110: Is Ford's Coyote Better Than GM's LS?

Speaker 1: 0:00

Like you know, like oh, you're gonna turn it up next pass, and like that's the fact of matters. It's up every pass. You know it's a 300 cubic inch factory casting engine going 227. Like you can't just put 10 pounds of boost in. It's gonna explode and catch on fire. You know so it's not. You know Hail Mary is just dangerous, so it's not even worth it.

Speaker 2: 0:27

Welcome to the HPO TuneIn podcast. I'm Andrey, your host, and in this episode we're joined by Brett Lesala, builder and driver of the aptly named Bright Green Ford Mustang Snot Rocket. Brett joins us fresh off the back of an outright win at the 2024 Sick Week Dragon Driver event. If you haven't heard of drag and drive, this is kind of a bit of punishment for a drag car. Not only do you have to run incredibly quick passes down the quarter mile, you actually also have to compete at five different drag strips over a week and drive your drag car between them on the road. On top of this, you also have to tow around a trailer that includes all of your spares, all of your tools, basically everything that you need to work on and service your car. So it really steps up the challenge. Despite this, brett's car averaged over the last five days a 6.34 second pass at 227 mile an hour. His fastest ET is a 626. So this thing is no slouch, and I'd argue, having come from a drag racing background myself, that the drag and drive events actually are more challenging than building an outright drag car. Making an engine that's producing 3 to 4000 horsepower also drive 1000 miles across the four road going streets is beyond difficult and really, really is a testament to what Brett has built here. We talked to Brett about his background and how he got interested in cars, how he built up his fairly diverse skill set, because he's able to work on just about every facet of this built himself. We talked about the development of the car, how he started with a basically a road going Mustang and then decided that in order to do it much, much faster, he was going to really have to cut up most of that car, so he sold it and started again. We talked about the engine development and the turbo development which is so key to getting performance out of any turbo charged drag engine. And in a world where everyone seems to be switching across to billet, we hear about the limitations of this Ford 5.0 V8 and where those limitations are, where the requirements for switching from a cast to a billet block might be and why there's a few roadblocks in the way. Brett does want to go down that path.

Speaker 2: 2:45

Before we get into our interview, for those who are new to the HPA TuneIn podcast, high Performance Academy is an online training school. We specialise in teaching people about performance, engine building, efi tuning. We also cover designing and constructing, wiring, harnesses, race driver education, race cast setup, 3d modelling and CAD, just to name a few of our topics. You can find all of our courses at hpacanrycom Ford slash courses. All of our courses are delivered by high definition video modules that you can take from anywhere in the world, provided you've got an internet connection. This gives you the benefit of being able to learn from the comfort of your own place and you can learn at your own pace. All of our courses also come with a 60 day no questions asked money back guarantee. So if you purchase and, for any reason at all, decide it just isn't quite right for you, no problem, let us know. We'll give you a full refund of the purchase price and, as a podcast listener, you can use the coupon code podcast75. That'll get you $75 off the purchase of your very first HPA course. We'll put a link to our courses and that coupon code in the show notes.

Speaker 2: 3:50

Lastly, if you like free stuff, then I've got a great deal for you. If you head to hpacanrycom Ford slash giveaway, that will show you the current giveaway that we've got running. We switch these up around about every month and we partner with some of the biggest names in the performance aftermarket industry. We might be giving away an aftermarket ECU or a power distribution module, maybe a dash, maybe some engine building tools pistons, con rods, you name it. We've given it away and we will ship free of charge to the door of whoever wins, so don't think you're missing out just because you live on the opposite side of the world. Again, you'll find a link to that page in the show notes. Enough of that introduction, though. Let's get into our interview now. Alright, welcome to the podcast, brett. Thanks for joining us today and, as we always do, let's start by finding out a little bit about your background, specifically how you developed an interesting cars.

Speaker 1: 4:42

Yeah, absolutely. I think my interesting cars developed the same way a lot of us did. I was a kid, a young teenager, and my dad had a hot rod that he actually had since he was in high school the 1970 Monte Carlo SS with a 454, it was a big four door car, it was a two door. It was just a giant two door, the SS version of that Monte Carlo, and the car was on blocks like most of my childhood and I never actually ran and drive much when I was a kid it was in an accident. I think my mom was driving it and it got hit and then they just parked it and it started rusting away and then I think maybe he got the urge or he saw my interest in it because he grew up riding dirt bikes, four wheelers.

Speaker 1: 5:23

it was kind of the like we had the Modalon, but you had to get the mower running in order to Modalon, because it was an older lawn mower. So you kind of got a mechanical sense, naturally because you had to. There was a 77 Camaro parked down the street from us which was like in a similar condition as this Monte Carlo and he ended up trading, I believe, like a washer machine for the car and it was. You know it didn't have an engine. And then that was our project. We put the 454 into that car and my dad doesn't have a real mechanical background other than very hobby level.

Speaker 1: 5:56

And so you know we learned together and you know I started getting into it and if I wanted to know something on the car, you know I would buy a book and you know like, I bought a carburetor book and I learned how to tune the carburetor. We bought a transmission book and we got the Turbo 400 working well. It really got my attention. And then, moving into high school, you know that was all I could think about. And when I was 16, my uncle owned a transmission shop down in South Florida and he had a 85 Trans Am that someone had brought in for repair, couldn't pay the diagnostic bill and ended up leaving him the car, so he gave that to me as my first car, so I could get it running and then I could have a car.

Speaker 2: 6:35

Yeah right, Sounds like a pretty good deal.

Speaker 1: 6:37

Right, right, a great deal. So I got the car running. You know I had a 305 with an electronic carburetor. It was a horrible engine and a horrible time for that platform. But you know, I had my first car and it kind of escalated from that point on. In high school I got a Fox body Mustang and that was my first switch over to the Ford platform. So you know, my dad had the 454 Monte Carlo. We built a Camaro. I had the Trans Am. I was in the market for a Camaro because that was, you know, you kind of grow up the brand that.

Speaker 2: 7:10

Yeah, I was going to say normally you're a GM guy for life or a Ford guy for life. There's not too many. I wouldn't think that sort of switch codes halfway through.

Speaker 1: 7:19

Right, right, right. So I think I had a pickup truck or two throughout that time. But you know, I was in the market to make a little hot rod. You know, 16, 17 years old probably 17 at that time so I was working in an automotive shop. So I was taking auto tech in high school because I was already hooked in the cars at that point. And when I was 16, I got a job at a mighty muffler. It was a local auto repair shop in my town. They were the only shop in town that would hire me because I wasn't 18. So I couldn't be on the insurance, so I would go after school and work at the shop. So then, you know, I had a job, so I was making a little bit of money and the Camaros at the time were around $5,000.

Speaker 2: 7:56

Yeah, so expensive.

Speaker 1: 7:58

So expensive, Right? So I didn't have enough money for that car and at the same time my next door neighbor, he had a 1990 Ford Mustang GT. You know he was the original owner of it and he said I'll sell you this car for $3,000. It was how much money I had and I bought that car and, like, needless to say, that was the beginning of the end for me, whichever way. So that was. You know, my switch over to Ford was just, basically, I could afford the Mustang, I could afford the Camaro and I started hot rod and that Mustang in high school and before you know it it was pretty quick. Like you know, I had a bunch of nitrous on it, ran low 11s, like really stock engine, you know, and that was kind of it on that.

Speaker 2: 8:41

I'm interested when did the sort of passion for drag racing which is obviously why we've got you on the podcast, where did that passion for drag racing sort of come from? Because, again, just like the sort of the Ford versus GM path people sent either go down the route of drag racing or road racing?

Speaker 1: 8:58

Right, you know I never really thought about that much, but I would say that just came from high school because you know all the. You know the car guys would hang out together and early outs we would go to the old, abandoned like neighborhood and drag race. So you know all of our very slow cars we would drag race. So then at that point I guess drag racing was, was just it, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 9:18

I think for me as well, one of the reasons I really like drag racing is it's an international comparison that you don't get. You know, I talk about a lap time from a racetrack here in New Zealand and obviously no one except people who have been to that racetrack. It's just meaningless. Whereas you say you know I ran a 6-2. Well, it doesn't matter where in the world you are, a 6-2, it's a 6-2 because that 13, 20 feet drag strip is always the same. So yeah, I think that's helpful.

Speaker 2: 9:46

But the other element is that, as a tuner and an engine builder myself, I kind of found that the drag strip was a really good way of seeing how good my work was, because the ET and mile an hour don't lie, whereas you can put a car on a dyno and, within reason, just about get any number you want for bragging rights. But that doesn't really mean a lot when the tree goes green, absolutely Alright. So looking at your actual sort of automotive skill set, it sounds like you've built this up quite quickly through high school auto tech and then these jobs. Have you got at the stage formal qualifications and an automotive sense?

Speaker 1: 10:25

Yeah, so basically at the end of high school. So I was already working in a shop pretty much full time. I had half the day. Because of the vocational classes I was taking, I could leave school early and I was working in the shop. And the high school came to an end and people were going to college and things like that, and at that point I didn't even think about it.

Speaker 1: 10:44

I was racing my car, working in the shop, working on my car at night, but at that time I was already working with a guy who had a hot rod shop at his house. So I would go to school, I would go to the repair shop and then I would go to Frank's house and he was building race cars and then I would start to pick up on race car things there from someone that was already doing it at a higher level than I was. So at that point I was like, yeah, I'm going to work on cars. So high school ended and I started working on cars full time at that shop some years past and then I realized that I needed to make a better income than I was making at that repair shop and I went to work for Mercedes-Benz. The dealership was a couple doors down from the repair shop I was at and I realized if I was going to be a technician, if I can get into this dealership, it was going to be the most lucrative repaired position I could make working on cars. And turns out that worked out very well for me.

Speaker 1: 11:37

I worked for Mercedes-Benz for 15 years up until when I went to work for Real Street just in 2021, I believe it was and I worked my way up with Mercedes. I was a master tech, cdt team leader. The amount of new technology that was always coming out from that brand because they're ahead of all the other brands. They just don't advertise it, and the training that we had access to as techs was pretty much unlimited. You just had to pursue it yourself. So that really was what drove me. As far as backgrounds, designing engines, diagnostic, electrical, and then the motorsports aspect was just still my hobby after work, kind of thing.

Speaker 2: 12:16

OK, I imagine it's just a dive into that position with Mercedes-Benz a little deeper, because we don't often get to talk to people on the podcast who have that franchise dealership background. I've sort of seen this transition with a lot of mechanics from the old school where physically they'd be rebuilding engines, replacing piston rings, setting valve lash et cetera, and I might be off the mark here. I see the more modern vehicles. Now there's not a lot of actual hands on maintenance being done on the engine, so much We've gone away from cam belts to cam chains. Does it become more of a diagnostic task on these very modern vehicles as opposed to actually spinning spanners, or is there still a fair element of mechanical work as well?

Speaker 1: 13:02

I'd say it's a good mix. There's still a lot of mechanical work and we're still repairing engines because from the warranty aspect, the outcome, the repair order, needs to be repaired at the least expense possible to the warranty job. And with Mercedes-Benz their engines as a package were very expensive. Some of them cost as much as the vehicle does. So there was multiple times. We're putting a crankcase in or a set of pistons in.

Speaker 1: 13:26

But the mechanical aspects of these cars are getting better to where there's more electronic systems than there are mechanical systems. So a lot of times the car comes in it's more for a diagnostic type repair than a mechanical type repair. And when the mechanical things tend to happen they're able to track them so closely because of the machineries and the way that the cars are manufactured that they know they can group a VIN number in like okay, we have this issue starting at this engine serial number and to this engine serial number. So you know, then a bulletin or something would be released and then the technician would kind of know what to look for when it came to that.

