What is the Max HP on a sealed GM 604

[levisnteeshirt]

once they let them be rebuilt ,, the genie came out of the bottle ,,, the seal bolts are not that hard to remove , and put back and you can't tell they've ever been removed

what amazes me is that they've created this big series for crate racing ,,, they sound weak , run slow , and its a constant consideration that someone is cheating ,,,

i was doing the tech at a local track ,,, the seal bolts protect the cheater as much as anything ,, because most guys don't have 5000 sitting around to purchase an engine ,,, most tracks don't want to have an engine torn down ,, which maybe if that was done more often ,, it might help the situation ,,, there is always gonna be somebody out there trying to cheat ,,

[raceman14]

Just a quick comment, you might want to start your own thread about crates and how they are this that and the other Fastrak and Nesmith have 40-60 cars at most National races as well as UMP as many as 75 cars at big events. Seems like it is working to me.

This post was about how much HP from a GM604 Crate and I have not seen a single post from a single racer or engine builder related to this.

It is easy to bash people in an open forum, and say how something is not possible to do, yet nobody has even posted their findings.

How about getting to the point.

As far as answering all of the questions; it is hard to get them all in one post so I will do a couple in each and try to get them all.

Run-it - Software and Data-AQ = PerformanceChassisDYno ( Proprietary ), absorption ( Inertia Wheel ), room 12,000sq.ft. shop with enough air to run all day long. If the weather changes the CPU will adjust with the STP Factor.

911- Ford Dry sump engines with decent heads should make 625hp with 390 carb ( old BGN ), 600-650hp with 650HP carb ( Hooters Pro-CUP ), 650-700hp with 390 carb ( newBGN ) and 850hp open carb. Carburetor HP increases in my world come from fuel mapping in 4-d just like fuel injection, my factors are engine acceleration, MAF, timing and fuel burn rate. If you are math inclined this is 4! or 24 moving targets to hit and if you factor in delta A ( acceleration rate ), and Delta T ( timing ) that is 6! or 720 variables. Add in piston speed 7! = 5040 possible outcomes...In an effort to make things doable in the real world I run timing sweeps and acceleration sweeps to somewhat make those 2 variable not variables and use a baselline piston speed and therefore dealing only with the original 4!.

I don't know what you do for a living but I hope you are good enough at so you can make money. The reason a $750 stock carburetor costs $1500 in my shop is because it is built specifically for the application it is intended for. That is why it normally takes a couple weeks to get done. I have many center sections and metering blocks built up but depending on application a 650HP can be configured any number of ways and no 2 being exactly alike. The tune for VP and Sunoco is way different as well as Chevron and Texaco pump gas. It is possible to make 430hp with any of the fuels you just have to get the fuel to the engine the way it burns the best.

If you look at any race fuel you will see a basic distillation curve and it might have 4 points. Race engine builders looking for an advantage will look way deeper and find the extra 20-30HP hidden in riding that fuel distillation curve just right. I personally call it the fuel burn curve as that is how I have my test rig set up to do my thing. There is a big reason why VP makes SuperBike fuel, Pro-Stock fuel, C-16 and hundreds of other blends.

It is a sweet symphony of success when you match piston speed, engine acceleration, fuel burn, timing curve, and fuel curve to what your race car wants. That is why some crates are 1-2 seconds faster on the engine dyno, chassis dyno and on the track.


JDR - I have tested 7 of your carbs and they decent, 2 were better than the baseline. The one new one that I purchased on e--bay better than baseline ( +6hp ). I changed power valves, 2 of the emulsion holes, installed smaller PVO, and changed the air and idle bleeds and picked up 17hp, yes it is still your carburetor with my tune-up in it. That is what I mean when I am able to match carbs to customer fuel VP-C12 in that case, nothing exotic, that is just what you get when you have the equipment and opportunity to do so. Firs pull is always Free...@ $15 per dyno pull it took 19 pulls to get the carb to this point $285. I that a lot? I guess if you don't have the $ it is, but if you are looking to win I think it is relatively cheap.

What you and everybody else out in the world and on this board needs to understand is the reason people send me stuff usually is because it does not work. In most cases it is a used piece handled and cobbled on by 10 different experts. Air bleeds are off, emulsion bleeds either not correct or in some case removed or even blocked off, PVO ( power valve orifice ) too big, Power Valves not working or completely wrong on vac setting, Idles transition slots full of dirt, metering blocks swapped around and that is just a small amount of what is screwed up. As a carb person I am sure you know this already. I have purchased a couple of your carbs off e-Bay brand new. I usually only test Brand New carbs from Carb builders that have sent me their best for evaluation and race customers that want to know where their stuff stacks up.


