’t spin a rod bearing, you’re going to crack a ring land.”

Most of the time, customers are building up the EJ257 for street car, drag racing or road racing applications, and if customers want to find a lot of power, Nemesis Performance addresses an inherent weakness in the structure of the cylinder blocks.

“We put it on our Haas CNC and we actually machine what “W is called a closed-deck block,” he says. “Basically, the cylinders and what supports them in the block is only held together by four little tabs. As boost increases and horsepower increases along with the harmonics that come with horsepower, they will actually crack the cylinder liner. That block now needs to be repaired and needs sleeves.

“We’ve adopted the philosophy of scanning the block into a “W CAD. We’ve designed these inserts that get machined. The block gets machined and the inserts get pressed in and effectively close the upper deck of the block and supports the cylinder structure right where it’s required, which is usually right where all the combustion force is happening in the first half-inch of the block.

“Not only does it create a more robust engine, but you have a significantly increased clamping surface for the head gasket, which is another inherent problem of Subarus too. You’re getting the best of both worlds. You’ve got more surface area to clamp the head gasket and keep its integrity intact, as well as keeping the rigidity and supporting the cylinders from moving and cracking.”

Anning suggests that if a customer desires to go north of 500 horsepower or in excess of 30-lbs. of boost, a closed-deck block is a requirement for added protection.

“That’s not to say you can’t do it without this modification, but you’re really pushing the limits of everything at that level,” he admits.

“The upgrades we look at performing are in oiling, hypereutectic pistons instead of forged and the deck architecture of the block itself.”

The 2.5L EJ257 can make 300-400 horsepower in stock trim with some simple bolt-ons. But, when you start getting into substantially larger turbocharger systems, Anning has personally built 257s in the 800-horsepower range and above.

“Commonly though, that’s just not for everybody,” he says.

“Most of those builds are around the 500-650 horsepower mark for the 2.5L. However, some guys are cracking 1,000 hp.”

34 ENGINEBUILDERmag.com | JUNE 2021

When comparing the EJ WRX engines and the FA WRX engine, they may look similar, but are vastly different.

Namely, they have a different bore and stroke.

If you’re building up the EJ255, the 2006-2014 WRX 2.5L, which comes with 260 horsepower, this build would also require an upgraded piston and rod combination, a torque plate hone and the proper bearing clearances to be set, because oiling issues and ring land failure was very predominant in these engines as well. It’s also a good idea to move to an upgraded, high-flow oil pump.

“With these cars, what you want to make sure of is that the main “W line is straight and concentric,” he says. “They tend to shuffle around and kind of pinch up or tighten up in certain areas. Those clearances depend on what you’re planning to do with the car. If it’s a drag car, it only has to live a certain amount of passes. You’re going to go really loose on everything to try to help with the heat and whatnot.

If you’re doing a mild build, you’re going to go on the looser side of the maximum spec from the factory service manual. Again, what’s important to these cars is that the main lines are true and straight.”

The power capacity of the EJ255 depends on whether you do closed-deck conversions or not. According to Anning, you can make an easy 700-800 horsepower with these engines, or more if your budget allows.

“The 255 engine is very similar to the 257 and it’s not limited in any capacity compared to the 257,” he says. “It could be built up to

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REBUILDING SUBARU’S WRX the same standards that you could with the 257, which is nice because parts are readily available and interchangeable.”

When it comes to the FA20 engine, Subaru did fix a number of W issues from the EJs, but the biggest weakness are the connecting rods if you’re looking to pump more horsepower.

“With the FA20, we know the rods are weak, so you have to “W upgrade the rods, and if you’re upgrading the rods, you might as well upgrade the pistons too,” he says. “You can swap to a big turbocharger and that’s what most people are doing. The FA20s also respond well to ethanol. If you use that fuel, you can see a nice bump in horsepower without having to tax the fuel system. I’ve seen the FA20 engine built up to be capable of 600 horsepower. The factory crank is very stout on these cars too. You can choose to upgrade it or you can choose to stick with the stock one and you’d be fine at 600 horsepower.”

One nice thing about the FA20 is the oiling system shouldn’t need any work as Subaru made sure to fix the issues commonly seen in the EJs by implementing an upper and a lower oil pan.

“The upper is very reminiscent of a girdle,” Anning says. “What they’ve also done on the short blocks of the FA20s is they dowel pinned the mains. The EJ does not use main caps. The other half of the block houses the main caps for the main bearings. They found that the EJ engines move around, so what they’ve done on the newest generation FAs is doweled those mains together, so it’s not just relying on bolt pressure alone to hold everything true. That mated with the upper and lower oil pan and a different oil pump has really addressed those issues with the newer generations.”

If you’re upgrading any of the WRX or STI engines, the valvetrain is also an area you’ll want to pay some attention to. Anytime you’re increasing boost to an engine above and beyond what it was factory intended for, it’s recommended you upgrade valve springs, retainers and possibly your camshafts as well.

“If the factory equipped turbocharger is no longer cutting it anymore and you need to step up to a larger turbocharger, that’s around the time you should start considering not only a built-up engine, but a built-up valvetrain as well,” Anning says. “The stock camshaft can hold up for certain power levels, but if you’re going to upgrade certain aspects of the valvetrain, you might as well upgrade the camshafts too. For my customers, it always comes down to budget. If

36 ENGINEBUILDERmag.com | JUNE 2021

it’s in the budget, then we always recommend it.