Speaker 2: 14:01

It takes a lot of the guesswork out of the diagnostics.

Speaker 1: 14:03

Yeah, and the dealership that I worked for in Tampa was one of the highest volume dealerships in the country, so we saw a lot of the problems before any other dealerships saw them. And we're also one of the highest AMG selling dealerships. The performance side of Mercedes in the country and me with my natural motorsports curiosity and engine curiosity, you know I was that guy. So if there was, you know, any engine work in the shop, more than likely it ended up shifting around and coming to me to either diagnose or or be hands on. And the same thing with the AMG and the performance line. And I got to work with the Mercedes factory level engineers and stuff on new problems. So you know it was. I got to do it at a higher level than the, than a standard. So it was really neat for me, yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:48

I mean, it sounds like you've got a very thorough grounding in mechanical work and the electronic side of things. Have you got any other skill sets you sort of bring to the table, fabrication, for example? So, fabrication.

Speaker 1: 15:01

I learned as I went, and mainly from my friend, jim Braun. You know he's my right hand man in a sense with the car. Me and him have been friends since I moved to the Tampa area in 2015, starting with my old car in his car he still has his car. It's going under redition right now, getting more roll cage and a mini tub to be safer for the speeds that it's going to go. But you know, he was the fabricator. He's a. He's a genius and a visionary when it comes to it.

Speaker 1: 15:29

I knew how the system needed to be made. You know the piping sizing, how it needed to be routed. One of the things that I feel like I learned a lot from the, from the dealership, was you know, all we worked on were failed cars. As a technician, you know you never really get to see a lot of the good cars. They were getting oil changes and going back out the door. So you got to, you know, see a lot of failure points and why they're happening when it came to wiring or hose routing or heat protection or things like that.

Speaker 1: 15:55

So you know, I feel like that's transferred into the race cars and into the modified cars, because you know a lot of people those put pipes and things because it looks pretty or you know, just because it goes there but it's not going to last like it needs to last. Then the flip side of that is, I still want it to look very good and be serviceable. So one of my main things when we build a car like mine is, like I know I'm going to have to take the engine out, I know I'm going to have to take the turbo kit off, like so you know, we build things in a sense where there's not things in the way or there's less steps that need to be taken to access certain things.

Speaker 2: 16:29

I think you don't get into that mentality. Until you're actually working on these cars hands on all the time, you very quickly realise where the sort of pain points are, if you like. And a classic example of where I absolutely got this wrong was my old Evo drag car where we cut the front end off that and tube framed it, and Dono, the friend of mine who did all of that, did an amazing job. However, what we didn't think through was how easy or difficult it was going to be to remove the gearbox out of that, which was the weak point To hold the drivetrain, and that together we had to slip the clutch so heavily off the line that you'd get 10 passes out of a triple plate clutch and it was rinsed. So basically every drag meeting the gearbox had to come out. Problem was the way the front end was designed. You couldn't get the gearbox out independent of the engine, so it was an absolute major. Moving on from that, we kind of learned from our mistakes. We built an Evo 9 drag car for a customer. We custom built the subframe for that, so it became something like a 15 minute job to drop the gearbox. It's just super easy. So yeah, you live and learn. You sort of build up those experiences and know what not to do. I also totally agree with thinking things through in terms of where they're mounted, so that makes sense. Heat management is something that's really really easy to overlook and also you can have. I think form and function can work together. You can build a car that works great and also looks great, which is exactly what you've done Before we get into the car. I feel like we sort of just need to quickly touch on the rest of your sort of working career.

Speaker 2: 18:09

You mentioned Real Street. We've had Jay on the podcast before, so he's a friend of HPA as well. Always looked up to Real Street. What was your position there and what were you doing?

Speaker 1: 18:19

My position there was I was the workshop lead, so Real Street. Its main business is parts resale. They sell parts wholesale and retail and that's where the income comes from. But we also had a workshop there where cars were getting worked on for either media or parts testing, tuning things like that not for customers, but they were mostly Real Street owned cars or personal cars used to promote the parts business.

Speaker 1: 18:47

So when I met Jay in 2019 during Drag Week with my older car, I had an issue with the AEM having a camp sync failure. He happened to be in the area at the time and he came over and was looking at it and calling some friends at his AEM to see if we can get it sorted, because we're actually on the last day and we were in the battle for first place for the small block power adder class for an A50 index class and my car couldn't make a lap. So he was helping me trying to get that sorted to make a pass. After that that day he told me to switch the car over to a MoTec and I was like, yeah, that sounds easy but it's not that easy. Over the next year he showed me that it isn't that difficult, that maybe I had a mental block on it, thinking that it was going to be worse than it was and that he would tune my car. So I did.

Speaker 1: 19:36

Jim also did it with me. We both switched our cars over the MoTec, jay started tuning them for us and we started having more successful outings with the cars and we were at a race or we might have been at a dyno one time with my car and he's like well, why don't you come work for me? I was like, yeah, that's great, I would love to, but I have a really good position on what I do, making what I want to make, and I'm not sure that the aftermarket can support what I'm doing. Now Turns out the position that he offered me was better than I couldn't imagine it being. I went to work for him. Over that course of the three years there I was able to build this new car and to continue my knowledge now just in the aftermarket sense, and take my factory training, my factory background and now, with a mind like his, learn the other aspect to building a race car or hot rod in general, and that's what's basically accelerated my career or myself or my program. So where it is now.

Speaker 2: 20:32

Yeah, well, I'm interested. Do you think, given that obviously there's a lot of crossovers but some very big differences between working on production cars and doing general service, repair and maintenance to building a six second race car, how valuable has your experience at a franchise dealership been with building these cars?

Speaker 1: 20:54

You know I don't know exactly because maybe because I didn't do it the other way. I know that you know, as far as like general service and maintenance goes, like I didn't do a lot of that at the dealership. A lot of that you know was done by other techs. You know I was more diagnostic electrical, you know harder problem solving type vehicles or engine worker or AMG work kind of thing there, and I was always basically every night, as soon as I went home from the dealership I was working on a race car, just at a lower level, lower horsepower level, because you know we weren't there in our program yet. So for me it was always just gaining knowledge and learning, like that's my excitement, to continue to grow, to find information, to apply it to what I'm doing, to look at other aspects when it comes to circuit race cars or how they're built and, you know, find inspiration and other motorsports to apply it to drag racing.

Speaker 2: 21:45

Okay, yeah, fair. All right, let's sort of get into the nitty gritty here with your cars, or your current car specifically, is what we really want to talk about. But I guess, before we dive into that, give us a quick overview of what a drag and drive event is and what that actually entails.

Speaker 1: 22:03

So the drag and drive event. There's a couple of different versions of them now, but mainly sick week and drag week has started off as a five day event. So there's five days, five race tracks, starts at one race track. Between each day you get a map, a course, and you have to drive that specific drive each day with your race vehicle to the next racetrack. You can make as many passes as you want each day. You hand in one time slip, whichever one you feel is the best of that day, and then they take the average of the five times that you hand in one each day and that is your overall ET for the week and the vehicle.

Speaker 1: 22:40

You're not allowed to have a support vehicle. So if you need to carry stuff with, you need to have a trailer and the trailer is regulated on size. You're not allowed to have Any outside help on a day to day basis, only the crew that is with you in your car. So if you have one person, that's the only person that can help you with your car on a day to day.

Speaker 2: 22:56

So you're not even allowed to see no support vehicles, not even allowed other people following around to help you, limited essentially to one helper right exactly you know.

Speaker 1: 23:05

So, yeah, basically, yeah, one helper is all you can get now if you have a failure outside, something not plan for. So the one helper thing is your normal daily routine, what it takes to race your car. Now say you have a failure outside of the normal spectrum. You're allowed to have a little bit of outside help from another racer or something like that For that instance, but you're not allowed to, you're not allowed to the vehicle anywhere. It's pretty much like as it runs and drives like that. That's you for the week.

Speaker 2: 23:35

I'm interested with this sort of event. What is the more challenging part during the process down the drag strip or the driving hundreds of miles potentially between drag strips?

Speaker 1: 23:46

Well, for me it's gonna depend on the car. So the drag and drive events is, you know, for sick week I believe. There's four hundred cars entered in that event. There's probably Ten cars that are going really fast that probably shouldn't be driven a thousand miles and race five days, you know. So for those cars the drive is definitely harder. You know there's. You know, for the masses doing drag and drive it's. It's not like a typical drag event. If someone hasn't been the one you gotta go to experience hard to describe. Like it's just a camaraderie, like you know, people hanging out. You get to the racetrack and in I remember my first drag week and then you know the second race track we pull into and you look out into the pits and there's no semis, there's no toaders, there's no, there's no trucks, it's just race cars doing race car things. You know, like, like it kind of brings it back to the roots of you know you build a car and you drive it down the street. You know like it's pretty neat.

Speaker 2: 24:41

Yeah, I can. I can only imagine the whole street car thing starts to always become a little bit questionable, and I mean I don't know what the rules exactly are like in the US for what constitutes a street car, but I mean the sort of vehicles that I see competing in these. If I tried to drive one of those around the streets here in New Zealand that lock you up and throw away the key is just absolutely no way we're getting away with what you can say. How do you drive these things on the street and not have trouble with the authorities?

Speaker 1: 25:10

Yeah, compared to New Zealand or Australia and I have a lot of Australian friends and yeah they're it's not comparable at all. Like especially the state I live in in Florida like there's no, it really doesn't matter. Like there's no emissions testing. Like I could probably get like a loud exhaust ticket if a cop wanted to be hassle us, but as far as that, as long as it has the turn signal indicators. Like there's a basic set of rules, the number to be licensed and sure okay that makes it easy, then yeah, so far as the driving goes for the gala is, it's really easy.

Speaker 1: 25:42

There's not a lot of laws against it.

Speaker 2: 25:44

Now, fair play to you a little jealous, if I was honest. Let's talk about the car itself, and before we jump into your current car. As I understand it, you had an earlier version of this Mustang that was a bit more streetable, that also went pretty damn quick, from what I understand, and then you've decided to move that car on and build a new platform. So can you give us a quick overview of the first car and why you decided that you needed a new chassis to sort of go faster?

Speaker 1: 26:13

Absolutely in. The first car gets talked about a lot because, like this is the car that kind of elevated me to where I am now, like when I bought this car in 2014. It was almost brand new, six months old, 2013 Mustang. It was kind of have a green because I raised some motorcycles at the time dirt bikes and street bikes and I was a Kawasaki guy and I love that bright green and that's actually why I bought the great green car, just because it was kind of like Kawasaki green. And I bought the car intent to get back more into car drag racing and I knew that. You know, the coyote engine had been out for a few years at that point and it already approved to be far superior than anything Ford had did, you know, the 10 years prior to that. So I bought the car and immediately had purchased a turbo kit for it and I bought a single turbo kit is like a bolt on deal 76 millimeter turbo and I started. That was my first turbo charge vehicle.

Speaker 2: 27:04

And.