ChassisDYno testing;
I first sold this guy some pushrods built in a garage by Billy Nolan, and got $2 piece for them 100 at a time. After about5 years made a bet with a very famous CUP team owner I used to buy cars from and do Chassis DYno work for, I told him $150hr or $100 HP and he said yes until he saw we picked his car up almost 47RWHP in a little over 6 hours. Shortly after that I had a contract for 25hrs a week for 2 years initially, and that program went on for 9 years until Randy Dorton passed away.

Bottom Line:
Like I said before, unless you are building and testing your Carbs and Ignition systems with the fuel you are racing with you are Pi$$ing your money away...that would be like running Hoosiers to practice with and then racing the race with a set of Goodyears.

Mark
dynoman14

[sjvalleydave]

Has anyone really answered the question, what is the most you can expect out of a LEGAL, non cheated up, Fastrack/Nesmith legal Dirt DLM 604 crate engine. LEGAL headers, etc...not all this stuff that gives all these numbers which is worthless for the application...There has to be only so much power available out of a 23* 210 cc intake runner, 10:1 compression and, most of all, a hydraulic roller cam that is 208*/221* duration and .474/.510 lift...That is a small cam...

[CamKing]

Has anyone really answered the question, what is the most you can expect out of a LEGAL, non cheated up, Fastrack/Nesmith legal Dirt DLM 604 crate engine. LEGAL headers, etc...not all this stuff that gives all these numbers which is worthless for the application...There has to be only so much power available out of a 23* 210 cc intake runner, 10:1 compression and, most of all, a hydraulic roller cam that is 208*/221* duration and .474/.510 lift...That is a small cam...

Race winning, fast time setting, legal 604 crate engine: 440ft/lbs, 453hp.

[n2omike]

Its already happening to an extent. Dropping the series to avoid the fees. Moving local racing into the forward direction is tough. Real tough. It has to become cheaper in order to have a real effect. The days of racing $200 jy engines are over. Even in bomber/4cyl fwd classes haven't taken off because of the overall expense of racing in general. $100 just to get to the track and back isn't going to work when you only make $2/300 a week. Budget classes are a thing of the past. Racing will be if we don't make it more affordable.

Maybe a class for what you can find in the junkyard for cheap... Maybe 4-door midsize front wheel drive... 4cyl and 6cyl classes. Pull them out of the boneyard, and race em'! Most a EFI, and I wouldn't think people would go to far in modding these junkers. lol

It doesn't do much for the engine builders, but is a cheap way to race.

[ZIGGY]

but is a cheap way to race.

There is no cheap way, just less expensive. And IMO crates ain't.

[JDR Performance]

Mark, I don't have a quarrel with you but I want to make sure that info posted is correct. If you bought anything directly from us I can look it up by name or by the build number stamped on the carb. I have good records going back 12 years. I can also look up the calibration and the fuel or application it was set up for. If the gain was that small, something was going on and I'd like to get to the bottom of it. If you ran something that was supposed to be one of ours brought in by a customer, I can look it up by their name. If it wasn't purchased directly from us, it could really be anything. The way things change hands, it could have been built for something else. It may have been "worked on" by someone, and it might not even be one that was built here but has a JDR name plate on it.. Believe me, I've seen it. Feel free to pm the build numbers or names to me and I'll look them up. None of them should have been down on power, and all of them should have been much better than that. Thanks.

[levisnteeshirt]

Just a quick comment, you might want to start your own thread about crates and how they are this that and the other Fastrak and Nesmith have 40-60 cars at most National races as well as UMP as many as 75 cars at big events. Seems like it is working to me.

This post was about how much HP from a GM604 Crate and I have not seen a single post from a single racer or engine builder related to this.

It is easy to bash people in an open forum, and say how something is not possible to do, yet nobody has even posted their findings.

How about getting to the point.

As far as answering all of the questions; it is hard to get them all in one post so I will do a couple in each and try to get them all.

Run-it - Software and Data-AQ = PerformanceChassisDYno ( Proprietary ), absorption ( Inertia Wheel ), room 12,000sq.ft. shop with enough air to run all day long. If the weather changes the CPU will adjust with the STP Factor.

