The Engine Master!

You could have cut the tension with a knife at the Westech Performance facility. We'd invited a total of 12 finalists to give it their best shot, and unlike the previous qualifying sessions, we'd given each engine builder 20 minutes to fine-tune their entries to the unfamiliar California air. The mechanical music produced over the 3-day Engine Masters Challenge Finals will be unforgettable to all who attended, and the solid results left one man standing.

The inaugural Engine Masters Challenge is complete, except for the technical teardowns necessary to validate rules concurrence and contingency participation, but let's take a step back and explain how we got to this exciting point in time.

The Engine Masters Challenge was conceived here at Popular Hot Rodding to deliver readers a contest unlike any before. We developed a series of rules and hard parameters to limit entries to what we felt were street-sane levels, and left our many participants with approximately 10 months to research, design, build, and tune to their heart's content. As is common in all arenas of Motorsport, we built a monetary prize on the strength of contingency participation. This means those who manufactured the parts chosen to power the winning entries will pay the majority of the prize money. We also threw the builders a few curve balls, in that we weren't testing for peak power, but average power numbers in the range we were testing (2,500-6,500 rpm). By limiting the rpm range and rewarding the average power being produced (scores were determined by adding both the average torque and horsepower figures in the test rpm range), the results are most beneficial to our street-based readership. We also supplied the 92-octane fuel used in all of our Qualifying and Finals test sessions, and all the pulls were made on fuel from the same batch as supplied by 76 Racing Fuels. We'd found a way to force both amateur and professional racing engine builders into developing street-flavored powerplants, and this effort will surely pay off for the most important people in the magazine business: the readers!

So after firming up the program and performing regional qualifying sessions, we were able to bring together twelve solid entries for a shot at the big money. As we said, the Finals were not run identically to the qualifying sessions. Rather than simply forcing the engines through a pre-determined series of warm-up runs, and then a rapid-fire series of three competition pulls as we did in the earlier sessions, we gave each tuner the chance to look over the dyno data acquired from a typical dyno pull on their engine. If they chose to, they had twenty minutes to make jetting (both air and fuel) or timing (only by distributor movement) adjustments. We also allowed each builder the freedom to make as many pulls and changes during this 20-minute session as they liked. Some made up to five fuel and air/emulsion jet changes, while others didn't use the time at all. Had any builder not been able to complete their adjustments in the allotted time, they would have been disqualified. Luckily, this did not occur, but one builder finished his last change with only 15 seconds left on the clock. This was as close as it would get.

The actual competition runs were done exactly as in the qualifying sessions: a series of three 2,500-6,500 rpm pulls done in rapid-fire succession, with only the time required to save the data on the computer between them. Naturally, engine temperatures would increase from run to run, and we felt this best duplicated street-type situations where engine heat is a true concern. We wanted the winning engine to be a capable representative of what street enthusiasts need, and the ability of an engine to make big power run after run is a big part of that. Controlling heat is a big issue for many on the street, and we wanted to be able to push these engines hard and have them be able to respond in kind.

We scheduled our final series in reverse order, meaning the lowest-qualifying engines would run first and the highest-qualifying powerplants would run last. This built tension constantly as each engine was loaded up on the Westech dyno and each successive pull was made. The Engine Masters Challenge came down to the last pull of the last engine on the last day- and that final pass made all the difference. We could not have scripted it much better if we'd have tried, and all that were present reacted emotionally to the results. It was as much drama as we'd ever seen in a dyno room, and we were proud to have provided the forum and structure for this unique, unprecedented engine building contest.