“The camshafts help shift the power and make the engine more efficient at higher rpm, which is kind of where these import engines like to live. A bigger cam profile with more duration is typically where it goes. Manufacturers like BC, GSC, Kelford – they’re all making camshafts that are specifically designed for these cars. You will get to a certain point where the stock camshaft won’t handle what the turbocharger is trying to push out.”

The valvetrain between the FA and the EJs are substantially different. The EJ205, EJ255 and EJ257 are all very similar, however.

“The STI (EJ257) had solid buckets. The early version 205s had a shim over bucket. Now, the FA20 is a roller rocker design with an HLA bucket, so it can hydraulically adjust its own lash,” he says.

Of course, before any high-horsepower performance engine is truly ready to rip, the engine needs to be properly tuned, which is something Anning says some folks in the Subaru world don’t do correctly and it costs them.

“You have to ensure you have really good tuning,” he says. “When “Y you buy these cars, most people put an intake system on and an exhaust system, and then they’ll run an ‘off-the-shelf ’ tune, which is a very generalized tune that’s not made specifically for your dynamic elevation and your quality of fuel in your region. Therefore, you’re not getting the engine completely optimized.

“In the case of the 255s and 257s, when you run these ‘off-theshelf’ maps for quite a long time, they tend to blow up since it’s so broad and not vehicle specific. Making sure you’re running good oil and good fuel means you should definitely have longevity on your side.”

Conclusion

Clearly, WRX and STI Subaru engines continue to be top Japanese tuning platforms, and it doesn’t appear that will end any time soon.

The WRX and STI are both summer performance cars that are equally happy on the street as they are on the track or in rally racing.

Since the WRX has been around for 20 years here in North America, people have really figured out how to manipulate the EJ engines, and the FA engines are quickly following suit. The only thing holding your WRX back is your budget! EB

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Diesel of the Month Granby Truck Shop

7.0L Mechanical Injected Cummins John Schirado | Granby, CO John Schirado remembers watching Mustang GTs and diesel trucks run the 1/4-mile in 14 or 15 seconds as a kid, which by today’s standards, is pretty slow. And that’s putting it nicely.

Nonetheless, John was captivated that diesels could keep up with the sports cars. Taking in events like that as a kid, and having a dad who worked on diesels, led John to a diesel career himself.

In fact, John has spent the past five or six years dialing in his own diesel truck to compete at the Ultimate Callout Challenge. This year, he’ll get his chance to go head-to-head with the best diesel trucks out there.

The Schirado family owns and operates Granby Truck Shop in Granby, CO, which opened its doors in 2008, initially working on heavy-duty diesel repair. Since John joined the shop – about eight years ago – the focus has shifted to light-duty and high-performance.

John’s UCC truck is a 1997 Dodge 2500 extended cab, long bed that features a 6.7L Cummins-based solid block engine under the hood.

“We’ve got a solid Hamilton block that’s still a cast iron block, but it has no water passages,” Schirado says. “It’s got Diamond pistons and Wagler rods. We’re running a 4.330˝ bore, so a bigger bore than what most people run. It has a 6.7L Cummins crank, so it roughly equates to a 7.0L, which is a little bigger than most.

“It’s got MaxSpool dual spring valve springs. It has Mountain High Performance valves and their port job on the head.

I built the intake manifold for it and it’s got a Steed Speed competition exhaust manifold. It’s also got a No Limit camshaft with our cam specs – 227/241 duration and .330 lift.

We have a relatively low lift cam with more duration.”

Previously, John was running a compound turbo set up with a GT55 and a big 4.8˝ HX82 feeding it. However, in an effort to lose weight, he switched to just a single GT55 and nitrous.

“Midwest Turbo did the turbocharger for us and we spent a lot of time with them trying to get the right combination that would work the best for it,” he says. “With the current set up we’re running about 80-90-lbs. of boost. With the compounds it was 160-lbs. of boost. It was a lot harder on parts running that much boost, so that was another reason we liked the single charger. The intercooler was built by Midwest Turbo as well.

“The oil system we have uses a No Limit Manufacturing oil filter relocation plate. The way that works is you get rid

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of the factory oil pressure relief valve, and then we run their oil pressure relief valve so we can run a little bit more oil pressure, and we run a high-flow oil pump from Power Driven Diesel. We’re running a Peterson Fluid Systems oil filter housing, which has a primer on it so we can build oil pressure before you start the truck.

“The lift pump is a Waterman lift pump, and we designed the fuel system, the regulators and the way the pump is dual fed. We designed all that stuff so we could more precisely regulate fuel pressure. It runs 100-lbs. or so of inlet pressure.”

According to John, he’s one of just three trucks at UCC that is mechanical injected. Everybody else has a common rail set up.

“Infinite Performance did the injectors for us and Farrell Diesel did the injection pump… and being from the mechanical diesel world, we have never really used nitrous, until recently. Mechanical injection setups are a little bit different to use nitrous on, so we had to change the injectors to get a different fuel density. We had to change the injection pump cam to get where we thought the duration would be better for nitrous, and we’re running different timing now.

Being as close as you can be to a carburetor with a diesel has its disadvantages for versatility.”

Helping with the mechanical injected set up are some adapter pieces made by Keating Machine to fit the P pump set up and to make the mechanical injection system work.

The engine also has a Fluidampr, and John says it should make around 2,000 horsepower. EB Diesel of the Week is sponsored by AMSOIL. If you have an engine you’d like to highlight in this series, email Editor Greg Jones at gjones@babcox.com.

INTAKE MANIFOLDS

FOR THE MODERN AGE BRENDAN BAKER | TECHNICAL EDITOR

When Vic Edelbrock Sr. bought a 1932 Ford Roadster as his first project car in 1938, it was a turning point in his young company’s history. Vic Sr. ‘s entry into the world of “hot rods” led to the design and manufacture of the first Edelbrock intake manifold, and thus the hotrod age began.

