Just got home. Dave has all the photo's he took over on the shops digital camera, but I got a CD from SuperFlow of all the pics they took, and I'll post some of them in a semi chronoligical order, to kind of give a feel for how the contest went and was run.

On a sidenote, I need someone to tell me how I can capture what is on my computer screen and post it as an attachment so I can capture the wyndyn dyno info and post it easily. I just forget what buttons to hit in Windows to do it....

Anyhow, first thing we did when we arrived Monday around noon was to uncrate the engine, and install it on a SF902 docking cart. All 6 motors by the end of the day Monday were on carts and ready to run. Once they were all carted, we dressed them up temporarily with carbs, headers and air cleaners, and moved them out next to the test cell location for magazine photo's. Here is pic of that event.....

Left to right.... Tom from R&S, Me, Mike Stark from CFM, Eric Shelton, Ken Lazerri from INDY, and Dennis Maurer.

Pics of the motors with no ugly mugs in front of them.

After the photo BS was over, we went upstairs to the conferrence room for a 1 hourish meeting. First the SF guys got up and told us how they would be operating the testing etc. Then the mP guys took opur questions and had to deal with the MSRP debacle etc.

The big items that came up in the meeting were, what happens if the engine stalls during it's mandatory 6 minutes of idling? It was decided their would be a hefty points penatlty for a motor that stalled, and it would have to eventually make 6 full minutes.

Russ Flagle wanted the 20 minute tuning period changed to 30 minutes becasue 20 was not enough to do much, including lash the valves which several competitors including ICH needed to do, due to the fact their engines had been apart after their dyno time back home.

And then we argued about the MSRP pricing for the rest of the time.... 5 of the 6 competitors were under the asumption that the cost of the MP supplied parts (heads, block, valve covers and crank) were NOT part of the MSRP total price. We believed this for several reasons but the biggest one was a LIST Mp emailed us detailing ALL the parts to be tabulated in the overall MSRP, and thsoe items were NOT on the list. Hence why 5 of the 6 competitors used very expensive aluminum heads, and several of us including myself and the winner took the more expensive wide MP valve covers becasue we did not think it would count against us.

In the end there was NO budging MP on the parts cost even though anyone with half a brain and could read all the emails we had printed out could se that the MP parts costs should not have been included but.... it's their game. They had to give us SOMETHING in exchange for their mishandling of the MSRP., so they did give us the 30 minute tuning period.

Also one other thing I brought up was about how would we do the power pulls, would it be 3 back to back to back, just like E'masters, with no time in between? (which is really hard on motors) And they were flexible here and debated overnight and agreed to give us 2 up to 2 minutes of idle cool down between power pulls if we wanted.

Also we talked alot about the enginemasters shortcomings because several of the SuperFlow dyno operators participated in the early Emasters contests and they knew what a disaster it was, and how badly Parkhurst ran them. And the one dyno operator even brought up the moparts fried starter wire before we could even mention it. And so it was determined that if something happened externally to a motor that was either Superflow's fault or like a plug wire melting on a header tube or a small leak, or in ich's case a freeze plug flying out of their Hemi in a previous challenge, etc. as long as it was EXTERNAL, we could fix it and keep making pulls without penalty. If their was an internal failure, bent pushrod etc, the motor was done, no repairs. Basically they wanted to se our motors run, and not have problems, and not scatter all over the floor, and they would make concessions as we went along to help us.

So that was the big stuff that came out of the Monday afternoon meeting.... it was clearly obvious other than arguing about the MSRp, that the MP tech guys were not out to screw us, they were going to be pretty leniant and help us as much as they could to have a good fair fun contest. There was not going to be any scenes like Scott Parkhurst yelling at DRAM about asking for too much when the starter wire fried. LOL This was a much more laid back easy going contest. I don't think you could have a stodgy uptight contest with Harold Bettes running the Superflow show, that guy is a bundle of energy and quite the prankster.

So after the meeting, Harold gave us a tour of the entire SF complex, here he is with one of the first ten SF benches ever built back in 1973, it sits in the lobby, along with the first dyno console they made.

