RPM
Exclusives
REBIRTH of
S S E N MAD
PART 3: THE HEAR T(S
OF MADNESS
) 1
story and photos by
TROY
LaCrone
AKES T IT T A H W U O Y W O WE SH P H + 0 0 8 1 N A D L II U B TO STREET ENGINE!
A
s we follow along with the rebirth of “Blue Madness” we felt that RPM readers would enjoy a detailed look into the engines that power it. In our June issue, we mentioned the
1: On the stand and ready for action, Blue Madness’ pair of big block Chevy bullets await their turn to power the resurrected beast. We will spend this issue looking at the process of building the 580 ci Drag Week bullet on the left, and we’ll show you the buildup of the new 2,000+ hp on the right in an upcoming installment.
car is powered by one of two big block Chevy powerplants. Both are capable of street driving thousands of miles and making upwards of 1,800-2,000+hp on the bigger tune-ups. This month, we will focus on the 580ci power
plant which was used in Drag Week 2018 to finish in 2nd place in the competitive Pro Street Power Adder class. The 580ci is our main engine and the one we have the most history with. Engine transparency is not always common
when specifics are asked. In this case, we will not only give specifics, we will hear from several industry experts on their part of this team. I feel that an engine tech article is best when the true experts contribute to it directly.
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I C 0 8 5 E H T T A K O O L A DRAG WEEK ENGINE SHORT BLOCK: THE FOUNDATION
This build started with kicking around a lighter engine to get the car’s weight to 2800 lbs. without driver to honor the 6.00 chassis cert that is only valid/legal at that weight or less. Therefore, we set out to replace the iron block 572 we had successfully campaigned for several years. Chris Straub, the owner of Straub Technologies helps with my engines and is a major part of our team. Chris is also a close friend. Straub is top notch with tons to offer in both part selection and advice. He suggested a Brodix 10.2 tall deck aluminum block serve as the foundation for this build. We opted for several updates, like 55mm cam journal raised cam, slightly taller deck, and the block has the HIP process done to it to increase the strength (photo #2) Straub explains, “I love racing and when a customer drives a low 7 second car on 1,000-mile trips, even better. “It provides us a lot of information, including identifying parts that survive these conditions.”
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Once the block direction was determined, the next piece of the puzzle was easy, a billet crankshaft. Connected to it are a set of Bill Miller Engineering (BME) aluminum rods (photo #3) that swing CP custom nitrous pistons (photos 5 & 6). Total Seal rings, ARP fasters, Moroso billet oil pump, and a Stephs oil pan complete the short block. Chris Nowak, of Nowak Racing says: “you normally get what you pay for. You can buy the right parts up front or spend a lot of time and money trying to make the wrong parts work. We punish these parts, and they normally keep coming back for more. Troy turns this engine 8,200rpm on a bunch of nitrous, things must be right. Even more so, he then drives it like a daily commuter on the street. Both of which place high demands on the engine in different ways. At times, when he has needed the 2nd or 3rd stages of nitrous, we put 1,000hp in just nitrous through it. So, a stable foundation is critical. I think successfully building engines is no different than successfully doing anything in life, make sure the basics
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6: (Left to right): Chris Straub, Troy, Ed Morel & John Callies
are right and don’t try to get too fancy.”
THE CAM AND INDUCTION
Chris Straub of Straub Technologies specs all of Troy’s cams. Chris explains… “we get the valve events right and the engine makes more power and is much happier, as well. The cam is the brain of the engine. We give it what it wants, and the engine will respond accordingly.”
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Straub always recommends quality lifters in a build like this and we went with .936 Morel Black Mamba DLC coated lifters combined with CHE lifter bushings. We run these lifters countless thousands of street miles with zero issues, ever. We use Smith Brothers push rods and T&D steel shaft mount rockers that are one-offs made for Straub. The team initially wanted to keep the engine along the lines of a conventional head.
A set of Brodix SR20 heads were purchased. Scott Foxwell set them up initially and developed the cnc’d ports. (photo #7). We use all titanium valves coated from Victory, 2.45 intake and 1.80 exhaust. All told, the heads produce great flow numbers throughout the lift range. The intake and exhaust flow 528 and 371cfm @ 1.00 lift respectively. That’s a lot of airflow by anyone’s standards. Nowack explains, “I like the heads a lot in terms of
their capability. With the help of expert team tuner, Jim Gray, we learned that the only issue we had with the heads was a narrow tuning window. To help resolve this issue, Nowak recently developed a new combustion chamber design. “I designed the new chambers in SolidWorks 3D modeling software and then machined them on my CNC mill. Our goal was simply to allow us to spray more nitrous safely, but it turns out the changes
MADNESS MAKING A NIGHT PASS...
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7 & 8: The Brodix SR20 heads were reworked thanks to Scott Foxwell and a custom CNC port job. 9: The original chambers were prepped. 10: The finished, free-flowing heads making breathing easier.
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actually netted more torque and horsepower naturally aspirated too. In our recent 06/08/20 dyno session, we saw an average gain of 30 in lbs of torque and horsepower naturally aspirated. We started the nitrous tuning as of right now, it has been absolutely remarkable thus far.” The intake is an Edelbrock Super Victor, the carb is a big single custom AED 4500 Dominator style. With AED you can just about bolt it on and call it done (photo #10). Every carb I’ve got from them is impressive. After the switch to AED in 2017, we averaged 15mpg driving 1,000 miles during tour events, while pulling a trailer! We were amazed by that, shocked actually. Jay at AED says, “we work with each customer to build them exactly what their engine needs. That does not stop after we
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CHECK OUT THE DYNO PULL...