Speaker 1: 27:04

I started with that car basically like everyone does, and it's now 10 years later to the point that it is now where it was turbo kit, stock engine, stock engine, 85 rods, piston engine. You know it kind of went through every stage the normal progression, the normal progression and during that time we were racing six or eight transmissions with it because I refused to put a turbo 400 in it Because it was still a brand new car to me. You know I was like I'm not gonna get this car. Still, like you know, it's a really nice complete stock car with a turbo kit, so I'm not gonna put aftermarket transmission in it. And developing some transmission parts with Dan outwave of blue street performance who is in Australia, and now those transmissions, thanks to a lot of the work that we did together with that car. Can you know it's been six seconds with that. You know the F six beat overdrive transmission. My car never went six seconds to me. I had to change the transover in the high sevens back some years ago.

Speaker 2: 28:01

I guess there has been a lot of development now on that platform, though correct that you probably didn't have access to back when you had that car.

Speaker 1: 28:08

Yeah well no, we basically did most of that development with my car as far as the hard parts goes. It just got to the point where I wasn't willing to go those next steps with that transmission. As far as like building a complete race car to have the six feet overdrive like, my concept of having the stock overdrive transmission Was that it was in a very stock car, like it was an Australian level street car in the sense that it just looked like a normal car, wasn't, you know, a race car that was called a street car. So then I started racing more and wanting to go faster and wanting to race more than I drove and I realized I need a more racing style transmission than a driving style transmission.

Speaker 1: 28:44

And that you know that's where the transition happened there and ended up going six ninety eight, like two oh three, with that car and it was complete, like you know, like full stock interior, all roll up windows, like complete, normal 2014 Mustang.

Speaker 2: 29:01

Wow, okay, this is pretty impressive time slip for something that is still completely streetable. What was the decision behind starting a fresh, though, as opposed to further modifying that car when you wanted to go faster?

Speaker 1: 29:15

Yeah. So it's kind of funny. Like it was after that event was at the Mod Nationals, when I ran that time and I got the six we are, you know, we were hunting that time for a little while, obviously, like everyone is, and like after that past, like I just felt complete with that car, like I didn't feel the urge to take that car further. I felt like it had did what it needed to do. You know it was at the limit of a lot of things, like it had a ten point roll cage and it wasn't. It shouldn't have been going two hundred miles per hour from a safety aspect, the next easy range for me I wanted to go like I didn't want to go Six, nine, oh, and then six, eight, nine, like I wanted to go a lot faster.

Speaker 1: 29:50

So Instead of cutting that car up and spending the time and the money it would have taken to transform it to more of a race car, I decided to sell it and buy this rolling chassis that I bought from my car, from Joel steel, which was an existing stick shift race car that he was racing live and he kind of wanted to sell it. At the same time I want to sell line. I convinced him to sell it as a roller because I knew that you know it had a twenty five to chassis and already it was four link. It was already, you know, pretty light in the sense of S197 that I could, you know, put my engine platform and it put, build a turbo kit, you know, and make a competitive car in the mid sixes.

Speaker 2: 30:28

Okay, just coming back one step for those who sort of aren't up to speed with drag racing lingo what's a twenty five to chassis? What's that mean?

Speaker 1: 30:36

So basically it's enough roll cage certified. The NHRA dictates the certification levels and they assign numbers to them and you know each second range I believe it's broke down is a nine, ninety, nine, seven, fifty and a six, fifty and then a six, oh, and basically it's the amount of bars that you know they dictate, that are in place around the driver and in the cockpit that can protect you in a crash at the speed that you're going.

Speaker 2: 31:04

Okay, so essentially the chassis, the roll cage structure, just steps up and becomes more comprehensive and safer, obviously the faster you want the car to go short and in turn you have a stiffer, better chassis for racing.

Speaker 1: 31:17

You know where the other car was still just a factory unibody, complete with a roll bar essentially welded to it, where this one. You know, this car started as a normal Mustang, but the unibody sections are cut out and then it has, you know, basically the chassis, the bars everywhere, of the twenty five to I guess that also gives a lot more flexibility in the design of the four length rear end yes, exactly, and you could get one to a twenty five three with a stock three link rear end.

Speaker 1: 31:43

You know this car was already four length. In the classes I run there wasn't a lot of dictation between like stock suspension to four length, so it was.

Speaker 2: 31:50

Yep, right, let's talk a little bit about the engine, and I actually want to start by talking about that turbo could. Obviously you got into the turbo's fairly early on. Was there ever consideration of a supercharger package? Because obviously, just like the four versus GM debate, there's those that go down the supercharger path and swear by them, and then there's the turbo guys, much like myself, who preferred the turbo's. What's, why did you go that way?

Speaker 1: 32:17

Engine efficiency. You know I saw it early on. I knew that. You know the turbocharger is a more efficient power adder for that setup for the smaller engine. So basically I got in the turbo's and you know, never look back. You know I actually never even thought about running the superchargers and when turbochargers yeah, I mean I've kind of been the same.

Speaker 2: 32:34

I've tuned enough supercharged cars in my time but I just prefer the flexibility is probably one of the key things I like with turbochargers and just the ease of which you can change your boost down the track. And you know the PSI for PSI. I think it'd be hard to argue that you're not going to make more power with a properly sized turbocharger as well. With the engine platform, I mean, obviously you can't go and jam an LS in a Ford Mustang that's not really in a fly with either camp. But obviously the LS and the Ford Coyote engines. There's again a loyal band of followers for both. One of the advantages I see with the LS platform is out of the box you've got more capacity 5 litres in terms of the Coyote but you've also got overhead cams. What's your sort of take on the pros and cons of the Coyote 5 litre V8 versus maybe an LS3 or something of that nature?

Speaker 1: 33:30

Sure so for me. I've never raced an LS engine personally, so you know I don't have anything against them at all. You know, fast as fast, like you know, if an engine is making power in a car as fast, I respect it the same, no matter what engine it has in it. But if you know, for me now, after building this Coyote and looking what it has to offer at its capacity, it's air flow of the engine. The amount of air flow for engine speed that you can get from a coyote is just. It's not matched by the LS at all. You know, in my opinion, that they're doing it with more muscle, more cubic inch, lower revs. But you know a drag car can be faster with a higher, ever higher revving engine because of the power cycles.

Speaker 2: 34:09

Yeah, okay, fair, fair, cool in terms of that high revving point. What are you revving it to on the drag strip?

Speaker 1: 34:15

It revs to close to 10,000.

Speaker 2: 34:17

Okay, it gives a bit of an understanding. I mean, you're at, or close to, sort of 3000 horsepower at the hubs with this combination as it's currently running. What do you need to change, if not absolutely every single component, in order to achieve that sort of power level?

Speaker 1: 34:33

From a stock engine to the engine that I'm running.

Speaker 2: 34:35

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1: 34:37

Well, so a brief rundown on my engine is starts as factory Ford block. You know we order it from Ford. It's the latest version of this engine from Ford that they call the predator block. It's offered in the GT500. So we start with that block. We start with a set of just Ford GT350 cylinder heads. The block is then a sleeve with the aftermarket sleeve. Fast forward race engines is the engine builder for me, who you know we've brought up. We've come up together from the rods and pistons engine to this version of the engine. Now we have to do Joe or ruin is a great guy. We work together really closely every day with the platform. So factory block, aftermarket sleeve. That's it for the block. There's no other modifications done to the crankcase. Use the stock main cap. The deck is unpouched. It's still full. Wet block, wet deck.

Speaker 2: 35:27

Well, we're talking about the block there. Did you get to a point where you found the limit of the stock unsleaved block, or was the sleeve and just a precaution? You went down that path anyway.

Speaker 1: 35:39

No. So the stock unsleaved block pretty much in any form of the coyotes, because you know there's there's four or five different blocks now from 2011 to now you know the earlier ones. Nine hundred thousand horsepower was the limit of the stock sleeve and then they went into the spray in liners in the gen three and into the GT500 engines and there's guys making twelve, thirteen hundred horsepower On that stock sleeve but again that you know they then start to laminating or the cylinder starts cracking at that point. So yeah, the stock sleeve doesn't get you very far. So pretty much, if you're gonna, the stock sleeve doesn't go any further than the stock rods and pistons. So kind of the first upgrade for a short block on these coyotes is to go right to a sleeve block with a product piston upgrade.

Speaker 2: 36:22

Yeah, so it's an expensive first step, but a necessary one.

Speaker 1: 36:25

Right, exactly, you go from a 1,000 horsepower capable short block to a 2,000 horsepower capable short block on your first step and then the guy's running them at 1,500, 1,600 horsepower. I have friends and stuff. These cars are in these cars. The engines are in these cars for years and they just run.

Speaker 2: 36:40

That's impressive.

Speaker 1: 36:41

Yeah, they don't have any issues at all.

Speaker 2: 36:43

We'll continue on with the engine combination. I just interrupted you on that point. But yeah, let's keep going.

Speaker 1: 36:47

So that was it for the crankcase Aftermarket sleeves. The heads are ported by FastBoard. But it's a pretty basic setup. There's not a ton like as far as CNC work done to them, as a lot of people think, has Freya valve and custom valve spring and cams uses the factory lifter and the factory follower. It's still a hydraulic setup just as it came. As that sense, the engine that was running up until sick week the one in the video were made close to 3,000, that engine still utilized stock crankshaft which we at that point we started to notice that we're having problems with main bearing life at that boost level and you can't be too mad at it. $400 crankshaft from Ford. It's like, oh, it's got a billet crank now and it's like, well, I mean, every other engine already has a billet crank at you know, a lot less horsepower than what we were making with this one.

Speaker 2: 37:39

I think it seems, from what I've seen of your videos, that you've sort of taken the approach of, rather than throwing a big old bag of cash at the engine and changing every component out, you've more gone down the path of, well, let's actually see what physically needs to be changed, as opposed to changing parts that are actually up to the task, which I think is a trap that a lot of car builders sort of get sucked into. There's shiny parts on the internet, so let's just buy them all and put them in the engine. And I've spoken about this previously on the podcast, but with my 4G63 drag engine program we were running an aftermarket billet crank shaft which was pretty expensive, and at one point we pulled the thing out and had it crack tested and it was basically cracked in the fillet radius of every journal. So obviously you don't put it back. In.

Speaker 2: 38:30

Added a pinch, we had a factory crank lying around and put that in because we were going racing and that crank shaft lasted just as well as the billet crank. We pulled it out and it was cracked again. But it's one of those things. Did it crack on the first pass or did it crack on the pass just before you pulled it apart. You just don't get to find that out. But again, instead of a $4,000 or $5,000 crank shaft, we were using a $800 crank shaft. So happy days. If it's not broken, don't fix it and a lot of that.

Speaker 1: 38:58

I give the testament to Joe, my engine builder, because leading up to it I'm like man. We should probably move to a billet crank because we tend to take our data and our data only for as something we write down as okay. This is a fact. There's plenty of people breaking blocks or breaking engines and you don't know everything that's attributed to why that failure happened. So we try to keep our focus on what we're doing. And he's like man. Like you said, he's like billet cranks have their own issues. We don't have a problem with the stock crank yet. Let's not spend $5,000 on a crank shaft to have it crack in the burnout box or have another issue that a billet crank can have because it's more for a race engine and at the time we're building up, we're building more of a street engine and we're building engines that the everyday Mustang owner is going to buy to put into their street car, and not everyone. Very few people want to buy $5,000 on a crank shaft and if it's not needed, there's no point.

Speaker 2: 39:57

Yeah, couldn't agree more In terms of the problems that we're starting to see up around. That 3,000 horsepower mark with bearing wear obviously indicates you're starting to get some crankshaft flex and, as you say, can't really be too angry at that, given 3,000 horsepower. Let's be honest, that's to be expected. I'm just wondering and I know you've got an engine builder so you may not be able to give me much information on this but up to that point, with the stock crankshaft, were you building in additional clearance in the bearings to sort of help make everything live with the flex you're inevitably getting?