After the tour was over we headed downtown to some upscale restaurant, where MP paid the $1000+ bill. Basically it was all the contestants, the MP engineers and about 6 or 7 of the Superflow brass. And at this point I should mention we were definitely taken care of all week with food. Every day their was breakfast foods brought in, lunch and dinner provided. We went through I think 7 Pizza's on Wednesday and 3 huge hoagie paltters on Tuesday for lunch. There was no shoortage of food or beverage the whole week. And staying along this theme, Dave and I were both blown away with ALL the people from SuperFlow's hospitality. There is something like 50 employees at this facility and I bet at least 30 of them introduced themselves over the 3 days and offered any help we needed tool wise etc. Harold spent half an hour with me on Tuesday AM in his office trying to come up with a calculation to convert vapor pressure into grains of water for me to do some thinking about my carb jetting. Evryone from the forklift operator to the receptionist could not have been nicer or more helpfull. I would have never in a million years expected to be treated so well by so many strangers, especially after hearing about how other engine contest are handled by the host facility. But I can definitely say without a doubt all the people at SF are TOP NOTCH in my book. NONE of the competiors had a single bad thing to say about anyone or anything that happened with the SF staff over three LONG days.

Tuesday 8AM we had contestant meeting outside the cells (where this photo is taken) We just basically went over small changes like the 30 minute tuning period etc.

At this point the R&S motor and ICH's were already in the cells and were ready to be hooked up and ran.

It's always good to hear things like that, I met a couple of Superflow Technicians when my friends SF902 was installed. Really friendly people.
AL...

This is a cool post Ryan...keep it up.

While they were hooking up their engines and running them, we were back in the shipping/receiving area where all the dynos are crated and shipped from, which was where all the motors were being stored. We were just making small changes, changing plugs, cutting out header gaskets etc. I think we were BS'ing with Rick Ehrenberg here in this pic, but this basically gives you an idea of where the motors spent most of the week.

Eberg was there?

I'm going to be really interested in hearing what you learned from the whole experience. I know you learned some cool stuff from the other engines. And you learned some cool stuff about Superflow. Last week you were saying that you would never do another one of these things but maybe now that it is over you've learned enough to see some benefit from participating?

Speaking of motors in waiting.... here is Mike Stark's 423" Large Port Commando motor. He had a 1050 carb, on a Super Victor, Flat Tappet, 13.3ish to one., reverse cooling etc. Very clean motor, and he is nice guy. We spent most of the weekend with Mike and Mikey from ProMax, we kept borrowing tools from him and he borrowed some header bolts from us. There was a lot of comraderie and give and take between all competitiors.

Interesting cooling system there
AL...

ANDYF: I believe Eric Shelton and us may do a combined effort in 2007, we discussed it some on Thursday, Eric approached Dave about what he thought about combining efforts next year and we said we would be interested in doing something. I'm guessing it is going to be a BB Wedge contest, MP could not tell us for sure, but said they are doing another one.

I assume eventually Mopar Muscle and Royal pruple will do a SB contest, so I'll give that one a "maybe". We'll see. I had a very fun time AT the contest, it was the month and half building up to it that sucked.

Here is Eric's 439 Large Commando motor. One thing I will say is, his 950 Proform out of the box carb is THE MOST IMPRESSIVE out of box carburetor I have ever seen. He tried all kinds of changes in air bleeds/jets PV's etc back in GA and this thing was dead on out of box, so that is where he returned it to, and his AF on dyno at contest just was deadly consistent across the pulls. I AM BUYING ONE this week.

How did the engines with the Edelbrock Super Victor manifolds perform? I have noticed a couple of engines with them in your pics so far?
AL...

I was wrong in my other post about ICH having a King Demon, they threw me off with the milled 4500/4150 adpapter they had on this thing, but it was a 4150 Demon.

They had a ton of valvetrain problems on dyno the week before the contest, they actually temporarily junked the block so the one they used in the contest is another block they had on shelf. They were breaking the intake rocker stands of the heads since they CNC'd them so far, and the boss had little support, so they came up with a nice looking stud girdle on July 4 to fix it. Dave took a bunch of close up pics of it, I'll post sometime. This was first time I ever really talked much to Ken and Russ and hung out with them, they're different than I expected, we borrowed their extra long MSD trigger wire to run our motor. We're going to do some business with Russ on a couple fronts in the future. I think Dave's highlight of the weekend was when Russ walked up to us on Thursday night at the MP Block Party while we were in the food line and asked us for a business card LOL. Anyhow here's their 440.

Ryan, keep it comming

INDY's motor and R&S were ran on Dyno cell #2 and #1 respectively on Tuesday Morning. Superflow has 4 Dyno test cells side by side. The guys at SF were worried about people being in the cell next to a motor during a pull so we had to do some jockeying, to make sure no one was in the opposite cell working when pulls were happening.

