1,891HP Twin-Turbo, Street-Legal 7.3L Godzilla! Brian Wolfe and Ben Strader of EFI U Explain How

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]Ready to heat.

[00:00:31]Well, hey, good morning, Brian. Um, great to have a little time to chat with you. Uh, if those that don't know, uh, I'm Ben Strader from EFI University and we have Brian Wolf from Willis Performance Engines.

[00:00:42]>> We just two buddies getting together talking about cool engine stuff. And dude, you have been killing it lately when it comes to the cool engine stuff.

[00:00:49]>> Yeah. No, we've been having a lot of fun. It's uh uh you know, like I said, being retired and doing the stuff not as a full-time job, but as a uh you know, part time to keep out of my wife's hair as I can. Uh it's like being kind of 16 all over again, just with a little bit more money to do a few more cool things.

[00:01:07]>> So, uh yeah, my wife would classify that as a jobby.

[00:01:11]>> Yeah, exactly. And uh so, uh yeah, so it's been fun. This is the first time we've really done a lot of testing with Boost. We've done a lot of NA stuff on on the dyno. Um, but uh, you know, so you're in the seven, you know, we're really like, you know, 600 800 horsepower range, but uh, put the boost on and kind of come up on that learning curve uh, has been a riot. So, uh, >> so, so, um, real quick, just so in case there's somebody watching that maybe doesn't know you or what we're talking about, you're, uh, you're specifically focusing all your efforts on the Ford 7.3 L Godzilla program, but tell us why.

[00:01:46]How did you get there? You know, tell us your your story, you know, briefly. So, so people can >> Yeah, I try to keep it uh as brief as possible. I I'll start with I retired from Ford uh at the end of 2017. Uh in that role uh I was accountable for the design and development of all Ford engines globally. And um the last engine that I kind of had a significant fingerprint in uh was the Godzilla uh which uh was approved by the board of directors um you know before I left Ford and the main the design work was already done and it was specifically designed for truck use for the Superduty uh to replace the 6.8 L. So um >> that was the >> cool thing 6.8 L V10.

[00:02:34]>> Okay. Okay. Yes, the 6.8 L V10. And the the cool thing is I retired and I said, "Well, I want to, you know, dabble in engine." So, the I retired at the end of December in January. I think second or third of 18, my wife and I flew to Florida and I bought a dyno and we got a U-Haul and we drove that back. Um, so you know, I wanted to, you know, play with engines and I was always a small block Ford guy, but I had a lot of good friends like Chris Hullbrook and others that, you know, we're doing small block Fords and Coyotes. So I said, you know, there's a lot of attention on those. Um, but I know that Godzilla will probably take off pretty good cuz it's smaller.

[00:03:14]It's kind of like a factory stroker because it's not a whole lot bigger dimensionally than a Windsor, but it kind of takes advantage of modern design, smaller compression heights, and allows to get a lot of cubic inches uh in a fairly small package. So I started to play with the Godzillaas and reached out to, you know, companies like Cal's and uh Brian Tulie Racing, Daily Engineering, Jessel uh on hey, you know, this is probably going to come along and you know, you guys maybe we can start uh working on some aftermarket parts for him and uh so that's why I started to to focus on that ever since. Well, you did a good job because um to be completely honest, I don't even know if I've told you this, but like 98% of the reason that I'm involved in the Godzilla world is because of your work. Like, you know, I watched some I saw some things about it. I know, you know, if you hadn't promoted and pushed and and elevated the platform, I don't know that I would have caught wind of it. And so, um we started working on them, I think, in 2022.

[00:04:14]Uh, we bought 10 of them, 10 Ford factory crate engines because I figured we're going to run the crap out of them, try all these parts. I got to hurry up and try and catch up with Brian and I'm still trying to do that. I I haven't even come close, you know, but uh but uh I thought, well, we'll probably end up, you know, blowing one up or a couple up or we need spares, you know. And so far, we've never done that. We've I've never had a Godzilla engine failure. Um either uh the normal failures everybody talks about or something, knock on wood, you know, self-induced that we screwed up.

[00:04:43]I've yet to actually have one uh fail.

[00:04:45]And we've done a bunch of them now uh in lots of different configurations. It's just such an impressive platform. I kind of wish it had came in something cooler than a truck. I think it'd be more popular if it was in Mustangs and stuff, but uh you know, for >> you know, I don't know.

[00:04:59]>> Yeah, just a couple comments, you know, before we get too far along. You know, one, you know, obviously you and 10K Technologies have done an enormous amount to get, you know, aftermarket parts for the Godzilla, you know, available to people. So, I think that's, you know, fantastic. And you know, I think uh you know, with the Innovate uh 59 mm on there, you guys have tickled 800 horsepower with a very streetable engine. So, I think that's that's super cool. Um but I will the only thing I I tell people when they say, "Well, you know, it hasn't come in cars." I said, "Well, let me ask you this. When people go to the junkyards to do swaps, how many come out of GTO's and Camaros and Corvettes?" No, they're kind of coming out of trucks.