Speaker 1: 40:30

Yeah, so we did. We did move to that. The first indication that this problem happened was actually last year at FL2K during qualifying. I actually got a low oil pressure warning on a run and we came back and we pulled the filter out and it was full of bearing and that was our first big sign of okay, something's wrong. And we actually had another short block ready to go for the next engine, because with Joe, you know, I have two engines so we can try to have one getting you know the next revision or stage done. So the car's not down for a long time because we raced a lot and we took the engine out.

Speaker 1: 41:04

We went back to a shop because it was local to this race, and we took the heads off my engine and we saw the bearing wear and I wish I had that video to show you because it's super interesting where you can see the flex in the bearing because it's only on the connecting rod side of the power stroke of that bearing. So you could actually you know it's the back of this bearing, the front of that bearing, so it was pretty visual to see, it was pretty neat. So at that time we went ahead and he went ahead and took that other short block apart and then, you know, put in larger, you know reclearns bearings for a larger oil clearance. And at the same time, you know, I realized also that, you know, I need to start working on my oil system better, you know. So at that time I had a five-stage oil pump on the car, you know, and we were maintaining 75 or so PSI oil pressure at that time, you know, and it's like man, you know, I wish we could get 100, 120,.

Speaker 1: 41:54

You know, we're trying to find, you know, crankshafts flexing. But we're always going to have flex. We have a stock block, a lot of things there's going to be things flexing. So we, you know, we look around the crankshafts also. What else could we can improve as far as bearing clearance or oiling goes and turns out it didn't matter much. We didn't smoke a set of bearings after that. The clearance did help longevity of it. I would monitor the filter and kind of see, you know, shavings or material. And I ended up racing that engine for the rest of the year. But I did put a set of main bearings in it, you know, throughout that time. But we never did have a full failure like in the dyno video. That was the same engine, oil pressure and all that stuff was the same. It just, you know, we had put a set of bearings.

Speaker 2: 42:35

Yeah, it gets to a point where some of these things become essentially consumables. And again you can't be too angry at that when you've got a production components doing things that are so far out of the range of what the car rolled off the showroom floor with. You know there are some expected downsides to all of that with that dry sump system. So one of the aspects here is when we increase the bearing clearances, basically you're generally going to see a drop in oil pressure. There's just more leakage for want of a better term of the oil coming out of those journals and just leaking out. So normally sort of find that if you don't do anything else you do see the oil pressure drop. With the dry sump system I'm assuming you can really sort of adjust the pressure pump to get your oil pressure back where you need it anyway.

Speaker 1: 43:20

Yeah, right, you can crank it out and in that also. In that same time I switched oil pump design and I don't want to get into manufacturer things as far as oil pump goes but went to a different style pump with more stages and we were able to get better crankcase evacuation, get the oil out of the engine better and maintain, you know, 100-115 psi oil pressure with the more stages and things like that.

Speaker 2: 43:44

Now there's a few things with the dry sump system. Obviously, one of the key aspects of it is engine reliability. Regardless of the G-forces under acceleration, braking or if it's a road race car cornering, you're always going to have a constant supply of high pressure oil to the bearing. So that's one of the key aspects with it. But there are some performance benefits as well. We sort of just alluded to the scavenging stages evacuating the oil and blow by gases out of the crankcase. So that can be beneficial because it can help reduce windage losses. Essentially, the crankshaft is easier to spin in the crankcase, it's not going through an oil mist, and also we can see benefits in terms of ring seal because we've got lower pressure in the crankcase. So I'm just interested here with a high boost turbo setup, what sort of crankcase pressure are you seeing? The sort of the assumption that you're going to be able to pull a vacuum, which with a naturally aspirated engine, you absolutely can. I've yet to see a significant vacuum with a high boost turbo engine, though.

Speaker 1: 44:48

Yeah like you said, we were trying to achieve as much vacuum as possible because with this small capacity engine and large turbo chargers we needed to make as much horsepower naturally aspirated as it can to help spoolies turbo chargers. So it maintains a good crankcase vacuum up until the higher boost levels. So we run about 53-54 PSI boost in this engine and currently we're seeing about 1.8 PSI positive crankcase pressure down the track.

Speaker 2: 45:14

Yeah, okay, that kind of fits with what my own sort of experience has been. Essentially, though, I don't know if you've got any numbers. Could you give us a comparison? If it was a conventional wet sump engine running the same boost, everything else being equal, what sort of positive pressure would you expect to see in the crankcase then?

Speaker 1: 45:30

I don't know from personal experience, but I've seen some other coyote engine people like breaking valve covers and blowing caps off. I imagine the crankcase pressure's pretty high on that kind of setup with it and they also have an inherent g-force issue with the stock sump of the oil pressure maintaining for the first one or two seconds of the track. There's not a really good oil pan currently on that engine from the factory and you have to run them two quarts, sometimes over, full on oil to keep good oil pressure because of g-forces.

Speaker 2: 45:59

Yeah, that's sort of a bit of a bandaid really, the sump that I had on my drag car, my Evo. That was sort of baffled and it had a nice sort of baffle box around the pickup with trap doors and everything. It was basically as good as you were able to make a wet sump and it was actually really good down the strip. But where I was having problems which is definitely less of an issue, but still not what you want to see was at the end of the strip you'd pull the chute and clutch in and you'd see the oil pressure there from sort of 10-11,000 RPM dropped to 20 psi, which is a little scary. Fortunately there's not a lot of load on the engine at that point because you're off the throttle, but still it's sort of reasonably quickly.

Speaker 2: 46:39

After that we made the call to go dry sump on that and it actually interestingly transformed the engine. We weren't. I wouldn't have thought we were seeing major bearing wear issues, but I did class those bearings as a consumable. So we were replacing big end and main bearings pretty regularly, maybe every couple of meetings or so, and after we went dry sump I'd pull it apart. It looked like brand new. So you'd just put it back together and just about do a season of racing on the same set of bearings, which was quite a noticeable difference.

Speaker 1: 47:07

Yeah, I think the issue with the dry sump market right now, or at least for a lot of the Coyote guys or other Brazmin new platforms, is it's not easy to do one because there's not a lot of parts available. You kind of like the mount on my car. Jt Oliver, you had him on your show before JT Power. He designed it in CAD and built the mount and it took a lot of effort to get that big pump on my car. So that's probably one of the struggles a lot of people the regular people have with it.

Speaker 2: 47:32

Yeah, definitely. It's much easier if you can just buy an off the shelf part and fit it rather than having to actually go through the R&D development process yourself. One of the big limiting factors on any turbocharged engine, or at least the ones I've been involved with, is head gasket sealing, and it's a pretty common topic we discuss on the podcast. What's your solution there and how effective or rock solid is it?

Speaker 1: 47:59

So we have again. We've come up from the stock engine to where we are now, so the engine actually has a really good sealing head. The latest version of the block that we run uses a 12mm head stud. That's deep in down by the mains. It gets clamped to 120 foot-pounds so it has a lot of clamping force on the surface. But there's still just four bolts per cylinder. So you're always going to run into some issues.

Speaker 1: 48:21

Standard MLS gasket you can use a Ford gasket. Actually you don't even need anything really exotic. With a very short raised O-ring in the block Joe does like on the Stage 3 engine, just extra pressure on the gasket. That gasket system will take you to close to a 2,500 horsepower and that doesn't require any machining or service life. You put it on, torque it down, it's good to go. After that we move to a copper gasket on my engine and it's a very old system. It's a receiver groove and a small stainless O-ring and that system has taken us to where we are now.

Speaker 1: 48:57

We're starting to see a little rise in crankcase pressure. We saw it on the dyno. We saw it the last time we were at the track. As we try to increase power, you know, above that 53-54 pounds boost level. We're still in our diagnostic stage or research stage of tracking that to see how bad it's going to get, if it's going to get worse, and what our next move is.

Speaker 1: 49:20

To get that better, we're doing an engine tear down, actually Saturday, of the engine that was in the car on the dyno. We're going to do a video and get that off and then, you know, see what's happening to that gasket. Possibly maybe we just moved to like a flame hoop setup or something with more surface area to get the interaction of the gasket into the head. We're going to start to evaluate and decide on what the next plan will be for that and to what happens with the current cooling pressure. Now we have enough data on this car and it's what's so good with it. Every pass, if something is 2PSI different, we're going to pick up on it and start tracking it. You know, start tracing it.

Speaker 2: 50:02

Okay, a couple of things I'm just going to dive back into. There is, I think, a certain number of people that believe that an MLS gasket is not compatible with an O-ring. You mentioned that you were running that up to, I think you said 2500 horsepower.

Speaker 1: 50:17

Yeah, that's where we saw it.

Speaker 2: 50:19

Yeah, so yeah, that was a similar system to what I actually ultimately ran on my 4G63s as well. And you do need to be a little bit careful because obviously those MLS gaskets are not really compressible like a copper gasket. So it's a long time now. I think we're only running something like 5 to 7000s of an inch protrusion on the O-ring, but just enough, it just bites into that gasket and I found that worked really well.

Speaker 2: 50:42

Interestingly, we tried the copper gasket stainless O-ring receiver groove technique at one point and I had absolutely no success with it. But obviously it's pretty well proven. It's the go to for the likes of top fuel, top alcohol. So you know, but I don't know whether the production engine there was too much flex in the cylinder head casting or the block or both. That just didn't work for us. Obviously it's working reasonably well for you. Long story short here, one of the downsides with copper gaskets is they do a horrible job of sealing the oil and the water. And when you're running a wet block with, I'm assuming, still water passages between the head and the block, how are you going about sealing that copper gasket for water and oil purposes?

Speaker 1: 51:28

Joe has a glue that he uses. He doesn't advertise what it is, it's an epoxy that we put on there and it works pretty well. And one of the issues we ran into, which a lot of people do, is to retort the heads. The camshafts have to come out, so to do like the first retort you know it's the full, the cams out of the engine is a lot of chains, the whole front car is gonna come off. So you know we made a what are you doing? Electric water pump. When we do it in the engine room, before the engine goes in the car, we bring it up to Operating temp backwards, you know, use the hot water to heat the engine and then get the retort done. And it's been good. We've gone back and tried to, you know see, but we haven't had any water leaks or any oil leaks yet with the glue that is using.

Speaker 2: 52:10

Yeah, nice, that retort is something that a lot of people don't do. I've found it to be an essential or most irrespective of the head gasket solution if you do want reliability, because it can be quite amazing, once you've heat cycled the engine a couple of times, just how much more movement you'll get out of those head studs talking it back up to the same torque setting.

Speaker 1: 52:30

So maybe a little tip there for those who aren't doing that and are having head gasket sealing issues yeah, and that's one thing that we're gonna do part of this engine tear down is because, because I physically can't do a retort in the car without pulling the engine pretty much all the way apart. I never had. So you know, we'll have this engine on the stand, will see where the bolts are torqued to now, after they've had 60 passes or so on them, to see maybe you know our fixes. After 10 more passes after the initial, maybe it needs a retort again and I need to pull the cams out and get a retort to get it to that next step. I guess we're still on our investigation stage right.

