Deep Breathing Monte Carlo

First up today, remember our Monte Carlo project,

we made Chevy's last full size muscle car, a real hot ride when we dropped in a 620 horse 4, 54 big block a few weeks ago.

Then we slap it on the chassis

dyno for a big power payoff.

The thing is as long as this thing sits around here, we can't keep our hands off of it.

In fact, we thought today since it's got that hungry big block under the hood, maybe it needs to breathe better.

After all horse power about fuel and air right.

There are tons of application specific cold air kits on the market nowadays, but not too many for our old Monte Carlo. So we decided we wanted to be unique and build our own. So specter performance sent us everything we need and then some

now they have the parts to handle any type of configuration or set up. You wanna run whether you're using the carburetor or EF I and need a place to house your mass air sensor. Now for the filters, they have them so you can mount them externally or in line inside of the tubing. And if you're running a carburetor, they have all types of plenum, single inlet, dual outlet for low clearance. Or if you're looking for a different approach angle, they've got you covered there too. And last, but not least the old conventional round 14 inch style.

Well, here's what I like about it. You can order a bunch of these tubes and all sizes and shapes, use these foam inserts to mock them up,

Make marks, send it to Specter and they'll weld up a custom kit tailor made to your specs to start the system. Here's how we're gonna do it. We're gonna remove both inner front headlights and replace them with these A BS plastic vacuum formed inlet buckets from here. We're gonna come through the radiator core support on both sides of the car and up alongside of the motor from there, it'll reach the plenum. Now, some of you may be wondering where are we gonna put the filters just watch

after removing the headlight retainer,

the headlight

and the headlight bucket.

We trim the fiberglass housing for clearance

and enlarge this hole in the bucket to accommodate the Specter inlet.

Then we reinstall the bucket

and re attach the spring.

Now the inlet can go in, held in place with the trim ring.

Then with the rubber sleeve clamp to the inlet, we can attach a 22 degree tube

from there. We use a piece of the kits ducting that leads to the straight tube with the filter element installed,

then attach another piece of ducting that'll run up to the plenum.

Next, we use a bracket to secure the inlet assembly to the inner wheel. Well,

now we can install the plenum hat onto the carb stud. We're going with the lower profile version for clearance. The last step connecting the ducting to the plenum.

Needless to say after you design and configure one side of the routing, the second side is a snap. Now you got a customized intake system that unlike a lot of cold air kits you see on the market only brings in cool outside air, unaffected by engine heat.

Now it goes without saying though uh set up like this is more suited to a weekend cruiser like our big block Monte Carlo here or a race car.

Speaking of racing coming up, Mike and I are gonna test the waters of the biggest little trend in drag racing. You don't want to miss this

today on horsepower. We're gonna show you how to build your own race car on Friday and take it to the track for competition on Saturday.

The cost uh it's about 1/20 of what you'd expect. The secret.

Just think this scale

our adventure at the fifth scale racing started here at a place called Sherlock's Emporium in Middle Tennessee

looks like a bookstore and it is,

but there's also a memorabilia section, a

New York style deli and

an off the hook hobby shop,

not just the usual model ships and airplanes we've all glued together before

they specialize in remote cars you can play with

and some that run on real fuel like the popular nitro cars.

Now, Steve fitted this one with a super charger, see the belt and the little blower pulley

and this 57 Chevy funny cars now got Slicks and a nitrous kit that Steve made himself.

The newest and baddest R CS are the gas powered F scale Baha cars. You can hop up like any other hot rod and then take to the drag strip

behind his store owner, Steve Buen often transforms a parking lot into an RC drag strip complete with the usual staging beams and yes, a little Christmas tree so that all kinds of RC drag racers can come out and run what they brought

man. This looks like too much fun. Gasoline, nitro and electric. The best part you can't get hurt in them. I like that part a lot. I'll tell you what I'm in for it.

Let's get the credit cards out company credit card. Oh,

yeah,

I

like that

back in the store. And before you could say credit limit, we had our own pair of HP I Baha sss

this scale gas powered and almost ready to race.

We consider the nitro cars, which used to be called gas cars. We consider those toys

now that now that these have come out,

it looks like it has to be completely assembled from scratch.

Oh, yeah. Look at that.

