Sick of cracked OEM cast blocks but don't have the use case for a billet alternative? Platinum Racing Products has something for you and your RB26-powered platform in the works.
Use ‘PODCAST75’ for $75 off your first HPA course here: https://hpcdmy.co/hpa-tuned-in
For years there has been a massive options gap between those who want to keep the likes a RB26 stock and those who race Pro Mod level drag cars producing 2000++ horsepower. Does an aftermarket ductile iron cast block bridge the gap for those in the middle who want to produce some serious power without the cost or complications of a billet block on a Nissan RB26-powered car that sees both street and track/race use?
Herman Urriola of @prp-platinumracingproducts7915 thinks so, and we'd agree.
In this interview, Herman and Andre run through some of the main flaws the Nissan and Nissan Heritage factory cast RB26 blocks have by discussing how PRP's ductile iron replacement via Crest CNC has addressed them. This includes superior material in the form of ductile iron giving greater rigidity, a 4 bolt main, 8mm bore thickness instead of the 3.5mm low that some Nissan RB26 blocks have, 14mm deck, improved serviceability and capacity options via sleeves, better oiling and head stud/main stud options to suit a range of built levels & demands.
Also touched on is why horsepower won't kill your OEM cast block, but rather cylinder pressure does (a topic we've discussed many times before) and why a billet aluminium alloy block simply doesn't suit 99% of those wanting to drive their car on the street.
We look forward to seeing this go into production, and Herman also gives some insight into what that process looks like in this day and age for aftermarket manufacturing companies like PRP.
Executed well, this aftermarket RB26 casting can handle high cylinder pressure. However, for applications where it becomes too heavy, a billet block will be the alternative so it's certainly not the end of them. Like many parts, it's simply not a matter of 'this vs that,' but rather finding the right fit for the different use cases and accepting the tradeoffs.
PS: While we just focused on the block, PRP is also working on an RB26 cylinder head.
Sick of cracked OEM cast blocks but don't have the use case for a billet alternative? Platinum Racing Products has something for you and your RB26-powered platform in the works.
Use ‘PODCAST75’ for $75 off your first HPA course here: https://hpcdmy.co/hpa-tuned-in
For years there has been a massive options gap between those who want to keep the likes a RB26 stock and those who race Pro Mod level drag cars producing 2000++ horsepower. Does an aftermarket ductile iron cast block bridge the gap for those in the middle who want to produce some serious power without the cost or complications of a billet block on a Nissan RB26-powered car that sees both street and track/race use?
Herman Urriola of @prp-platinumracingproducts7915 thinks so, and we'd agree.
In this interview, Herman and Andre run through some of the main flaws the Nissan and Nissan Heritage factory cast RB26 blocks have by discussing how PRP's ductile iron replacement via Crest CNC has addressed them. This includes superior material in the form of ductile iron giving greater rigidity, a 4 bolt main, 8mm bore thickness instead of the 3.5mm low that some Nissan RB26 blocks have, 14mm deck, improved serviceability and capacity options via sleeves, better oiling and head stud/main stud options to suit a range of built levels & demands.
Also touched on is why horsepower won't kill your OEM cast block, but rather cylinder pressure does (a topic we've discussed many times before) and why a billet aluminium alloy block simply doesn't suit 99% of those wanting to drive their car on the street.
We look forward to seeing this go into production, and Herman also gives some insight into what that process looks like in this day and age for aftermarket manufacturing companies like PRP.
Executed well, this aftermarket RB26 casting can handle high cylinder pressure. However, for applications where it becomes too heavy, a billet block will be the alternative so it's certainly not the end of them. Like many parts, it's simply not a matter of 'this vs that,' but rather finding the right fit for the different use cases and accepting the tradeoffs.
PS: While we just focused on the block, PRP is also working on an RB26 cylinder head.
In a world where billet blocks have become the go to norm for any high performance import drag engine, platinum Racing products are bucking that trend and going past. We're here with Herman from Platinum Racing Products to talk a little bit about their upcoming RB26 block. Welcome to High Performance Academy's tuned in field report podcast series. In these special midweek episodes we look back through our archives to find the best conversations we've had through years worth of attending the best automotive events across the globe. We've pulled the audio from these tech filled interviews with some of the industry's most well known figures and presented it in podcast format for you to enjoy as a quick hit of insider knowledge. So, herman, for a start, before we get into what you've done here, can we talk about some of the weaknesses in the factory cast iron RB26 blocks?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure. So they're notorious obviously for splitting down the middle on top of the oil gallery in a 05U application, the 23, sorry, 24 years a bit better. But then you've still got this deck issue. They crack all these RB blocks. They all tend to pull through their head studs and you buy a ARP bolt, set 625s and open the pack. It's 140 Newtons or whatever 140 foot pound. You pull them to and it just cracks the deck as you're putting your head on. So they're notorious for that.
