A lot of work for 650 hp

Saw this article on Hot Rod today. All aluminum Pontiac with lots of good parts including dry sump and very fancy headers, Cam is fairly small and the header shape is unusual so I'm guessing that this is a street engine in some sort of weird vehicle? The article doesn't say what it is going into but the cam is too small for drag racing. I suppose it could be some sort of road race car. The small cam, dry sump and weird headers could all work in a road race vehicle.
https://www.motortrend.com/how-to/510-inch-pump-gas-pontiac-engine-westech-dyno-test/

Road racing wouldn't you want quick revving and top end rpm vs just big cubic inches? Seems like a very expensive way to get there as well? Buicks, Olds, and Pontiacs cost $$$ to build.

I look at engines like that with all the trick do-dads and then look at how fast the F.A.S.T. class guys run with no real visible speed parts and it makes me wonder how much of the trick looking stuff does one really need?

It says torque wins races. Of course that's not true. If it was, we'd all have semi truck engines in our race cars. Horsepower to weight ratio wins races.

And I agree, the Pontiac motor has way too much in to it to only make 650 horse.

Switch the carb and it will pick up power...

Agree, looks pretty exotic build for those kind of numbers. That engine is far less than the sum of its' parts. Wonder if the cam is mistimed, either installed wrong or ground wrong.

Wow, exactly right on the horsepower! I snicker every time I hear the torque statement.

Thank you!!

Yeah I have serious doubts about that carb design. I would be interested in the back story on the engine design. Peak power is 5900 RPM but the valvetrain and the oiling system appear to be NASCAR type stuff. 7/16 pushrods, Crower rocker arms. Peterson R4 pump, etc. Those are serious high dollar parts. Even the water pump uses a NASCAR style multigroove belt.
Maybe it is just designed to look like a NASCAR engine? Could be going into a vintage NASCAR chassis for track days or something.

Also has a Wilson bling spacer, real money was spent.

What type of carb booster? are we looking at?
Doug

Booster? That looks like a derivative of Pro Systems old SV1 carb.

I mean, trying to reinvent the wheel sometimes doesn't work when the wheel was invented 5500 years ago. If something was better, it would have been figured out long ago.

Same with boosters. All this time with annular, dogleg, straight leg, forget all that....

Just drill some holes in a tube!

Is this going in a boat?

An "aerosol" carb. Design has been around for years and not very successful IMO and certsainly not the best way to make power.

Motor Trend and Westech Dyno are a platform to showcase advertisers' products. I remember Horsepower TV around 2012 Built an Edelbrock headed hydraulic roller cammed 440 six pack that made a whopping....410hp. Seems they want us to pay attention to the bling but not the power it makes.

That is a really good possibility. Those headers could fit in a boat and that would explain the dry sump system as well as the heavy duty valve train. This engine design would make sense for a boat engine that was going to be pushed hard for long periods of time.

I’ve dynoed motors with various versions of the KRE hi-ports.
One thing that seems a bit odd to me is the cam selection.
You’d think big split and wide lsa would have been used to help extend the power band, yet it’s peaking at only 5900.
Seems more like a street EFI type cam to me.

For sure, the hp doesn’t really seem commensurate with the total scope of the build……. At least in my mind.

Thats the same head I sent you for testing on your flow bench correct ???

Thank you again.


Yes the cam is very strange. Good bit of lift but way short on duration (especially for the cubes) and wide lsa

Probably for a heavy street car with 3.42 Gears and a very streetable converter. Definitely not a priority drag car.

with a 4.310 bore and 510 cubes I'm guessing its some kind of offset ground (2.200 BBC journal) factory Cast 455 crank.....So keeping the revs down and the torque up makes perfect sense to me.

So Because of that, I'm thinking the "small" intake lobe is the built-in Rev limiter for the combination. Thats a LOT of lift for that short of a

Pontiacs tend to like wider Lobe Separation angles and the cam in fairly late compared to a BB Mopar, I never understood exactly why,

That's got to be some killer ramp on the camshaft no?