[00:05:37]>> And Yeah.

[00:05:39]>> Yeah. And as Ford makes 350,000 plus of these a year, you know, there's quite a few out there and, you know, they can be purchased pretty reasonable.

[00:05:47]But I I think the toughest part um for the swap versus like a Coyote or, you know, an LS is the oiling system because it comes with that super deep pan and uh you know, for a truck and, you know, the guys did a good job. It's got that variable displacement oil pump. So it kind of forces, you know, a fairly large expenditure to get it into a a car platform, which is probably an Achilles heel.

[00:06:13]>> Yep. Yeah. And, you know, you sort of combine that with the fact that the the way the cylinder head has the ports going upwards, it's hard to make an intake manifold that's real low profile without giving away performance. So, you kind of take a hit in the the height of the engine right off the bat, unless you're putting in an old F-100 where it doesn't matter, you know, but to get them into little, you know, must uh Cobra, you know, 427 Cobra replicas or whatever, you you end up having to spend some off the bat. And that's probably the only negative I would say. But, um, if you can get past that.

[00:06:43]>> Yeah. And the, uh, I will say I think like, you know, the Brian Tulie intake, the Ford Performance, and the Holly um, they're all pretty, you know, they're all pretty low profile now. Yep.

[00:06:52]>> Um and in fact on the drag car now again I probably got the engine lower than most people but I've got a flat hood on that with the pro with with a proch charger. So uh um I and you know with the flat uh intake flange um you do have a lot of or you have a lot of runner in the in the cylinder head >> and I always thought well does the air know if it's in the cylinder head or the intake? So, you know, with the big TR intake, you do lose quite a bit of torque versus um a um a stock intake with those super long runners. Y >> but I think that's kind of true for some of the LS stuff too when people try to put an I um you know a higher RPM intake you want to make power 65 775 you know I kind of we all we all lose a bit of that nice low end uh >> I totally agree and the one thing I would say about that is because that comes up in conversations a lot around here too you know we run a lot of these things on the dyno and people say oh it kills all the bottom end torque I'm like yeah it's a real bummer to only be able to make 600 foot-lbs at 2800 RPM you know instead of instead of 675 or 700 00 like in our in our big stroker ones, you know, but like man, 600 footlbs is one of those things. It's a number we toss around, but the first time you go out and drive on the street with normal street tires with 600 footlbs of torque, you're going to be changing lanes. Like it's it's wild. It's a really cool engine. Um, so this is kind of cool cuz we've both, you know, done lots and lots of stuff with the engine. Like I said, you're you're a little bit of the, you know, the king of the Godzilla, if you will, and uh we're all just kind of riding your coattails. But man, I've done some cool stuff and made neat parts for him. And I'm super stoked that some of my parts got to make it into your engine. But I want to talk about this engine because you've kind of broken the internet last week or so with this foray into turbocharging a Godzilla. I mean, I'm sure other people have put turbos on them, but you're the guy that's really been vocal about it. So, let's chat about that thing.

[00:08:46]>> Yeah. So to start with, you know, we're we're you know, we're just kind of at the starting stages. We, you know, people like to talk about like, well, I know what to do with the cam. I know this. I know that. You say, "Well, where's your data?" Well, I don't need that. I just know. It's like, well, yeah, you know, you might know and you probably pretty close, but you know, um, as you do c, you know, people that have actually run dinos and have done cam development, they know that, you know, before like a company, you know, is going to go in production with a cam, they're not just going to make a profile and ship it out there, you know, they're going to test four, five, six cams and really find the a best compromise. So, uh, one of the things I thought would be really cool would be to run four different cam profiles, run it naturally aspirated, run it with a F1 A94 Procharger, and run it with twin turbos.

[00:09:34]And uh, well, first I was going to run a turbocharge, just any turbo. And then I looked at my son's car and I go, "Oh, he's got all the plumbing all done. I can just take the stuff out of his car and throw it on the dyno with a lot less work." So, that's what we did. And, uh, this is my first real experience working with a turbo. and these little 68mm.88 AR ratio boreh Warner turbos. The first thing I I kind of found was um after I got a call from a friend that asked some about some of my initial data uh Ben, you might remember when you called me where uh and I was super stoked. It made 1550 horsepower. Go, wow, that's really good. you know, and uh and Ben called and he said uh he was, you know, again, you really appreciate when someone looks at your data, they see something that maybe they don't understand or doesn't make sense and they call and let you know what they see cuz obviously I missed it. And he said, 'You know, I looked at the correction factor go and it was going up throughout the run. And then I looked at the humidity and that was going up throughout the run. And then I looked at the air temp and that up there, you know, what's going on in your dino cell. And I go, you know, I don't know, but let me take a look. And uh, you know, I started to think about it. I said, "Yeah, I remember when I fired the engine up with the turbos. I put my hand in Oh, case in point, when I run all the, you know, um, other applications, the exhaust goes out the back of the cell as convention." But because these twin turbos had the dumps coming out the side, so it would come out like in front of the front fender on the car. I thought, well, I've got a 23,000 CFM fan, I've got openings in the room, it it'll be fine. And, um, I didn't see any kind of bunny stuff when I was looking through the window in the dyno. So, I thought everything was fine.

