Race Engine Development

10/05/2026

27/04/2026

Had a customer who wasn’t getting enough oil up through the pushrod whilst priming his engine. Asked if we could help him out. Milled a 0.002” deep slot in his lifters with a solid carbide ball mill. Plenty of oil getting up there now.

0.002” is all it takes. You can barely feel it with a fingernail.

27/04/2026

One for the 8.2 deck Mafia.

A customer Steve dropped off a set of Yates C3 heads for a service. These are from an ex US Trans Am engine that he purchased for his XT circuit race car. These are a slightly earlier version of C3’s than the ones I just posted about last week.

Considering their age, they were in reasonable shape but needed a bit of tidying up.

Valve springs were quite heavily pitted with rust marks so a new set of PSI springs were purchased from George at Race MAX Direct.

27/04/2026

Prepared another VW EA888 head for an engine builder customer of ours. This one received a full set of Supertech guides, Kelford Cams spring kit and Ferrea Racing Components valves.

23/04/2026

Been a while since my last post, been a bit busy lately.

Anyway, an engine builder customer dropped off a set of Ford Motorsport Yates C3 heads. One of his drag racing customers bought a complete engine and was told “Fresh build, just came off dyno”. What the seller forgot to add though, “We also ran about 2500 ¼ mile passes after that as well”.

WOW! Someone in the automotive industry was less than truthful about the state of the parts he’s selling. Never, ever heard of this happening before.

Fortunately, the engine builder and owner decided to pull down the engine, otherwise it most likely would have disassembled itself. After performing an inspection of all the components, it became obvious that engine maintenance was not one of the previous owners' strong points.

The valve guides were so badly worn which saw the valve heads clashing into each other. The exhaust guide was also shortened dramatically which allowed excessive movement of the exhaust valve head contributing to the valves clashing.

As with many heads of this age, the guide bores measured bigger than 0.500”. These ones were at 0.502”. Fortunately, Dean at CHE Performance Auto Pty Ltd keeps oversize OD guides in stock. We required 0.504” for this set of heads to give us the required 0.002” press fit.

22/04/2023

The VS383 being tuned by Steve at RPM Racing

22/04/2023

Here's a video of a Wednesday night pass at WSID in the VS383.

Holden 383, factory VN heads, Torque Power dual plane, Solid roller, Quickfuel carb, Pacemaker Tri-Y's.

22/04/2023

Built a Holden 383 for Pat’s VS. Specs are-

Factory VN block 4.030” bore, no grout
Come 3.750” crank
Come stroker Rods
CP Bullet pistons
Comp solid roller from Gavin Total Performance
Torque Power Hi-Rise dual plane from Craig Torque-Power
Quickfuel Carb 1.520”venturi & 1.750” butterfly
Factory VN heads ported by us
Yella Terra Platinum rockers Yella Terra
Pacemaker Tri-Y 1 ¾” -2.0” with modified 3.0” collector into a 3.5” single system Pacemaker Headers
Manualised TH350
TCE 5500rpm Convertor TCE Torque Converter Engineering
3.89 Diff gears
Hoosier Tires P235/60R15 DR2
3483lbs with driver

14/04/2023

A set of Spreadport BBC drag race heads that haven’t been treated very nicely over the years came in last month. We applied some red dye to the intake faces and gave them a rub with an oil stone to highlight the peaks and valleys. I wouldn’t have thought an angle grinder would be the tool of choice to clean this surface but whoever did this would obviously disagree with me.

Someone also thought it would be a good idea to reduce airflow by cutting a step into the chamber just above the valve seats.

The engine builder asked if we could show a bit of much needed TLC to the heads and correct all the problems.

13/04/2023

A set of older generation All Pro 13° Sprintcar heads came in for a service recently. The inlet valves had a 5/16” stem but the exhausts were 11/32”. As all the valves needed replacement as well as the exhaust guides, it was decided to modernise these heads by installing 5/16” exhaust valves. New CHE 5/16” exhaust guides were installed, seats cut, decks milled and chambers were blended above the top cut.