AMC Build-up

This time, we'll turn a rare Rambler into a mean street RMR.

So stay right there

today on horsepower TV.

It's a rumbling Ramler build up starting with an A MC machine. 401 block.

Hydraulic flat topic can forged 10 to 1 pistons single plane intake at 950 CFM car with the goal of hitting 500 horsepower on pump gas

and meet a father and four. So

racing team that turned their passion for racing into an amazing high performance parts distribution center.

It makes you feel kind of good knowing that there's, you know, thousands or even millions of people out there that like to do what you like to do and that we are a part of

helping them achieve what they wanna achieve again. That, that,

that makes me feel pretty good. That's

pretty gratifying.

So hang on for horsepower TV.

Hi and welcome to horsepower TV. You know, back in the late sixties it seemed like everybody was involved in the muscle car wars, even a MC. In fact, today we've got a pair of their most potent weapons here in the shop.

Yeah, this 1970 rebel machine was only one of 2300 ever built.

Now, it turned the tires with a 390 cube engine that made about 340 horsepower. But what turned heads on the street was the patriotic paint scheme. And this functional cold air scoop that houses an 8000 RP of tack.

This is not your run of the mill Rambler.

The other half of our dynamic duo is this two seater AM X and well, it's far from being stocked

under the hood is a 700 horsepower Barry Allen built 426 cubic inch Stroker.

Now it's back with a turbo 400 transmission and a data rear end that spins a set of 410 gear.

It's a great combination that not only runs on pump gas, but it also clicks off easy. 11 2nd ETS.

Well, today we're gonna build a more suitable, more affordable version of that engine starting with this 30/4 01 block that's been machined by patent performance in Cromwell Kentucky.

The A MC block has a high nickel content which makes it extremely durable and to make ours even stouter, we've added a RP main studs here to the bottom end. Hey, now, that's a good idea.

Of course, our goal is to hit 500 horsepower on pump gas and well, once we're done bolting missing together, we're gonna strap it to the pump to see if we make our mark. Now, to help, help us get there, we're gonna drop in a stock steel crank that's had its journals polished and its oilers tampered.

We're also using stock steel rods that hang a set of Lena

forged flattop pistons. And of course, these things are gonna give us about a 10 to 1 compression ratio.

Our rings come from Speed Pro and they're filed to fit Molly filled pieces.

Of course, choosing the right camshaft is crucial to us hitting that horsepower mark. So we're gonna install this Lina

hydraulic flat tappet piece. Now, this one specs out at 280 degrees on the intake 285 on the exhaust. And well, it ought to make good power all the way up to 6500 RPM and still give us plenty of vacuum for the street

for bearings. We're using federal moguls and these mains have been fully grooved for better oiling. Now make sure you use plenty of assembly lube on them to protect them during initial fire up. Oh, here's a tip for you before you drop in this rear main. Put a dab of silicone here

and here on the seal to prevent the possibility of a leak.

After you drop in the crank, you can torque your studs to 100 ft pounds. Put a little bit of oil on the threads here to ensure an accurate reading.

By the way, while you're torquing those studs spin the crank from time to time

to make sure there's no binding.

I've already set the gaps at 20 thousands on the top ring and 14 thousands on the second ring. Now, we're gonna give it a little bit of oil here.

There we go. That ought to do it. And we'll be ready to slam these babies home

with assembly lube on the bearings. We can go ahead and torque down the rod bolts to 50 ft pounds.

Now, we're using a RP bolts here on the rods too and,

uh, they're gonna give us the confidence to spin those stalkers up to 7500 RPM.

The cam shaft is next. Notice how he saves the messy job for me, but you know, it is important to get lots of assembly lube on the lobes. So you don't wipe the cam during break in.

I will stab it in about halfway and

I'll loop up the rest of them.

Well, the timing gear is next. Now see this little oil feed hole in the cam shaft,

we make sure it lines up with this one here on the timing gear.

Otherwise you won't get lubrication to the distributor gear.