[00:11:21]Well, I was wrong cuz when I started when Ben asked the question, I remember starting the engine, I put my hand in front of the exhaust pipe. I felt a little moisture and I first I was afraid that might have been a head gasket.

[00:11:31]Then, no, by combustion is water and it is E85.

[00:11:37]So, I go, well, maybe I ought to r the exhaust out of the room. And we did that. And, uh, all I'm at north of 1700 horsepower.

[00:11:46]>> Yeah. I remember the second dyno. She was like, "Dude, did you turn the boost up?"

[00:11:50]>> Yeah.

[00:11:50]>> Said, "No, I didn't."

[00:11:51]>> And then we started to turn the boost up and we got up to like 1810 and then eventually uh we swapped out to this new Borg Warner 6880 turbo uh their R version and you know it made uh 1,890 horsepower and um like 1460tlbs of torque. But I will say the problem I was having is um be because the absorber has so much pressure in it and the servo on the other side of it uh has to hold that pressure in so that it'll hold the load control. I was I started to blow the gaskets out of the uh out of that. So I have to get that fixed before we do any more running. Uh but we are going to tailor it back. I that was like 26 lbs of booster 26 and 12. I want to tailor it back and like kind of do the comparison at about 20 lbs cuz pistons I have in that engine are I bought four or five years ago. I mean, they were the, you know, like the first offtheshelf, you know, pistons and not really designed for those type of loads.

[00:12:53]>> Yeah.

[00:12:54]>> So, uh, we're going to dial it back a little bit before we do the rest of the testing.

[00:12:59]>> Yeah. So, early on in your testing, so I want to make sure I get the timeline right. Um, early on you had whatever I'm not sure valve springs in there and then you were having some issues and we got together and I sent you or you bought I didn't I didn't I don't think I gave them to you. That was >> Yeah, I just Yeah, I went online cuz you have a nice online store that made it super easy. So, it was it was over it was over the weekend, you know. Okay, I was going to say I feel like that's something I should have sponsored, but all of a sudden there was an order for a set of springs and so uh I appreciate that. At uh >> at 10K Technology, we've been working hard on valve spring designs and a kind of a controversial one, right? This little single conicle, you know, like on if you just look at it, you go, man, that thing ain't very much spring, but uh it's really really really great stuff. So you um you put it in when?

[00:13:45]Early on before the boost or >> you know I could probably throw up a graph that might show what made me think I have something wrong even before we got into all the turbo testing. So let me see if I can get this up here reasonably efficiently.

[00:13:59]Okay. So what what you'll see there is the red curve which is like my was my NA baseline. It made a little over 700 horsepower. And but I go, "Man, it's falling off so fast." I go, "Is it the cam?" Because it was a pretty short duration, 231.

[00:14:20]Is it the port, you know, is there something wrong? Or is it I'm just losing control of the valve train. And I said, I don't want to get into this five or six week test program and find out I had something fundamentally wrong. So, uh, so we ended up, uh, I said, "Let me put a lighter intake valve in it and let me put a better valve spring in it so that I can at least say the red line is accurate and it's something else in my system or let's see if I corrected." Uh, not I corrected, but you know, the parts that we put in corrected it. And uh what you can see there is like the black line looks a lot more for those that probably do a lot of dyno testing looks a lot more normal from a power fall off. And you can see how dramatic it is cuz you know if this is at like 7,300 RPM it's over 50 horsepower there.

[00:15:09]>> So if you start thinking about a car going down the drag strip and you normally shift 4 or 500 RPM past the power peak and then it falls back to how much better that's actually going to perform in you know in the vehicle. So it becomes super important. Um, I didn't really hear a miss on the dyno. I didn't kind of hear anything. It was just I looked at that fall off and I go, "It just doesn't look right." And uh that was like and then over the weekend I said, "Okay, I'm ordering springs." And then uh I looked at my shelf and I said, "Oh, look, I got a set of titanium valves, but they're too big." And I called my buddy Dave Petite and said, "Dave, can you turn these down for me?

[00:15:43]Can I have them tomorrow?" And you know, he did that and uh uh put it back together and we uh said, "Okay, now we got a reasonable baseline that we can put confidence in our data."

