Modified Payoff

Horsepower hits painter today when the guys take their modified race car to a dirt track to see if the car and Mike, the driver are race ready. Plus it's back to the

dyno to discover how much horsepower bang for the buck. They get from a high performance top end combo.

And Joe travels to an Alabama strip where the heads up outlaws try to navigate a hot tricky racetrack.

Hey, come on in. Glad you joined us. We're kicking today's show off by answering a question. We get all the time. And that is when are you guys gonna finally take the horsepower, modified it out and thrash on it at the racetrack? And the answer is today now it's been an ongoing project that's just dying to get a payoff. But first, let's take a bit of a flashback and show you how we got it to where it is today.

We made a trip to Speedway Motors where our chassis was welded together and our rear end was built according to I MC A specs

back in the horsepower shop, we completed the suspension and brakes.

Plus we installed a fuel cell and ran our fuel and brake lines.

We also installed an OEM steering box again according to the rules of the sanctioning body.

So now can we take it out and sling some dirt?

Well, almost, you see the motor runs great. Everything else checks out great.

But you got to set up the chassis in a car like this before. It's safe to race. Now to do that, you can either take it out, drive it and tweak it, drive it and tweak it or better yet save a bunch of time, frustration and money and take it to a dirt track chassis expert

when it comes to getting a stock or modified car on the right track. A good race shop can really help put your chassis set up right on the money.

We brought our modified race connections in Shelbyville, Tennessee where owner Tim Smith put it through a myriad of measurements and tweaks.

I've got 77 8

here. He's checking to

ensure

the frame height is exactly 5.5 inches

on it.

The next step is gonna be to check the squareness of the rear end

with the frame of the car. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna exit out just like you would do a foundation on a house and we're gonna get it square corner to corner.

Now, this tool is used to check Camra

first on the front left wheel

and we have 1.5 degrees positive camera that means that the wheel is laying out 1.5 degrees

at the top

to measure caster at the left front, he turns the tire out 20 degrees.

Then with the castor bubble zero, he turns the tire 20 degrees in the opposite direction.

And that gives us our castor reading

which is 3.5 degrees.

He then repeats the procedure. On the other side,

we have about two and three quarters degrees of negative camber on this side, negative meaning that the tire is laying

in toward the car at the top

two and three quarter degrees.

Now with scales under each wheel tim checks every conceivable weight ratio of the car. The left rear tire needs to be heavier than the right rear tire.

Ok. Our right rear tire weighs 629 pounds

and we go to the left and we've got 667. This right here is uh good measurements to get you to the racetrack and then to make the final adjustments

when we get it on the racetrack, good baseline

with the wheel shock and spring out of the way. He installs this bump

steer gauge,

then uses a little height gauge to set the control arm to the racetrack height

and this gauge to determine the amount of bump steer under real track conditions.

We're in a situation where it would be going down the straight away with the front end on the left side lifted

and then we're gonna go in the corner when we end up

with the weight set back down on the car. We're looking for this tire to tow out approximately 5/1000 of an inch and we have about six thousands

close

enough. That's close enough. That's very close. So how does he correct it if he needs to?

We put a shim right up under here and drop this down just a little bit.

We put about 60,000 between the spindle and the tie rod

to make those angles do what we want them to do.

We're gonna set the toe out on it. What we're looking for is about an 8 to 3/16 of an inch tow out.

That means that the tires are wider in the front than they are the rear. We've got about 74

on the front

and we've got 73 and 7/8 on the back. So, if we had

too much in front, we could adjust that with the end.

Ok, what we would do would be adjust these rods, your tire rods to either make them longer, which would widen the front of the tires out or we would make them shorter and it would narrow them in.

Well, thanks to race connection cars, set up and ready for some laughs. Are you ready? Yeah, I've been ready for a while now. All we need to do is get this thing off of these blocks and get it loaded. Up onto the trailer.

It's like the in car cameras are about ready and finally after rain outs and other setbacks, we're gonna get this modified race car on a real dirt track, or at least he is. Are you ready for this man? No, not really. But, hey, it's a great place to do it. We're here in Maryville, Tennessee at Mountain raceway now, it's 4/10 of a mile long and it's got a whole lot of history behind it and hey, tonight's practice night. So I'm gonna go get a little seat time. You're gonna do fine.

