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Here we go again, once more into the breach...
Last year's "Danny Miller's Hot Heads Racing and Research/Gene Adams Performance" 385 Hemi was highly successful in one sense, we picked up the pieces after Danny's untimely passing and ran his engine (without blowing it up) at the 2011 competition in Ohio. We chronicled that installment, with all its trials and tribulations here:
Suffice it to say, that we all scrambled and no one really had a handle on everything that was hanging on that engine. Hell, we didn't even know that we had .950 intake valve lift until we got to the dyno and set up a dial indicator. Danny took most of the detailed information with him, hopefully its helping him go fast in the hereafter.
This year the rules threw us for a loop out of the box. We decided to drop down to the street division, but the initial rule set had us stuck for a 400ci minimum. That's a tough expensive proposition for an early Hemi. We spent the last two months looking for the proper block/crank combo to make it work. We even thought at one point about running the 385, and taking the point hit for calling it a 400.
But, things got much better last week. First set of rule revisions rolled in, and the minimum ci is now at 300! Woot!!! Now we can get back to the regularly scheduled program, reusing many of the prior parts.
So we present this year's "Danny Miller's Hot Heads/Gene Adams/Smithberg Racing" 385 Chrysler Hemi.
Pretty much the same team.
Bob & Debra Walker at Hot Heads remain the driving force, providing parts, funding and advice.
Gene Adams is doing the engine assembly and providing a lifetime's worth of expertise.
Nick Smithberg is the porting and fabrication savant
Scott Clark is bringing his magic fingers to "Geek" the tune
John Beck is on the throttle for the dyno
Scott Courtney is wiring perfection
Elaine Miller keeps us all happy and moving in the right direction
And there are a bunch of other folks that are helping in many different ways to try and get to the top of the podium.
With the change in the cubic inch minimum, we're already looking at dyno dates. We hope to spend the year more in a tuning mode than a construction mode. We'll try a couple of different flavors of cylinder heads, several different cams, a bunch of header/exhaust combos and then settle on the proper combo. Hopefully we'll not chase the "Stroker McGurk" syndrome and avoid the valvetrain breakage that we experienced last year. No more "three dyno pulls and we have to relash the valves."
Stay tuned.
Last year's "Danny Miller's Hot Heads Racing and Research/Gene Adams Performance" 385 Hemi was highly successful in one sense, we picked up the pieces after Danny's untimely passing and ran his engine (without blowing it up) at the 2011 competition in Ohio. We chronicled that installment, with all its trials and tribulations here:
Suffice it to say, that we all scrambled and no one really had a handle on everything that was hanging on that engine. Hell, we didn't even know that we had .950 intake valve lift until we got to the dyno and set up a dial indicator. Danny took most of the detailed information with him, hopefully its helping him go fast in the hereafter.
This year the rules threw us for a loop out of the box. We decided to drop down to the street division, but the initial rule set had us stuck for a 400ci minimum. That's a tough expensive proposition for an early Hemi. We spent the last two months looking for the proper block/crank combo to make it work. We even thought at one point about running the 385, and taking the point hit for calling it a 400.
But, things got much better last week. First set of rule revisions rolled in, and the minimum ci is now at 300! Woot!!! Now we can get back to the regularly scheduled program, reusing many of the prior parts.
So we present this year's "Danny Miller's Hot Heads/Gene Adams/Smithberg Racing" 385 Chrysler Hemi.
Pretty much the same team.
Bob & Debra Walker at Hot Heads remain the driving force, providing parts, funding and advice.
Gene Adams is doing the engine assembly and providing a lifetime's worth of expertise.
Nick Smithberg is the porting and fabrication savant
Scott Clark is bringing his magic fingers to "Geek" the tune
John Beck is on the throttle for the dyno
Scott Courtney is wiring perfection
Elaine Miller keeps us all happy and moving in the right direction
And there are a bunch of other folks that are helping in many different ways to try and get to the top of the podium.
With the change in the cubic inch minimum, we're already looking at dyno dates. We hope to spend the year more in a tuning mode than a construction mode. We'll try a couple of different flavors of cylinder heads, several different cams, a bunch of header/exhaust combos and then settle on the proper combo. Hopefully we'll not chase the "Stroker McGurk" syndrome and avoid the valvetrain breakage that we experienced last year. No more "three dyno pulls and we have to relash the valves."
Stay tuned.
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