[00:15:52]>> So So a couple things. I mean, to be fair, it could be the lighter valves that that helped. It could be the valve spring, or it could be just a com combination of both. But either way, I'm thrilled that you chose to put our products in there and that they actually helped the problem. But it's interesting. So you're on this valve spring thing. Now all of a sudden you have this single not a duel single spring and its conicles which some people like and some people are scared of just because they've had bad experiences in the past or whatever. Um but it ran really good when it was naturally aspirated. The problem is um it's not a it's not a spring that works because of high loads, right? The spring works because of its dynamic stability and the variable pitch and the variable frequencies that it generates um at higher RPM. But if you start talking about boost, one of the number one phone calls that I always get is like, "Yeah, I like your spring, but you know, if you install that thing at inch 900 or 2 in or whatever, like it should be, you're only going to have about 180 lbs on the seat." Is that about what you found of what you had?

[00:16:54]>> Yeah, that's Yeah, we had uh we we installed at 195, so I think I was 180 180 185 on the seat. You know, it varied a little bit and I didn't, you know, I wasn't like a good cylinder head guy and put real, you know, get them all exactly the same. I said, "Okay, 180." You know, as long as they were within five, I was happy.

[00:17:10]>> They don't they don't crash, so we're good. That's that's fine. Um, but, you know, you start talking about boost and the number one question I get is like, well, how much extra spring load do I need if I'm going to have boost? And when you think about that on the surface, you're like, "Oh, geez, that's right." You know, I mean, what what size is your intake valve?

[00:17:28]>> It's a 2.220 >> 2220.

[00:17:32]Okay. So, let's see. If I did that in area, I'll divide that in half and then uh square it. So then times 3.14 for pi.

[00:17:42]So basically um if I'm doing that right, uh let's see, 2.22 / 2* >> I just go squared uh*ide 4.

[00:17:54]>> Yep. Yep.

[00:17:56]>> Uh you could do that too. So I get what about three 3.87 square inches of area.

[00:18:02]>> Mhm. something like that. So then all of a sudden you go, "Well, I think I heard you say you had 26 pounds of boost." So you're talking about 100 pounds of total force that's pushing on that valve and you only got 180 lb on the seat. And so I'm going to I'm going to give an example what I'm talking about here. So here's a Godzilla 73 L Godzilla cylinder head that uh accidentally fell into the bandsaw. And uh so what what guys are talking about is if you put obviously 26 lb here, it's pounds per square inch.

[00:18:34]And so the area of this valve being p<unk> r squar uh whatever that was 3.87 * 26, I get about 100 lb of force here trying to trying to push that valve open, which effectively makes my my valve spring 100 pounds weaker. I think we would all agree that that's the case.

[00:18:54]The problem is, um, dude, you made 1,900 horsepower and the spring didn't fail.

[00:18:59]So, what's going on? Why?

[00:19:02]>> Well, you know, again, um, you know, way more about this than I cuz I'm not a valve train guy, but um, you know, it's, you know, people would say, you know, hey, the free body diagram, if I drew drew the valve, and I've got, you know, I accounted for what's on one side of the valve, but we got to talk about the loads on the other side.

[00:19:19]>> That's right. And uh I think you have some good uh data that I don't have that can help explain that to folks.

[00:19:25]>> So at the end of the day, we might have this extra 100 pounds of force here, but that's there's no free lunch. There's nothing that comes for free. You can't generate that boost um without having pressure somewhere else in the system.

[00:19:38]So it's the extra pressure that's left over from cylinder pressure like in the you know in the combustion chamber that's effectively offsetting that value, right? And so, um, I did bring some, but do you want to share your boosted dynino sheets before we look at some of my data?

[00:19:56]>> Why don't we just go right into yours because, you know, I think that because you you you got the incylinder pressure and I think it'll be more >> uh it'll be easier.

[00:20:03]>> So, yeah, I'll stop sharing.

[00:20:05]>> Okay, no problem. I'm going to bring this up. You let me know when you can see my diagram here. So, this is what I consider to be one of the most extreme examples that I could find. This is a a twin turbocharged uh 640 cubic inch engine. This is a a promod car that we call project sorceress which was an engine that I worked on for a couple of years actually working out valve train issues. And then what we did is we instrumented it with every cylinder having a little combustion pressure sensor uh inside the inside the combustion chamber. Now, this thing is making uh on this dyno pull, this thing was making 4,754 horsepower. That's um at the axles on a hub dyno uh with 71 lbs of boost with some 100 I believe 110 mm Hartzs turbochargers. We also ran some 114s at one point, but these are not small turbos. Um, and even in this example with 71 lbs of boost and the intake valve being something like uh 2.6 in in diameter or something like that. I mean giant, right? One, whatever that is.

[00:21:12]Let's do it your way. 2.6 * 2.6 * 7854.

[00:21:16]Yeah. So, we have 5.3 square in of area on the back of that valve times the 71 PSI. That's 377 pounds of force that's trying to make that valve open. But what I wanted to show with this diagram here, so uh what I got is I'm going to come up here to where we're like 82 3 400 RPM or something where we got a lot going on.

