Using parts from one car in something completely different is what circle track racing was built on. For thousands of years—OK, maybe not thousands, but for a really long time—racers, hot rodders, and automotive madmen have concocted some serious iron using whatever parts they could mash together to reach their intended goal. In most cases, the goal was more power!
Even today, on racetracks across this great nation you can still see tons of seasoned parts, many of which are used, repurposed, then used again. This is a great way for racers to save a few bucks, while keeping their cars on track. That’s why automotive hoarders (or racers, whichever term you prefer) keep a stockpile of hard-to-find parts or pieces they know work perfectly well, just in case the need for it ever arises. And for the record, your author is one of these hoarders! Now that we’ve established that repurposing parts is the norm for many circle track racers, here’s where we’re going with this…
When we started thinking about repurposing a NASCAR Camping World truck as a street vehicle, the debate about how to power it came up. Everything from a basic crate engine to one of Ford’s new Mustang powerplants was thrown in as an option. After going back and forth with our good friend Mike Delahanty at Ford Racing, we locked in on an old Sprint Cup engine that FRPP had used as a dyno mule in years past. The history of the engine was a little sketchy (which we love about it), but it had some markings on it that hint at its lineage. It had an old Roush Engineering intake manifold, C3 heads, and pretty mild valvetrain components in comparison to the absolute insanity you see in the cars every Sunday. The engine was complete, but needed some freshening. We also wanted to tone it down just a touch in preparation for the street miles it was destined to endure.
To accomplish this, we traveled to Boynton Beach, Florida, to visit Tim Eichhorn, owner of MPR Racing Engines. After a quick tear down and inspection, it was pretty clear that we didn’t need much to get the engine to where we wanted it.
1 The refresh started with tearing the engine down. When the valve covers came off, we found rather mild valvetrain components. Though we were surprised, this meant we wouldn’t need anything overly exotic for the rebuild.
The first step was teardown. Once the intake manifold, front dress, and cylinder heads came off, we knew this engine was well taken care of. After a few calls we had all the parts we needed to put everything back together. While the engine was apart, Eichhorn cleaned and honed the bores to ensure the cylinders wall surfaces were correct and the rings would seal perfectly, polished the crankshaft, and added drainback holes in the block for our conversion to a wet sump oil system.
Knowing this engine was going to see mostly street duty, we took the solid flat tappet camshaft out and replaced it with a hydraulic roller setup from Comp Cams. The conversion required a new camshaft, lifters, and pushrods. Our new hydraulic roller camshaft measures in at 0.623/0.587 lift for intake and exhaust with 251/258 degrees of duration at 0.050 respectively, with a 110 LSA. All in all, it should be a healthy cam for being a hydraulic roller. To complete the heads, the shaft-mount rockers were reused. A new set of Clevite main and rod bearing were installed, and a set of thicker Cometic head gaskets were used to mate the C3 cylinder heads to the freshened short-block. The thicker gaskets helped bring the compression down from 12:1 to about 11.2:1, which with a mild tune-up will allow us to run pump gas on the street.
Following the streetable theme of the engine, we needed drivetrain components that would survive in traffic. A call to Tremec netted us one of its T56 Magnum six-speed gearboxes. Even though you may not think of it as a race trans, the T56 Magnum is an incredibly versatile transmission. It has a tall First gear (2.97:1) and a very low Sixth gear (0.50:1), which gives us an amazing blend of acceleration with fuel economy. The trans bolts right to the engine with an SFI-approved bellhousing from Quick Time Performance. Inside the bell, we used a 10.5-inch twin disc clutch from RAM Automotive. The clutch hold may more power than our 358ci powerplant is going to put to it, but it also has a nearly effortless pedal for easy driving in traffic. We reused the truck’s hydraulic system for the clutch, and American Powertrain sent us a billet hydraulic throwout bearing to complete the assembly.
Given that the entire combination is rather unconventional, we called Mark at the Axle Exchange and he built us a custom 4-inch aluminum driveshaft. Behind that, sits the 9-inch speedway rearend housing (0.01 degree of camber, and 1/16 toe out on the right side), which we got from Tiger Rearends (thanks Gerald!). The rear is filled with a center section and axles from Quick Performance in Ames, Iowa. The center section has a Detroit Tru-Trac limited-slip differential and 4.10 gears.
8 Hydraulic lifters complete the new hydraulic roller valvetrain. Though 9,000 rpm is probably out of the question, we will make plenty of power in a very usable range.
With a repurposed engine and some great new parts, our power and drivetrain is going to be hard to beat in the fun department. Engines like this are out there. And in many cases, they can be altered to fit many different rulebooks. Sometimes it just takes a little creativity and you can have a unique, yet powerful combination!
931/646-4836
www.americanpowertrain.com
973/808-2800
www.axle-exchange.com
800/752-9850
www.cometic.com
800/999-0853
www.compcams.com
800/367-3788
www.fordracingparts.com
610/847-2028
www.jonesracingproducts.com
203/453-5200
www.moroso.com
561/588-0188
mprracingengines@aol.com
515/232-0126
www.quickperformance.com
216/658-6413
www.lakewoodindustries.com
803/788-6034
www.ramclutches.com
704/603-4431
www.tigerrearend.com
623/587-7400
www.totalseal.com
734/456-3700
www.tremec.com