Speaker 2: 53:05

I just wanted to take a moment out of our interview with Brett and talk about a course that I think would really suit anyone who's enjoying this interview so far, and that is our practical engine building course. Most enthusiasts tend to think that building their own engines is beyond them, but the reality is, if you've got a little bit of patience and an eye for detail, absolutely this is something you can achieve at home. Another concern I hear regularly is that you're going to need tens of thousands of dollars worth of tools in order to build your own engines. The reality is that that's absolutely not the case, and with just your usual mechanics tool set, plus a few key additional tools, you can do a great job of building your own engines. This course actually begins by looking at failure analysis, which is so often overlooked but absolutely critical. Often I see engines that have been rebuilt that have suffered some form of failure, but no one's really under covered the root cause of that failure and, lo and behold, the freshly built engine with thousands of dollars spent on it is going to fail again. So here we dive deep into the different modes of failure, what you should be looking for and how to find that root cause so you can fix it. We only look at some of the practical engine building skills that you're going to need to know. We then hear about how to fit bearings, how to prepare your engine block, how to measure bearing clearances, piston deck clearance, how to balance your own pistons and connecting rods, how to install con rods onto pistons, how to gap your piston rings, just to name a few.

Speaker 2: 54:35

We then move into the HPA 10 step process, and I know that when you get all of your engine components back from the machinist it can be a bit daunting knowing what to do first and what order to progress in. So, taking the entire job down into the HPA 10 step process, each of those individual steps is relatively quick and easy to complete and in no time you've got to the end. You've got a completely assembled engine and you're going to have the confidence that when it comes time to start that engine for the first time, all of the parts you've chosen, all of the clearances you've set, are going to be perfect and your engine's going to start. It's going to produce great power, great torque and, most importantly, great reliability. It is important to mention that this course is generic, so it doesn't matter if you're dealing with a four cylinder naturally aspirated engine, maybe a push rod V8 or a quad cam V12, this course will be perfect for you.

Speaker 2: 55:26

After the body of the course, we then move into our library of worked examples, which is an informal walkthrough of that 10 step process where we apply it to a variety of different engines to give you experience on a wide range of different platforms. Now this course is usually $199 USD. You can use the coupon code BREAT50 and that'll get you 50% off the purchase of this course. So it's a great deal, but you are still protected by a 60 day no questions asked money back guarantee. If you purchase them for any reason at all decide it's not quite what you expected, let us know. You'll get a full refund of the purchase price. We'll put a link to that course, as well as the discount code, in the show notes. Now let's get back into our interview with Brett Alright. Where do you sort of see the limit with the block being still production, and is there an expectation that in time, you're going to end up being forced to move to a billet version?

Speaker 1: 56:23

Yeah, so it's going to be one or two areas. It's going to be the head gasket sealing or if we can get that head gasket sealed up, then it's going to push the crank out of it. It's going to seal it up to a higher power level that we're going to run now. It's the same situation that's been for every factory block. So we're running, like I said, 53-54 pounds now, but the engine is just showing signs. It's still making close to 45 horsepower per pound of boost. So it wants to be a 65 pounds boost. It's going to make that much more power there, but maybe something fails. So once we get the head sealed up at that power level, then it's going to try to push the crank out and then we'll see when that happens.

Speaker 2: 57:07

Well, one of the things that was easy to overlook as a benefit with the billet blocks is generally particularly if they're a wet block design, so it still has a natural water jacket, so it's streetable they'll usually incorporate a much thicker deck surface and again, that doesn't seem maybe too critical, but these components flex around quite a lot and just adding material to that deck surface can help reduce the flex in the deck at the block, meaning that it's going to be able to do a better job of sealing that head gasket, so it can be a really big benefit. Of course, then there's also the potential to go to much larger head studs as well, so the whole thing sort of all works in conjunction. In terms of billet blocks for the Coyote platform, are there many options?

Speaker 1: 57:51

There's two options currently two companies, and I believe they're pretty similar from what I've seen I haven't looked at them real hard yet just because I want to keep the car in drag and drive trim for the foreseeable future. So for me it's not an option because they don't have water, it's a dry block. So if a water block does come out or begins to get made, maybe that we move that direction as just a progression of the platform and of the car. But for now it's not really on my radar because I'm not ready to make the car the full race car version yet without the water.

Speaker 2: 58:26

This also begs the question of how much more power can you actually get to the track? People think that drag racing is just a case of well, we'll chuck another 200 horsepower at it and it's going to go 2 tenths quicker. But when you're talking cars at the level of yours, quite often your severely traction limited for at least a big portion of the pass.

Speaker 1: 58:47

Yeah, I think in that aspect we do a really good job. We run a 275 radial tire and there's cars in Pro 275s going 360 or so to the eighth on that tire. We've been 409, my goal coming up is to go a little quicker than that in eighth mile trim. I believe a car has been 580 to the quarter on that 275 tire. We're nowhere close to that.

Speaker 2: 59:13

So the tire can put more power to the track. Essentially it's been proven.

Speaker 1: 59:17

Yeah, exactly, and my car is not as light as the Pro 275 cars but it's also not really heavy. In the aspect of that too, I know we couldn't possibly get to their ET range even if we had their horsepower because of our weight, but I think we could get close to it. So we have the power at this point and then manage the traction, just because, like I said, I think we do a really good job of that, and right now I'm just wanting 200 more horsepower, not necessarily wanting more traction.

Speaker 2: 59:43

Yeah, okay, okay, fair, all right, let's move on and talk a little bit about the electronics package in the car. You've already alluded to the fact that you made the change from AEM to MoTeC. Can you give us a bit of a rundown on the electronic components that you've got managing everything?

Speaker 1: 59:59

So it has a MoTeC M150, a MoTeC PDM30 and a C1212 dash and an E-888 expander for thermocouplers and a few more IO. The car uses rife sensors front to rear. Basically all the pressure sensors and speed sensors are from rife and that's it. That's the electronics package. You know, the MoTeC does everything in the one box, so it doesn't have a lot of boxes.

Speaker 2: 1:00:25

One aspect with the M1 platform which again we've talked about a few times in previous episodes, is that for all intents and purposes it's just a blank box which will do whatever you tell it to, based on the firmware that's developed and this production firmware that MoTeC provide. And then there's a number of aftermarket suppliers making their own firmware packages that can be very tailored to a given task, such as drag racing. I'm just interested in what you're running there for firmware.

Speaker 1: 1:00:55

So the firmware that I run is a small variation of USA Drag. So I ran USA Drag up until a few months ago and I'm fortunate enough to be good friends with a guy named Bit who does MoTeC firmware and he's made some additions to that. And it's just us being picky because we want to race the car a certain way. So it's like, oh, if we had this on a button, that'd be easier and MoTeC could do the updates eventually to USA Drag. They just take some time because they have to go through Australia to get that firmware updated. But it's really close to the USA Drag package. Actually, that package has enough to do very, very powerful things in these cars.

Speaker 2: 1:01:33

Could you give us some, maybe a couple of examples of what that drag package just the production firmware, maybe not necessary your tweaks? What drag specific functions are incorporated there? That a GPA or GPR package that you'd use on a street car or maybe a road race car, doesn't have?

Speaker 1: 1:01:51

Yeah, so the drag racing strategies are going to be transmission based. There's a lot of time based strategies because most drag runs are tuned over what's called a race time, so the second you let off the button until the timer starts and you're going down the drag strip. So there's going to be a lot of boost control, a lot of ignition timing, ride height control for a wheelie sensor, ride height control for suspension, ride height transmission control for dump valves. For the first, because we'll use the transmission converter pressure to slip the clutch, in a sense to apply power to the track and for the whole run. Shifting timers, shifting retards, transmission lockup strategies, launch control strategies, staging strategies there's a lot of very specific things that you would only use for drag racing.

Speaker 2: 1:02:45

Yeah, okay, and that's totally reasonable as well. It just sort of shows how flexible that particular platform is, because when people hear MoTeC M150, it's important to understand that the M150 is irrelevant. It's really the firmware that you're running and the functionality or strategies, as you put it, that are incorporated in the firmware that really make the difference. Now I want to dive into a couple of the strategies, if we can, and just talk a little bit about how you're implementing them. To start, let's talk about the launch strategy. How does that work for your particular vehicle? You've got an automatic transmission. You've got large turbos on a relatively small capacity engine. How hard is it to actually build boost on the line, and how does that work?

Speaker 1: 1:03:30

Well, you know, job Spatter is the main tuner of the car. So out of respect for him and everything he's worked on really hard, I can't go deeply involved in that subject because the car is very competitive right now and we have a lot of people trying to outrun us and we're trying to stay in front. But with the MoTeC ECU and everything that's available to us, it's actually, I say, easy for us. But the car does very well. We have engine speed for manifold pressure. We get the engine speed up, get the turbos going, get the manifold pressure up and then you can a lot of things you can tell if you just listen to the vehicle on the racetrack. If you listen to a pass, if you listen to a stage, the engine's going to go up and the speed's going to come down to its launch chip and then I'm going to stage the car in and be ready to go and all that stuff's happening in the background. So it's working very well in its current state with the 83-85 turbos.

Speaker 2: 1:04:22

Normally you've sort of got, I guess, two key controls at your fingertips with the launch strategy. One is the boost target at launch and the other would be the engine RPM. I was just wondering are you manipulating those on a pass-by-pass basis, depending on how the track evolves, or is that sort of a fit and forget? It is what it is. You've proven it works.

Speaker 1: 1:04:44

No, no, no, it's pass-by-pass basis. So, the way we have the setup now, we have nine map slots set and I have a driver switch in the car and I have a confirmation on the dash of which map slot it's in. We have the map slots built off of previous known runs, so we know what that does to the 60-foot.

Speaker 1: 1:05:03

We know what it does all the metrics down the track so we know how each map slot is. Then Jim Braun is usually with me at all the big races. We'll gauge the track for the round, depending on if we're in qualifying or depending on if we're in eliminations, depending on our strategy. If you know who you're racing, you know how fast that car is, you know the track condition. You kind of pick an ET that you know the car run. We can walk out on the racetrack and know the temperature of the racetrack and kind of put your foot down and visually see how much rubber is there and put your foot down and see how much goo is there. Now we know this car so well I could walk out there for 10 seconds and be like, okay, we can go this fast. Then you pick that slot and then it goes that fast.

Speaker 2: 1:05:45

I guess as well. When you've got a car that's running a PB I think 626 to 27 is that about right you sort of probably dial it back and run a 6.5 and kind of feel like you're sitting on the couch. It's all pretty, relatively speaking, easy going. Is that sort of fair At this?

Speaker 1: 1:06:04

point it is, but you know that took the last year and a half was data collection, tuning. So we built this database of tune ups and versus track conditions, versus density, altitude, that at this point, yes, we know what the DA is, we know what the track looks like. I could pick a number and we can put it in the car and it's gonna run that you know outside of something failing and you know we keep up on the maintenance, keep up on the suspension and the shocks and we look at every aspect of every run. This to keep it consistent and you know.

Speaker 1: 1:06:35

That's why this car, when so many races, is because it's consistent. We know it so well.

Speaker 2: 1:06:40

Yeah, it's sort of the polar opposite to a lot of what I see with the import scene and I mean I was guilty of this myself where the guys are going out to run PB's or world records and you can't go rounds because you're never gonna be able to actually beat the guy in the other lane, or girl for that matter. So yeah, a car that actually is consistent and can do laps and pull a really good light and you know within you know probably a couple of hundredths what it's gonna actually run, that's what you need to actually be competitive.

Speaker 1: 1:07:09

Yeah, I'd say that's an inherent flaw of a lot of drag racers is, you know, they work on the car a lot and they get to the event and they want to run a PB every pass and you know like I have told a lot of people, when I built this car, like I built it so I could win races, like you know, going fast is gonna be a product of us getting better with the car or being at the event that we need to go faster to win. But you know, consistency and building that, that library of data, and being able to just run the same pass no matter what the time of day is or who you're up against, that's what's gonna win the races.