[00:21:38]You can see here that my pressures are in bar. So that's 178 and each bar is worth about 14 1/2 PSI or so. So we're talking about a total pressure of 2581 uh pounds per square inch. Uh pretty pretty big amount of pressure. You're certainly not going to offset that. uh with a with a valve spring, but but obviously that's at peak load. So, let's zoom out here and look at the whole engine cycle. What we're seeing here in the bottom bottom left corner here and I don't know, can you see it? Okay, Brian, should I raise >> Oh, yeah. Yep. See it perfectly.

[00:22:11]>> Okay.

[00:22:12]>> Yeah, if you make it Yeah, make Yes.

[00:22:14]Yeah, that'd be great.

[00:22:14]>> There we go. Um, so across the bottom here, we can see uh zero is top dead center and then I've got 360 degrees both directions. So, we're actually seeing uh the entire four-stroke cycle here. Um, and so I have the four valve events, right? So we have intake valve opening, intake valve closing, exhaust valve opening, exhaust valve closing. So if I was to start over here, if I went to 180°, that would be bottom dead center. And then as we start going back up in the cylinder, we get here to where the intake valve closes. I want to look at what that pressure is when the intake valve closes. Here we have 10.3 bar.

[00:22:50]Now, this is absolute pressure. So, what that means is I have 9.3 bars worth of above atmospheric pressure. Again, times 14.5. When the intake valve closes, there's about 135 PSI on the gauge there in the cylinder. Now, some of that's because of the boost, and some of that's because we're after bottom dead center.

[00:23:08]The piston's actually going up, so we're getting some compression as well. Um, shortly after that, we'll have the spark plug fire and we'll get this giant pressure spike. So, here's TDC or just after TDC about 20° or so and then the piston starts going back down and we're of course losing our pressure. Take a look at what the pressure is here in the cylinder uh when the exhaust valve opens at about 90 or so degrees in the cycle.

[00:23:37]We're 40 bar 40.5 time 145. We're opening and then if we even take out the barrel to be generous, we're opening the exhaust valve trying to push it into the cylinder at 573 psi. Now, now here's the thing. That's pushing the exhaust valve into the cylinder, but that same pressure is also pushing up on the intake valve. So that you know 70 pounds of boost that we have in there is nothing compared to the 570 pounds of force we have inside the cylinder. U the valve spring we don't even need a valve spring at this point. We could literally take it off and the valve would stay closed because the pressure inside the cylinder is so much greater than what's than what's in the in the intake manifold. Right? Um, so if we continue on down, then we get on down to bottom dead center, 180 degrees here, and then we start going back up towards top dead center. And uh, let's see over here at about uh, I don't know, 25 or so degrees before top dead center. We're going to open the intake valve. So now what I have is 71 lbs of boost pushing on the the back side of my valve, trying to make that guy open. Um, but I have 8 1/2 bar. Again, that's absolute. So we'll take one out, call it 7 1/2 bar time 145. I have 109 PSI of cylinder pressure at that point. So what you see is as you move through the engine cycle over here, there's never a time anywhere in the four-stroke cycle where we end up with a positive pressure gradient across the valve. Meaning what I mean by that is there's never a time when we end up with more pressure here than what's here. And that's true whether you're running 5 lbs of boost or 50 lbs of boost or in this case almost 75 pounds of boost. In fact, it almost gets worse as the boost gets higher because the exhaust back pressure gets worse and worse and worse and there's no free lunch. So, what I tell guys all the time is like pick the right spring for the cam shaft lift and the valve weight and all that stuff you have dynamically and don't worry about the boost because you're never going to have a time when the boost is truly offsetting the valve spring the way that most people think it is.

[00:25:45]Yep. For sure.

[00:25:46]>> Hopefully that was helpful. You think that made sense to anybody?

[00:25:49]>> I think it made sense probably to everybody. It's it's it's nice because you know while people will see data in textbooks or you know you know or on the internet of a PV diagram or diagram, they may see it like for an NA engine, it might be for a single cylinder experimental engine, but to see it um on a turbocharged engine, not many people have the data and then even fewer people that do have the data will, you know, share it with people. So you can really say here's what's happening. It's not I think or maybe or could be. It's like well here's what the data says now let's talk about it. So uh I think that was very clear.

[00:26:21]>> I'm really lucky. I mean I'm like I'm not quite as cool as your job where I'm just retired and I can do whatever I want but I'm in a very great position with both um 10K Technologies which is our product development company um and then we get to use and share all the resources that I have here at EFI University. So, um I probably have told you this before, but for 20some years, I've been trying really hard to build a terrific engine research and development shop that didn't have any customers. Um just just so that I could, you know, I I joke around all the time at EFI University. I mean, we're a vocational school. We teach about engine development, EFI tuning, all that stuff.