As you'll see in the accompanying tech info, Joe Sherman of Joe Sherman Racing Engines made the most average power and torque. His entry will be subject to teardown, so these results are unofficial at this time, but the performance of his small-block Chevy was enough to overpower the efforts of every other entry, and that's saying plenty. We are proud to call Joe the Engine Master for 2002! While some may argue our point, we present this fact: we honestly believe any engine builder in America would be very hard pressed to exceed the performance of the engine crafted by Joe Sherman in the allotted time, within the allotted rules, and at an equal or lesser budget than Joe. If such a builder exists, they were not able to prove their argument as Joe has, so any disagreement is a moot point. Anyone could have entered this Challenge and given it their best shot, and Joe Sherman is the first in what we hope will be a long line of annual PHR Engine Masters Challenge Champions. Congratulations Joe, and thank you for bringing your best work to the table. We admire what you were able to accomplish, and we hope the media exposure, inevitable gain in business, and the big, fat $75,000 check were worth the effort. We'll be showing exactly what it took to win the Challenge in upcoming issues, along with a peek inside the outstanding second and third place efforts as well. While the Engine Masters Challenge competition might be over, the lessons to be learned about making the big power have just begun. We can only encourage you to check future issues for detailed assessments of the top-finishing engines in the only magazine with the guts to make this program happen: POPULAR HOT RODDING!

Developing the Engine Masters Challenge from a cool concept on paper to actual running engines our readers could learn from took almost two full years and countless hours of effort from a dedicated group of publishing professionals. We let our rules evolve as questions were asked and answered, and we hope the basic rules will not change nearly as much in the future. Beyond the logistics of running a contest at this level, we learned plenty about dynamometers, air, fuel, and engines.

As we've previously stated, we could not have even conceived of this Challenge without the full support of SuperFlow. Their technical team was always there for us when we had questions or issues, and we owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude for their support. The dynos we'd selected for our preliminary qualifying sessions were all of different size and moved different quantities of air through them based on these limitations. We learned that larger dyno rooms capable of moving more air through them would result in better power numbers, even when the equipment inside the room was identical. We learned that 92-octane pump fuel is capable of supporting much more compression than we thought possible, but as engines age and the inevitable carbon deposits begin to take root, these high compression ratios will show their ugly side. For our purposes, limits could be pushed far beyond what we'd ever recommend, but our recommendations have always been based on long-term use, not short-term dyno figures.

We learned there is benefit in both bigger-bore, shorter stroke combinations and smaller-bore, longer stroke designs. It seems the bore-to-stroke ratio has no "magic formula" for street superiority in small-block dimensions.

We learned hydraulic roller camshafts are viable upgrades for serious street performance engines under 6,500 rpm, but the traditional flat-tappet solid lifter is not ready to give up yet. If you're capable and willing to check your valve lash on a regular basis, the extra expense of a hydraulic roller cam can be saved and put to use to create power in other places. If you need every last horse, the aggressive ramps of a roller will certainly deliver.

We learned how the latest small-block dual-plane intake designs lose nothing up to 6,500 rpm. The power gained down low makes them worth the effort, and a well-crafted mix of long runners sized correctly is the best way to make a broad range of power.

We noted how may of the builders seem to agree the 600-horse threshold was just about the limit for a real street engine at 366 cubes, and anyone claiming to make more was probably lying.

We were proud to see legendary hot rod heroes happily talking shop with enthusiastic amateurs, and both were learning from the other. We learned there is no truly dominant make on the street, as our top four finishers consisted of two Chevys, a Ford, and a Mopar. We saw that it was possible to make great power on a budget with carefully selected and modified parts. We were also not ashamed to hear many top-notch builders openly admit they learned plenty by building these engines, and how the information and data they'd gathered would be reflected in future parts and products. We were glad to see many representatives from the aftermarket at the Finals, and they were as excited as the builders about the results being posted.

This ultra-personal expression of engine building prowess has succeeded, and will be repeated in the near future with different parameters. We're going big-block, and the rules will be very similar to what we've got now. By keeping parameters at street-sane levels and promoting the use of factory-based dimensions, we're on to something benefiting a broad range of enthusiasts from the most hardcore racing engine builder, to the aftermarket manufacturer, to every reader of this publication. It gives engine builders a chance to show their talents, aftermarket manufacturers a chance to showcase the capabilities of their products, and readers a chance to see streetable recipes brewed by the true executive chefs of horsepower. Everybody wins, and even though only the top three finishers got paychecks, no one we spoke with would have us do anything differently. The system works, and you'll keep seeing it work on our pages. The teardowns will be in next month's issue, and if you want to see where the big power numbers came from, don't miss it!