Oh, yeah.

Wow.

How, how big is this?

Uh, I wanna say they're like 700 cc, but I'm not really sure. They, they can run about an hour on it.

This is gonna be your 26 cc gas oil mix engine.

It's just a high end weed eater engine. Basically.

It's cool.

The neat thing about the HB I car is you can move quickly back and forth from drag strip asphalt racing to off road just by changing the tires

and to some degree, changing the suspension system. So it reacts a little bit differently.

This is what they look like after serious customization to it. So this is 38 CC 4.5 horse

has a special exhaust Carbury intake.

I actually have a nitrous oxide bottle that I can hang off of it

or you can get forged crank pistons rides, you can bore them out. You can, you can sleeve the cylinders. I mean, it's really amazing. Well, we tell everyone though, that is the first trick you wanna do is change the exhaust system

that

really will wake up the car.

Well, with that in mind, we added a pair of high

four exhaust from Dave's Discount Motors to our tab before checking out,

we'll see you guys in a couple of weeks.

The winner's gonna race my car next.

Got it.

That'll be me of course,

that's if you make it to the truck with these boxes,

man, this is a far cry from the last model car I built looks like we're only about 0 1000 parts away from having one of these little monsters ready for Saturday's race.

But I tell you what they do include all the tools and we need to put this thing together

and a nice thick phone book. I mean, instruction book with step by step details what to follow this thing closely. Now, the first steps involve the bulkhead

B

eight

87 4 78. I know this is supposed to be a how to show, but we're kind of learning how to, as we go with this build up,

I do have a tech tip for you though. Read the instructions

without them. You'll be as lost as last year's Easter egg

man. Check this no binding at all in these front control arm sinks to those ball ends. Well, now

this front bulkhead is finished and

this is the part where

it

meets up with the chassis.

Now that stuff's pretty cool, but let's check out the heart of the project and the main reason we're doing it, it's all about the power plant and what we have here is a 26 CC gasoline powered two stroke engine. It's basically based off of a weed eater. We've got a carburetor, spark plug exhaust starter kill switch. A lot of the same components that are on a regular engine. Although this is plenty powerful to make our little buggy fly. There's always room for improvements. You know, our name, we've done small blocks, big blocks. Now it's time to do a weed eater,

believe it or not, they actually make Stroker kits for these things. Now, we got ours from Dave's motors.com and it's gonna take our 26 CC engine which is actually 25.4 to a whoop in 28.9 CC.

It's like taking a small block Chevy 350

making it a 383 Stroker.

The first thing we're gonna talk about is the cylinder head. Now, in the RC world, this whole setup is considered a big bore kit. And on this particular head, the exhaust, the intake and the transfer ports have all been race ported. It's got a larger bore and it's taller to accommodate the larger stroke. Now, since it's an air cooled,

the heat from the cylinder builds up and transfers it to these cooling fins, the air passes through and that's how these things stay cool as far as the piston goes. It's pretty basic. It's made out of aluminum and uses a single ring. Now, it also has a wrist pin that uses a roller i cage bearing on the small end of the rod and two sea clips to hold it in place pretty similar to a conventional small block.

Now on to the crank shaft and connecting rod. Now, these two pieces have to be really durable because these motors turn some pretty high RPM s

now the rod is two millimeters longer and it rides on a roller ice cage bearing on the big end just like the piston. And that's how these things can handle all the abuse because we plan on giving its own.

Now, when you tear these things apart, make sure you keep track of all the parts and how they came apart because there's no manual to put it back together

before we can split the case. We have to remove the flywheel. We're gonna use a 12 millimeter socket and back the nut off about half way. That's to protect the threads when we use the brass punch and hammer to break it free.

Now, I pulled the crank rod and pissed out as an assembly and we're gonna put it back in the same exact way. The first thing to go on the rod is the bearing

followed by the retainers,

the piston

and the wrist pin.

This is a stock head without any porting done to it.

And this is our Stroker head with the results of the race porting.

Now, before you go any further, make sure everything turns over nice and smooth without any binding.

This has got to be the easiest Stroker kit I've ever put together and check this out man. It's got some compression. Now, we can't fire it until we put it in the car and speaking of which I need to help the old man.

