2024 EMPI Engine Battle - Will Our Engine Be Ready?
With some setbacks and time constraints, our engine build has been delayed. Sam gives us an update on whether it will be done in time for EMPI's 2024 Engine Battle.
by JBugs
Watch Sam's update on our 2234cc engine build for EMPI's 2024 Engine Battle.
Yes, we could have started a little (or a lot!) sooner but we let the time get away from us with other projects, thinking that we would have enough time. Unfortunately we had an employee that was out unexpectedly which required some shifts in responsibilities. As we are first and foremost an e-commerce business, our customers phone calls, questions and orders take priority! So, Sam had to stop building and filming to give a hand to our tech department which is why you may have heard him picking up your phone call. The engine is still a priority though, just not the main priority so, we’ll see what we can do to still get this high performance engine built, and have it ready to run at EMPI's 2024 Engine Battle on June 11th, 2024.
Video Transcript
All right, guys, I'm back. I'm doing all I can. I'm down to the wire, and I just got one more bombshell dropped on me.
One of our main tech guys on our phone lines is out indefinitely, so I've got to pick up the slack for him or at least help pick up the slack for him on our phone lines. At the end of the day, your phone calls and your support for us as a business is why I can do these videos. It's twofold: obviously, these videos help you, but most importantly, if you guys aren't calling in, buying, and getting help when you call in, I can't continue to do these videos.
At this point, I may not have an engine to go to EMPI's engine battle with, which is going to be a shame, but that's just the reality of it. I'm going to be doing all I can, staying late, and working as hard as I can to try and get this done. Along those lines, I may not be videotaping all of this simply because of the time constraints of trying to have an engine at EMP on June 11th through the 13th, up until their open house. It is what it is. I'm going to try all I can to make sure I have an engine there. Whether or not I film it all, I'm going to try to. Whether or not it's worth watching, I don't know. Obviously, I can set up a camera and just have it rolling while I'm doing all this stuff, but I like to be able to at least put some personality into the video, which I may not have an opportunity to do.
At this point, again, I've got the engine case back. It's opened up for our 92 mm thick wall pistons and cylinders, thanks to Don's. The guys down there are super friendly, super helpful, and super quick with the turnaround. They cut my case open, and I had my cylinder head fly cut to lower the amount of ccs to bump up the compression ratio for more performance. That's going to create other headaches that, again, due to my time constraints, I may not be able to overcome and actually have this engine running safely for EMPI's engine battle, but I'm going to try.
The cylinder fit is awesome. I need to go through and make sure that all of our lifters fit smoothly, our cam drive gear fits smoothly, and I need to get the thrust set on our cam bearing. Then, I need to rinse out this case and all the other parts, and then I can start putting the short block together. Then, I can start setting the rocker geometry, which again, because of the lift of this camshaft, I might have to notch these pistons. We'll see how it goes, guys.