Several experienced racers have also come out for practice night getting their cars ready for the weekly Saturday night race and while he's keeping pretty calm,

I'm sure the modified rookie here feels a butterfly too

well, time to jump into the dressing room and put on my race suit for some inaugural track time for me and the modified,

well, the first time out, I'm just gonna knock a little dust off the car, get used to it and the track, bring it in, check everything out

and hey, hopefully we'll be ready for another session.

Safety is essential in any kind of racing. And thanks to Bell, I was outfitted with everything required in modified racing from the helmet all the way down

track owner Kevin Kaufman gave us a tip on how to tell when the wheels are straight with a piece of tape on top of the steering wheel starting out. The tape is a really good idea to save your race car. You bet we'll take the tape. There you go, buddy.

And here's your radio and you're the coach Kevin. Ok, I'll do my best.

The tires you have on will probably take about three laps before you feel them start coming to you and start gripping and after that, they'll, they'll grip more every lap.

And if you feel the car going away from you, that's the tires giving up.

Even at slow speeds. This car is a blast to drive, but the rev limiter was set way too low.

So it was tricky entering the corner. But what a blast to drive off of it.

That was slow and that was fun. All that rev limit are way up.

They don't tell Mike this, but two of his front wheel lugs were only finger tight.

Another new lesson.

Even though the chip was still set too low on this next round. I just had to see what it felt like to go a little faster.

That was a perfect corner exit right there. That's exactly the way you want to come up off the corner. That was perfect.

He got a little bit loose with him right there and you see him kind of back

out. I mean, he, he, he's doing a great job. He got out

of it right.

He's getting braver rep chip issues aside. I can sum this right up in three words, I am hooked.

Well, all I can say is how you're gonna keep them down at the shop after they've seen and felt the fun of modified dirt racing.

You're picking it up really quick. I mean, I could tell that you were getting the feel it's fun. This is a, this is a blast. I recommend this to anybody

right now. We've got a bang for the buck test that answers a lot of questions. How do I build a big power top end for a Chevy small block to go in my muscle car or street rod one that makes good use of my time and money. And of course, it's got to run on pump gas and let's just say we want to keep it all under three grand. Unless you've already got a stout bottom end, you could go ahead and build your own or get what we've got for our mule motor. It's a GM performance part ZZ 4350

has a forged crank and hyper Eutectic pistons. If you go this route, you're gonna save time in machining parts matching and the biggest thing, the amount of work you have to do to it. Plus you can bet on it being reliable and ready for the build up. Here's the combination we're gonna finish the job with from Holly, a set of their beefed up aluminum versions of G MS 460 twos. Now, these have 68 CC combustion chambers with valves measuring in it +202 on the intake 160 on the exhaust.

The matching manifold is this Win

and Stealth Airstrike that has isolated runners to promote a cool fuel charge.

The carburetor, it's a 770 street Avenger that's ready to run right out of the box. Now, the heart of the system is this roller cam shaft that's specially designed for performance parts.com.

It's a special grind that should help us reach 400 horsepower or more.

Next, we can install our timing change straight up,

followed by the new roller lifters

with the 68 cc cylinder heads. We now have a 9 to 1 compression ratio which means we have a solid platform for power adder, whether it's nitrous, a turbo or a blower,

here's a heads up. You'll need to order a push rods out of the proper length for your motor.

Next up, we're installing a set of these 15 rocker arms. Now, these things are full aluminum and they're packed with needle bearings, making them a full roller

and you need to go ahead and order extra nuts and locks for the roller rockers.

Now, the manifold which wine claims can nearly match a single plane for peak horsepower.

Finally, we can install the car.

Yeah.

And after joining the motor up with the

dyno, we can hook everything up and fire it up.

All right, if you guys plan on doing this build up in your garage with the motor in your car plan on it taking about eight hours. Now we already warmed the motor up and we're about to make some pulls using 89 octane fuel

for a baseline comparison. A GMZZ four with a 9 to 1 compression ratio makes 330 horsepower and 380 ft pounds of for.

Well, looks like we gave up a foot pound of torque, but look how it holds to the whole RPM range. Now, check out how much horsepower we made 406 at 6300 RPM

to sum it all up. Our peak torque was an almost even 379 ft pounds and with 406 horsepower, we made 76 over our baseline

price of this combination. 2879.

All right. Now, that's just under $38 of horsepower. But with this combination, you'll have a low compression pump, gas friendly motor that'll definitely handle the power adder of your choice.