Speaker 2: 1:07:41

I think it sort of feeds into what you just mentioned there, as well as the data collection. When you're going out and trying to run a PB or a beta world record every pass and you're breaking things, you're not getting the passes in to build up that knowledge base that's so important to then be able to go and run faster passes. So like the two sort of go hand in hand together. I think I want to come back to another term that you used, which we hear thrown around with drag racing quite a bit, which is DA or density, altitude. But again, for those who aren't up to speed with that, could you give us a quick overview of what DA is and why it's so critical in a drag racing sense?

Speaker 1: 1:08:20

Yeah, so it depends on your combo. How critical is the density? Altitude is the amount of air that's available in the air model that you're breathing right? So the cooler, the denser the air is, there's more oxygen in that air so it's gonna Compress and make more horsepower at the same manifold pressure or if there is a pressure, that aspect.

Speaker 1: 1:08:40

My car runs an air to air intercooler. A lot of methanol cars don't run any intercooler. The imports still from air to water intercooler, which I would if I didn't want to sacrifice the weight loss according to that, with an air water intercooler, typically you're making your own DA because your starting line air temp is typically always the same. So for that particular setup I don't believe it's gonna be as crucial as it is to like my setup. But for my, basically, if the air is really good, the cars gonna make more horsepower at, or is gonna make, manifold pressure easily or more easily. So we control our boost range with CO2. So you command the pressure on top of the waste gate and in turn you get out this much pressure. But depending on how you tune up is how your Boost control is. If the air is better, 10 pounds of CO2 that usually means 20 pounds of boost. Well, now it's making 25 pounds of boost, or the turbo spools faster, so it can drastically affect your run because you're gonna be making more power in different ranges.

Speaker 2: 1:09:38

So, essentially, if you had a tune up that was dialed in for poor DA and then all of a sudden the density altitude improved and maybe now we've got an effective density altitude below CC level, if you don't adjust your tune up, basically pull some CO2 out of it and hence pull some boost out of it you're gonna blow the tires off and go nowhere, right yeah, absolutely, and that's one of the things with Dragon Drives that gets challenging too, because normally at a race you start at a track, your DA will change throughout the day depending on you know, weather conditions the sun's out or if the sun's not out.

Speaker 1: 1:10:10

But we raced from Bradington to South Georgia so we had 2000 feet density, altitude changes from track to track. So we're trying to make a consistent car at a different racing surface, a different temperature, a different altitude, all within that week, so that, you know, adds a bit of the challenge to it, which is what we like, so why we do it?

Speaker 2: 1:10:30

Yeah, lots of complexities going on in there. Alright, diving a little bit further into some of the systems, you mentioned that you've got ride height sensors for wheelie detection here. I'm interested specifically how you're doing that, because there's a couple of variations. Some people are using laser ride height, some are using shock travel potentiometers and then there's also some that I don't really know whether it became successful. So we've talked to a few in the past who are using IMUs or dry scopes to sort of look at the rate of pitch and sort of control things off that. So how do you do it?

Speaker 1: 1:11:06

Yeah, so my car has all those sensors you mentioned on. It has shock potentiometers, but those aren't used for wheelie control. Those are used just for shock tuning so you can see where the shock position is during the run, and just extension and the compression vary depending on power and track conditions. For the wheelie control we use a laser ride height sensor. Basically, you know it's zero at ride height. And then there's a point of every car is going to be different to where we want the ECU to start doing something. Okay, at this point you know it's going to, because once it gets to a certain point it's going to keep going backwards. Right, you just get the pendulum effect and it's going to drive drive up.

Speaker 2: 1:11:43

No wheelie bars on this, this car.

Speaker 1: 1:11:45

No, no, radio cars don't use a wheelie bar. Just thought we'll clear that one up. So we'll race the car on the wheelie sensor. The wheelie sensor is there to save a run. So if you're, you know, naturally you want no power reduction during a run because you're trying to go as fast as you can to win the round.

Speaker 1: 1:12:02

But depending on the track conditions and depending on my suspension setup, the looser you run, the like the front suspension. So the more you let the car move during that first 60 feet, the easier it's going to be on the rear tire, the more traction you're going to have, the more you let the front end move. And the more you let the car move, the more prone it's going to be to wheelie. So that's where you know. We have the ride height sensor there to catch that and the system so tuned in now that it's hard to even hear it. If you watch the car go down the track you won't see the tire barely leave the ground. You won't really hear a reduction in power. But the ECU is doing it so fast it's basically just kind of slapping it on the back of the head, get in the front end back to its control range and then letting the car go drive down the track?

Speaker 2: 1:12:49

Am, I safe to assume here, using a combination of maybe ignition retard, initially, if it just needs a subtle reduction in torque, and then, if it's still coming up, maybe something a bit more aggressive like an ignition card or a fuel cut?

Speaker 1: 1:13:02

Absolutely yeah to use timing retard for this first segment. You know, and there's a ramp rate. You know, if it's gaining this many inches per second compared to this many inches per second, it's going to be more aggressive or less aggressive, or initiate a cylinder cut.

Speaker 2: 1:13:16

Okay, in terms of the power delivery or torque delivery as the car goes down the strip. I'm assuming here you're using some kind of timer based boost control strategy. Yep timer based boost control and ignition. Yeah, okay, and again, is this something that you're looking at data after a pass and making adjustments? Or again, you've got those map slots. You've sort of got all of that data already. You can just go to a separate, a different map and be a bit more aggressive if maybe the track can take some more power.

Speaker 1: 1:13:45

Right now with the, you know the library of two notes we have are all really well. So right now we're just kind of picking between the slots. But everyone you know you still will get a variable where you want to like be between it. To like, okay, I want this 330 with this 60 foot, you know so then, and then we make those changes there. Or if we go out to go faster than we've been before, then you're in a range you haven't been before. So then you know you move to that.

Speaker 2: 1:14:08

Yeah, okay, talking a little bit further about the boost control, you mentioned CO2, which is kind of the norm, I guess, for high output turbocharged drag cars. Can you give us a bit more insight into why everyone goes to CO2? Is it's just to get a wider range between the minimum and maximum boost pressures you want to run?

Speaker 1: 1:14:27

A wider range and just better control because you have, you know, a hundred pounds of CO2. Whatever you said on your regulator, typically it's around a hundred. You know ready to go and transition from how much CO2 is on the starting line for the first millisecond of the run to transition into that. You don't have to wait on manifold pressure to have pressure for the wastegate. So you know you can artificially close the wastegate, command more CO2 beginning part of the run to get the turbo sped up, you know, and then taper it off towards the end. It just seems more controllable with the known pressure, with the static pressure of the CO2 bottle, rather than the variable pressure of the manifold.

Speaker 2: 1:15:04

Yeah, I think for those who sort of aren't up to speed on this, instead of using the boost pressure available in the inlet manifold or intake plumbing to plumb to the wastegate for boost control, we're using, as you say, a regulated supply of CO2. And two advantages with that. One, as you say, it's 100 psi or whatever you set the regulator to, so it's always a known, consistent value, as opposed to if you're using manifold pressure, that's going to vary, obviously, with our boost pressure, so that's a variable. The other side of that, though, is you've got a higher pressure for control of the wastegate. So you know, if you're running 50 psi of boost, that's all you've got to force that wastegate closed.

Speaker 2: 1:15:46

And where this becomes an issue is particularly if you want a wide range of boosts. Say, you want to leave the line with 20 or 24 psi, because that's all the car will put to the track. If you weren't running CO2, you might be capped at maybe a maximum of 40 or maybe 50 psi so many variables I can't give a number there. If you wanted to get to 80 or 90 or 100 psi, you're just not going to get there without CO2 control. So I just wanted to clear that up for those who maybe haven't heard of that technique before, I'm interested with the control strategy. Is the ECU solely controlling dome pressure, the CO2 pressure being applied to the wastegate and then the boosters just whatever it is going to be as a result of that pressure in the wastegate, or is it using CO2 in a roundabout way to then control a specific boost?

Speaker 1: 1:16:35

target. No, it's only closed loop to the dome pressure.

Speaker 2: 1:16:40

So it's up to you to basically have an understanding of what dome pressure results in ex-boost pressure.

Speaker 1: 1:16:47

Right, which, on a car like mine with turbo inlets, varies down the track, because getting close to the eighth mile of the car gets over 170 or so. The positive pressure in front of the turbos requires less CO2 to make the same boost. So it's being manipulated the whole way down. So what makes the boost at the 60 foot doesn't make the same boost down track.

Speaker 2: 1:17:07

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. In terms of the turbo sizing, again, in one of your videos that I've stalked you've talked about the sort of jump in turbo size that you've made, which again I think is pretty much par for the course. With turbocharged drag cars we do tend to get a little bit power hungry and I don't know. I sort of find, at least with the import engines, it's really easy to make just about within reason however much power you want just with putting a bigger turbocharger on. However, the problem that this then brings in or can be a problem is that the boost threshold, or where in the RPM range that the turbo will actually start making usable boost, obviously increases the turbo's bigger. There's more inertia, it needs more exhaust gas energy and that can have a negative impact on how well the car 60 foot, which is so critical to the rest of the past. I'm interested to get your sort of impressions of how you've dealt with that, how it's affected the car as you've stepped up turbo science.

Speaker 1: 1:18:04

Sure, yeah, it's 60 foot and it's spooling. So one of the things that we've been up against with this car, with this engine platform, is we've been working with a stock engine, so you can't be really or a stock casting it's not a stock engine, so you can't be just super mean to it, like you can with a light horsepower engines, because your just going to break it and we're dealing with a relatively small engine, cubic inch wise for a V8. So the car started with 7675s, because that's basically where we left off on the last car and we know they worked well and I don't really have a class limit for turbo size. So, yeah, you could just put the biggest one they make on there. I know you're going to make a lot of horsepower, but it's not going to spool, it's not going to 60 foot well. So we just started the progression the same way we did with the engine parts.

Speaker 1: 1:18:54

With precision we went to a 7680. And one thing that I've learned very well from Joe and Jay is pressure ratio of the engine manifold pressure to back pressure to keep the engine happy and keep the engine efficient. So we tuned the car off of pressure ratio and we've watched the pressure ratio and when that starts to cross the one to one, that's when it's like, okay, we're going to need a bigger turbocharger before we add more manifold pressure and then see if we can spool it and, funny enough, the spooling is still not an issue. Or you know, we're up to 8380 5s and right now precision is building us some 8680 5s because it's just been fine, the converter combo with the engine speed we can leave at. You know, we're still within our realm.

Speaker 2: 1:19:36

Okay, cool, you just brought up another term that I want to dive into, which is pressure ratio against something that's reasonably easy to overlook, which is the ratio between the inlet manifold pressure, essentially the boost pressure being fed into the engine.

Speaker 2: 1:19:52

But the easy part to overlook with turbochargers is that we're going to end up with exhaust back pressure, that turbine housing and turbine wheel is actually creating a significant restriction to the exhaust gas flow and that ratio really has so much impact on the performance of the engine but also the boost response.

Speaker 2: 1:20:10

You know, if we want a turbocharged street car that's going to give good response at low RPM, then we might see those pressure ratios in the range of sort of 2 to 1, maybe 2.5 to 1, where the exhaust pressure is higher than the inlet manifold pressure. On the flip side of that, with drag cars, if we get it down to the point where the exhaust back pressure is below the inlet manifold pressure, just you sort of see the performance start to, in terms of horsepower, start to ramp up the engine I kind of put it down to almost starts acting, but like a naturally aspirated engine, we can also run more aggressive cam profiles. So that's what you're talking about to the 1 to 1 ratio. There you're actually targeting, trying to target below exhaust manifold pressure, below inlet manifold pressure.