Edelbrock Sr. knew the engine’s top end was about moving air and fuel to the combustion chamber as efficiently as possible, and a good design had the potential to unlock horsepower. He came up with the first performance intake for Flathead V8s with a 180-degree dual-plane design. The rest, as they say, is history.

Today’s aftermarket intake manifolds offer engine builders many options, but choosing the right one for your build is more than just finding the biggest one. Experts say it is essential to match the head and intake to your application and intended use, i.e., rpm range.

If your customer is an occasional drag strip competitor, but mainly drives his showpiece to the local diner for car club nights, you may want to choose an intake that’s good

Choosing the right intake design comes down to matching the intake style to your customer’s vehicle and intended rpm operating range.

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for the street and reasonable on the strip (or from stoplight to stoplight). Today’s performance components blur the lines between street and racing more than ever, so engine builders must know how to read between the lines for their customers.

High-performance intake manifolds should have smooth contours and gradual transitions between segments. The design and orientation of the intake manifold is a significant factor in the efficiency of an engine. Major contour changes can invoke pressure drops, resulting in less air (or fuel) entering the combustion chamber.

While there are several manifold styles from which to choose, each design has some compromise to consider. Take, for instance, the dual-plane manifold. It has consistently been recognized for its performance from idle to 5,5006,000 rpm. This manifold has been a mainstay for OEMs because it produces excellent drivability. The cylinder runners are grouped and separated by 180-degrees of crank rotation and split a plenum. There are two small separate plenums, and the runners are usually long, with each one feeding four opposing cylinders of a V8 engine.

One thing to keep in mind when choosing an intake is that air velocity affects throttle response as well as low-end torque. That’s why cylinder heads with port runner volumes that are too large may not perform as well as the stock cylinder head.

Turbulence helps route air into the cylinder more efficiently and promotes better air and fuel mixture for better combustion. Turbulence can also cause air and fuel separation in the combustion chamber, which you can better get an idea of what’s causing the fuel to separate by wet flow testing.

Carbureted intake manifolds come in various styles: dual-plane, single-plane, air-gap, tunnel ram, and others.

Choosing the right design comes down to matching the

intake style to your customer’s vehicle and intended rpm operating range.

Carbureted and throttle-body injection (TBI) intakes are known as the “wet flow” style because air and fuel combine in the plenum as it flows through the runners and into the combustion chamber. The wet flow design has challenges where contours or induction pulses allow the fuel droplets to separate and fall out of the suspended air/fuel mixture. Whereas port fuel injected engines use a “dry flow” manifold. There are some differences, but heat can be a bigger issue for the dry flow manifold, which is why you see racers put ice on their plenum between rounds.

The majority of intake designs are either dual-plane or single plane for carbureted applications, and there are arguments in favor of each. Dual-plane intake manifolds (also referred to as 180-degree intake manifolds) have two separate plenums that accept air-fuel from the carburetor.

Each one of the plenums feeds four cylinders of the total eight. The divided design allows each bank of four cylinders to see every other firing pulse (180 degrees of crank rotation), so there’s not as much overlap between induction pulses. This makes a cleaner induction pulse, especially at low rpm. Dual-plane intake manifolds typically have longer intake runners, making them ideal for low and midrange

power.

Single-plane intake manifolds use an open plenum design that feeds all eight cylinders at the same time on a V8 engine. Although this design doesn’t provide the dual planes clean induction pulse in the low-rpm range, it generally allows for a better, more equal flow distribution between cylinders. Single-plane intakes also usually have shorter, more direct runners to move a higher volume of air from the carb to the heads. These intakes are generally best suited to high-rpm power up to about 8,000 rpm and are used mainly in racing applications.

Once you’ve selected an intake manifold style for your application (and rpm range), you need to narrow it down to one that fits your engine. You will need to consider things such as hood clearance, which could determine whether you can run a hi-rise or lo-rise intake; cylinder head port style, are they oval, square, or some other shape? And then, you also need to factor in the mounting position and dimensions of the carburetor.

Hood clearance is a significant factor for intake selection, especially in street applications. You’ll need to measure the height of the stock manifold and try to remain close to that dimension when choosing a performance intake if you want to use the stock hood without adding a hood scoop or low-

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INTAKE MANIFOLDS

Once you’ve selected an intake manifold style for your application, you need to consider hood clearance, cylinder head port style, mounting position, and dimensions of the carburetor. profile air-cleaner.

According to Jason Fenske of Engineering Explained, who hosts a YouTube channel devoted to automotive engineering topics, choosing the correct manifold that matches the induction pulses to the intake valve creates a supercharging effect, ramming a bit more air/fuel into the cylinder. “The way this works,” he explains, “ is your intake air is going to come in and pass through the throttle body and then start to go down the intake runner on the intake stroke for the cylinder, so it’s pulling in that air, causing it to move at high velocity. Right before the air gets into that cylinder, your valve closes. As a result, that air still has velocity in one direction. As it builds up in this lower section of the runner, it creates a pressure wave that pushes back up to the plenum and then starts to come back down after it bounces off the back of the plenum.”

Fenske says that after bouncing back and forth awhile, the pulses will start to dissipate, and you’ll no longer have this effect. But, if you can time everything right (runner length, plenum size, etc.), this pressure wave will come back down when you have the intake valve open. “You can force in a little extra air into that cylinder and make more

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power. This effect will only be useful for a very narrow rpm range because any time the timing is off, of course, then it’s not going to give that supercharging effect. This is one of the reasons why you would want to use a variable intake manifold to create another range.”

