This episode of Engine Masters presented by AMSOIL reinforces the fact that Steve Dulcich is not just the guy in the back of the dyno room—he’s a legit engine master. And you won’t question that after you see his homegrown porting job on a set of Edelbrock aluminum cylinder heads for a small-block Mopar pick up a whopping 92 hp! To be fair
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MotorTranscript
00:00 This time on Engine Masters, we're gonna find out
00:02 how Steve Dulcich home ported a set of cylinder heads
00:05 to make big, stinky power for free.
00:08 (engine revving)
00:13 (engine revving)
00:18 (upbeat music)
00:25 (upbeat music)
00:27 This is Engine Masters, presented by AMSOIL
00:33 and sponsored by Mr. Gasket and Earl's Vapor Guard Plumbing.
00:37 Now this time, it's gonna be pretty interesting
00:39 because we're gonna take an engine
00:41 and we're not gonna change any parts on it.
00:44 But what we are gonna do is completely hog out
00:47 and port the intake manifold and the cylinder heads
00:50 and find out how much more power we make
00:52 with just a little bit of elbow grease.
00:54 Now this engine should be familiar
00:56 if you're a fan of Engine Masters.
00:57 It's the same one that we did in that
00:59 Ford versus Mopar Stroker shootout episode a while back.
01:03 And you'll remember in that episode,
01:04 we complained a lot about the fact that
01:06 the Mopar here lost that competition
01:09 basically because the cylinder heads don't flow very well
01:12 for an engine at 410 cubic inches.
01:15 So we're out to solve that.
01:17 Now what this is, is a long block from Blueprint Engines.
01:21 You can buy it for about 5,300 bucks
01:23 and it comes with a front cover and an oil pan
01:25 and a camshaft, pretty good deal.
01:28 The camshaft that's in it is a hydraulic flat tappet.
01:31 It's 241/247 at 50,000's tappet lift.
01:34 That means that is a pretty big
01:37 hydraulic flat tappet camshaft.
01:39 This thing should RPM, but it doesn't
01:42 because it doesn't flow much air.
01:43 These are an out of the box Edelbrock cylinder head.
01:46 Now Edelbrock has recently introduced a Victor head
01:49 that is much more bitchin' than these.
01:52 But what we're gonna show you here
01:53 is how Dulcich took a set of these heads
01:56 and made 'em better just with a little bit of hand work.
01:59 Now what's different since the last time
02:01 we ran this engine is two things.
02:03 First, the rocker arm ratio in here.
02:05 We've changed it to a 1.6 to one ratio roller rocker
02:09 so it's got a little bit more lift.
02:10 It used to have 1.5 to one which is stock.
02:13 Also, when we ran this before,
02:15 it had a dual plane intake manifold
02:17 which favors low end torque.
02:19 We've now got a big ol' super Victor single plane on it
02:22 that is probably gonna run pretty bad
02:25 and kill a lot of low end torque
02:27 compared to the last time we ran this engine.
02:29 But the whole point is, it's gonna be a scientific AB test
02:32 of the exact same components before and after home porting.
02:37 So now let's go hang a thing on the dyno,
02:38 pour some oil in it, we're gonna fire it up,
02:40 see how bad we killed the torque curve
02:41 with this intake manifold before we make it
02:43 heroically better with a bunch of ported parts.
02:46 My prediction is that when we swap to this intake manifold,
02:49 we probably killed a whole lot of torque
02:51 and it's probably not gonna make any more horsepower
02:54 and it's probably not gonna make any more RPM.
02:56 So this thing's basically still a tame street engine
02:58 but when we put the ported stuff on there,
03:01 I'm hoping this thing will scream.
03:03 And because of that, we're gonna use
03:05 the Dominator Racing Oil.
03:07 We're gonna throw the 10-30 in this thing.
03:09 This is what AMSOIL has recommended to us for this engine.
03:14 Even though we've had the premium protection in it before,
03:16 we're trying to step it up a little bit.
03:18 Oh, check this out.
03:19 See this white stuff that just came off
03:21 of the valve cover grommet?