911- Ford Dry sump engines with decent heads should make 625hp with 390 carb ( old BGN ), 600-650hp with 650HP carb ( Hooters Pro-CUP ), 650-700hp with 390 carb ( newBGN ) and 850hp open carb. Carburetor HP increases in my world come from fuel mapping in 4-d just like fuel injection, my factors are engine acceleration, MAF, timing and fuel burn rate. If you are math inclined this is 4! or 24 moving targets to hit and if you factor in delta A ( acceleration rate ), and Delta T ( timing ) that is 6! or 720 variables. Add in piston speed 7! = 5040 possible outcomes...In an effort to make things doable in the real world I run timing sweeps and acceleration sweeps to somewhat make those 2 variable not variables and use a baselline piston speed and therefore dealing only with the original 4!.

I don't know what you do for a living but I hope you are good enough at so you can make money. The reason a $750 stock carburetor costs $1500 in my shop is because it is built specifically for the application it is intended for. That is why it normally takes a couple weeks to get done. I have many center sections and metering blocks built up but depending on application a 650HP can be configured any number of ways and no 2 being exactly alike. The tune for VP and Sunoco is way different as well as Chevron and Texaco pump gas. It is possible to make 430hp with any of the fuels you just have to get the fuel to the engine the way it burns the best.

If you look at any race fuel you will see a basic distillation curve and it might have 4 points. Race engine builders looking for an advantage will look way deeper and find the extra 20-30HP hidden in riding that fuel distillation curve just right. I personally call it the fuel burn curve as that is how I have my test rig set up to do my thing. There is a big reason why VP makes SuperBike fuel, Pro-Stock fuel, C-16 and hundreds of other blends.

It is a sweet symphony of success when you match piston speed, engine acceleration, fuel burn, timing curve, and fuel curve to what your race car wants. That is why some crates are 1-2 seconds faster on the engine dyno, chassis dyno and on the track.


JDR - I have tested 7 of your carbs and they decent, 2 were better than the baseline. The one new one that I purchased on e--bay better than baseline ( +6hp ). I changed power valves, 2 of the emulsion holes, installed smaller PVO, and changed the air and idle bleeds and picked up 17hp, yes it is still your carburetor with my tune-up in it. That is what I mean when I am able to match carbs to customer fuel VP-C12 in that case, nothing exotic, that is just what you get when you have the equipment and opportunity to do so. Firs pull is always Free...@ $15 per dyno pull it took 19 pulls to get the carb to this point $285. I that a lot? I guess if you don't have the $ it is, but if you are looking to win I think it is relatively cheap.

What you and everybody else out in the world and on this board needs to understand is the reason people send me stuff usually is because it does not work. In most cases it is a used piece handled and cobbled on by 10 different experts. Air bleeds are off, emulsion bleeds either not correct or in some case removed or even blocked off, PVO ( power valve orifice ) too big, Power Valves not working or completely wrong on vac setting, Idles transition slots full of dirt, metering blocks swapped around and that is just a small amount of what is screwed up. As a carb person I am sure you know this already. I have purchased a couple of your carbs off e-Bay brand new. I usually only test Brand New carbs from Carb builders that have sent me their best for evaluation and race customers that want to know where their stuff stacks up.


ChassisDYno testing;
I first sold this guy some pushrods built in a garage by Billy Nolan, and got $2 piece for them 100 at a time. After about5 years made a bet with a very famous CUP team owner I used to buy cars from and do Chassis DYno work for, I told him $150hr or $100 HP and he said yes until he saw we picked his car up almost 47RWHP in a little over 6 hours. Shortly after that I had a contract for 25hrs a week for 2 years initially, and that program went on for 9 years until Randy Dorton passed away.

Bottom Line:
Like I said before, unless you are building and testing your Carbs and Ignition systems with the fuel you are racing with you are Pi$$ing your money away...that would be like running Hoosiers to practice with and then racing the race with a set of Goodyears.

Mark
dynoman14

and you sound just like a few more on here tooting their own horn ,,, this post looks like free advertising ,,,, if your comments are focused toward me , I have sat in on many 604s on a dyno ,,, I have taken apart many " crate carbs " ,, i don't see alot that works better than what I do to them , or a whole lot thats not different than a stock Holley , and somethings that get totally ignored and are completely opposite than what those motors need ,,,I help a friend that just got into rebuilding 604's , and I help him with the carbs ,, he's not a carb person , but anyway

go buy some paid advertising

[sjvalleydave]

Thanks Mike...We have a friend here in CA that doesn't want to go race with us in the Super Dirt Late Model world, and they have a 602/604/iron built 4412 carbed 11.5:1 deal as a Limited DLM as is trying to decide to build a 360 11.5:1 or get a 604 crate..Nice to get a straight answer

