Congrats to Engine Masters competitors Barry and Mark!

[jayb]

Barry Rabotnick finished 20th overall in this year's Engine Masters with a score of 2536, using the same FE as last year and after running it all summer in his Torino!  Great job, and Barry really answered the doubters who say that Engine Masters engines are not real street engines.

Mark Dahlquist ran another Pontiac this year and finished 10th overall with a score of 2710, following up on his 9th place finish last year.  With that kind of back to back success Mark is obviously a serious EM competitor.  Lest anyone forget, for some strange reason FEs and Pontiacs share a lot of similarities, such as bore spacing (FE 4.63, Pontiac 4.625) and head bolt locations (an FE head will bolt onto a Pontiac block with nine of the ten head bolts).  Pontiac Ram Air V engines and FE Tunnel Ports are very similar designs.  I've kind of got a soft spot for Pontiacs LOL!

Once again the same group of contestants dominated the top six spots, led by first place finishers BES.  It sure would be nice to see some new faces in this group; maybe next year Barry or Mark will break into that elite group.  Great job guys!

[Barry_R]

Thank you Jay.  Its been an interesting year in many ways, and it really was fun to just get out and "do something" cool.  The radical Pontiac was beyond cool.

Changes from last year are really minimal.  They did not care for the F600 oil pan, so we installed a Milodon 4WD pan (now for sale BTW).  I added a pan evac, which in turn required going to BT valve covers.  Part way into the summer I had installed one of the "flying toilet" throttle bodies.  And we stabbed in the smaller of the two cams we'd tested with last year since they lowered the peak RPM to 6500 - pulled the lifters up with tag wire & never even removed the intake!

Dyno was set up really tight this year compared to last.  My raw number scores were pretty close to the "home" numbers, but they had nearly zero correction and the reported power and torque was off by a fair amount.  At 6500 I showed 660HP here and had 637HP down there.  Same was true for everybody, and scoring is thus perfectly fair.  Just pointing this out 'cuz somebody is guaranteed to ask why I am down so much in power and the answer is "I'm not".

Engine is going to get a well deserved freshen/inspection and go back into the car, where its fate is yet to be decided.

[Qikbbstang]

Several questions here Barry, The fact your motor is more than a EMC dyno-war horse and has seen street/strip duty makes this even more pertinent.  I noted you and I believe all other EMC competitors were shown as runnning Amsoil 5W20.  ....................Running 5W20 in an FE??
Got me wondering if you designed/clearance'd  your EMC FE motor for thin 5w20 oil?...... Or is this a  more power on dyno EMC "shoot-out oil only" that gets swapped out for the more common weights we see run in FEs for street/strip? ......... Or hard to ask and likely more difficult if not impossible to answer, perhaps this is a marketing lube?.....   
 
Finally I would have sworn at one time in EMC you ran a Perf RPM with a deeply notched divider wall or have you always run the Blue Thunder with the deeply notched divider? ............ One time or another someone made/posted a Perf RPM with a removable divider wall that clouds the issue.

          I'm just going to throw out the position FoMoCo is in at EMC.  The 1st and 2nd place Engines this year were Mopar Gen III Hemi's, the 3rd and 4th place Engines were LS7 head based LS engines.  5th of course was Jon Kaase with a Frankenstien like 429SCJ block (de-bored) to a measly 3.70 bore and crazy long stroke to make 409 cubes with his own Boss 429 Heads somehow breathing through the 3.70 bores - lets not forget Boss 429s pushing 600-700 cubes are not all that uncommon so a 409 version made that small is especially complex.
          No one can dispute that Detroit's big three strive to develop extremely efficient engines today that off the showroom make astonishingly high TQ/HP. The heads of both the Mopars and Chevy's are their latest offerings. These make an outstanding base for building an efficient EMC engine as the top four places indicated. Ford on the other hand dropped pushrod motors nearly twenty years ago. Last year EMC 4-valve DOHC Fords cleaned house and are now banned at EMC. Those winning Ford heads of last year are decades older then what the winning Mopar/Chevy guys now run with. Obviously the latest Ford heads that go head to head with the LS7s and GenIII Hemi's  on the street and dealer showrooms are the Coyote and any chance of using them at EMC is zero.  A first at EMC this year was a competitor running a 1960's Cam-A-Go to vary his OHVs cam timing. Lord help them if the stock Coyote DOHC's variable cam timing AND variable overlap ability could show up where HP and Torque are scored as at EMC!    FYI there are no longer air-pumps and EGR systems on Ford Coyote's - all handled simply by the computer and cam positioning!
    I noted an abundance of essentially off the Perf shelf bolt on intakes with production heads/blocks from the winners yet EMC for the Ford guys by banning what Ford puts on the street are screwed. They don't get the opportunity to use those state-of-the-art heads & blocks from Detroit.     

[mike7570]

Barry's engine was very respectable for a "street build", I doubt you would find many of the top points earners driving down the boulevard.
But if I could have one it would have to be the 599ci Boss. If the dyno was "tight" as Barry described it (and down about 3.6%) that would put the Kaase motor at 1017hp!

[Barry_R]

Couple answers.
I ran the 5W20 because there does seem to be an incremental advantage to thin oils on the dyno.  Single digits, but still there.  On the street I run a basic WalMart sourced 10W30 unless I have something else around (they sometimes donate a couple case of Amsoil & I end up with extra).  I change it out too often to assume any real functional advantage.

I have usually run the Blue Thunder.  It just seems to work very well, and I enjoy the WTF factor that comes with a flat dual plane in a contest populated by sky high exotic intakes.

The modular engines are out because they are 4 valve DOHC.  Its that simple.  A 4 valve DOHC architecture has an unbeatable advantage in cylinder filling efficiency - particularly when the competitive environment does not involve or handicap weight, cost, complexity, or physical size issues that otherwise hamper the combination.  EMC is an environment literally made for the modular DOHC to outpace the competition.  .  If you really want to have a modern engine only, 4 valve per cylinder competition be sure to let them know - because that's what you'd end up with inside of a couple years.  I would exit the contest instantly, as would most other entrants not interested in new car applications.

[900HP]

Thank you, Jay.  I love the EMC event and what I love most about it is the diversity.  We did not score as well as we hoped and most of that is because I missed it in the exhaust department.  We had pretty big dips in the torque curve that were non-existent at home.  I attribute this to the school exhaust system and I just plain missed the boat.  That being said, the phrase of the week from the Throttle's crew was "at least it's not ugly"