Many years ago in the early sixties my Dad embarked on one of his many adventures, a teenage nightclub. The thought was to give young people a place that was drug free, alcohol free with good adult supervision.  A place where teens could hangout and listen to music in a friendly environment.  My Dad soon found out that the reason young people “hangout” is because they have no money to do other things.  One observation that Dad made from this was that kids liked feeding quarters into a jukebox along with ever ringing pinball machines.  My Dad then surmised that if entertainers of the day would film their performances, put them on a TV type jukebox machine these kids would watch them for hours.  One down, another million good ideas to go.

When we started to get into racing, car building came natural.  Nothing about the car building process seemed to intimidate my Dad at all, and because of his confidence, his engineering background, along with his “If they can do it, I should be able to do it” attitude, it magnified my confidence level in fabrication to where I am today.  One of the issues in our racing program was the engine.  NASCAR and most Outlaw tracks in our area of the country where limited to 440 cubic inches with a 9.6 pound per cubic inch weight limit.  Most everybody went as big as possible when it came to motors.  Smokey Yunick, at this time, came out in Hot Rod Magazine with a series of articles about Mouse Motors or Chevrolet’s small blocks.  In short, Smokey felt in time that engine builders could get as much as 2 horsepower per cubic inch.  Smokey had taken the 350 cubic inch LT1 motor right out of the curate and made over 400 horsepower on his dyno in Florida. Chevy advertised these engines in Corvettes, Novas, Camaros and some C-10 trucks.  In Smokey’s article, he also stated that the big block 427 with the L88 option was making only about 425 horsepower on a good day and could only be twisted to a whopping 5800 RPM.  Smokey felt the LT1 could easily turn 7000 RPM with no adverse wear on any parts.  In a later article, Smokey suggested a 302 aluminum high rise, a factory part for Z28; a 750 CRM Holley and a L88 NoduLar iron flywheel would carry the stock motor to over 450 horsepower.

After studying a number of articles, researching some information Chevrolet had out, my Dad decided to buy the crate LT1 option motor for our racing engine.  Many in the area felt that the engine would have too tight of clearances to perform, but we put the criticism to side and stayed our course.  We raced two complete seasons, 9 million practice laps, the car set outside all winter and about ten races into the third season broke a wrist pin.  We tore the engine down, the bearings looked great, you could have taken and honed the cylinders out and reassembled it.  The crate motor built for streetcars passed the test on the short tracks of North Florida with flying colors.  When I moved to North Carolina in the end of 1984 I soon found out that a lot of short trackers used the LT1 as the engine of choice.  Back then you could by the engine with everything but a carburetor and distributor for around $1,000.00.  Even if you took it home, disassembled it, clearenced it, changed the cam, done a three angled valve job, you still couldn’t beat the price.

We all want the same thing, but not all men are created equal!

The concept is great; give everybody the same car, same motor, same drive train, the same rules, tires, bodies and the list goes on.  The driver and luck takes it from there.  I have been racing for 35 years and motors have always been an issue.  90% of the time a competitor gets on a winning streak, everybody thinks he is running an illegal motor, or has found something trick.  Body hangers could work for weeks in the wind tunnel hunting and tweaking for that perfect combination of balance, but when Sunday comes ole DW says “Boy the car is handling great on the straight-aways.” It’s all a game of numbers, you take the same car and driver, if the car is tight, the driver will bitch hands down on power, it is loose he claims he’s got so much motor he cant hook it up.  Two turns up on the track bar or down and the engine mysteriously looses or gains horsepower. 

As a fabricator, I got to spend more than my far share of time in the motor room building trick pieces.  Remember, when I came into Winston Cup racing if you were making 600 horsepower out of 358 cubic inches you were doing something.  In the mid-eighties we started working hard on oiling systems, moved the oil tanks to the front, built better oil pans, scrapers, pick-ups, added scavenge stages to oil pumps and in less than a year picked up 50 to 75 horsepower. You had engine builders that had the mind set to go for all the power available, set on the most polls, lead the most laps, and let the car finish where it may.  Others took the conservative roll, tune the engines safely, turn less RPM’s rotating assemblies, taking no chances.  Even into the early nineties, you could have 50 less horsepower with a good driver and still win championships, but that was changing quickly.

