Altered E-Go's Powerplant

Today on Muscle car altered ego's mock up motor drops in the mod motor meets the

dyno

and all rise. The honorable GTO judge is here.

Hey guys, welcome to muscle car. Today we're gonna be taking a break from our other cars and getting back on our 64 Comet drag car project altered ego. That doesn't matter how much tin you chop up or how many bars you put in.

It doesn't mean anything without a drive train and that's what today's show is all about.

This car will be an A FX dragster. So when we blew it apart, we didn't have to worry about reusing every piece we chopped it up,

moved the rear end up 16 inches

widened, the tubs modified the frame rails and got to work on the roll cage

and we got something cool and different to fill in the engine compartment. In this thing. We'll get to that later. One thing I can tell you, it's gonna take up a lot more space than this come here has to offer. And that means more of this factory 10 is gonna have to find its way into the scrap heap.

Some of you guys might be crying, watch me chop up these Virgin Shock towers, but it's a necessary evil because we need to save the fender mounting surfaces to get the sheet metal hung back in place.

Back in the sixties when these cars were getting cut to pieces and raced guys that hack out the shock towers, leaving the edges and head to the strip,

but we're not that hacked. So we're going to drill out the spot welds and get rid of the leftovers

after warming up the grinder and smoothing off the frame rails. You'll be as smooth as theirs.

It's time to see how much of this new found under hood real estate. The motor is gonna take up. Plus we need to get our motor mounts

fed up and get our headers

fed up and we need to see if we're gonna have to chop up our firewall. Now, the real engine that's gonna go on, this is gonna be a highly modified Cobra motor, but for now we're using a mockup engine just because it's lighter and a lot easier to handle. Plus we don't have to worry about banging up the real one.

All right, cool.

How we look.

I think we'll be ok. We may even have to lose that center cross member,

the one that we work so hard to tie into our frame. Yeah, but we can raise it.

It's no big deal. We still got a steering column

very

well. I was thinking about that on the break. What if we use like a street rod style that has the, the uh lever where you actually pushing on the pedal and it pushes that lever

in behind it. You know what I mean? And mounted crossways behind the firewall because then we'll have tons of room for the head.

Yeah, we're on

that side and out here since we chopped all this out, we could actually take the clutch mount, the clutch out here out board of the steering column. It'll be a little bit weird with the pedal over near the side. But then we'll have room for the headers to come out the side.

We'll have clearance for a steering column.

Well, since we have so many holes that need to be filled, don't we just cut the firewall off? You wanna drop the whole firewall out?

Uh You love making work for us, don't you need to mock up some motor mounts on this thing? But we need to decide on height wise where we're gonna put it,

the stacks are gonna come up. They're not real tall. Stacks are probably six inches or so,

something like that. Decide on the height, how much the, the floor

or how tall of a hump we want in the floor and then mock up our mouse to kind of set it in there. If we run the, the master selling the sideways behind the dash, we don't have to worry about clearance on the head. So we could basically put this thing wherever we want it. We don't want to get it up too high because the

mount will be in the way for,

for our steering comb. Yeah, probably get the motor mounts in, get our suspension hung and then go from there if we could do that and set the, set the axle

right there.

That'd be just about centered on that spring that would set the whole engine behind the front axle.

That'd be a wheel stand in front of a gun.

Yeah, it would.

Our biggest issue is gonna be cleansing for the transmission. That thing's huge.

We'll make room.

Yeah, that's right. That's why God invented plasma cutters

to avoid catching the foam mock up motor on fire. We're covering it up with a welding blanket. It's a thick material treated with a flame retardant

since we're probably replacing the whole firewall later. I'm just getting enough of the comet out of the way to make room for the motor and tranny

there

with the motor set where we want it. We can make some mounts Brent, starting with the plates that attach to the motor

with these in place. You can make the extensions that connect it all to the frame rails

with one mount tacked in place.

We need to make sure the engines level

a slight tweak of the engine hoist and everything looks good. So the other side can be tacked in

one final measurement to make sure the setback is equal on both sides and it can all be finished up

where the motor mounts in. We can get our transmission set in place and get a cross member built. Now, obviously, this isn't the motor that's going to stay in altered ego because plastic blocks don't hold up to internal combustion very well.