It'll grind itself into little pieces that wind up in your oil. Now, we're using this double roller set up from Milo Don. It's got multiple key ways that allow us to run this cam four degrees advanced four retarded or in our case straight up.

Next, install the fuel

p centric

the distributor gear.

Finally, the oil slinger on the crank S now,

now you can install this retaining boat with dreadlock on it

before torquing it down to 50 ft pounds.

Well, before we can install this timing cover, we're gonna replace the oil pump gears with these new ones from sealed power.

Now, check this out.

I like to go ahead and pack a little bit of grease right down here between the impellers and in the housing to help seal things up. So it'll pick up oil quicker and keep those gears from galling. When we first fire this thing up

there, we go

with the new gears in place. We're ready to bolt up this pickup space. That's part of our Mylod on oiling system. Now, it just sandwiches right here between the timing cover and the oil filter mount.

Of course, everything is held in place with the hardware that comes in the kit and uh don't forget those gaskets

with a gasket glued to the block slip, the timing cover in place.

The other part of our melody

oiling system is this new pan

and swinging pick up that replaces the stock internal piece. Now, the advantage of this thing is, it follows the movement of the oil so it stays submerged for a constant supply.

It also allows the use of this baffling that helps contain the oil inside the sump. Now, if you're building an extreme motor, this thing has provisions for a dual line pick up. But of course, with our 500 horse street application. A

single line will be sufficient.

Hey. All right, good timing. Now, I've already glued down the gaskets and added this line here and,

hey, let's drop this thing on, ready for it. Ok.

You know, I gotta admit this is a pretty cool setup and

ought to be pretty efficient. Not to mention the cool looks we're gonna get from this gold finish here. Now, why don't you be more efficient? Give me some of those bolts over there. All right. Well, don't you bolt anywhere? You'd have to be nuts not to stay tuned for more of our rumbling Rambler build up.

As they say, the

dyno.

Don't lie. We'll find out the truth about our AM C's Horsepower story later in the show.

Also, we'll go behind the scenes at a distribution center where the race is on every day getting race parts across the globe.

Hey, welcome back to the shop and more of our rumbling Rambler build up.

Well, we finished the short block of our 401 A MC with Leno

pistons, one of their cam shafts, plus a mylod

oiling system. So now I guess we're ready to bolt on some heads.

And what we're using is a set of stock 73 castings with the good dog leg ports. Now we filled them out with some Milo

on stainless steel valves that measure +208 on the intake, +16

five on the exhaust. Plus we've gone ahead and opened up the combustion chamber from the stock 58 CCS

all the way up to 64 CCS. Now that's gonna do a couple of things for us. First of all, it's gonna uns

the valves to give us a little bit better breathing and it's gonna help us hit that 10 to 1 compression ratio we're looking for. Now, these heads flow extremely well right out of the box. But Payton performance gave him a full port and Polish treatment.

We've been using Fell pro gasket so far during this

and well for head gaskets, we're using a set of their perm

toy

blues. They're a composition gasket with a compressed thickness of 48 thousands. Of course, we're also using a RP studs here on the heads. Let me show you something up here.

The A MC is notorious for not getting enough oil to the upper valve train and to solve that problem, we've run a line from this front oil boss back here to the lifter area.

Well, we're ready for the heads, I guess. Help me get this lined up here, Joe

Deal,

give him a shot of oil

and torque the studs to 100 and 10 ft towns.

Hey, we're gonna feed 500 horses. We need to give them plenty of oats with this Herman Lewis racing intake manifold.

Now it's a single plain four barrel intake with plenty of runner volume and just check out this huge plenum here.

Now, we're gonna mount a nine 50 HP vacuum secondary Holly Car bonnet

and with this combination,

well, it really ought to pump up the mid and upper RPM range. Now, don't forget this is a tall intake. So make sure you check your hood clearance first before you slam it shut.

You know, this has been a pretty cool project so far and to help our engine keep its cool, we've got this high flow water pump from Milo do.

