Barry Rabotnick at Engine Masters Challenge

[Barry_R]

Hi guys - Thanks for the kind words. I had a great time and met some really cool folks. I also thought I had a decent piece going in - - and got "schooled" by the small block canted valve crowd. Below is a tweaked version of the message I posted in the Network 54 FE forum.

Now - - the contest...
There were a total of five FE motors pre-entered. Two from Dove, and one each from myself, Blair Patrick (Super Stock FE racer), and Texas engine guy Ty Lodstrom. Dove did not make it to the event.

The story on Dove from the folks at the contest was that he had called in really sick the week prior and did not think he could make it. Since he was scheduled to pull the day before me and the same day as Blair any assumptions regarding worry of comparative performance are baseless. I hope he is OK - Jim's actually a pretty good guy and I was looking forward to seeing him again. He still owes me a dinner...

Ty Lodstrom broke a rocker shaft early on. He said he had been using a really wild cam and I suspect that the Crane setup was simply not up to the task - the Crane deal is really oriented more for street/strip type action. He says he'll be back - I certainly hope so 'cuz he seems like a pretty cool guy.

Blair and I ran essentially neck & neck - I just edged him out by maybe 10 points at best. Seeing as he's a darned good Super Stock guy I think I was doing OK just keeping up. Folks that don't race in that realm do not realize how hard those guys work and how good they are. Blair is also a really great guy - he was constantly trying to lend me parts (including an unreal cool looking set of headers) to improve my package at the show since he'd already run. I was scared to try them at that late hour fearing they'd change my combination & tune. I'll be doing the coulda/shoulda/woulda thing for a while...

We compared notes and decided that - for this contest - I probably had a better set of heads and he a better cam, definitely better headers, and possibly a mild advantage with his smaller rod and main bearing selection. Both short blocks were pretty swoopy though. Mine had a 4.350" bore Genesis block, destroked (3.640") 391 crank, 2" rod journals, Carillo 6.7 rods, .927 pins, JE spherical dish pistons with a .031 dykes top ring. I'll let him elaborate on his if he so desires.

My three final scores at home were 1008, 1008, and 1001. At home I was on a dyno I had never used - so I can't really say what happened but I sure would have liked those 20 points! The motor responded normally to just a bit of timing and fuel tuning there in New York - but nothing was going to deliver the big gain we needed - so we just let 'er rip. There are no signs of any distress - I think all three contest pulls were within a couple points and we made some pretty good peak horsepower at 678 (I ought to check but that was likely a "top ten" stat). Numerous competitors came by to comment on how cool it was to see the ol' FE put up those numbers.

The canted valve CHI head Fords were near to unbeatable - 5 of 6 finalists and a slew of other high finishers had them. Kaase just missed winning - it was soooo close. Second year in a row he qualified number one and basically lost in the final pull.

After the contest was over we loaded the motor into the side of door my minivan (looks absolutely hilarious but it's within the spec GVW rating for the vehicle) and headed home. Fourteen hours of construction delays & driving interrupted by and one seedy roach hotel with dim lighting and sticky carpet and we're back.

I'd encourage anybody to take a swing at this - - its not really that expensive, you keep the motor so you're not throwing that cash away (maybe a cam & a set of pistons...), and the contacts and conversation are unreal. One result from this year is that Survival is now a distributor for the World Products line of heads, blocks, and crate motors - no FE stuff - but some of us have other toys as well. Any of the highly talented FE builders that frequent this forum could be players - - and I personally think it'd be great to have a bunch of us in the game.

Barry Rabotnick
Survivalmotorsports.com