Don Terrill’s Speed-Talk

raceman14 wrote: I have checked 100+ stock cams with a friend and we have not seen more than 1/2* one lobe separation and 1* on durations. Lift is near perfect every time as is Base Circle.

You need to buy a new cam checking machine.

For those that are interested.
Here are the intake lobe variences on the 30 stock 604 cams I ran thru my Audie Cam Pro system

.006": 3.71 deg
.020": 1.83 deg
.050": 1.56 deg
.100": 0.91 deg
.150": 0.97 deg
.200": 1.28 deg
.250": 1.54 deg
.300": 3.14 deg

Max Lobe Lift: .00228"
Centerline 1.22 deg

CamKing wrote:

what, You don't think some out of round lifters can "loft the valves to make an extr 20HP on the dyno?

raceman14 wrote:Still no answer on the Camshaft question??? How do you re-grind a stock GM 604 cam, gain 15hp and keep it legal ???

I like the comments on controlled valve float.

Lots of folks getting way off track, hydraulic lifters when pumped up act as solids, when they are taken apart they are 100% stock, because they are. The camshaft profile is not changed because National race winning cams are Adcole'd and that catches anything. Lobe lift and duration measured every degree. I have checked 100+ stock cams with a friend and we have not seen more than 1/2* one lobe separation and 1* on durations. Lift is near perfect every time as is Base Circle....

Not quite. All hydraulics collapse substantially during the lift phase due to internal leakage (exacerbated by high spring pressures and in some roller set ups by distortion induced by high pressure angles resulting from aggressive lobes) and the compressibility of the inevitably air-entrained oil. Limited-travel lifters are better because the reduced internal volume equates to less collapse.
The wrong oil and/or pan design alone, allowing the crank to make a chocolate milkshake of the lube, can easily drop 20 HP from lost valve motion. Special oils have been formulated to combat the issue.

I witnessed an extreme example last year. A 'barely streetable' hydraulic roller cammed 572" Hemi was targeted for 750 HP, but after a dozen pulls was stuck at under 700. In desperation, the builder put a few hours into reworking the intake (usually good for ~ 40 HP on this build) and dropped in a set of solid rollers, cold-lashed to zero. The next pull was 816 HP, with the peak 800 RPM higher...

[quote="raceman14"]Crates are pretty much here to stay because I don't see too many racers that are able to afford the $25-30K Late Model engines we used to build and race.


From Raceman's web site
604 Crate Engine :
Leading edge technology that was only available to professional teams in the past is now available to local racers. HP levels for every budget 425hp $9500, 450hp $12,500, 475hp $17,500 500hp $22,500, 525hp $25,000 ( + SHIPPING ). All tuning, carbs, and engines are 100% legal.

I think I would rather have $25K in a real motor I could sell as opposed to a crate motor I could get $3500 for used.

i want to know how many engines raceman built that have been claimed ,,, or do they high tail it out of the track without honoring the claim and receiving the purse money ,,, for these " legal " engines

robert1 wrote:

raceman14 wrote:Crates are pretty much here to stay because I don't see too many racers that are able to afford the $25-30K Late Model engines we used to build and race.

From Raceman's web site
604 Crate Engine :
Leading edge technology that was only available to professional teams in the past is now available to local racers. HP levels for every budget 425hp $9500, 450hp $12,500, 475hp $17,500 500hp $22,500, 525hp $25,000 ( + SHIPPING ). All tuning, carbs, and engines are 100% legal.

I think I would rather have $25K in a real motor I could sell as opposed to a crate motor I could get $3500 for used.

He doesn't even have a a price for his famous 550hp version. That sucker's gotta be around $30K(unobtainium isn't cheep)

So much for the low budget guys being able to race with the big budget guys.

just a heads up..dont make fun of his website. his buddy at the department of defense built it special for him using propreitary software.

i believe this is a photo of raceman14 and a valued customer!

Is that George Lopez?

Thanks for the reprints from my webpage. My mail boxes on here and 4m fill up daily when you guys post that kind of stuff. Sorry I have not got back to anybody that has pm'd me but I will.

If you look at some old pages from RCR, Gibbs and Katech you will see similar information and pricing. If you can build a stock appearing GM604 crate with stock parts and get it up to 500hp more power to you.

Thanks for posting the pic, that little dude is an awesome paint, fabricator & bodyman at Hendrick's and his name is Javier. We worked on his Honda Civic on and off for about 2 months on weekends and he won a N/A shoot-out held by an import only shop in Charlotte. I think the final number was 287RWHP out of a 1.8L. After a couple minor changes he made 307 and that is where it stands, I think the last time he ran it at the Dragstrip in Concord NC it ran 10.60 with street tires. For all you rednecks poking fun at him I doubt you could compare check stubs with his as he makes $2500 a week plus any bonuses from Hendrick wins and titles and they average 30-40% of annual pay.

My original question still stands unanswered :

How do you re-grind a stock GM 604 cam and gain 15HP out of it and still have it measure legal on Lobe Circle, Centerlines duration / degree?

The cams I checked were brand new and sent to Comp and run on their ADCOLE. When they got back they were double checked on a CamDoctor and numbers were within .5* on every spec. so that is close enough for me.

So are you being truthful in your ad or not? Everyone, including you Mark, I think, has responded to this thread about "LEGAL" 604 crate numbers, and there is no way that you can get 525 hp and be legal in Fastrack/Nesmith DLM crate racing...My real question also, is getting 550 hp from 10:1, 210* dur .500 lift hydraulic roller cam and no touch factory 210 cc heads even obtainable? I know what I've seen and I know the numbers I've seen on the dyno's and to get to 550 hp, those specs are not close..

raceman14 wrote:How do you re-grind a stock GM 604 cam and gain 15HP out of it and still have it measure legal on Lobe Circle, Centerlines duration / degree?

