Can You Get 1000 HP with a Mechanical Fuel Pump & Tunnel Ramp? | Engine Masters

you know what the biggest problem is with having 800 horsepower in your model a drag car it's not having 1,000 horsepower in your model a drag car see on the roadkill garage show me Steve doul and my buddy Sam stru have been building my 31 Ford Model A coupe and it is going to be a dedicated race car and I'm trying desperately to run eights in the4 mile naturally aspirated the engine that's in the car right now you've seen on engine Masters it's a 5 72 pump gas deal it makes about 800 horsepower and I don't yet know if it's actually going to break into the eights I suspect not and so my 2-year dream has been this engine right here that you saw on episode 70 of engine Masters where it made a th000 horsepower naturally aspirated now on this episode it's going to get much more personal because I want to configure the thing exactly how I want it in the car let's do a quick refresh course this is a 582 cubic inch tall deck big block Chevy it has got an aluminum block from Dart I've never had an aluminum Block in my life and it just makes me so excited I'm going to save a bunch of weight on that car it's got a K1 bottom end it's got Diamond pistons for 14.7 to1 compression you know what's weird every time I tell people the compression ratio I get questions that say well is that because a stochiometric mixture for gasoline is 14.7 no complete coincidence has nothing to do with it the top end of this thing has a dart aluminum head on it it's a 20° altered valve angle head and it has a 451c intake runner it has a massive custom Comp Cams solid roller cam shaft and when we ran it before it had this induction system right here an outof the-box Holly Dominator and an outof the-box edel Brock intake manifold and we also ran it with our typical Dino headers now on this episode we're going to run it with a tunnel ram because I live the tunnel ram life I just have to have it for that visual impact and the thing that worries me is that a significant expert in the industry looked at this thing and said to me he's like I I wouldn't do that it's not going to make any more horsepower than the single four barrel and I'm like what how is that possible so I sent it out and I had it Port matched to this and we're going to try it and see what it does and I got to be honest I'm running it either way well I'm running it if it doesn't kill 100 horsepower because because it is just so awesome looking and it's got a couple of old school gold dominators on it now these are 1,50 CFM each now the other thing that's special about this episode is that I have the headers and the fuel system that I want to run in the car and that's always the best thing that you want to do if you've got an engine that you want to race bring your exact fuel system your exact carburetor your exact exhaust and run it to find out exactly what it's going to do these headers were custom made by Sam just for the car with a little bit of input from Steve brulee we called brulee for a little bit of advice on the headers before we built him and he's like you know you want to build a 2 and a/4 in diameter tube and you want about 32 in in length with a 4in diameter collector and so that's exactly what we did they're a little bit shorter on both the collector and the primary tube link than the dino headers so we're going to find out what that does now the last thing is a weird Kink of mine I want this car simple that's why it doesn't have EFI that's why it doesn't have a turbo or blower or nitrous or any of that and super Simplicity means a mechanical fuel pump and a lot of people have said to me you're never going to feed a th000 horsepower with a mechanical fuel pump well I got to try and so that is a holly Billet 170 gallon per hour unit which is going to be the last test of the day so this is going to be very personal to me the whole way I'm kind of on pins and needles wondering what I'm going to do with this tunnel ram I desperately hope that the headers make Power because one way or another this is what's going to go in the car if the 572 that's in it just doesn't cut it at 800 horsepower because 1,000 horsepower we're going to Baseline it first with the old four barrel carburetor setup and the dino headers and start progressing from there [Music] there's our first run we barely squeaked it it made 1 107.8 horsepower at 7400 RPM man it's cool reving an engine this big that high and it made 780 PB feet of torque at 6,400 RPM okay pretty good yeah I think it's on par with what we saw the last time we ran this thing given that there there's no vacuum pump on it and yeah I I think the best run we had last time with um pre- changing fuel was something like a, 15 or 17 or something right there so we're right there yeah so it's in the neighborhood what do you want to do first headers or tunnel ram oh that's an easy one tunnel ram guess I didn't need to ask two dominators on a tunnel ram see you have to go for the monster truck guy when you say that oh two dominators on a tunnel ram coming right up let me grab this thing weighs like 100 pounds okay all right goad you ready for gone yeah we've got a little bit of an oil leak right here one thing about this tall deck block that also has raised ports is that it takes two China Wall spacers stacked on top of each other and then there's still a gap that needs a cork and then RTV it's just really hard to keep it good and the main main reason why we're not running that vacuum pump that we had in the prior episode with this engine is because when you induce a vacuum here in the valley it sucks the silicone right in and so that's why we weren't running it in this episode we're going to test fit it on here and figure out what to do about I was hoping that it would get close NOP we're still going to have to have silicone okay all right I got this half yes there we go [Music] well this is all me tunnel ram greatness I hope this thing runs even half as good as it looks because this is fantastic [Music] [Music] fry Burger pull yourself together bro did not do what I was hoping it would do you told me so Keith Wilson told us so 1,024 horsepower 8 123 lb feet of torque so that's a significant gain but dude wait till you see the overlay yeah so the black lines the