It's got an enhanced impeller inside that increases flow by about 20%.

Of course, we're gonna increase the RPM range of the engine. And for that, we've got this A T I super damper.

It's an Alaska Ver style damper with the machine billet hub

and 360 degrees of timing marks on the housing.

We're gonna finish off our valve train with a set of these 16 roller rockers from a

nati,

they're gonna get rid of a little bit of friction and probably free up a few more horsepower at the same time. Then we're gonna stabilize the valve train with a set of their stud girdles. Now, if you're in the hunt for a set of these heads for your own engine build up, well, you wanna make sure that you check out the 090 or the 993 castings. Now, they've got the push rod holes sized and located properly to eliminate the need for any push rod guide plates. Now, if you can't find a set of those heads, well, you can always cut and weld a set of guide plates that go on a small block. Chevy.

We're gonna use an annihilator ignition system when we take our engine to the

dyno. Now, he thinks simple. We swapped out the old point style distributor for this electronic piece.

Now, I've also added a set of annihilator plug wires to the cap here. These are nine millimeter custom fit for the A MC and

they have only 50 ohms of resistance per foot for efficient energy transfer.

Hey, how's this for a finishing touch?

These cast aluminum valve covers from Herman Lewis racing have a MC right in them that way. There's no doubt about what you got under the hood. Yeah, 500 horsepower. But just in case there's a doubt about that, we're gonna take this ferocious 401 to the dyno Room next and we'll meet you there after the break

later in the show. Meet the Kauffman Brothers of pro stock racing.

It's a family success story. We're celebrating

John.

Hi. Welcome back to horsepower TV. Well, as promised, we got our rumbling Rambler strapped to the

dyno.

By the way, this is ad Ts dyno, the same type used by many of the top NASCAR teams. That's right. Now, if you recall, this is a street bound pump, gas motor. So we're even gonna use street headers for this test Now these are hooker super comps with one and 78 inch primaries. Of course, once I get everything snug down here, we'll be able to go ahead and make our power pools.

Our

dyno

operator, Jerry mcadoo here has got the thing warmed up pretty good. So what do you say? We make a fool now, Jerry.

Oh man, that's the strongest sounding A MC I've ever heard. But let's check those numbers out.

Ok. We almost hit that 500 mark. 481 horsepower at 5600 RPM and

almost 500 ft pounds of torque at 4700.

And we should point out it made over 400 ft pounds at 2500 and up. Man. That's impress.

I said, plus it's more than enough to turn the mildest pacer into a real ground pounder. And you know what else? I think with a little more tuning, we'll hit that 500 mark pretty easy. Yeah, but we got a pound some ground of our own and get out of here. We'll be back with more horsepower TV. After this,

we have the best of both worlds to be able to race and have a business that, that we can intermix with a lot of people we sell to

and you'll meet the racers who help other racers get the winning edge right after this.

We sell what we race and race what we sell, I guess. And uh

uh it definitely does help to do both. They work extremely well together and,

and, uh, you know,

we all get along really well, which is, you know, that's, that's a must and in this environment, you know, racing, we enjoy racing and we enjoy coming to work and, you know, making other racers happy and getting them in the right parts at the right price

on time. And, you know, it kind of goes hand in hand. I really, really enjoy that. We have the best of both worlds to be able to race and have a business that, that we can intermix with a lot of people. We sell to

the

Klan brothers are part of two winning teams. One competes in N hr A post stock racing.

The other runs, one of the world's biggest and fastest high performance mail order businesses.

Jags got started over 40 years ago. Humbly in this Columbus Ohio repair shop

opened by Jed Coplin S, an

avid racer who like his counterparts here in the Heartland had trouble finding speed parts to feed his passion. Everything was predominantly in California at that point in time. So

we started ordering parts and putting them in stock and then

people started buying them and that's how our retail stores started.

Jegs became a mail order house in the late eighties and today is housed in this 225,000 square foot facility.