[00:26:58]But the truth is I only teach the stuff that I'm interested in learning, you know. So, the the whole reason that I do R&D is so I can understand more about engines. And like you just pointed out very accurately, I got frustrated. I bought all the physics and manuals and the college textbooks for thermo and engineering and all this stuff. And all I ever found was these graphs of cylinder pressure analysis done on lab, you know, slowed diesel single cylinder engines or hybrid. You know, nobody would ever nobody could ever show me data from a eight or 9,000 RPM legit racing engine. And so I just went out and acquired the equipment a little at a time to do it myself. And I've been super fortunate uh to work in, you know, US, you know, 500inch pro stock and Australian 400inch proto and promod and, you know, factory X and every everything in between. That's given me a huge amount of u what what do you want to say? I guess experience working on these these engines. And so I've been watching these trends of of data that looks just like what I shared here and kind of comparing that to what I'm seeing on the internet that people are saying. And look, I'm not trying to make anybody feel bad or dumb or edge you shame them, I always call it. But man, there's some guys out there that speak about this topic you and I are sharing here so boldly. And it's like the only thing that exceeds their ignorance is their confidence. You know, they're they're so convinced that they're right. And they would be if there if the engine only worked as a static model. If there was only ever pressure on one side of the valve, you would be right. But in real life, engines don't work that way. It's always dynamic. There's always a change in pressure and it never really works out the way we think which is why I keep doing it, why it's so cool and I keep learning stuff.

[00:28:39]>> No, no, it makes it makes it great and like I said, you know, the the the data helps uh in most of the time calm debates.

[00:28:47]>> Yes.

[00:28:48]>> Yep.

[00:28:48]>> Yeah. So, if you uh >> even in my own >> pardon, >> even in my own brain, right? Like I I >> Yeah, >> I think I told you the other day when we were talking about you did your dyno test and you were high-fiving everybody about 1550 horsepower and I called and I said, "Hey, uh I'm not real sure what's going on here." And I said, "Look, nobody doubts the accuracy of my dyno more than me." Like, so I'm always looking for what did I miss and what went wrong. And so when I see it with my friends, I'm like, "Hey, check this out." And in your case, it worked out in your favor because you picked up 150 more horsepower or something like that.

[00:29:20]But uh usually it's like are you sure I made that much power?

[00:29:24]>> Yeah.

[00:29:25]>> So here's a cool >> Yeah. No. Yeah. I I still you know you still uh when you see the when you see numbers you know you still got to say does that make sense? Let me look at the fuel flow. Let me look at you know does that make sense? Does the fuel flow meter match fuel injectors within a reasonable amount? Because again you know here I don't have the same level of equipment that you know we had at Ford right? you know the you know where you could you know critical air systems and you control humidity temperature going into the motor and all that. So you get you you've got to rely on more and then you got to question it more and then you also have to say you know there my my dad is I know my dad is not perfect I just hope it's repeatable so if I see a difference I can at least say well I think that difference is correct um even though they absolutely may not be perfect. I I honestly I think the critical part for us in the aftermarket in the motorsports r range where like we don't have the facilities that Ford and GM and you know all the rest of them have um the the real determining factor of success for me is the ability to question yourself and be humble and say maybe I miss something and if you do that I mean I say all the time I've never learned anything on my dyno when everything went perfect right like I start out with a combination and I got all my calculations and it should make 684 4 horsepower and the thing makes 684 horsepower and you go, "Yep, that's what I thought." What happens is you think it's going to make 684 and it makes 624 and you're like, "Hang on, what the heck?" You know, and by the end of the day, you've fixed it or not fixed it, but you learn something. And so, you know, for us, you know, at the lower level, we'll call it. You just have to be really open-minded and really um skeptical. I say there's it's healthy to be skeptical.

[00:31:08]>> Yep. Yeah. you um one thing I used to share with folks at work is you want to be your own worst critic. I said because if your own if your own worst critic nothing I can give you from a coaching perspective or tell you anything was going to hurt your feelings >> because hopefully you've already thought of it yourself and uh and that's yeah I think just a uh a reasonable way to you know proceed through pretty much anything in life.

[00:31:32]>> Yep. Well, hey, um, show us your show us your cool graph with this, uh, what is it? 1900 horsepower.

[00:31:40]>> Yeah, this one. Let's see. I think the one that I have here, this was just the, uh, 1810. Let me just see. Oh, hang on here, baby.

[00:31:47]>> There we go.

[00:31:48]>> So, yeah, this is the uh, you know, and this was one um, that I like to do cuz uh, uh, and this is what got me into trouble where I started to hurt parts on, you know, the blow gaskets on the dyno. I always like to do a a three-run average if I, you know, and again, it's funny because when you start to make numbers like this and you lean in into it, you can see this thing started at 4,700. I want to start to pull lower, but the dino wouldn't hold lower.