Here is the winning motor out of MN, from R&S racing. Like I said in my other post it is aprox 15:1, is a 4" crank, 4.180ish bore, has custom pistons with vertical gas ports, and a "light ring pack", 1000 HP carb, Super Victor, heads were done by another shop in MN. We took pics of the motor during tear down, there was no voodoo. It was just a well built solid combo. The heads have 52 cc chambers, the ports looked nice, but nothing outrageous size wise on the intake side. He just had regular old Fel Pro 1213 intake gaskets on it. The exhaust ports were BIG. Probably one of biggest I have ever seen in a SB mopar head, bigger than anything I've done, I may have done 1 or two sets of W5's with Ex ports similar in size. So they were very big and nice shape, flat floor, D shaped. And like I said in other post cam was very unusual, I'll be checking out exact specs on that on Monday from Comp. I've never even read a magazine article anywhere with specs like that cam has, such low duration (238 intake) and yet alot of lobe lift (.420ish)and a wide LSA. Just had a set of 1.6 Crane gold rockers on it, actually had a stock 340 oil pan, and set of 1 7/8 TTI W2 headers. 285 cranking PSI.

Pic of test cell #2, which was operated by John Seamon from SF's North Carolina office, and officiated by Jim S. (in the blue shirt) From MP. The guy in the black shirt is John Donato, the other MP Engineer who was in charge of tech on cell 1. This is the cell we used, INDY ran on and Shelton. The other 3 ran in cell 1. These were 2 brand new never ran SF902's that were installed on Monday. Turns out John is originally from Williamsport, PA (about 45 minutes Northeast of us) and is the nephew of Gary Hetler. We BS'd about Kent Ritters dyno "cell" jokingly on Thursday at the MP Party. Kent's Brother was the one who introduced and recommended John to Harold at SF to give him his job. It's a small small world.

Eric working on his motor. When the big man puts his glasses on, you know he is getting serious In all seriousness, he is a blast to hang out with.

Stark's motor during a warmup pull. This is cell #1, and I can tell it is a warm up pull becasue I can see the MP/Martha Stewart kitchen oven timer up on the console. Talk about high tech timing and scoring

Dennis Maurer on the left and Bret the #1 cell operator on the right. I don't have many good pics of Maurer's motor, but it was definitely an oddball at 434 inches, with commando heads, 273 rockers, thermoquad and M1 dual plane. This pic is before the warmup pulls. We were probably over in cell 2 thrashing on our motor during this pic.

This pic was taken within 10 seconds of Maurer's motor popping the head gasket, this was power pull #1, only reason I know this is because I'm standing there watching oin this pic, and this was only pull I watched of his.

This is how all the pulls went, all the other competitors had to stay behind a rope barrier, only team members or the competiors in the cell next to you were around the console/operator during all the warmups and pulls.

MIGHTY COOL STUFF!Were proud of ya,Ryan.Thanks for all the cool photos

Our motor obviously. I was putting the breather back on after putting the 10/40 Royal purple in it. MP Tech guy was standing in corner making sure the oil was legal and we put in at least 5 quarts.

Here's Dave crunching various RPM/Vacuum #'s during warm up trying to figure out what RPM/Vac reading would give us the best score. He calculated 910 RPM/6.0 was where we would score best so I went in and tryed to set the idle as clse to his goal as possible. In the end after 5 minutes of idle and then 1 minute of recorded idle, we had 930 RPM average and -5.9 vacuum, so I set it about as close as I could to his target.

if you look real close you can see alot of data on the screen including the corrected DA on the lower right corner, it reads, DA, VP, baro, humidity, and inlet temp in that order starting from bottom up. Harold welded in a O2 bung in our headers on Tuesday night so we could run the LM1.

A thermoquad!!!!?????

Just wondering....how can they run the motors on 2 different dynos and get apples to apples dyno comparisions? I thought 2 different dynos can't be truely comparable?

Jet change during the tuning period. I still would have liked to have pulled more jet out and crank timing up, but after we saw our warm up pulls Dave wanted to leave it alone, so as not to lean it out and risk breaking it. I'm sure there was another 20 or so HP in it but 20 was'nt going to make a difference in the end, so we decided to save it and stay on safe side. We were hoping our ultra cheap combo would help out in scoring, so we were not going for peak power motor. That is why I ran the small carb and headers etc. The $86 1 5/8" Summit headers required doubling up the header gaskets to clear the oil pan. At least now I have better idea of what a tiny header tube does to a 440 inch motor. We very well might re-dyno it back here in PA in the same state of tune parts wise, and then throw on some big tubes and carb to see what is left before it gets sold.