Speaker 1: 1:20:50

Yep, exactly, and, like you said, we don't necessarily care about the street aspect. Or as long as it will spool on the starting line, it's going to race fine down the track. So we just want it to make the most efficient horsepower it can, which is going to be a lower pressure ratio.

Speaker 2: 1:21:04

Absolutely. The other thing you just I mean you might have alluded to, but I may have got a wrong read on it you can actually use pressure ratio as the load axis for your volumetric efficiency, your fuel and ignition tables. Are you doing that? It just sounded like maybe you are. Yes yes, we are OK. So that kind of, then, I guess, almost self corrects for some of those changes from a tuning side in terms of just keeping our air fuel ratio on track when your density altitude changes as well, doesn't it?

Speaker 1: 1:21:34

Yeah, from a tuning side, the way Job approached it and the way we tuned the car, it will. Yes, the density altitude affects, like air fuel ratio, like our car, like it's fine, it's not going to affect it at all. It's only going to maybe make a little more horsepower because there's better air or not. But air fuel standpoint we don't have to touch the tune because it's going to be pressure ratio based.

Speaker 2: 1:21:52

Yeah, ok, perfect, all right. One other strategy I wanted to talk a little bit about is traction control, and that's a bit of a misnomer sometimes when we talk about drag racing, often actually, traction control based on wheel speed is illegal. I'm not actually sure about the rules for the class you're racing in, but then it also comes to be a little bit problematic when you've got the front wheels in the air for a significant portion of the launch. So how are you doing traction control, if you're using it at all?

Speaker 1: 1:22:23

Yeah, so we're using the native traction control that comes in the Motec. We're using two systems, which is the drive shaft speed control and then the front wheel versus rear wheel slip percentage. And what we do is transfer from the drive shaft speed control to the front wheel versus rear wheel at a certain mile per hour where we know the front end is down and the car is going down the racetrack. And we use this system in the same sense that we use the wheelie control system as it's a safety net. So if we miss a tune up, if something is on the track, it's going to catch the tire, catch the engine more than the tire. So the real problem is if you spin, the most crucial part of a drag pass is like 0.8 seconds on the run. So it's when the converter starts clamping down on the engine. All the power starts getting pushed to the rear tire. That's more than likely where you're going to see 90% of the car spin. That's the zone it's going to spin when it does come off the tire. The radial tire isn't like a slick tire. So the compound it's either hooked up 100% or it's not hooked up 100%. It can't have wheel speed and continue to gain traction. So when you lose that tire at 0.8, you know, and your engine speeds, you know, at 7000 RPM your wheel speeds at 20 miles per hour, what's going to happen is the tire, the engine, is going to zing towards the rev limiter. The wheel speed is going to be 100 plus mile per hour, whatever the maximum is in that gear, and then you have to wait for the tire to slow back down before you can then accelerate again. Otherwise it's going to keep spinning and by then two seconds have passed and the other cars down the racetrack where the drive shaft slope will catch it. It'll catch the wheel speed before you even know what's happening.

Speaker 1: 1:24:05

You can, you can see it in the data as soon as that comes. You know it manages the power. It allows you to then pedal the car if you need to, or start accelerating again. Your run is not going to be as fast as it would be if you didn't have wheel speed, but it's not. You're not just going to sit there waiting for the tires to slow down to accelerate again. You can still potentially beat the guy next to you In that past because you're gonna be able to start again sooner, yeah, so key aspect here is that on a good pass, on a good track, you shouldn't be on that traction control.

Speaker 1: 1:24:35

It's there as a safety backstop Just in case you break it into wheel spin absolutely and and the driveshaft slope is, you have to put in a predetermined slope so with that in place you can never go faster than what you put in. So like your power Range to your slope still need to be really close. You know, it's not just like oh, it has traction control, it works. And then of course, that still needs to be tuned with the amount of power Reduction to the power ramp in. So it's not the voodoo system as a lot of people think. It still requires a lot of work Once, once it's in place, but it will absolutely save a run and make a better race.

Speaker 2: 1:25:10

Yeah, I think I kind of Considered that to be a passive form of Attraction control because, like you say, you have to tell it what the profile of the driveshaft speed versus time is for a really, really good pass. It can't fill that data in by itself. And then I guess the other aspect is, as you develop the car and it becomes faster or you've got more traction, then you're going to need to also adapt that driveshaft speed profile because otherwise it becomes self limiting. But then you transfer across to this wheel speed based control strategy and that's what I'd sort of call a more, more active control strategy, where it's purely just looking for a slip target and once you're beyond that it's going to bring in some kind of intervention.

Speaker 1: 1:25:50

Right, absolutely. And you know, in downtrack, like on a radio car, once, once it's hooked up and you're, you're out a hundred feet, it may spin a little on the gear change when there's a big interruption in power or engines speed, but after that the car is going to be pretty hooked up unless there's something on the racetrack. So again, it's a safety net. Like you know it works so good. Like I feel confident in this car, like it's never just going to turn sideways at a thousand feet unless there's, you know, something that's gone really wrong. Like is you know that system in place, just it makes you feel safer as a driver and, you know, keeps the car safer for a pass.

Speaker 2: 1:26:22

Now you just talked about on the gear shifts and earlier you talked about using some ignition retard on the shift. So one of the things we'll talk about this transmission in a bit of detail shortly but one of the things with a manual gearbox Maybe a Liberty or G4 something like that is that they can really unsettle the car on the shifts because the clutch lists you're just pulling the next gear and obviously the engine RPM has to be pulled down and that can have the effect of sort of spiking the rear wheel speed and you know quite often see very high powered Manual transmission cars get very squarely on the gear shifts. The auto is a bit smoother, but I mean there's still no magic here. So you're using that ignition retard just to soften that shift and keep the car hooked up through the shift.

Speaker 1: 1:27:09

Right, exactly, and you know that's gonna determine on your, your gear ratio splits in your transmission. You know everyone. You know between your first and second and third gear to your rear gear, your RPM drop it's gonna be tuned in a little differently the more speeds you have, the less drop You're gonna have, so the less chance you have into that. But if you have a really tight converter and a big gear ratio Difference then yeah, you're gonna definitely be prone to wheel speed on the on the one two shifts.

Speaker 2: 1:27:34

Yeah, okay. So getting into the details of that transmission, what have you got in there? Obviously, a three-speed is mentioned.

Speaker 1: 1:27:40

Yeah, so it's a three speed mark, mickey, which is Eminem transmission Bill. It's a close ratio transmission, meaning that first and second gear you know, third gear is always one-to-one in these transmissions, but the first and second gear ratios are close so you don't have the big splits like we just talked about yeah, okay, advantage with having that third gear over the likes of the power glide, which is kind of the other Popular go-to for a drag racing automatic transmission.

Speaker 1: 1:28:07

Yeah. So I owned a power glide and my last car before I bought a turbo 400 and I think the main advantage is the initial cost. You can build a power glide for 2000 horsepower for probably half the price. You can build a turbo 400 for 2000 horsepower. Once you get above that 2000 horsepower mark there's not a lot of power glides that will support that power, but a lot of people will race a two-speed 400 which uses the you know the main shafts and stuff of 400, but only has two forward gears. That's gonna be combo specific. What I've learned from Jay, who you know has raised a lot of smaller engines, and even that I'm racing is, you know, the more forward gears you have, the better for the engine that's gonna be, because it's gonna keep it in the revs. You don't have as much grunt or as much torque as you would in a larger engine to be able to pull through just two speeds and you know the car will be faster, which in turn it has proven true.

Speaker 2: 1:28:58

Yeah, I sort of saw, during my time with drag racing, a lot of that. Yeah, my experience is almost solely based around the import stuff, but everyone started with manual transmissions and then, due to some of the problems I just mentioned, we started to see the fast guys all transfer across to to autos, and that's now the way to go, particularly if you want to go fast and something like a Nissan GTR, for example. With this, though, the torque converter typically is going to have some amount of slip, so that means that sometimes your mile an hour, for example, is going to suffer compared to, all things being equal, with a manual transmission and a clutch. Can you talk to us about the converter converter slip and what sort of how relevant that is what you can do to control it or limit it?

Speaker 1: 1:29:42

Yeah, so, the torque converter and in a drag car is probably one of the most important pieces of that puzzle. And tuning the torque converter to your specific car, depending on what your gear ratios are, your shift RPM, your final RPM and the car's weight, is going to very, very be different from car to car. My transmission is a lockup version of the Turbo 400, so the torque converter has a clutch in it, so we're able to, you know, engage the clutch and achieve zero slip on command. So much more efficiency, right. So down track slip, you know, isn't a concern to us because we can lock the converter and then do that.

Speaker 1: 1:30:18

What that does is, you know, before the lockup, you know, became as popular as it is now, or even guys that still haven't gone to the lockup because of the expense of that transmission and converter over the other, is you end up with a really tight torque converter that you try to loosen up artificially in the beginning half of the racetrack with stage dumps where you're relieving pressure to the converter to Make it more loose because there's not as much fluid in it, and then let it, you know, close those dumps as you go down the track to tighten the converter up. You know where we still monitor converter pressure and we still tune off converter pressure, you know, for the first hundred feet or so. But with the lockup we're able to get away with a, you know, a looser converter to help spooling in the in the other aspects, because we can achieve zero slip when we want.

Speaker 2: 1:31:01

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. How are you controlling that lock up and can you give us an idea enough? This is sort of a secret squirrel IP, but you know on how you're engaging that and where?

Speaker 1: 1:31:12

yeah, so anyone that's listened to the car run again you know in the past year so can tell that you know it's making what sounds like gear changes more than more than two times to make three speeds. And that is our lockup strategy, which you know is all done through the mo-tech and you know we're using it in each gear for a certain amount of time to bring the engine down to accelerate, to simulate a higher speed transmission.

Speaker 2: 1:31:37

Okay, all right, sounds like almost the best of both worlds. You've got the torque converter, the automatic transmission to soften those shifts and keep the car hooked up, but still zero slip through the, the deep end of the track. So all of the mile an hour and all of the power is making its way to the wheels.

Speaker 1: 1:31:53

Right, absolutely. And with the zero slip, what that allows you to do is to run more gear ratio and your final gear ratio, which Another advantage to the small engine and the high revs in the zero slip is that you know we can run considerably higher gear ratio, which is, you know, free torque, which you know horsepower comes from torque. So the more, the more torque you can have through gear reduction, the more you know power you're gonna actually put to the surface.

Speaker 2: 1:32:18

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Now a question I haven't asked so far, but with the requirements for the drag drive style of racing, how much faster do you think the car would be if it was a dedicated drag car? You didn't need the, the cooling system, etc.

Speaker 1: 1:32:35

So I think, the car, the main advantage would be the cars weight. So we could, you know, like right now we just we run a 12 volt battery system with the factory alternator. Like the alternator is 22 pounds, I would still run water, I'd run water in the heads, but I would probably just do like a pressurized tank and not, you know, the full radiator and I want to have the capacity that it has now. So you know, there's weight in that. My fuel cell is in the back of the car now, which is a eight gallon cell.