tunnel ram and you got to admit that is a lot of beef in the curve and that is a lot of torque in the curve but it gives up at 6700 RPM 6800 RPM yeah yeah it is just on the downward slope that is too long of a runner and not enough air flow yeah there a compound problem on this thing because they've already extended the intake runner on the head by being that raised Port 20° now it's already an inch longer now you put this N9 inch long Runner dart on it I mean it's just gets really long it's a really long intake runner and as we've learned before long Runner means low-end power short Runner tends to favor the high RPM and nothing could actually spell that out more than this ton of torque and then just kind of up here at the top on a typical kind of combination if you saw that like for a street engine and you'd go oh wow the tunnel Ram's way better because it just gets nipped out at the very top but for a drag race application I'm going to be driving from 6,000 up 7500 I want to shift at 7500 I mean it's just going to roll over like a dog at the high RPM but it might still be faster can I just look at the power curve again just to sort of do you real want to if you don't like the horsepower just sell the torque fry Burger it doesn't work in this circumstance it's a drag race application it's like you know the old magazine days is that like sheld the sizzle instead of the steak Yeah Yeah so it looks good when it's on its own on the screen it's when you compare it to the other one when you put a Fuel Curve in there it's not nearly as offensive I know it changes the uh the scale not offensive yeah once again if this was one of those street car deals we'd be going oh this is totally worth it but for a drag race thing not so much oh well um let's go kill more power with my customade headers that cost me a fortune perfect okay yeah let's go throw headers on this thing this is actually a scary thing I'm doing here meaning taking an actual engine configuration that I plan to run in my car and throwing it on the engine whether it makes more power or not and then telling the world about it it's actually a risk there's a chance that these headers that we're going to install are going to make less power than these Dino headers but they look amazing they're going to be radical in the car they might hurt power we're going to find out trying to be super careful not to Dent these cuz they have a lot of work in them if you look at the seams on these headers you can see where Sam welded them together and then brazed them and metal finished them so that once they're coated they look like one bent tube cool how rad does it look though I think it looks pretty good fry Burger it's pretty neat I'm happy with it man this is going to look great when it's in the car actually one of the cool retro things I'm going to do when it's in the car is what's called a panac system which is an old school thing that really makes no power but it keeps the engine nice and clean it's a hose that runs off of a breather right here and goes right down to this bung on the header that has a one-way valve in it so that you cannot backfire and shove pressure into the engine but the gas is passing out the header create a little bit of a vacuum draw the like oil fumes and things out of the crank case and keeps the engine really clean so that's what that [Music] is I'm super relieved that was good yeah our new power numbers with my custom headers a, 28.4 horsepower the torque 822 but uh we're thinking the story is a little bit better than that watch as we overlay Steve's Dino headers onto this and boom this did actually exactly what I was crossing my fingers for it got rid of a little bit of low-end torque which I kind of wanted for traction unfortunately it's all below 6,000 RPM which is about where my converter is so that's a wash but it picked back up at the top end where the tunnel ram had actually lost power yeah this is actually a real benefit there and I think that's due a little bit shorter primary and of course the collectors a touch shorter too yeah so I measured both headers your longest tube on your dyo header is about 33 34 the shortest is about 26 these are all rolling between 30 and 32 so it's in the neighborhood the collector's a little bit shorter that might be where the torque is I think they're both these are two and a quarter are yours two and a quarter yes they are okay so it could be partially The Collector too cuz we've got those 18in long extensions yeah you know whether it's primary or collector that was result you were looking for so for your application the way it carries past Peak horsepower yeah that's what you needed to pick up a little bit of that no I'm actually really happy with that that's much better so much so can we look at the overlay of the single four barrel with the dino headers versus the tunnel ram with these headers because I want to see if the headers actually picked back up that that power past Peak I don't think it made it all up but it out it drug it out yeah yeah it makes it look not as bad I mean of course what I want to do now is put the four barrel back on it and see what happens now I'm having to pick the tunnel ram now this is just better it's just better everywhere you know I mean you you can give that up at 75 because once the car is moving and it's rolling 150 or 60 miles an hour you can lose quite a bit of power there and it doesn't slow it down much that was a good trade I feel so much better and look at them I think they look red I'm glad they worked you get so grumpy when things don't go your way yeah you Grouch man look I'm glad it went your way that's all that matters yeah I'm really glad that this is great thank you guys

Channel: MotorTrend Channel

Views: 109,960

Keywords: motortrend, motor trend, motor trend channel, automotive, auto, engine masters, Motortrend on demand, Engine, Ford, Chevy, Engine masters clips, oil weights, crew, Engine Masters, engine masters full episode, enginemasters, engine modifications, engine rebuild, engine boost, motortrend on demand, motortrend full episodes, engines, Racing Engine Build, Big Power, AMC 401 V-8 racing engine, Tony Angelo, Trans-Am Killer, AMC 401 V-8

Id: sNFDGnLnl5M

Length: 13min 53sec (833 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 16 2023