But we do have the real one that just showed up along with a guy who built it. So stick around because after the break, we're getting schooled on the 4.6

up next, a small engine that packs a big punch.

Hey, welcome back. And I told you guys earlier in the show that we had something special planned for the power plant and altered ego and here it is, it started life as a Ford 4.6 L, but it's been sleeved and bored out to a full 5 L. It has billet racing cams, oversized valves and seats CNC ported heads and it's all topped off with a throttle body intake. And here's the man behind the motor, the mod God himself, Sean Highland. How you doing, man? Good, Rick. How are you? Very good. Thank you. So how is it that, you know so much about these motors? Well, we've been working on them a long time

about how basically we've been working on these engines pretty much exclusively since 95

and we've developed them for, you know, road racing,

drag racing. We've been privileged to work with a lot of the people that were pioneers racing. These like John

Mikovits

first guy to drag race one of these engines in the nines, the eights, the sevens and then the Sixes, you built

all those motors. We've worked with John, we built some and we've also developed components with him.

Uh We've also worked with some semi factory back race teams.

People like multi Matic that ran Grand M Cup. We were involved in the development of these engines for GT three.

So a lot of opportunities around the world working with these engines for the last 12 or 13 years. So you literally know these things inside now.

Yeah, I sleep with them at night.

Nice. Well, I sure appreciate your help on our project here.

Well, can you tell us anything about the short block? Absolutely. This is, this is a Ford production block we're using on this build up. It's the best one they made called the T

block. Unfortunately, it was only used till 99.

So for higher horsepower applications, we actually have our own casting, a full race block that we offer now.

But for this one, this is good over 1000 horsepower the way it sits. No kidding.

And same thing, the crank shaft production Ford steel crank shaft, we've used these crank shafts up to 1500 horsepower. No problem. What kind of power are you getting out of? Your aftermarket blocks.

The aftermarket block is good to 2500.

Holy smoke. So, what head castings do you start with?

These are 0304 Cobra castings, one of the better late model castings.

And then they're CNC ported with our own port design

that removes the, you know, human variability. If the head porter had had a fight with his wife the night before, we don't have to worry about it.

And then we fit them with our stainless valves, our valve springs, retainers, locks and our own camshaft profile which are ground on the billet course.

Uh So you actually designed the profile of the cams then? Yeah, we've got about eight different profiles depending on the application.

So the rods and pistons are those just straight off a shelf or what are those? Those are actually our design. We had to work with companies like Manly

for the rods je for the pistons A RP for the studs years ago when we started working on these engines because at the time,

none of these parts existed. So they're all to our specs.

Well, this doesn't look like any standard small block Ford that I've seen.

No, these engines all have six main bolts on them

four down this way and two side bolts on each cap.

So we have to torque all of them

in sequence

to get

everything lined up the way it needs to be first, the main bolts in the four pattern.

And then we have to use an inch pound torque wrench to tighten the side bolts correctly.

You know, Rick, one of the tricks with putting these engines together,

we put the A RP Molly lube on the bolt,

but we tighten the bolt to torque, which is 55 ft pounds three times and loosen it off. That gets rid of any residual friction between the bolt thread and the connecting rod. So that when we torque the bolt for the final time, we get the correct amount of preload on the bolt. Got you.

So put it in,

you bet

it's like you're ready for the head gaskets. What's up with these?

This is a multi lamb gasket. It's made of all metal materials laminated together

and it's held in place with a rivet until it gets set in the engine.

These type of gaskets are really durable. There's no composition material so there's nothing to blow out.

They'll stand up to nitrous supercharged, whatever you wanna throw at it. So they're more, better, more, better,

cool

the heads are where the real power is made. Sean spent his career perfecting the engineering behind these power plants.

And that's why we can expect to get such big power out of such small displacement.

Once the heads are torque to 75 ft pounds, the timing components can go on.

Now, I've built a lot of domestic V eights but seeing what looks like 20 ft of timing chain, man. I'm glad Sean is the one putting this thing together. Four cams means it's not only four times as complicated, it's also four times as critical to get it right.

We've been busy over here, which got set up.

This is the set up for degree in the CAMS. We have the degree wheel on the front of the engine

dial indicator on the cylinder head and we're gonna degree in the

CS

degree in the cam shafts on the double overhead cam 4.6 Ford engine is super important. If you don't do it properly, you're going to flat leave 30 to 40 horsepower on the table. That's a lot. So what's the first step rotating the engine until we see 50 thou valve lift,

we record the valve opening point on the degree wheel.