[raceman14]

SJDave is right on.
All I can say is I have seen 450RWHP+ on one of my customer engines that was Fastrak Sealed. A buddy of mine ( Bobby ) and I delivered the engine to the customer in Kentucky on Wednesday around lunch, by Thursday lunch the engine was installed and running. On Friday we went to the track and he Set fast time, track record for crates by 0.32 sec. on a green track. Once they qualified he won his heat race by about 1/2 track. Started position #1 and led every lap until the last one where he got bumped out of the way and finished second ( adjustments to the car slowed it 0.5sec per lap and about 7mph in the corner on the radar gun. We left and on Saturday the same thing happened and the engine was torn down to the crankshaft by 2 local certified crate engine builders and the Track Tech official. They sent the heads and camshaft to GM in Michigan to be inspected and we got them back in a week 100% legal. It rained the following week so I had that week to get the engine cleaned, inspected and put back together, dyno'd and re-sealed.

During that week I changed a couple things in the way I was honing and also on the final finish on touching up the valve job. On the same dyno, same fuel and carb etc...the engine made 467RWHP. Engine installed back in same car running same track 2 weeks later and he set new track record again by another 0.2 sec. Everything else happened the same except he won the main by about 20 car lengths and told me he could have lapped the field. Thanks to John Mulligan and Pops at Mulligan plumbing.

The only specifications that are left out is the flow numbers on the heads. I have flow sheets on 200+ pairs of Crate heads I have had thru my shop in the last 10 years. They vary from 225cfm to 267cfm ( flowed @25" ). My Superflow bench is within 1% on 400cfm, with Tony Clement, Don Losito, Matt Bienemann, Tony Corrente@Larry Wallace, Penske Racing South ( Todd Tesar ), Evernham ( Marty Zimmerman ) , Mike Chapman, Jerry Hemmingson ( Jerico ) and Weldtech as those are folks that have either purchased Serdi Machines from me or had me work on their stuff. Some of those folks have a similar ChassisDYno to mine and we have dyno'd my ARCA & ASA Series cars; V-6, Fuel Injected 500hp and 604Crate engined cars at their shops to the same level of accuracy 1% up to 800RWHP.

I have spent 30+ years trying to work at this stuff with the "scientific method", A-B-A testing all of my parts along with verification my multiple reference level sources. That is why it takes me a couple years to get new stuff out to sell but I can say I have about 5 years of crate stuff in the pipeline and have 2-3 test cars out there that run the stuff for at least a year before I let it loose. My inertia based acceleration ignition system is almost as "power producing" as the treated GM Springs and Controlled Valve loft. I have 2 Ignition companies testing it and may do a 2 year non-compete contract to keep it on the down low if the offer looks good.

Camshaft on the spintron is about 15% longer on the intake duration with "treated" stock GM springs. That is just one of the reasons I am able to turn engines 6500+ and still make power.


tshirt - Who is the certified engine builder you help out? Like the thread asked how much Legal HP have you seen. Keep looking at the carbs and you will eventually find one that is quite different from a stock 650HP and that might send you in the right direction, shoot I'll even tell you what to buy if you want to really look at what to do. Call up Dave Braswell and order a BGN 390 carb for Super-Speedways, Take that carb and install Banjo Boosters in it and then start working the fuel curve down from 600+ to make good power on a 604 crate. Once you have hit 450-475 with that carb, do the same thing with a 650HP body and slap all of the other parts on it and see what it takes to make that carb hit the 450HP level. If you are as smart as you thing you are it will only take you a couple pairs of metering blocks. As dumb as I am it took about 20 sets of bare Holley blocks for me to get it right. After that I ordered 100 sets of Billet blocks which are cheaper in bulk that Holley and I transferred the build to them only to find that they pull fuel way different than the stock ones. Took another month to get that worked out but it is all good now.

I don't consider this any kind of advertising cause it seems to pi$$ of more folks than not, but if I find one intelligent racer or customer to work with it is well worth it. I normally find that one person in a thousand has original thought and has the capability to test new products and give good feedback...that is why I only have 3 racers testing out of 10 years of working with Crate engines.

[CamKing]

Camshaft on the spintron is about 15% longer on the intake duration with "treated" stock GM springs. That is just one of the reasons I am able to turn engines 6500+ and still make power.

Anyone want to guess what happens when you leave the intake and exhaust openings alone, and increase the duration by 15% ?