Yup.

They are available with several different cnc porting options.

Something ain't geeing and hawing with that combo. Of course there are "Happy" dynos and "Stingy" dynos. But those numbers seem about 25hp/tq low to me. When Dwayne an I talked about my cam for my LD512 build. We knew we were going for a street specific grind. And when it was all said an done. Even at .575 lift similar duration on a 112 sep SFT cam. It made 640hp670tq @ 5800 with a 850 carb with 10.25 comp and was a point fat on top. I remember the shop dyno guy asking me about my combo. I told him and he said that should make a nice 575hp grocery getter. I remember thinking if it only makes 575 i'll puke. He through the lever and looked at me and said damn.

Maybe there was a misprint in the article's title and is was supposed to say "510-Inch Monster Pontiac Engine ONLY Makes 650 HP on the Dyno!"

I looked at those headers and think the boat application makes sense, too

And, boy, does that carb booster look a bit Rube Goldberg

Westechs dyno is generally seen as being a very happy one FWIW....Never seen anything off of it that performed anywhere near the numbers it spits out

Yeah Westech has always been considered to have a very happy dyno. Steve Brule seems like a very sharp guy with tons and tons of experience so I don't know why their dyno would be happy. If anything, I'd think that he would take extra care to keep it calibrated since he has such a high profile. But I've heard for years that the dyno is happy and that the numbers don't match how the car does at the track. Kind of a mystery to me.

Don't mention that to Steve Dulcich or he'll get mad, lol. I remember years ago there was a discussion about one of Dulcich's builds and that dyno's numbers were brought into question. Steve wasn't very happy about it.

Let me follow up by saying that I like Steve Dulcich and love watching his shows, just not a fan of the inflated numbers they published on some builds.

As others have mentioned, it could be going into a boat.
I can say that I personally know 3 different guys local to me that had Kauffman build their Pontiac engines and they were all quick, 9 second N/A cars.

I'd imagine the client has asked for the best of everything with a modest HP requirement, it seems to be the most logical explanation? Or a build to grow in to?

Could be the case or the engine builder knew it was going in a boat that was going to be driven hard so he opened the checkbook for all the good stuff. I've seen customers spend $30 to $40K for a street car engine. Doesn't happen often, maybe once a year. Have a 428CJ in the shop right now where the owner is going to spend $40K on the engine just because he wants the best of everything. It probably won't make more than 600 hp when finished but it will last forever.

My take on why its a happy dyno is just what you posted here. Its the dyno of choice for magazine write ups and youtube experts....They like/NEED those inflated numbers for thier viewers who dont understand and for the companies who products they are pimping.

Not long after the year the Moparts sponsored entry competed in the EM competition, it was announced that the on site barometer at Westech was “off”, and that with that corrected…….the results were on the order of 5% lower.

The year we competed, the preliminary testing was done at 3 separate locations…..Westech being one of them.
The top 3 from each location would then have a shootout at Westech to determine the winner.

Some of the entries from the other two locations saw big gains on the Westech dyno.

There was an “official” explanation that involved some oddball weather anomaly, blah blah blah.
Then at some point after that the barometer story came out.

My recollection is that after the barometer story………the numbers did seem less ridiculous.
There was a time when I remember reading stuff in magazines and on line of engines being tested at Westech and feeling like the results they were reporting seemed so high it was insulting.

Again, I'll bet that's a Cast crank, and it's why he's not got a big cam in it....he's just not chasing High RPM Horsepower.

BTW...455 Pontiacs also have HUGE 3.25" Diameter main bearings, combine the long stroke/piston speed with oil that has to flow over 10" just to travel 360 degrees across each journal.

And even the 350 has a 3" main, Probably why there were never too many 350 Pontiacs in Comp Eliminator!

Aftermarket Pontiac blocks usually have smaller mains. I bet the aluminum block in this article was a 3 inch main. The crank was probably forged given the other parts used in the build. Multiple vendors offer forged stroker cranks for Pontiac blocks, especially in the 3 inch main size.