We then do the same on the closing point

and adjust the cam shafts as necessary.

So how long does it usually take?

It could take up to 4 to 5 hours to do this properly? Oh, man, we don't have that kind of time. I have both a book and a DVD on this subject in more detail. Oh, that's cool. Hey, we'll get a link set up on our website at Power block tv.com. So you guys can check those out, uh stick around because we're gonna finish button this thing up, get down to horsepower and invade their dyno room right after the break.

Next on flashback. A numbers matching GTO judge.

Today's flashback. A 1970 GTO judge

order in the court, muscle car fans

rides for the honorable GTO judge

the verdicts in and this goat's guilty of outrageous style and disturbing the peace.

This numbers matching 1970 judge really knows how to lay down the law

with its 400 cubic inch Ramer

3 V8.

This engine could produce 366 horsepower at 16 over the standard GTO

it features

deported heads, hydraulic cam shaft, free flowing exhaust manifolds and a Rochester quadrajet four barrel carb.

The ram air intake can be opened with a knob under the dash to suck in more air and boost power

keeping track of all that power was easy with the hood mounted. Tap,

Bill Stovall

isn't afraid to drop the hammer

or should I say gavel on this judge? It takes a few years off my life with a bit younger.

It makes

you

feel judges also came with a heavy duty suspension which included coil springs, front and rear, a thicker front and a roll bar, four length in the rear and stiffer shocks.

The judge made its debut in 1969. A much different car than originally planned. The engineers of Pontiac had been working on a budget version of the GTO to compete with

road runner

who was called the Et Short for elapsed time and had a 350 engine. But that project got mixed when Pontiac's division head, John DeLorean refused to have anything smaller than a 400 in the GTO.

What they ended up with was a pricier version of the GTO with a lot more flash and a little extra power.

DeLorean

named it the judge based on a skit from the hit show laugh in,

in 1970 the judge

got a bit of a face lift. The long tricolor

stripe down the side was now two eyebrows over each wheel. The judge logo was moved behind the front tire and onto the rear deck lid. Black caps on the wheel hubs were changed to red by March of 1970

up front, the concealed headlight option was axed and the girl got a blacked out treatment

in the rear. The huge air foil no longer curved down at both ends but was flat all the way across and the exhaust was all turned to two dual tail

pipes.

Now, the car didn't look this good when Bill found it almost 20 years ago,

the front fenders were basically jumped. It underwent a total rotisserie restoration and the result was a car that won a gold award in the concourse class at the 2006 GTO Nationals in Louisville, Kentucky,

people are used to all judges being orange, but that's not true. And then when you tell somebody, you got a blue judge when it has pink and orange stripes, and I really think you've gone over, but with

only 3797 judges were built in 1970 about 3000 less than the previous year. Thanks to rise in insurance costs. Interest in muscle cars was beginning to wane. And the last judge was produced in January of 1971. Only about 11,000 total were produced in that three year span. And that makes these cars highly sought after today.

And it's easy to see why

ladies and gentlemen

court's adjourned

coming up, Rick and Sean test the go power for altered ego.

Well, we snuck down here to horsepower's diner room. We commandeered the joint. We're gonna do our best to twist the shaft off this thing. What do you think the odds are Sean?

I think the diner will probably survive.

All right, this little Mo motor did good 491 horsepower at 6800 RPM. S 415 ft pounds of torque at 5900.

But what we expected it's a nice little motor. Thank you, dude. That's awesome, man.

Looks like altered ego is gonna have plenty of power to hang the front wheels. Absolutely cool, man. I really appreciate it. Hey, thank you for coming down and helping us out with a project. My pleasure, Rick. Hey, Sean Highland Motorsports. If you want the best of the best to build an engine, look him up. He's also on our website on Power block tv.com.

Well, you guys were in there thrashing on the dyno there. I was out Thrush on the panel, wherever it is there, it is just a little. Thank you from me to you.

Thank you very much. I appreciate it, man. I really do. I really do. Thanks again. Well, hey, I gotta get back down to muscle car and get back to work before we can hit the track. But we're out of time for this week. So for now we're out of here.

So let's go get a beer, man. Ok.