[00:32:13]>> Y >> um you know, you get nervous, right? And it's like, oh, I did it once. Yeah, I did it twice. Okay, yeah, we we'll do the three runs, you know, and do the three run average. And they and they repeated I should have included that, but they repeated pretty close. I was pretty happy. Every run was over 1,800.

[00:32:28]Uh I think they ranged from 1806 to 1820. And so I call it 1810 is what you know the three-run average was >> you know and beyond beyond the dyno doing it. I look at that and I say that's also validation for the air quality in the room.

[00:32:42]>> Right? If you're if you're wrecking the room every time and then you wait and a minute and do another dyno test, the next one really suffers because you're you're sucking a bunch of hot wet air in the engine. So obviously it doesn't make the same power.

[00:32:53]>> Exactly. Yep.

[00:32:55]So, yeah, that was that's fun. But, uh, like I said, we're we're going to dial it back. Um, I don't want to break the dyno anymore because when that gasket blows, you know, the it's a 200galon per minute water pump. And, you know, by the time I get I figure, you know, figure what what happens is I normally breaks I'm like holding like 4,000. I'm starting to close the servo and then I give it a click and the engine doesn't fall back in RPM.

[00:33:24]>> Mhm.

[00:33:25]>> And it's and it's supposed to. It's like, oh no. You know, you jump up, you hit the off button on the, you know, the ignition and you run over and turn off the water pumps and open up the cell door and say, "Okay, get your mess."

[00:33:40]>> So So, uh, let's talk about the engine real quick before we before we forget.

[00:33:45]Like I think what's impressive about this is I mean obviously it makes tons of power which is freaking cool. But I mean like this is not some exotic race engine. This is like you took a stock one basically and put rods and pistons in it. Tell me about what mods are actually done to it.

[00:34:01]>> Yeah, so this is Yeah, this engine is designed uh to go into my uh son's new Edge Mustang. So it's a stock block with the saw cut in it. You know, a stock, you know, block from 5 years ago. Yeah.

[00:34:13]>> Stock crank, >> uh, stock oil pump with the Indie Power Products eliminator oil pan on it. So, >> okay.

[00:34:22]>> Jim does he's got that like a little internal PRV, pressure relief valve in the back of it. So, it uh will control pressure because from the factory um it had a variable displace. It's still the variable displacement pump is still in there, but we would the factory would control actually the oil flow by controlling the volume that the pump would put out. So, this kind of says defaults to maximum uh flow out of the pump and then it's got a pressure relief valve to keep the pressure at about I think it pops around 70 75 PSI.

[00:34:53]>> Um, so that's all stock. It's got a stock cam drive in it. Um, this had the uh cam timing locked on it um at about uh it was a BTR U231 cam uh 6° from the full advanced position. Um and then it does have the Johnson lo travel lifters in it. Manton 38 push rods. Um stock cylinder head castings boarded by a Visitor Engine Development uh with a 222 intake 1700 exhaust valve. uh 10K technology valve springs and um and then it has stock rocker arms on it as well.

[00:35:35]Wow.

[00:35:35]>> Uh BTR Trinity intake.

[00:35:37]>> So the thing that surprised me the most is you told me it had a stock head gasket.

[00:35:42]>> Yeah, stock head gaskets on it, too.

[00:35:43]Yeah. So, you know, the Ford, you know, multi-layer steel head gaskets, um you know, they're they're pretty good. And um it was interesting. I mean, I don't want to make this too long, but I'll take a 50-second divergence. So, on the race car, which is I got an F1A uh 94 Procharger crank driven methanol. And I said, "Yeah, no one's done a copper head gasket, so I think I'll do a copper head gasket with fire ring on it for that."

[00:36:10]And then I'll take the water out of the block. And then a buddy of mine said, "Well, man, you ought to dry deck it." I said, "Yeah, you're right. you know, you want to dry deck that so if you do fail that head gasket, you don't shoot water on the track and have problems. But in retrospect, in retrospect, looking back, that's where I started to get into some cylinder head reliability issues. I'm just thinking there's 23 holes in that deck. Got to weld all those holes up.

[00:36:36]There's a big water feed hole in the front. And I had more problems, not at the deck face, but you know, I got a water leak in the port or I got, you know, an exa cracked exhaust port or I got a little weepage coming from behind the valve seats. And um I don't know if I'm right. I don't have the data to prove it, but I'm just like saying, you know, when I was running the stock head gaskets, I I never I I didn't have all these ancillary issues. So, I don't know if that like, you know, hurt the material properties or what, but uh or if it was just coincidence. Hard to say.

[00:37:10]>> Yeah. But you have a sneaking suspicion maybe that all the welding like potentially anneals the aluminum and like it's not quite as Huh. That's >> Yeah, >> it's not an aftermarket cylinder head for one of these things. Yeah, if there was an aftermarket cylinder head with some nice thick decks and um uh you know, some nice a lot more meat around the ports, it'd be really good if someone would come out with one of those someday.