Hey, welcome back to horsepower. Now, here's a question for you.

How do you tune your race car for a track? That's well, about 100 and 40 degrees and rising.

We'll get the answers of this weekend's horse

outlaw event here at Montgomery Motor Sport Park

on a weekend. Hotter than a grill full of barbecue chicken. It's the outlaw racing street car Association's mid season showdown

and the trick to competing on 10.5 slicks or drag radios is finding the magic combination for a hot breezy eight mile track. It's gonna get tricky. It's gonna, it's gonna make a hard time. These cars are making so much power now in this little tire and it's just gonna get hard to handle.

You know,

hey, here's something special in the already wild, easy street class. $10,000 to the top racer and

here's who you should look for.

Former champ Shane thrill Billy Stack who's been struggling this season with his turbo. Monte Carlo would like to go home with the cash and new confidence. It would be very nice to go back to that. All the bill collectors will be excited.

I guess you could buy some more parts too,

that's for sure. We buy something, change a good racer and uh

we knew that he was gonna be some hard competition and uh

we worry more about him, I think than he does about us.

David

Rees says the most season wins holds the world record

and enjoys a big points lead with his pro charged Fox.

It is a lot more consistent than the turbo. We've run turbos in the past.

Seems, uh seems to be a little more user friendly

as night fell on Montgomery Motorsports Park for round three of qualifying with a few wild runs and even an unscheduled fire show stack racked up top et and mile per hour honors for easy street with a 503 at 100 50 miles an hour.

Jeff Cooner led the limited street PAG with a 498 at 100 56

in outlaw 10 5. Ke Sexton here runs a 464 2nd only to

his dad, Richard Sexton.

Richard. You're number one,

Keith, the son. Number two. I don't know if I've ever interviewed a number one is your father and son team. But how do you guys feel about that? I feel real good about it. Proud of my son. It's fifth time in the car and he's doing real good.

Both of the Sextons surprisingly went down in round one of eliminations

but their Maryland teammate Chuck

worked his way into the finals with consistent runs in the 470

out of the finals of modified street

and Richard Reagan gets a whole shot on Ryan Rats

Shaw

to win with a 566

at 127 miles an hour.

Carlton Thompson navigated a tricky track to beat limited street points leader Darren Hoyle with a 519 at 100 and 46. He's beat us four times this year

and this is the first time we've ever beat there in hole. So this is

a,

a big day for us.

Chuck

S

was also a first time winner with an outlaw 10 final victory over Todd Moer.

I've almost been there a couple of times. My first

Oska race, a couple of years ago, I, I actually lost in the final there too.

And then we started riding an

Oska this year. So,

uh,

it, it worked. I mean, it's, it's nice. I really needed a win.

Ok. The featured brick Reese cuts a 26,000 flight to be stacked

in one of the closest races of the year

6, 10/1000 at the second.

That's close.

We fought the track all day

and I just made a decision to leave it alone and did the same. We did all day. We just lucky.

So there they are three of the heads up winners who fought the heat and beat the competition at this

Orsa Alabama showdown.

Ok. Maybe this is your predicament. You like the idea of having a GMEF I crate motor stuffed in your street machine,

but you hate the idea of getting the right harness right computer and tuning the system up. Well, check this out.

It's geo performance parts E 67 a stand alone system custom calibrated for all the late model LS crate motors. Now, all you do is install the harness, hook up the sensors, add B

up this electronic throttle control and you're done.

Now, by the way, we will use this system. Add this motor and a very important

dyno test next week.

Oh, for pricing on the E 67 call your local GM dealer. Every performance exhaust system should sound good and make good horsepower. But what you don't want is that loud, noisy drone inside of the car? Well, courses new DB series, they use a

to reflective sound cancellation technology to keep that unwanted noise out

inside. The mufflers are straight through design for better flow, the slot gaps, they trap the problem frequencies and turn them back against themselves. Now, this kit is for a Mustang GT and makes 14 horsepower at the rear wheels over stock. It retails for 795 or you could go a different route and pick up just their mufflers which start at 250 or kits for

vehicle starting at 740 before you lay down more green for brake pads, check out these yellow stuff pads from E BC brakes.

They've got a race quality compound that gives you maximum stopping power even in the coldest conditions. Plus they've got a break in coding for zero bed end. Now, you can expect to pay about 100 bucks a set. Hope you're set for another horse power. We'll be back next week and see you then.