Speaker 2:A side of all those issues is the cracking bores, because you've only got two or three mil at best in the thinnest part of the bore and you don't have a lot of cylinder pressure room. Before you start cracking, splitting bores, you sleeve it, you lose the rigidity behind the sleeve and you crack another bore. So there's not a lot that you can do to save a block or avoid it other than sonic testing and trying to find the best or the worst and running with that and big cams and make all the boost and turbo talk happen later to try and keep the cylinder pressure up high when you've got lots of RPM happening to try and save it. So that's the limitation of the RB block as it is now.
Speaker 1:Now you talk about that cracking on the deck surface of the block with an aftermarket stud kit. But I mean, I've pulled down completely stock standard RB26s that aren't modified in any way, shape or form, maybe high mileage, and even seen that cracking in stock form. So that's still a problem even before you modify the engines.
Speaker 2:Yeah, still a problem. I mean even sourcing RB blocks. We try and buy as many RB30s and 26s as we can and we've got an internal joke with the RB26, especially that they all come pre-cracked. Because other than buying a new heritage block which then has a deck warping issue when you start to get heat into it a few times and usually got to pull it all down and deck the block just to get some longevity out of the build, it's just not a great casting compound.
Speaker 1:Now I mean, obviously this is a difficult question to answer, sort of how long is a piece of string? But with a stock RB26 block, could you give us some kind of ballpark figure in terms of where you would place the reliability in terms of horsepower levels?
Speaker 2:Look, I mean it depends on the ball thickness, obviously, but for example, anything over 1000 newton meters of torque, you're gonna start cracking that deck regardless and you can make that happen at 800 horsepower or you can make it up at 1200 horsepower, but in that realm is about the limitation of an RB26 block.
Speaker 1:So it's really just to come back to that. It's not specifically the horsepower, it's the cylinder pressure that's going to cause failures and you were alluding to that before about whereabouts in the RPM range. You're actually making that peak cylinder pressure. That's going to have an impact on the reliability of the engine and also the actual power levels correct.
Speaker 2:Exactly. I mean you go and put a V cam set up on an RB26, you put the right size turbo on it, try, you know, 64, 66 or 68, 70 or whatever and you get it to come on really early and dial your cams to get the best response first. Pull, you're gonna crack that.
Speaker 1:It's just a way, so sometimes less is actually more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, make it happen later. Laggy turbos that's why the juxt got away with it with those T88, 34D, turt, the turtle edition things, you know 6,500 RPM they'd start coming on and these things would live Well. Now that we've got more advanced turbos that come on at 3000 RPM and Artec manifolds and all this stuff, people think that the blocks are getting worse. But it's the tech that's getting better and cracking them earlier.
Speaker 1:I think it's really easy to overlook that cylinder pressure element, and that comes down to whereabouts you're making peak torque in the RPM range. Let's move on to billet blocks which, as I mentioned at the start, sort of that's become the go to solution. Most of the fastest import races are running billet blocks, be it in the R&B or the 2JZ world. So what is wrong with the billet block? Where are the downsides with going billet?
Speaker 2:Well, like I mean to start off, billet blocks are great. They serve a purpose. You know they're industry standard now. But for 99% of the population that doesn't want or need a billet block because they do want to street drive it and billet blocks can be tricky on the street. I mean, it's a race engine and someone comes to us for a race engine, buy a billet block. You know there's no problem with that.
Speaker 2:But for everyone else that wants to do a bit of street and a bit of drag, it's like someone says all right, I want 1000 horsepower, what are you doing with it? Because all of those things matter. So where it becomes crucial in a billet block bill because you have to go dry something, you have to do this, and you've got to warm your oil and you've got a blah, blah, blah, blah and you can't really drive it on the street because of all these reasons. People are like oh, when you have a car solution and you can basically have a dead standard 400 horsepower, rb sort of thing or whatever they make, and you can go up to 2000 horsepower with the same platform, as long as your pistons and rugs will hold it, you know you're not bouncing the thing. Well, it's a turnkey solution to have that 99% of the population catered for.
Speaker 1:Coming back to that sort of element with the billet block, obviously, as you mentioned, great solution for a dedicated drag application at the 2000 plus horsepower mark. But the bit that's easy to overlook is the fact you have to warm everything up, so not really ideally suited to your street car where you know a pop down to the Mackers drive-through for a bike to eat, correct.