In 1981, NASCAR took the Saturday night Late Model Sportsman and made a touring series.  NASCAR started to implement a plan that would start the Late Model Stock car division as part of the plan a common car, engine, along with a 350 CFM two-barrel carburetor.  This was a determining factor in the concept of crate engines.  We quickly found that what we thought we knew about engines we didn’t.  Harold Elliot, Rusty Wallace’s championship engine builder, preached religiously that a racing engine is nothing but a glorified air pump.  The LMSC 350 cubic inch engine rules included stock exhaust, 350 CFM 2300 Holley Carb, 64 CC Chambers, and stock stroke.  Engine builders worked hard but the LMSC motors made, at the most, 360 horsepower.  It didn’t make a difference on cams, head flow, rod length, light rotating assemblies, it would only breath so much.  Engine builders would flow multiples of carburetors hunting one that would flow just a ½ % more.  I had a good carburetor that flowed 89% of 400 CFM about 356 CFM, on our best engine this carburetor would make about 370 horsepower, but that engine cost about $15,000.00 to build.  It wasn’t about the cost of parts the expense was the trial and error method of developing the perfect engine.

As early as the mid-nineties NASCAR was hearing car owners start to voice their concerns about engine prices.  Top teams found out that fresh engines made more power; it was not uncommon for a LMSC to leak 10% on a leak down after just 200 laps of competition or 30 horsepower.  A Cup car could easily loose 80 hp in a 500 mile race.  Take 30 to 40 horsepower away from a 360 horsepower engine and you’re in trouble.  At first a freshen-up was about $750.00, heads were removed, touch-up on valve job and back together they went.  In the later years a thousand lap freshen-up was $2,500.00 which included rockers, springs, retainers, a valve job, inspect lower end and dyno.  Some considered overkill for an engine that only turned 7200 RPM at the max.

In comes the crate motor.

As tracks across the country started to see car counts start to fall, many jumped at the opportunity to add crate motor rules in the Super Stock, Modified, and Limited Late Model divisions.  Many tracks made advertising partnerships with GM Dealers to provide the circle track engines straight from that dealer.  Entry-level racers loved the concept, a $3,000.00 engine ready to run.  Engine builders screamed like panthers, team owners had mixed emotions, I had two LMSC engines, if crate motors replaced them, what was I going to do with the motors along with all the distributors, carburetors, spare parts, etc…  One limited car owner I built cars for would run a crate motor for 3 to 4 weeks until it started to leak down, he would then sell it to one of the local hot rod shops for $2,500.00 and back to the track with a new power plant.  Engine builders reached a reality check; many looked for alternative avenues for revenue.  Many started to build their own versions of crater motors policing heavily each sanctioning body hoping for approval with exclusive contracts.

I talked to a lot of engine builders, many felt that the tracks betrayed them, singled them out.  Some felt NASCAR and GM shot them in the head.  Many aftermarket suppliers told NASCAR they would pull sponsorship and contingencies if these engines were made mandatory.  This year after the PRI Show I had a number of calls form car owners saying that the buzz of the show was crate motors, GM, Ford, Mopar, Jegs, Summit, Speedway, Jasper, Edelbrock, Childers and Wegner all had some form of crate motors.  The rumor Wegner was pitching about racing crate motors has been rampant for years; it materialized with a contract with NASCAR.  Aftermarket suppliers seem to be satisfied because the Wegner engine utilized their parts. Holley, MSD, Edelbrock, Crane, Mahle, Quarter Master all have an opportunity to participate.

Racers will in time have to warm up to the concept of crate motors while hot hodders have fell in love with the idea that they could get 400 hp 400 ft. lbs of torque and a 12,000 mile, one year guarantee.  For less than $5,000.00 street guys can put dependable performance under that right foot and head out to shows knowing that today’s crate motors aren’t going to leave you aside the road.  Be able to pick and save when choosing an engine for your street rod lightens the load.  I have had friends that collected parts for years just to get an engine for a street machine.  Some took a shot at buying a junkyard motor dressing it out in chrome and held their breath all the way to the car show!  As we started to put together parts for our first engine, I put an intake, valve covers, oil pan, cam, lifters and a number of other critical parts under my bed.  My Mom hit the roof one day while cleaning.  “You can’t keep oily car parts under you bed!” she hollered.  I told her that they were all new, no oil, just pure horsepower placed there to keep the competition from knowing what we had for them.  A Mexican standoff, but it was going to stay close to me until it went in the car.  It came down to a sniff and a threat that she had better not smell anything that resembled oil in my room.  The good thing was I had a little brother that omitted enough odors on his own to hide the good stuff.