[00:37:35]I would love to tell you we're almost there, but I feel like I've been lying to you for three years about that. So, uh we're getting really close. 10K technology has uh has done a great job uh you know being patient I'll say and and you've been no small part of that talking me off the ledge a couple times but uh but I'm super duper close now to having a physical running pair of prototypes in my hands here in the next probably I don't know probably couple weeks two weeks or so um we will we will see how it runs on the dyno and then if everything works out good we're going to move into production we do have all the tooling done and made and paid for now so of course I'm not really telling you that, you know, that I'm I'm sharing with the world a little bit. I'm hoping this doesn't generate 684 phone calls that I don't have answers for this week.

[00:38:19]But, uh, trust me, I think the best thing to say, you know, at at a call that >> thousands or this that probably thousands of people listen to, give you a call first quarter next year and you'll probably and you'll be able to fill their order. That way, I can advertise it before then.

[00:38:36]>> It'll only be happy news.

[00:38:37]>> Yeah, exactly. Yeah, next year I'll be taking your credit card. I promise. But right now, like people want answers to questions that I just don't have answers to. You know, when are they ready? What are they going to cost? What is it going to, you know? And I'm like, there's too many variables. Like I promise you, nobody wants to sell them more than I do. Uh but um as soon as we can, we will, you know, but it's it's a cool piece. You know, you've had at least one or two, I think one anyway, in your hands of the early prototypes. Um >> they're substantially the same now, but we've made lots and lots of little changes to improve things. So, we're excited for that. And I I mean I can only imagine if you made that power with a with a stock ported head and all the things you had to fight. And and look, Vizner's pretty hardcore. Like it if he ported the heads, they're probably pretty good, but you can't get around the fact that you're limited by how much room you have before you get into water and how much deck thickness you have.

[00:39:26]And so we tried to approach all that kind of stuff. Like for for reference, um like I know that Dave goes kind of to the extreme on some of his heads with the bigger valves and seats and all that stuff, but like on a stock cylinder head, I haven't seen really anyone, including our stuff, five axis CNC porting a stock head with a stock valve that gets a whole lot farther than like 350ish CFM, you know, 3 340s, 350 somewhere in there. I know Dave's got some tricks to get a little above that uh with with larger valves, but um but I mean our standard off-the-shelf port that a guy's going to be able to buy um is somewhere in the 415 to 418 range.

[00:40:05]And then obviously it's thick and they can port all they want in there. But um I think it means that we'll have a lot of room to grow this engine, this platform, you know, guys like you pushing lots of power through them, I think just makes that easier.

[00:40:18]>> No. Yeah, absolutely. And uh but I do smile when you know you hear Yeah. It only flows 30,40 350 because >> I think back to when I was racing Pro50 and my C302B heads were about 340.

[00:40:32]>> Yeah.

[00:40:33]>> You know, and that was a pure race head, not a not a truck head with a clean w with a CNC cleanup done. Yeah.

[00:40:39]>> So, uh we've come a long way.

[00:40:41]>> Definitely. It's it's a good place to be. So, well, man, uh like I said, I didn't really have a lot of uh motive or alternative, you know, al alternative motive or anything for this call other than I love hearing about what you're doing and and it's cool. I know we get to talk now and then about the Wednesday night Zoom chats on the Delta Lambda Group and all that, but rarely do we sit down and just hang out and talk. So, you know, thanks for taking a little bit of time to do that today. Do you have any other stuff that you wanted to share or or put out?

[00:41:08]>> No.

[00:41:08]>> Okay.

[00:41:08]>> No, nothing else to share. I just really appreciate uh you taking the time to set up the call and uh and getting this recorded and uh you know hopefully folks uh will you know get some data that they can think about uh for their next build.

[00:41:20]>> Yep.

[00:41:20]>> And uh you know once we get all this testing done it and be interested and see how all that comes out. I'm anxious.

[00:41:25]>> Yeah. I can't wait. You know I'm I'm I'm like the world's worst sales guy. You know I mean I just I'd rather let my work speak for me than go out and brag.

[00:41:32]So you don't always hear about what we're doing but I feel like you and you know the people that are inside and doing the really cool stuff. you know what we're up to and the word eventually gets out that we do good stuff. So, that's all I need. I'm good. I'm happy.

[00:41:44]So, um all right, dude. Well, thanks uh thanks for hanging out today. I will uh I'll get this recording done and we can share it to our friends and and you know, future friends. And if it helps somebody, great. I always think the more you tell, the more you sell. So, if we can help somebody out and keep them from making mistakes, then we did good.

[00:42:02]>> Yep. Sound Yeah, I agree. Sounds great.

[00:42:04]>> Cool. All right. See you later, buddy.

[00:42:05]>> All right. We'll see you.

[00:42:06]>> Bye.