Speaker 2:And there's a lot of die hard billet people that say that you know you can daily drive a billet block. I just don't agree and I don't. I often ask our customers to have a think about it and have a look into it, because anyone that does do that with a block and I'm not saying it can't be done it happens but there's a lot more to consider when it comes to thermal expansion and getting all the water and the oil and everything up to temperature, because, yeah, it does make a difference. So for a street application they're tricky.
Speaker 1:So this comes down to the thermal expansion coefficient of the billet material. Basically, it expands more as it heats up, compared to a factory cast iron block.
Speaker 2:Exponentially. Now, when you're talking a compression ratio, you know 40,000 on the deck sort of thing you're talking a thousand and a half up to 2000 times on a main bearing clearance. I mean it's enough difference to have a belt, skipper tooth, you need a different, adjustable sort of tensioner. Or it's enough to grab a bearing. If you give it a rev cold, I mean. Yeah, I mean you might end up with 200 PSI oil pressure because you know you haven't got the expansion there to allow everything to start working. So yeah, it's, there's a lot more to consider. I still call it a dedicated race race block and they're really good at that. But that's where they belong.
Speaker 1:Do you want to take your car knowledge game to the next level? Join us in the next free lesson at hpacademycom. Slash free and start developing your own skills today. Ok, so let's come to your solution, which is an aftermarket cast iron block for the RB26. So I think we've kind of already covered off why you've done that in terms of getting the thermal expansion coefficient kind of similar or matching to the factory block. What have you engineered into this block to fix those inherent floors with the factory RB26 block? Well, look, straight away.
Speaker 2:we just went for a better duck dial cast iron with a higher MPA. So we're always chasing hardness and we've proven that hardness makes a difference. So we've, we've upped it on the hardness scale, not too much but enough to give it the rigidity to stop the thing cracking and twisting. And then the ball. We know that two and a half to three mils not enough, eight mil ball. So we know it works. Because there's certain sections of certain blocks, jzs in particular, that go up to eight mil and you don't see any sort of thermal damage from the piston in that area. So we sort of put two and two together. We do our homework and we realize you know eight millimetres, roughly, give or take a millimetre.
Speaker 2:Then you can go to an eighty, six mil, eighty seven, eighty, eight mil bore, ninety mil bore and end up with a three point one with a seventy seven mil crank. And all of a sudden you've got a big piston, high revving engine. It's a twenty six basically, just with a bigger slug. So I mean, all of a sudden you've got it opens up this whole world of options and obviously serviceability on your RB block because you're not just stuck at a brand new block. Well, we can't use that. We've got to go to an eighty six, five because we need to get a talk plate home on it. You can't do that with a virgin ball because Nissan didn't do a factory. So all of a sudden we're going eighty six and a half. All right, we've had a issue, we've had an event value, we've had a lean out or whatever. We've got a hotspot. We need to go to the next size up eighty seven mil block stuff. So you get one lick at a new setup and it's a 13,000 dollar exercise by the time you do the testing and the braces and the machining and all the stuff.
Speaker 2:So with this solution you can go eighty seven mil, eighty eight, eighty, nine, ninety mil. You can split you know numbers between them and it's a one off purchase, like a billet block would be only need a bite once you can replace leaves. Obviously we've got the serviceability as well. So other than that, obviously we've given it a nice thick sort of 14 millimeter deck. We've resolved all the issues with the deck cracking because we've also the bolt holes that go all the way. Well, in our situation, we've made the bolt holes and the threads for the head studs go all the way down to the bottom through the block middle section, into the main caps. So it's basically getting. You can drill it as far down as you want and run a longer stud if you want, all the way into the mains if you feel the need. So we don't have any of those issues anymore.
Speaker 1:So the benefit of the longer main stud and basically tying it into the main caps from the top, does that help reduce the bore distortion as you talk? The?
Speaker 2:head down? Absolutely. So if you can pull, I mean for a standard application, we'll drill them shallow. When you just run a standard set up and and where that crossover happens, we still haven't worked out yet but if you can completely eliminate, as you say, where you compromise, that bore with a bolt in every corner and run them all the way down into a solid piece of structure and leave the ball basically to be independent of itself and to get sandwiched with a head on it, you're eliminating all those sort of talk plate issue problems that we're getting and distortion, and when you add twist into that, which ultimately it does happen, you have all these unknown factors that end up putting scores on pistons, and there's a whole heap of variables that you just eliminate by pulling it from. Well, you're basically going past the ball, as you say. So it makes sense, it's a godsend. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:All right. So I mean, obviously the block hasn't actually seen production yet. We've got a sort of a cast part here as a two-cylinder sort of proof of concept.
Speaker 2:I guess you call it.