BTW, that list of head porters needs to be updated. Half those guys are out of business, or have been let go.

[levisnteeshirt]

that 430 hp engine i saw ,,on a dyno that doesn't give nothing at all ,, tight as tight can be ,,, calibrated exact ,,, out ran some pretty big name 604 rebuilders ,,, which ,, this engine was rebuilt before by a " top 604 rebuilder " , i could tell the state ,, ain't gonna , don't want to start a war ,,, but the owner said it never felt beter when it came from my friends shop ,,, it won a race 2 weeks after it left ,,, out ran 604's that cost twice what he does them for ,,, and thats all i'm gonna disclose ,, he doesn't cheat them up , so some people may have decided to not let him rebuild theirs ,, he hasn't done 1 all winter ,,, he doesn't really like them , but he got to thinking that he better start ,

[raceman14]

Mike
Only one I know that is out of business is Chapman, most of the other folks are still around. Losito and Bienemann are still in business, Marty & Todd are still doing stuff. Tony is still doing R&D @ LWR, and I know Clements is still building engines and porting. I only used their name to establish a connection to the importance of establishing a baseline with some known cylinder head folks so when you compare data you can do so with confidence.

As far as what happens with the intake increasing 15% duration, the result is 20% more HP in a 5hp Briggs and 15-20RWHP on a 604 crate. It may not be perfect but it works. That testing was done on one of the spin-trons with laser inferometry @ RCR Engines along with dyno testing the same engines at their facility. They were big in Crate stuff a couple years back when Austin and Ty were running dirt.

I don't think the results would be any different than the fat lobe lift rule cams that comp builds for Street stocks that have max duration and lift rules. We do get the ocaisonal back fire under deceleration but that enables me to do a couple other things in the Carb that makes big acceleration numbers on the ChassisDYno and the track, that is about all I have found.

There is a lot of stuff I might end up bypassing because if I test something and it make more HP, I usually don't look further and I go on to the next step. If there is something else you can contribute that would be great and I am all ears to learn something new.

t-shirt
No problem, I don't blame you for keeping your engine builders name a secret, I am sure your he does a great job and has a fine dyno. I have been super busy over the off-season and have been blessed to get more engines in than I could have hoped for. With the 3 - 604's that came in last week I am at 12 re-freshes and 9 new engines, which is more than enough to keep one man hopping in the off-season.

JDR,
John, I did call you and got some good info on one of your carbs as it was a new one for 604 crate. It was better than a Stock 650HP ( +6RWHP ) but was slightly off on the fuel curve for the fuel the customer was using. When I say I changed the air bleeds, power valves and jetting that was not a knock on your carb just the facts. I do the same thing with almost every carb that comes in the door in order to map the carb the the fuel a customer burns. Is it a pain to do? Yea. Does it take a lot of time? Yea. Does it cost some money? Yea. the key is; it is 100% legal and helps the engine to perform better when you do other things to it.

Headers & Collectors,
When I play with header primaries, diameters and lengths, along with collector sizes and lengths as well as extension lengths and diameters and mufflers I get pretty major numbers on swaps of each part like +/- 3-5HP, and once you stack a couple of them together you get an exhaust system that is 10-15HP better. If you monitor manifold vacuum on the engine and chassis dyno you can actually make your intake pull better with an exhaust system that scavenges better. I have been working on some Bloomquist headers for about 18 months with a top header builder and every new set has resulted in more TQ and HP. I am on set #4 right now and will be building that tube-set into a set of Rocket test headers that will run on the dyno in a week or so and then be on the track for testing and verification of better lap times. For anything to be sold to a customer it has to be better on the track, not just a small HP gain.

The difference in doing that with a carb and ignition system ( including wires, spark plugs and box ) is 5-10% on any 604 crate. That is the single biggest gain you can make, even over a blueprint or rebuild of an engine and way more cost effective because it is lost HP until you find it.

Rather than aggrivate folks on this thread I will start a couple new ones and folks that want to contribute can jump on and do so.

[robert1]

This stuff sounds like a JC Whitney catalog to me. Everything ads 25 more HP. The Briggs by the way don't float the valves due to the springs but due to mechanical design of the lobe. They also don't chase a piston.

[CamKing]

This stuff sounds like a JC Whitney catalog to me. Everything ads 25 more HP. The Briggs by the way don't float the valves due to the springs but due to mechanical design of the lobe. They also don't chase a piston.

They're also not Hydraulic rollers.