Cylinder head port style is also important to condsider when selecting a manifold. There are multiple port designs, including rectangular, oval and peanut-style, so you should check that the intake ports match up with the ports on the cylinder heads you are using.

Your carburetor’s mounting pad configuration should also be considered. Four-barrel carbs come with three different mounting pads – square bore, spread bore and Dominator style. Make sure the intake matches the type of mounting pad you have. If you’re using a fuel-injected manifold, the throttle body inlet should match the throttle body size.

One final note, don’t forget about the plenum design.

According to Rob Lamont of Plazmaman.com, one of Australia’s largest performance engine parts manufacturers, plenum volume and shape also play a big part in the performance characteristics of your intake manifold.

As he says on their YouTube channel, “There are many theories behind plenum volume and shape design, but the fundamentals remain the same. If a plenum dome on an intake manifold is too small, it can cause sluggish performance down low. The engine can’t get enough air, and you’re basically you’re going to be choking it. And if the plenum volume is too large, this can cause air to be slowed when it enters the plenum and can cause poor airfuel distribution to all cylinders and give the engine some pretty sluggish response. A lot of care has to be taken when designing an intake plenum dome today (for performance applications).”

A well-designed manifold that is correctly matched to the engine’s requirements will make more torque and horsepower than a manifold that is mismatched to the engine. An intake manifold is more than just the plumbing that connects the carburetor or throttle body to the ports in the cylinder head. It is an integral part of the induction system that has to match the airflow characteristics of the cylinder head and camshaft and the displacement and rpm range of the engine.

Vic Sr. proved that horsepower could be squeezed out of those early Flathead V8s as he won many races at Muroc Dry Lake (where Edwards Air Force base is today) in the late ‘30s. He did so well with the first “Slingshot” manifolds he made that he inspired a whole industry of hotrodders looking for the fastest way to move air through an engine. EB

THE

TIMING IS RIGHT FOR CHAINS BRENDAN BAKER | TECHNICAL EDITOR

The relationship between the cam(s) and the crankshaft is like a marriage. You might say they are heavily dependent on each other for their survival because any slip-up and their union could end in catastrophe.

Extended oil change intervals are not timing component friendly. All timing chain systems depend heavily on good, clean oil to act as the hydraulic system to support the system’s stability.

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If you’re building late-model dual overhead cam (DOHC) engines, you’ve probably noticed that a chain rather than a belt drives the camshaft. But why is this the case when chains are more expensive to produce?

Cale Risinger from Melling Engine Parts believes it is due to the complexity of the newer, primarily V-style engines. “Most are DOHC, and many have an idler sprocket that transfers the crankshaft rotation to the two chains that drive the cams.

I cannot imagine the amount of packaging space required to do this with belts. I’m not sure if the carbon footprint might also come into play, either in belt production or the waste of throwing the belt away every 50k. I would also think a vehicle that does not require an expensive service, such as a timing belt replacement every 50k, would be more appealing to customers.”

While timing belts have been steadily giving way to chains due to their longer service life, belt manufacturers have made strides to improve their belt life to more than 100,000 miles, in some cases. Even though belts will not last as long as a chain, they are quieter, create less friction, and often easier to line up with the cam and crank locked down.

“In most cases, if the engine is properly maintained, service intervals would be the main advantage to a chain over a belt,” says Risinger. “The chain is also, for lack of a better word, more durable. Thinking back to the days of timing belts, if the front crank seal leaked on an engine to the point of coating the belt, you would most likely find the belt nearly shredded when inspecting it due to the oil saturation. On a chain-driven timing set, you simply change the crank seal, clean up the mess from the oil leak and move on.”

Because modern vehicles use so many electronics to control the engine with crank and camshaft timing sensors, engine builders and technicians need to make sure the alignment of the timing chain is “dead-on” or, as some say, “dead-nuts.”

The cam gear cannot be off by even a tooth, or the engine may set off an engine code or worse. The cam and crank must correlate to within a certain number of

degrees set by the ECU, which could be less than 8 degrees in some vehicles. If the engine also has variable valve timing, it’s a little more challenging to be sure the cam is where it is supposed to be since the gear can move around on its axis and throw things off.

While OE timing components are available from the dealer and other channels, aftermarket suppliers such as Cloyes and Melling offer improved products for specific applications with known timing chain issues.

Risinger says one example would be the timing chain tensioners for the 5.4L modular V8 Ford engines. “The OE tensioners are plastic and have an integral seal. Over time the plastic breaks down and fractures which leads to seal failure, and ultimately timing failure. We have developed cast iron tensioners for these engines that don’t require a gasket. We have also incorporated a ratcheting mechanism that eliminates the possibility of a slack tensioner on startup due to oil bleed down.”

Slack in the system can cause the chain to ride up the sprocket and stretch or break it. Timing systems use hydraulic chain tensioners that are operated by using engine oil and oil pressure. Because of this, specific timing chain tensioner designs can present issues. The timing chain tensioner is essentially the heart of the timing system and is often overlooked. If proper tension isn’t maintained, the system will fail.

Another issue with timing chains is stretch, which is typically due to oil maintenance neglect. “The most common failure point seems to be chain stretch,” says Risinger. “I believe that this stretch is ultimately the result of lack of proper lubrication to the chain. This lack of lubrication directly correlates to proper vehicle maintenance.

Worn-out oil won’t lubricate the chain and cause the rollers and links to wear against each other. As the chain rotates around the gears on the camshafts and crankshaft, the movement between the rollers and links also causes wear and elongation.