Speaker 2:We call it yeah, proof of cast. So there's a whole, you know hyper science that goes into the cast. Obviously we're working very closely with our friends at Cresce and C in the casting prototype. Where the proof of concept happens can happen in a small area or a big area. So it's getting the gas off between cylinders to work, because it's a Siamese ball, and cast castings come a long way. You don't need the standard Welsh plug stuff as much as they did in the early 90s and all this new technologies happen, new casting methods. So basically, proof of concept.
Speaker 2:You don't know if it's going to work yet in that orientation because there's so many differentiating factors and there's variables in that cast process. So you do it on a cheaper, smaller scale and if it works or it doesn't, you make changes. And then you and ours went fairly well. So we might do another two-cylinder plug, you know, the next week or two. And then I think we're pretty right to go to a six cylinder version with the more expensive patterns and all the rest of it. And as soon as that sort of happens we're going to build an engine really quickly. Peter McDonald's going to slap something together. We've got a 2.8, 2000 horsepower set up with a Pro mod and we'll set it on the engine dyno and let it sing and try and break the thing and we'll go from there. Hopefully it goes well.
Speaker 1:In terms of the power handling capability of this block. I mean, obviously you know, as you've just mentioned, you haven't validated this yet. Have you done any simulation? I mean, has it been designed in the virtual world and sort of tested, putting through any finite element analysis, to kind of get a sense of what you think it might be capable of?
Speaker 2:Over and over and over again. So, yeah, obviously we've thrown every piece of technology we've got at it to make sure that we eliminate all the inherent issues that we're aware of with the RB to be able to obviously nail it on the first one. So we're confident and look you know what worst-case scenario if we get it wrong 30 times, we'll get it right eventually, but hopefully we nail it on the first go and we'll, you know, we'll do whatever it takes and spend no expense or time to get it to evolve to that stage and hopefully, where I know everyone wants to know, when can we buy one? And it's probably, we hope, by the end of the year on the shelf machine to size ready to go along with our cylinder heads that we almost had on display here today as well but didn't quite make it. But obviously, now that people can see that we've got the proof of cast here, it's well and truly happening.
Speaker 1:Can you give us an indication of what the price point of this is going to be or, if not a natural number, how it would relate to the comparable billet blocks that are currently available?
Speaker 2:Well, look, we've got, we've got some numbers that where we'd like to be able to release that and for a standard, two options standard cradle version you don't need the PRP brace in the alloy, obviously, that you don't need a four-wheel drive adapter that will, that'll comes engineered into it. And then we've got from that to an integrated main cap brace version which is similar to what we do now, but we're possibly going to throw a four-bolt feature into it as well. But let's say the standard version, which we'd rate potentially, hypothetically, 1500 horsepower, around 8000 bucks, and the integrated brace version with all the whistles, the bells and whistles and the four-bolt mains. Potentially 10 000 bucks is the aim. It might vary a little bit. But going back to the RB05U or 24U, by the time you buy a block for 4000 or 7000, depending on which one, and then you go and throw a $3000 main cap brace at it, you do $2000 worth of machining, you sonic test it, you end up spending 10-12 000 dollars anyway on a block.
Speaker 1:That's going to be inferior that's going to crack.
Speaker 2:So that's our thinking and I look a billet block. Obviously it's more expensive. You're talking 14 000. But I want to separate and I know everyone's going to be comparing the billet block to our block. You know it appeals to a different market and, yes, ours will be cheaper and people might say that's dear. But when you add it all up and the performance that you're going to get out of a cast block and we're hoping to rate these things up to 3,000 horsepower you might start seeing them everywhere.
Speaker 1:It's an exciting product and obviously there's no end in sight and people, particularly in Australia, wanting to develop the RB26 platform, so it makes sense to give them another option. Okay, great to get some insight into that. And if people do want to reach out to PRP, how are they best to do so?
Speaker 2:Oh look, email or any of the social media channels, download the app. We monitor that, but look, it's happening. I don't know. A lot of people want answers and why we're not taking any money. There's a waiting list. People will get a preference there, but we'll go as quick as we can and every after now. Obviously we wanted to keep it a bit of a secret, but now that we've sort of let the cat out of the bag, sort of speak with some social posts and obviously this will be full throttle and anything that happens, obviously we'll be posting and letting everyone know.
Speaker 1:Oh, sounds like people are going to have to be a little bit patient, but it also sounds like it'll be worth the wait. So we can't wait to see what sort of power people start making with these. Thanks again for your time, herman. Thank you very much, man Cheers. If you enjoyed this podcast, please feel free to leave a review on whatever platform you've chosen to listen to it on. It goes a long way to help us getting the word out there. All these conversations and much more are also available in full on our High Performance Academy YouTube channel, so make sure you subscribe. It's a one stop shop when it comes to going faster, stopping quicker and cornering better.