Speaker 1: 1:33:03

The mechanical pump is in the back of the car so there's a cable drive from the oil pump to the back, like that. That cables 18 pounds, you know. So I can add up 150 pounds without even getting into it pretty far. So so mainly if I'm still running that same engine, you know, if I wanted to go a billet block, because I'm not doing drag and drive Now we're talking more horsepower, but just like in a direct changeover from how I race the car now, if I didn't have to drive it would just be the weight advantage which you know at this stage would be considerably faster with 150 pounds out of it or whatever that number maybe.

Speaker 2: 1:33:38

So you're actually sort of putting on the spot here, and I know it's not sort of a set in stone number. But if you take 150 pounds out of a car that's running 626, you know what sort of a difference in ET would you expect from that 150 pound drop?

Speaker 1: 1:33:51

You know I don't know exactly because I haven't done it, you know with the car that fast. But I have taken 100 pounds out of this car since I've owned it, from when I first started racing it to now. I know we've been slowly increasing power, but I know for a fact that it gets easier the lighter it gets. You know, like we were when we first started racing this car it was 3050 with me in it and you know now it's getting closer to 2900, is 2930 or so, you know, and it just gets faster. I see it in the shock settings like I take 10 pounds out of the back and you know I have to click the shocks two or three times because they're reacting faster. So the weight at this power level and at this ET range drastically seems to affect what we're doing.

Speaker 2: 1:34:33

Yeah, that makes sense. I guess the lighter the car is, the easier it's going to be on all of the componentry as well. One more question I had. You just mentioned a 12 volt battery system which most people don't give too much thought to. Every car has a 12 volt system where we've got a 12 volt battery and an alternator that is run off the engine and charges that battery and again for the drag and drive. You need this because you can't run a total loss charging system or battery with a lot of drag cars we see them using a 16 volt battery and no alternator. And is that just for what you mentioned there, the weight saving of not having the alternator?

Speaker 1: 1:35:11

Yeah, mainly it's going to be the weight saving of the alternator and you couldn't run a total off system off a 12 volt battery because they don't have the capacity or the amp hours to make it through the run. There are companies that make 16 volt alternators. If we wanted to run a 16 volt system, which would give coils and injectors more energy to run, but my problem with that is the complexity and the failure rate of these components, me being able to run a factory alternator. I have one in the trailer just in case, but I've never had one fail and it maintains solid 14.9 volts through the run. So I don't feel like I'm far away from that 16 volt range and I don't have any ignition problems or anything like that. So I'll keep rocking that as long as I can.

Speaker 2: 1:35:52

Yeah, fair enough. Again another case of if it's not broken, no need to fix it. That point that you mentioned, though, as well having that higher voltage to the coils and maybe to a lesser extent. The injectors are particular. With these high boost engines, ignition energy is everything to get that fuel air charge lit off. So more voltage to the coils means more energy out of the coils, providing the coil is happy running at 16 volts. Of course, alright Brett, I think we'll move towards wrapping this up. It's been a great chat and great to get some insight into the car. We've got the same three questions we ask all of our guests to wrap up, and the first of those is what's next in the future for you and the car?

Speaker 1: 1:36:33

Well, what's next for the future for me is just started. In the past week I've started a new job position with Motion Raceworks as a business development manager for all companies which is Rife sensors, fluid works and TBM brakes. So this is my first time of stepping out of the workshop as the full time gig and moving into parts development and the solely technical side of the aftermarket to be able to help consumers and to help grow these brands with this company. You know I've been really really excited for that and you know Doug and the company you know, I've been working with them for years.

Speaker 1: 1:37:08

As far as I've been running Rife sensors on my car since I built it, you know they've been a sponsor of mine and stuff like that and I've been testing parts for them and different things for them throughout the last you know couple years. So To be able to move their full time and to pursue this is going to be a neat next step to my journey of racing and my personal side.

Speaker 1: 1:37:26

Yeah, definitely sounds like a really exciting opportunity yeah, and then, as far as the car goes, the next step, the next step coming up right now, in two weeks, is TX2K, which you know we have a good shot of winning that race, which you know the cars pretty fast right now in the arena that we race it. So you know we show up and we just try to keep our heads down, do our thing, keep the car together and not make any mistakes. And you know we have a, we have a pretty good shot of doing well there. Evolution of the car will see where it goes for the next year. I think, as of right now, chassis wise the car is is that there's not a lot of areas I can improve. That there's not. There's nowhere else I can take weight out of it. So we'll slowly try to make more horsepower and then, you know, the car will get faster that way.

Speaker 2: 1:38:10

I mean on paper. A 626 sounds dangerously close to a 599, which I'm guessing must be somewhere on your radar. The reality, of course, is getting to an a half tenths out of a car that's already running Low sixes is no mean fate. There's a lot of work that becomes iteratively more difficult to go faster, but the question here is, as a five second pass on your radar, not at all not on my radar at all.

Speaker 1: 1:38:37

I know Well, it's also just not how I go about it right. So we went 626, we we saw the data later last week that 626 went for 12 to the eighth. Last week we went for 10 to the eighth and we know we can go for a per. So in this hearing, you know, which will translate to a 618 or so, but we're still a lot of horsepower away from that five numbers. So until I go 618, can it go 608 and then 605. Like there's a lot of steps, you know, to get that five second around. Like I would probably take another 500 horsepower just to try to Muscle that down the track, which is just gonna bring up a lot of other new problems then you start facing traction issues and you know, mechanical strength issues and, yeah, the whole thing starts to just become more and more difficult.

Speaker 2: 1:39:23

I'm glad you did mention the additional 500 horsepower because again, people who aren't deep in the word of drag racing would see that number go. So if I was just around the corner that the reality can be something very different though.

Speaker 1: 1:39:35

Right, yeah, exactly, my next goal wouldn't be a five. My next, like you know, go on the back of my head for the car, which, you know it doesn't really mean anything other than that you know we get to. That small achievement for ourselves is actually to go Like a three, ninety nine to the eighth and a mile trim. So I have a, you know, a mile gear set that I put in the transmission in the rear end, you know, to make it more suited for a mile racing. And after Texas I think we're gonna put that in there and go go swinging for a little bit. We don't get to go out time slipping with the car much because most of the time we're at races and like we talked about, like you know, not necessarily trying to go for personal best of the race. So If we can go out to a rental and just try to go faster, it's some of the most fun we have a car actually yeah, no, that's fair.

Speaker 2: 1:40:17

and that the risk, I suppose, when you're actually racing and trying to win, as if you really push for a pay me, you can potentially end up throwing a pass away because you overpowered the track or something correct?

Speaker 1: 1:40:29

yeah, absolutely yeah. I've never put a tune up in the car that we haven't been there yet as far as you range, unless we have to. So unless we line up next to someone that we know has been faster in us, you know, and even then it's gonna be incrementally faster, it's not gonna be a big swing, and then just do our job well and try to win so no hail Mary trains being thrown in, it just iterative gains and a known quantity and a known and known.

Speaker 1: 1:40:54

Well, yeah, and because, like you know, like all you're gonna turn it up next pass. Like that, the fact of matters, it's up every pass. Like you know, it's a 300 cubic inch Factory casting engine going 227. Like there's not, like you can't just put 10 pounds of boost in. It's gonna explode and catch on fire. You know. So it's not. You know, hail Mary is just dangerous, so it's not even worth it Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 1:41:16

Alright. Next question is there any advice you'd give to one of our listeners, or a younger vision of yourself to maybe help fast track? We've got to in your career and I mean you're a unique sort of guest here in that you're not necessarily running a business building race cars, you race cars a personal thing. But I mean, yeah, give us, give us your impression of that.

Speaker 1: 1:41:39

Well, I think it's to try to latch on to someone that you look up to in a sense, that you know is already kind of there, that can fast track you to you know, teach you things, and to be receptive of those things, so you don't have to necessarily learn the hard way, and that you know this, this hobby or this sport gets you know it's expensive and if you can't afford to do it the right way, and then you take a shortcut and then you have a failure and now you're set back that investment of that, the shortcut, and you still can't afford to do it the right way and it just, you know, you get.

Speaker 1: 1:42:15

You get, you know, bummed out and it's really hard on you. So I would, you know, I would try to Build the car or or find the person that's going to do a good job for you and try not to take, you know, a lot of shortcuts, because shortcuts will just, you know, make not a good memory for that situation and you'll be in a worse spot than you were If you didn't do it at all yeah, I think that's really solid advice.

Speaker 2: 1:42:35

There's a saying that I'm probably gonna butcher it, something along the lines of if you can't afford to do it right the first time, how you're gonna afford to redo it a second time to fix it. And you know that's often a learning curve that you have to learn the hard way. But, yeah, really important advice. I think your point about a mentor essentially as well. We don't need to necessarily go and reinvent the wheel and learn all of this knowledge from scratch. I mean it's all been done before. We're pretty much not paving the way with anything really groundbreaking. Sure, the technology on the cars continues to evolve, but we're still doing the same thing, just with different tools. And you know, thousands of people have walked before us. So if we can lean on their experience and fast track our own knowledge, then happy days. I think, yeah, absolutely Alright. Last question for today if people want to follow you see what you're up to, how they're best to do that.

Speaker 1: 1:43:29

So all my stuff is linked to my name, so it's pretty easy to find Facebook, instagram. It's just Brett Lasala. If you search that, you'll see a green Mustang more likely pop up in a page, and that's going to be me. I do have a small YouTube channel that I've made some videos about my car with over the past year and again. Search Brett Lasala and you can find that.

Speaker 2: 1:43:48

Well, as you put links to those accounts in the show notes to make it super easy for people to find. I did do a fair bit of stalking on your YouTube channel prior to this interview. I'd have to say it's excellent. You speak really well on camera, the editing and the video work is also exceptional and I for one, found it really interesting. So I would urge our listeners, if they do want to learn a little bit more and see and hear this car in action because obviously a podcast is a pretty limiting media format for that Then, yeah, go check out that YouTube channel. Alright, thanks, brett. Really interesting chat, great to learn something about a platform that I am not overly familiar with, and we look forward to seeing your progress in the future. Alright, thank you.

Speaker 2: 1:44:33

If you enjoyed this episode of Tune In with Brett Lasala, we'd love it if you could drop a review on your chosen podcasting platform. These reviews really help us to grow our audience and that, in turn, helps us to continue to get more high quality guests To say thanks. Each week, we'll be picking a random reviewer and sending them out an HPA t-shirt free of charge, anywhere in the world. This is also a great place to ask any questions you might have too, and I'll do my best to answer them if your review gets picked. So this week, a big shout out to VTech Justin from the United States, who has said like cars, like technical details, this one's for you Simply a great platform, great hosts, guests and professional execution. This is not the horse around podcast, it's knowledge and serious business podcast. Great details, content and knowledge galore. Well, thanks for the kind words there. Great to hear that you're seeing so much value in our podcast and if you get in touch with your t-shirt size and shipping details, we'll get a fresh t-shirt straight out to you.

Speaker 2: 1:45:31

Alright, that concludes our interview and before we sign off, I just wanted to mention, for anyone who's been perhaps hiding under a rock and hasn't heard of High Performance Academy before we are an online training school and we specialise in teaching a range of performance automotive topics, everything from engine tuning and engine building through to wiring, car suspension and wheel alignment, data analysis and race driver education. Now, remember you've got that coupon code. You can use podcast75 at the checkout to get $75 off the purchase of your first course. You'll find our full course list at hpacademycom forward slash courses. Important to mention that when you purchase a course from us. That course is yours for life as well. It never expires. You can rewatch the course as many times as you like, whenever you like.

Speaker 2: 1:46:18

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