Extended oil change intervals are not timing component friendly, says Risinger. “I think most drivers, including myself, got very used to changing their oil every 3k-5k miles. But most healthy engines will use little to no oil in that mileage interval, which in turn, got us out of the habit of regularly checking our oil level.”

With oil life monitoring systems pushed service intervals out 7k-10k miles combined with very light oil viscosities, Risinger says engines are using more oil during that interval, and drivers are still not checking their oil level. “I had a customer bring in a vehicle a few years back complaining of a rattling noise when making hard left-hand parking lot maneuver type turns. While test driving it, I noticed this noise sounded like timing chain noise. We found that the 6-quart capacity oil system had around a quart and a half of oil in it.

When they made a parking lot maneuver, the oil ran away from the pickup, causing oil pressure to drop, which allowed the tensioners to lose tension. The chains then would slack, which caused the rattle noise. The sad thing was, this engine only had around 40k miles on it, and the oil life monitor still showed 20% engine oil life.”

Most OEMs don’t spec a replacement interval for their timing chains, which is why oil maintenance is so critical.

However, when rebuilding a DOHC engine with a chain, you will want to replace most of the timing components, whether they are worn or not. In most cases, aftermarket kits from quality suppliers will offer the most coverage and solutions for

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TIMING CHAINS problem applications.

Long-life oil is not necessarily a good idea on OHC engines with variable valve timing actuators because they rely on good clean oil to operate. Risinger says that oil maintenance is critical for VVT systems because the oil is fed through the camshaft to the actuator. “Lack of maintenance can lead to engine wear, which can increase the cam to journal clearances. This wear can, in turn, reduce the amount of oil volume supplied to the actuator.”

With many of the newer engines having direct injection, which we know causes increased soot, or turbos, which adds heat to the oil, more frequent oil changes are a must. “The lube paths to the actuators, and in the actuators themselves, are fairly small,” Risinger explains. “This dirty, deteriorated oil can cause these passages to plug and may also lead to internal actuator damage.”

Some engines are better than others, and some are prone to oil consumption that can cause problems with the timing

With OEMs driving more direct injection and turbocharged engines, the demand for stable and robust timing systems has become even more significant.

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system. “Engines that are prone to oil consumption issues can easily be run low on oil, which will cause lack of lubrication to the chain and tensioners,” says Risinger. “Take the GM V6, 3.6L DOHC engine, for example. Like some bizarre math word problem, this DOHC, four-camshaft engine uses two idler sprockets requiring three separate timing chains to operate the timing system.

“There are four camshaft sensors and a crankshaft sensor used to operate the VVT system, etc. The front of the engine is shown below and includes 15-pieces needed to service this timing system – which doesn’t include any of the VVT components.”

As Risinger noted, late-model applications use multiple camshafts and balance shafts that need more sensor input to improve performance and reduce emissions. Sensors control VVT operation, but the oil is the lifeblood that advances or retards the timing. A check engine light is triggered if new timing components are not installed correctly. Each engine is a little bit different, so be sure to look at how it is all oriented before replacing.

Overall, timing systems have become much more complex. As we have transitioned away three-piece sets in many late-model engines to overhead cams, there are now many configurations of timing sets that have incorporated VVT or even twin VVTs per head.

This extra rotating mass is more demanding on the chains. Variable valve timing loads the system dynamically as the valvetrain changes. The relative motion itself strains the system when the VVT is in operation.

All the timing chain systems depend heavily on good, clean oil to act as the hydraulic system to support the system’s stability. It puts more demand on the oiling system as you depend on the timing system to keep it all stable. And when it fails, it’s like a perfect storm.

In general, overhead cam engines will pose greater repair complexity. Indeed, newer engine designs will require specialized knowledge about timing. But, the OEMs are continuing to drive forward to come up with innovations.

With direct injection and more turbocharged engines, the demand for stable and robust timing systems becomes even more significant. EB

OXYGEN SENSORS A HOW TO MAXIMIZE THE POTENTIAL OF YOUR ENGINE DAMON KUSKIE | GMS RACING ENGINES

The oxygen or lambda sensor is one of the most important and one of the most misunderstood components of a modern fuel injection system. A basic understanding of how the sensor works and how to interpret its output is crucial to the successful tuning of a high performance or racing engine. Throw a power adder into the mix and the importance of the O2 sensor is further escalated. For our purposes we aren’t overly concerned with the chemical and electrical properties of the sensor – that information is widely available if you would like to delve deeper – but instead, we will focus on practical information that will help us achieve our ultimate goal: To extract as much power from the engine as safely as possible.

There are two main types of O2 sensors you may encounter. The narrow band O2 sensor is typically found in production vehicles and can be used to accurately determine air-fuel ratio (AFR) over the range 14.3:1–15.1:1 on gasoline.

Notice that I say determine and not measure the air-fuel ratio. This is an important distinction that we will discuss momentarily. If you are tuning engines, particularly race engines, you are far more likely to be working with the other type of lambda sensor – the wide band oxygen sensor. With a faster response time, the ability to directly measure the oxygen content of the exhaust gas, and a usable air-fuel range of approximately 10.2:1–15.5:1 (on gasoline), the wide band lambda sensor provides critical information that can be used to safely extract massive amounts of power from your engine.

This data is from the first run down the track on a brand-new street tire drag bike with a 172 cid V-Twin engine. Notice there is still some variation on the AFR, but the correction is running at less than 5%.