Uh huh. Must be the glasses. I tell you I could use a stronger pair with these tiny parts.

Anyway, this unit houses servos, one for the throttle and brake, one for the steering.

This is battery, got a little port for charging and of course, you know what that thing is.

And for my next trick

I'm gonna build a pair of shocks.

This is another step I couldn't wait to get to. Now, the instruction booklet may look a little confusing and intimidating but check this out. This car actually runs a full functioning limited slip you're in,

it's got bevel gear shafts. O ring seals, a main drive gear and check out the housing. It's even got cooling fins on it to help keep it cool, pretty detailed. Now that I've got this somewhat assembled, the next step is to drop in the side bevel gears.

The HBIK even came with a little cross shaft

and a baby bottle full of gear oil.

Ok. Now we mount the gear drive and

hey, look, is that cool or what?

Now we drop her into the chassis and now the brakes even cross drilled and slotted like the big boys binders

and they install here on the gearbox shaft,

no engine hoist needed here,

just tiny tools.

All right, filled with oil, the adjustable shock assemblies go in.

And since we plan to run on asphalt. We're running with our best street rubber.

Those beat locks are just for looks, either they're fully functional now, a quick test of the steering Servo

and the throttle Servo,

which also works the brakes

and finally the fuel and oil mix, which is a little leaner than your weed eater.

Drum roll. Please.

We're ready to go races.

You're watching Horsepower for a DVD copy of this episode. Just go to Power Block tv.com and order your copy for just 595 plus shipping and handling. Start your own horsepower collection delivered right to your door from the power block.

The all new power block directory, your source for everything. Automotive, find all the brand and parts. Thousands of racetracks from Daytona to Long Beach plus events, clubs and more. The all new power block directory. Your source for everything, automotive only at Power block, tv.com

Horsepower is back and we're back to the drag strip at our favorite hot rod hobby shop.

Ready to put our driving skills on the line with the two HP I Baha assesses we just built in the shop

while we get our tune for the track. Let's see who else came to play.

Larry Clemens and his daughter Morgan have 910 scale nitro cars in their arsenal

and they alternate between off road competition

and the drag strip

drag racing has its own challenge and, and just keeping the car straight, you don't have to worry about that too much off road if the car weaves or wobbles or something. But out here in the narrow lane, you gotta go pretty much a straight line.

Take off is, is all important. If, if you get kind of squarely on the take off, it's hard to ever catch it and get it back right down the,

the drag strip. So kind of take off slow and then get on the power one. It's kind of like in real drag race who's a better driver.

You gotta beat him today.

I cut no slack with her at all.

So

now when we race, I go to win,

she does too. So

indeed, she does. And at least twice today, she kind of put poor old dad in this place. Second place. That is.

Meanwhile, I got to point out that Mike Galleys had a wee bit of pre race practice with his car.

I

guess that's why he was quickly killing the competition at the tree and at the bottom end of the track keeping his car pretty straight.

Well, most of the time that is,

that's how you kill cos not a wall.

Finally, it's Elmore's time to stage up

and he's about to discover that these things are harder to keep straight than one might imagine.

But Joe, come on, hitting the cones is one thing, crossing lanes isn't cool.

Ok. I know. But practice does make perfect or at least they say that.

Yeah. And those post raise flips.

I meant to do that. Yeah.

Anybody want to buy one of these?

That was awesome.

That was awesome.

You,

you gotta remember when it's doing that, you gotta

push forward.

I was

going

like that.

Well, after the second runaway run, I discovered an important lesson. Keep your control box batteries fresh. Otherwise the car keeps going because something makes it stop

that last backflip.

Yeah, I think he could win an Olympic Gold.

Where you race your brake parts. That's it. I broke apart. Check this out.

They

ride.

Thank goodness, we're at a hobby store with a tech shop and lots of spare parts.

Meanwhile, this guy kind of made me feel a lot better,

at least in terms of damage control.

After repairing the pits. Joe was back in action

and I gotta say he even beat me once. She says twice. Oh, well.

But, you know, it's all about having fun.

Oh, yeah. Fun. It is. But, you know, if they ever have a national championship RC drag race event,

don't look for my name on the roster.

We'll see you next week

now. I'll take cash check, credit card, jewelry, goats, chickens.