Well, now we're in the uh large pack building and as you can see, we've got room for about 30,000 tires here. We have quite an extensive inventory of Goodyear Mickey Thompson and Hoosier tires.

Just to name a few.

As you can see, we've got turret trucks and they go all the way up to the top 54 ft.

That's a full orders and one person can pull uh many different orders um during the day, very efficiently

for smaller items. There's an ultramodern automatic retrieval and storage system

and there's 10,088 bins in here

and each bin can be divided up into 17 different part numbers.

And if the computer knows where the parts are,

brings the bin down

and brings it to the operator. And right now we've got uh

piston key chains.

Ok. Right now, Joe, we're in the medium size car area which is called the flow rack.

Well, after your order is filled with air bags for protection, it's taped up and weighed on a high speed scale.

And then the last thing that happens is it gets scanned again for the bar code to know that your order is finally packed and it's gonna off to go on to the UPS truck to deliver to your house.

Next door is a new performance center where the Jegs cars are built, tested tuned and made ready for racing.

This room we referred to as the war room.

Scott Woodruff took me on a tour of the trailers where video and computer data, tell the complete story of every run.

This can really help a driver.

Oh,

yeah.

Yeah. It, uh, it makes all of us look good if we use it. Right. A

lot of expensive toys. Sure. But while winning braces, the

Coughlan Brothers and customers by living the lifestyle and carrying on a family tradition, we get a lot of feedback from people at the races and, you know, good and bad. You know, if we'd have good service, they'll tell you about it. And if we have,

you know, an opportunity, if you will, they'll tell you about that too. So you come back and, and you put that opportunity into, into play. The most gratifying

uh experience for me is coming home from a race and,

and walking into the facilities here in Delaware, Ohio or Columbus and,

and uh just feeling the warmth and the excitement from

the 300 plus folks that we work with every day. That that was probably

the biggest rush for me. To be honest with you, it's a dream come true for a parent to, to have uh their family follow in your footsteps,

uh

and work with you and work together. I think if I had one wish I would like to have my dad have been able to see this because he would have really enjoyed it.

Horsepower TV S hot parts is brought to you by Wyotech,

the nation's premier technical training school.

Earlier, we showed you how to build a high performance A MC engine and well, here's a new spin on how to get one started.

It's power masters excess torque gear reduction starter. It's got a billet aluminum snout and a 4.4 to 1 gear reduction to spin over the highest compression engines. Now, it'll help eliminate any hot start problems and give you extra clearance around oil pans and headers. And hey, if you wanna get one of these, you're gonna have to clear about 220 out of your bank account

if you're a racer and feel like your ETS have been stalled a bit. Well, here's a way to shave off about 3/10.

This auxiliary valve body from FB performance controls line pressure for a higher stall speed when you launch then increases coupling efficiency down track for more miles an hour. Now you can use this to tune for different track conditions and well, you'll have your competition singing a blues tune

with prices starting at 995.

Well, here's something that ought to spark the interest of all you Mopar mavens out there. It's MS D's ready to run billet distributor for all engine applications. Now, it's got a high output module and a magnetic pickup for reliability. Plus an easy to adjust

mechanical advance to help you dial it in. Of

course, the vacuum advance is gonna help your mileage out a little bit. Maybe even save you a few bucks at the pump that is after you pump about $300 out of your wallet. Well, you know what, I'm pumped up about next week's show and here's a look at it.

It's back to horsepower basics. As we show you an easy way to bolt on more horsepower with a performance intake and an 850 CFM car.

We'll put our budget Honda on the bottle. Nitrous. That is, it's the cheapest tuner horsepower you can get and we'll prove it on the

dyno

Jack.

Plus it's your celebration time in Tennessee as we take you to the largest gathering of America's favorite, mid size muscle machine.

Well, that's what these cars are made to do

is to get out and run a little bit.

Gotta see how it goes

all this and more on the next horsepower TV.

For information about the products used in today's show and more. Check us out online at horsepower tv.com

Horsepower TV is an RTM production.