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Before we delve into how to put the wide band oxygen sensor to use, it is important to understand what it is actually measuring. The first thing that probably comes to mind when oxygen sensors are brought up is AFR. In reality the oxygen sensor has no idea how much fuel or air is being fed into the engine. Rather, it measures the oxygen content of the exhaust gas. This alone is not enough information to determine AFR. By knowing the stoichiometric value of the fuel the engine is designed to run on, defined as the AFR at which complete combustion occurs, we can calculate the AFR the engine is running at.

But what if we change fuel types or add nitrous to the mix? Different fuel types require different air-fuel ratios to achieve complete combustion. Injecting nitrous necessitates adding fuel to accommodate the extra oxygen carried by the spray. At this point, it is no longer an air/fuel mix, but rather an air/fuel/nitrous mix. These things will alter the actual required AFR being fed into the engine dramatically.

However, complete combustion still looks exactly the same to the oxygen sensor regardless of what we put into the engine.

This data provided by the wide band oxygen sensor, prior to accounting for fuel type, is known as “lambda.” A lambda value of “1” represents complete combustion. This equates to roughly 14.6:1 on pump gas. Values greater than 1 are lean, whereas a number less than 1 indicates a rich condition. Tuning using lambda values is very helpful when working

AND ENGINE TUNING with different types of fuels and power adders because lambda values for best performance are essentially the same regardless of what you feed into the engine.

Most tuners will run a richer target lambda when under boost or nitrous as a safety margin, however in my experience, by starting rich and progressively tuning leaner until optimum performance is obtained, I almost always end up at or slightly below a lambda value of 0.9.

Knowing the importance of the data provided by the oxygen sensor means that we must understand how to properly install it and how to determine when it needs to be replaced.

Oxygen sensor placement will vary depending on your setup. Things such as the number of sensors being used or the presence or absence of a turbocharger will have to be taken into account. Be certain to follow the instructions for the data logger or ECU you are using regarding the angle and location of the oxygen sensors.

This is especially important when tuning with the myriad of closed-loop EFI systems on the market today. There are many different options to choose from, but regardless of the system being employed, there are certain strategies I

turn to when tuning with wide band oxygen sensors.

First, be sure the sensor is in good working condition. If you aren’t sure, use brand new sensors. Signs of failing sensors include delayed response times and diminished measurement range. Problems of this nature can be difficult to spot without experience, so if in doubt it is best to swap them out. As far as lifespan is concerned, I typically get 40-60 hours out of a lambda sensor when running leaded race fuel.

This number drops dramatically if excessive EGTs are encountered. A bad oxygen sensor can lead to running problems or worse very quickly in a closed-loop EFI system. This is especially true if the system is configured with a wide AFR correction range.

Modern EFI systems are impressive in their closed-loop capabilities. The ECU is able to respond rapidly to data from the oxygen sensors and keep the engine running at the desired lambda value very effectively. This is extremely helpful for tuning – but can also lead to problems if relied upon too heavily. Remember, the ECU is going to react to bad oxygen sensor data. It has no way to know if there is a crack

This 172 cid HD Road King made 324 hp on the third dyno run and went 8.37 in the 1/4 mile on the third run down the strip at Keystone Raceway Park. With the package weighing over 850 lbs., getting up to speed with a brand new untried combination like this wouldn’t be possible without the advanced tuning and planning that modern EFI systems provide. Photo courtesy of Cycledrag.com

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SENSORSAND TUNING in the exhaust pipe or if the sensor is worn or damaged. Feed some bad data into a closed-loop system running an engine under 30 psi of boost and bad things are liable to happen. To prevent this sort of catastrophe from occurring, I try to rely on closed-loop as little as possible.

My tuning strategy is generally to first manually develop a base map before even starting the engine. Then, with closed-loop settings allowing +/- 20% correction, I will do some data logging and refine the map. I will repeat this process until the base map is correct within +/-2%, and then I will go to the track with the closed-loop set at +/-5%. This will allow the closed-loop system to fine tune for different ambient conditions while preventing it

Oxygen sensors and the closed-loop EFI systems that utilize them are fantastic tools that can unlock levels of performance unheard of just a few years ago.

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from making the type of dramatic changes that result from bad oxygen sensor data.

While at the track, I continue to refine the base map. Once put into service, the base map is still always evolving, thus allowing it to operate with as little closed-loop correction as possible while still adapting to changing requirements as the engine traverses it’s lifespan. It is important to note that extreme elevation changes or anything else that changes the fuel requirements more than 5% are going to require multiple passes to bring back into tune and therefore should be addressed manually before the first pass. In other words, if your last race was at sea level and your next one is in the Rocky Mountains, you’re going to want to make a fuel adjustment before you hit the track.

Oxygen sensors and the closed-loop EFI systems that utilize them are fantastic tools that can unlock levels of performance unheard of just a few short years ago. Like all tools, however, they are only as good as the person who wields them. Putting them to use requires an understanding of what the oxygen sensors are measuring, how the ECU uses that data, how the data can be compromised, and the consequences of allowing the ECU too much latitude to react to this faulty data.

I have encountered more than one tune done by other shops that would not run at all in open loop. With the oxygen sensors unplugged, the engine wouldn’t even idle. This is extreme over reliance on the ECUs closedloop capabilities. With the system configured like this, any sort of oxygen sensor failure is going to lead to extremely poor running and possible engine damage. When the base map is correct, the engine should run just as good in open-loop as it does in closed-loop. Closed-loop correction should only be relied upon for fine adjustments to adapt to things like changes in ambient conditions or very slight variations in fuel quality.