Here is the power scoreboard, it was tallied by day in the order in which we ran. ie. R&S ran 1st day #1, ICH ran 2nd day one, Stark and Shelton ran next on day one and Maurer and us both ran on Tuesday. Now I'll see if I can figure out how to post these dyno #'s off of wyndyn.

rvoyles: the contest heavily factored in cost of the engines as well as vacuum and idle RPM, hence why he tried a Thermoquad (cheap) and we ran $86 headers on a $16,000 engine LOL

This, as in numerous MoPar items after 25 years of experience, proves again: All roads are one way, away from Detroit. It's the reason there hasn't been much sucess since the "Break In".

Great informative post Ryan!! Thanks for bringing us all along on this ride. We appreciate it!! When I saw Maurer's name on the list T-quad was the first thing that popped into my mind.

So now that you know what you do, what would you build if you had to do it again with the same rules?

It looks like a 420+ inch with lg port commandos, 13+ compression, super victor, 4500 carb, etc is the combo?

Sounds like a great time and quite a learning experience for everyone Great job Ryan I hope I can get more involved with it the next time.

Good job Ryan, I'm glad you had fun after all of the thrashing you did.

nice pics... gee I wonder which one is Ryan... Flannel boy!

Some dyno #'s.....

This is Dennis Maurer's only clean pull

Shelton's 3rd power pull

A sample of Shelton's idle/vacuum test

INDY's Power #3 pull

INDY's Idle/vacuum test

Stark's Power #3 pull

Stark's idle/vacuum test, he intentionally set the idle rpm high to help the vacuum # go up. We did similar thing, to help score as best as can.

Our # 3 power pull

Our idle/vacuum test. The motor actually idled at 605 RPM, but vacuum was obviously lower, and so we increased it to maximize scoring. Also because of the atmosphere in Colorado everyones vacuum #'s were aprox 2 lower than they were back in "normal" air. My motor was 8-8.2 inches here in PA at 775 idle.

Here are the atmospheric conditions during our pulls

Our oil pressure during pull #3

Graph of pull #3

R&S Power pull #3

Hell, I'm impressed by everyone's results, not just the "big number" guys.

Gotta admit the correction factor for running in 8800 DA is pretty shocking, though.

R&S Idle/vacuum sample

great post!!

and...it sounds like it was a good time, despite all the BS up to that point.

i am confused about one thing though....you were mentioning the odd cam specs of the one entry...
("like I said in other post cam was very unusual, I'll be checking out exact specs on that on Monday from Comp. I've never even read a magazine article anywhere with specs like that cam has, such low duration (238 intake) and yet alot of lobe lift (.420ish)and a wide LSA")
......but i was under the impression the cam had to be an "off the shelf" item.

sooo.....which page of the Comp catalog is that cam on??

very informative thread. it looks like the folks at R&S had most everyone covered by nearly 100 Horsepower. do they do their own head porting? glad you were treated so well and had no fried wires.

Ryan, what were the final scores?

Engine masters was NOT a thrash?? Grrrr...

Oh it looks like the A/F ratio is based on O2 (saw an O2 sensor on some of the pictures and the WinDyn channel is labeled LamAF1 for Lambda?), I'm wondering if a dyno calculated A/F ration was available, if so how did it compare to the Lambda O2 sensor A/F reading?

Ryan, would the R&S motor maybe be one of the fastest non "W" motor that you made a topic last month. What should that motor run in a 3,000 pound A-body?

ryan,, it looks like the air/fuel was low around peak torque which isnt that bad,, but the bsfc numbers look lean. might be that header that is screwing you up more than the jetting.

im wondering who would pay 16k for a 650hp motor....

why wouldnt you think that the supplied parts wouldnt be included in the msrp,, was mopar goingto give those parts to anyone trying to replicate that engine?

looks to me like the guy who best understands the way an internal engine functions could win,, and probably won. if you want more of a no-brainer,, real world engine shootout,, you need a compression rule.

jeff

That R&S engine was moving air, with a 1000cfm carb it was still pulling more vacuum during the pull than Ryan's with the smaller carb.

Impressive for the small carb and headers though.

Well I can assure you from what I see on this board that regardless of who won between Ryan and Indy. I would go to Ryan in a heartbeat. Russ and his boys are a real piece of work. When guys you sponsor talk bad about you; you need to work on your business. When I build more power I am gonna call Ryan for a set of W5's or something similar. Nice job Ryan.

here's the lobes he's probably using.

Dave