Just pile loads of B.S. all over the cam, and it'll pick up 15hp. That technique seems to work well.

Maybe if you had a little better understanding of how hydraulic cams/lifters worked, you'd understand.

I really doubt Comp ran 100 604 cams thru the Adcole, if they did they wouldn't have come up with such a horrible 604 cheater cam. That stupid thing is almost 10 degrees bigger then stock at .300". A blind tech man could find that.

I think 550hp may be attainable with the specs you refer to. but not with the airflow on the 604 intake and heads without reworking the ports more than a little. and making the carb bigger.

autodoctor911 wrote: but not with the airflow on the 604 intake and heads without reworking the ports more than a little.

That would be highly illegal.

Madbill,
Sounds like you were at the Engine Builders Challenge. All of the things you reference are correct. GM 604 crate springs are not much of a spring checking about 100# on the seat, my treated springs are less than that statically and dynamically as the treatment process sacrifices some seat pressure for harmonic frequency tuning. Oil is a significant consideration as is the oil filter in stock GM crate engines. About 50% of my spring customers have started to use my oil and filter to gain some additional rpm. Springs net 250-300rpm, oil and filter contribute 300-500rpm depending on the lineage of the engine and how the pump and other engine parameters were set-up from the factory.

Laser inferometry on the lifters is how you can determine how much actual lift and duration occur at the camshaft/lifter interface and also at the valve. To accomplish this you need upwards of 40 channels at the cost of about $100K per channel. To make more power not much else of all that scientific $hit matters, when the indicator says more lift and duration at the valve, and the dyno says more air and fuel sucking in the engine and the dyno wheel or drum says more HP that is what counts !!! If it is repeatable that is what really counts.

First time I met this guy was at Daytona in about 1998 and he walked up to me and said, if you give me $500 cash right now, in 5 minutes I will make that car you have been messing around with all week long faster than it has ever been. Conditions were roll the car into a private stall and give him 5 minutes without being watched. What the hell, I just paid $2800ea for manifold updates from Wilson and that was for 4 cars over $10K, whats $500 in the scheme of things. It didn't take him 2 minutes and looking at the car you could not even tell what he did. We went out next session and shot from 21st place on the time sheet to the top of the stob...freakin P1 in a couple minutes. We immediately got called into Joe Wells office and had to take the carb, plate and manifold off the car for inspection.
Well after that me and Waddell Wilson become best friends and he came to almost every practice and race we went to for the next couple years. Oh yea, it was 6 pieces of legally place tape to make air do what he wanted it to.
That is the kind of education no amount of money can buy, and he was a pretty good engine builder in the day too.

911 and CamGuru,
The ports and intake don't need any work, have you ever flowed a set of 604 heads and intake???

Mike I am not a cam grinder so I would not tell you how to grind a cam, although I have ground them before in another life. 911 don't know what you do but I wouldn't tell you how to do your job.

Where you are missing the boat is knowledge about what you are working with...there are 4 different intake generations and now 5 generations of cylinder heads. Heads vary in port volume from 187cc to 214cc, is bigger better, check them on the flow bench and see for yourself. Seat height in the intake and exhaust port is also a critical measurement for air flow and that number can vary +/- .100" in stock heads and +/- .250" when you install new seats in a head. Talk to a cylinder head guy and see what he says about that. Valves make a huge difference and not all stock valves are the same. Go thru about 100 of them and you'll see. I have a flow fixture made just to slap valves in and out of so I can see what number they make. Change the margin .020" and see what happens to the flow numbers.

With swapping intakes and heads around I have seen +/- 47cfm@25". Run that thru your Horsepower calculator and see what that nets.

I know there has to be more folks out there like Jed that has built spec engines. I ain't just making the stuff up for fun over here, I spent 7 hours on the flow bench last night flowing a new pile of heads and intake manifolds. It is no different than building a super stock engine using Canadian heads and intake with hollow truck valves and certain 2g's that flow better...Why do you think people give their left nut for 'X' heads these days, if you have some of the old 2101 stuff you'll see it is 15-20 HP better than the new ones, wonder why?

Not everything works out quite the way you plan and sometimes you have to look at How along with Why ???

Bill Jones taught me to look closely at everything I touch, Alan Lockheed taught me that "you can build engines on a computer if you have the right input" & that was in the 80''s when we published along with Myron Cottrell of Chaska MN. Mike Chapman taught me that "all that glitters is not gold", Smokey taught me "not to take anything with a grain of salt", Jim Feuling taught me that "air has different phases at different speeds and it really changes super-sonic" ( he had a 600HP Flow bench at his shop and that thing would suck your eardrums out if you weren't careful ), and there is a hundred other folks way smarter than we that have helped me thru the years.

Bottom line = take from it what you can use and throw the rest away...

As far as the Comp Cams comment, maybe your not talking to the right folks up there. Yhey have been a great help and resource to me anytime I have had to try and find something new, from Kart engines, to FI ASA engines, ARCA and BGN Qualifiers, even a couple 450+" LS Crate style engines.

I pay to have my cams adcoled and it took from Friday night to Sunday afternoon to get them all run. I don't know anything about their cheater cams. In my outlaw /stock appearing engines I have never had to go any bigger than the ASA / GM Hot cams to get bigger HP numbers.

Any engine builder that has built any of these engines should know that the camshaft is not where the power is in these engines. With the rules as strict as they are why would anybody even try???
Maybe it is because I have been looking at them for 10 years now and have a different approach to building a Spec engine.