During the tuning process, however, wide band O2 sensors and closed-loop control can be leveraged to quickly develop a refined base map that is ready for competition. In this way, we can get the most of this technology while avoiding some of the potential pitfalls it can present. EB

INSIDE

EFI UNIVERSITY GREG JONES | EDITOR

Many people in this industry have done a great job of making a name for themselves. Someone to add to that list is Ben Strader, the founder of EFI University in Lake Havasu City, AZ. Ben comes from a background in engine building and engine development. At one point, he had a shop with an engine dyno, a chassis dyno, a flow bench and all the other ancillary necessities. However, that path wasn’t for him.

“I found out it’s a difficult industry,” Strader says. “When I realized that I could just talk about working on engines rather than actually working on engines, I went full-time in 2003 and have been doing that for the last 18 years.”

Ben founded EFI University, a highperformance engine training center, in 2003 when he decided to create a weekend seminar to help encourage engine builders to embrace electronic fuel injection. Within the first six months, he was overwhelmed with requests to continue teaching it.

“I realized maybe there’s more to this than I than I thought there was, so I started a seminar called EFI 101,” Strader says. “We would travel around the country and talk about the different parts and hardware and mapping

EFI U offers a number of hands-on, in-person courses as well as online options.

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techniques and the hows and whys of EFI.” Ben quickly realized that many attendees could understand the EFI concepts, but they didn’t have a dyno to practice and learn beyond that. He rolled EFI 101 into an EFI Advanced Workshop where folks could get hands-on practice with a real car on a real dyno.

“That lasted for a number of years, but it was always troublesome and problematic to actually produce that because we’d have to travel around, find somebody with a shop who would loan or rent us their dyno, then find a vehicle that was outfitted with an EFI system that could be tuned,” he says.

“Sometime around 2006, we decided there was enough merit to have a permanent facility and have people come to us.”

EFI U set up shop in San Diego, CA, initially before getting a more dedicated facility in Temecula, CA. That’s about when EFI U came up with the idea of an EFI certification.

“One of the problems with EFI tuning and really all of racing and motorsport, in my opinion, is that for every professional service-based industry, there’s a governing body that sets minimum requirements and minimum standards for professionalism – doctors, lawyers, school teachers, plumbers, you name it – but not in motorsports and racing,” Strader points

out. “Pretty much anybody who can afford the rent on a building and puts up a sign saying ‘we’re the best’ can have a business. Unfortunately, the consumer pays the price because a lot of these shops are just using people as guinea pigs to learn as they go.”

Ben and his team looked into finding a governing body to take the EFI industry under its wing, but there wasn’t anything that fit. Nobody wanted to invest the time and effort to understand the industry, so Strader and EFI U took it upon themselves to create something.

“Around 2007, we came up with the idea of the Accelerated Certification Program, which is still offered today,” he says. “It’s actually our most popular class. It’s a week-long bootcamp-style class, where we give attendees all the required knowledge and experience they need to pass the exam before they leave at the end of the week. Guys come from all over the globe and we start in the classroom on day one learning all the fundamentals of the four-stroke engine cycle and all of the things required for sensors and actuators and different tables and maps. By the end of the week, they’re actually sitting on a dyno with a standalone aftermarket ECU and tuning a real car on a real dyno.

“Once they get enough practice, we’ll take the keys and basically zero out the different tables and they’ll have to use what they’ve learned to create a

map from nothing. From there, they sit through a written exam and earn a certification.”

According to Strader, even after 14 years of doing the certification, there’s still no legal requirement or governing body that forces anyone to get certified.

However, it’s turned into a really good marketing tool for shops that do have a certification from EFI U. It shows customers that a shop spent the time, money and effort into getting training on a service they now offer.

As EFI U continued on an upward trajectory, Ben moved the facility from California to Lake Havasu City, AZ. He also realized, along with the help of his instructors, that the demographic of people coming to them had changed.

His audience started as older engine builders learning to use EFI, but had now transitioned to younger tuners who didn’t know much about the actual engines.

“I was sort of taken aback,” Strader admits. “The demographic had changed right under my feet. Now we had a ton of young guys who grew up with computers and are not intimidated at all to plug into a car and start making changes, but some of these young guys

don’t know the difference between a crankshaft and a connecting rod.

They’ve never seen the inside of an engine.”

To capture those folks and give them the needed insight to become more well-rounded, EFI U created an engine blueprinting program in 2014 where people would start with a bare block and spend a few days going through the process of building up an engine.

“That developed into what is now called the Competition Engine Development (CED) program,” he says.

“We use the GM LS engine because the market is much bigger for V8 guys who want to learn this stuff. What I teach in that class is different than engine building. This class is really how do I make an engine better? How do I understand airflow, the camshaft, bore and stroke ratios, displacement of the engine for the application? When would I want a large, low-rpm engine versus a small, high-rpm engine? How do things like gear ratio, tire size and application fit in? It’s a completely different look at engine design and development.”

While EFI U’s courses are very hands-on, that doesn’t mean they

EFI U offers one of the few certification’s for EFI tuning. It has become a marketing tool for the shops that have received the proper training. don’t offer other options for those who can’t come to Arizona. They do have a plethora of online classes available as well.

“We have online training in order to reach a bigger audience,” Strader says.

“We have Introduction to EFI. We have some Advanced EFI tuning concepts.

We have Advanced Turbocharging courses. We have some manufacturer specific courses, and I feel like those are all really terrific, high-quality, high-impact courses that are great for somebody getting their feet wet and not fully committed or sure if they want to go down this path, or maybe they are committed, but can’t travel all the way to Arizona to our facility.

“The reality is the online educational quality will never be as good as the live, hands-on, in-person quality. With racing engines, you could read all the magazines and watch all the videos, but until you’ve actually assembled one and that thing fires up on the dyno for the

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INSIDE EFI U first time, you haven’t really experienced it.”

Something EFI U and many training facilities encounter that is sometimes difficult to curb is the notion that someone knows everything there is to know and can’t possibly learn more.

“The most difficult thing is getting through the motorsports egos of people who think they know EFI or how to tune and getting them to see the value of the cost of these courses,” Strader says. “They wonder if they’re going to learn anything and usually within the first hour they’re really paying attention because they didn’t know what they didn’t know. It opens up this whole new world of questions that they didn’t even know they had.

“That’s probably the biggest roadblock in motorsports and racing is for anybody to think there’s nothing left to learn or to think they already know everything about a particular topic.

When you look at some of the industry leading people, you often find they’re saying they learn new stuff every day.”

While EFI U has gone through different variations of classes over the years, they’ve now narrowed it down to really highly focused classes on either the EFI tuning side or the engine

EFI U prides itself on giving folks the tools they need to do things themselves, in their own way.

54 ENGINEBUILDERmag.com | JUNE 2021

development side.

“We’ve really thrived by not trying to be too many things to too many people,” he says. “We have a really great niche where we do high-end EFI, high-end engine building and some online training. For me, I think what makes EFI University’s philosophy different than a lot of the other avenues for learning is that so much of racing and motorsports is based on religion.

What I mean by that is most people look around to [emulate the fastest guy or the guy winning] and that’s what they’re also going to do. Well, it’s really difficult to move forward and expand the performance envelope if all you’re ever doing is copying somebody else and never really knowing why or how that works.

“We start with math and science, which is the opposite of religion.

Science refuses to accept any contradictions and always digs farther to find the result, find the answer, to find out why. We use a lot of math and we use a lot of physics and science. We use a lot of actual test data to teach our students to never accept ‘because I said so’ or ‘because I won’ as an answer.

“Many racers we meet are stuck in that hamster wheel of I don’t really know why I do this. Everybody else is doing it, so that’s what we do. We teach a lot differently than that and I think that’s why so many people have such a great experience. It’s refreshing to learn from somebody who gives you the tools to teach yourself rather than telling you a bunch of stuff and you just have to take my word for it.”

Since this industry is such a closeknit community, EFI U has also created a new ‘fraternity’ for engine builders, racers and tuners in an effort to keep the conversation ongoing outside the classroom. Called the Delta Lambda Fraternity, it is a monthly subscriptionbased learning program to give folks access on a more regular basis.

“Instead of one high-intensity week, we have them communicating with us on a weekly basis all throughout the year,” Strader says. “We do a videobased lesson that goes on our website in a private location that only members of the fraternity can access. That goes up on Mondays and on Wednesday we do a live Zoom chat, so they can ask questions, give ideas and share thoughts. Then, 24/7, members of the group have a private Facebook page where they can converse and share projects and ideas and things there as well. It’s a community-based learning environment where they get full-time access.”

Delta Lambda Fraternity members pay $99 a month to get 24/7 access to the Facebook page as well as weekly learning environments and weekly live interaction with instructors and mentors who include folks such as George Bryce, Billy Godbold, John Kaase, and Lake Speed Jr. Aside from the monthly membership, many of EFI U’s classes range from $99-$299. When you get into the higher-end, hands-on classes, they tend to attract a more serious customer and it’s a very limited class size with a higher price point.

“The Accelerated Certification Program is a retail price of $5,695,” Strader says. “We only do those classes every other month and we only allow six students per class. Those classes are typically sold out at least one or two months ahead of time because of the limited class size. The Competition Engine Development class is $2,995 and we typically do that class quarterly.

We offer a little bit of something for everybody to get started at either a low level or a high level.”

Since beginning in 2003, EFI U has taught courses in 10 countries to more than 10,000 people. Strader says it’s been a terrific ride, and it’s nowhere near over yet. EB

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ENGINE BUILDER (ISSN 1535-041X) (JUNE 2021, Volume 58, Number 6): Published monthly by Babcox Media Inc., 3550 Embassy Parkway, Akron, OH 44333 U.S.A. Phone (330) 670-1234, FAX (330) 670-0874. Periodical postage paid at Akron, OH 44333 and additional mailing offices.

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JUNE 2021 | ENGINEBUILDERmag.com

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LAST SHOT

JUSTIN ZEIGLER | ZEIGLER DIESEL PERFORMANCE You'd have a huge grin ear to ear too if you had just won the 2021 Ultimate Callout Challenge. Our pal Justin Zeigler of Zeigler Diesel Performance located in Canton, OH, clearly had a fantastic showing at Lucas Oil Raceway in Brownsburg, IN over the course of the weekendlong UCC event from May 21-23. He took second place in drag racing with an 1/8th-mile time of 5.3 seconds, first place in the dyno competition with a best pull of 2,443.6 horsepower and 3,282.7 lbs.-ft. of torque, as well as ninth in the sled pull with a distance of 290.350 ft.

We caught up briefly with Justin during the dyno competition where he seemed confident his triple-turbo 6.7L Cummins-based Enforcer engine from D&J Precision Machine could put down a massive number and be near the top. He didn't quite hit the horsepower goal he had in his head, but you can't take anything away from a first place finish in the event. His dyno and drag race performances sealed the deal.

Congrats Justin and the entire Zeigler Diesel Performance team on a well-earned win!

56 ENGINEBUILDERmag.com | JUNE 2021