03:24 That might freak you out because it looks like
03:25 the kind of milkshake that happens
03:27 when you get water in oil.
03:29 But we often see that on the dyno,
03:31 we get a little bit of condensation in here
03:32 when it's cold in the morning and stuff
03:34 and it just sort of burns off.
03:37 Let the AMSOIL do the lube and not the coolant.
03:40 The long pour is back.
03:43 I've still got it.
03:44 Oh, I failed.
03:46 I failed worse than ever.
03:48 The reason that we've got this mishmash of components
03:55 is that we wanted a clean A/B test
03:58 to compare with the ported intake and heads
04:00 that Dulcich has.
04:02 And that's what he used as an Edelbrock Super Victor
04:05 big single plane.
04:06 - Yeah, that's the match set.
04:07 So we had to make this same component setup, right?
04:11 - So this is gonna be humiliating, but run it.
04:14 - I bet you it'll still make more top end power
04:15 than it did before.
04:17 - I don't think so.
04:18 I think the head is a limiting factor.
04:19 - Sometimes when you saturated the head,
04:21 that's just all you get.
04:23 Can't get there from here.
04:24 You don't make one side any better,
04:26 you make the other side a lot worse.
04:29 - It's like taking the freeway
04:30 and necking it down to one lane.
04:33 That's what that solder head's doing.
04:36 Got the coolant up to temp, oil's hot.
04:38 - Ready?
04:39 - Let it rip.
04:40 - Here we go.
04:42 (engine revving)
04:44 - What'd you see, Dulcich?
05:08 - 440 horsepower.
05:10 - Okay, so that's up five.
05:13 But wait till you see the torque.
05:15 - 448 pound feet out of a 408 inch motor.
05:18 - That's not very good torque.
05:20 - Let's see what we got.
05:22 Not even a very pretty curve.
05:24 And that's valve float.
05:26 - It's in some sort of distress.
05:27 It hasn't completely crashed yet,
05:29 but it's not happy there.
05:30 - What we just saw is that it made 438.7 horsepower
05:33 at 5,500 RPM and 448.2 pound feet of torque at 4,700.
05:39 Just out of curiosity,
05:41 I've got to see this curve laid over the one
05:44 from the earlier episode
05:45 where we had the dual plane intake manifold.
05:47 - And the survey says.
05:49 - Oh!
05:50 - So this is horrible and what we predicted.
05:55 The red line is the prior test
05:58 with a dual plane intake manifold.
05:59 This black line is the single plane we've got on it now.
06:03 You can see that big, tall race manifold killed
06:06 all of the torque and power in the world.
06:11 The real question to me is when we get more air flow
06:14 through it, are we going to take the RPM points
06:17 at peak power and move them up?
06:19 And do you think that the torque will stay at the same RPM
06:23 and that the horsepower will be at a higher RPM?
06:26 - I think it can shift the whole thing up a bit
06:27 with the ported head, larger head.
06:29 And when I said a bigger head or bigger intake,
06:32 it really is.
06:33 We're probably going to see some torque improvement
06:35 because it's an improved cylinder head,
06:37 not necessarily just bigger.
06:38 - Either that or you completely screwed it up
06:40 and it's going to be a disaster.
06:41 - It might be.
06:42 You all know why.
06:43 - Why?
06:44 - Because with that setup, you're depending on a higher RPM
06:47 to make the additional power.
06:48 - And your valve train might not hold it together.
06:50 - Well, it's not the valve train.
06:51 It's the hydraulic lifter cam.
06:53 When you do a really high RPM motor, what do you want?
06:55 You want a solid roller or you want a really, really good.
06:59 - At least a solid flat tap.
07:00 - Hydraulic or you want a solid flat tap it.
07:02 - And this is a hydraulic flat tap.
07:03 - Engine speed's the key to the upgrade
07:06 in cylinder heads and intake.
07:08 So we're going to have to-
07:09 - Less talking, more ported heads being installed.
07:12 - Yeah, let's go.
07:13 - Yeah.
07:14 - I'm hedging.
07:15 - It's a turn.
07:15 - Am I making excuses here?
07:17 - Now we're going to get into
07:18 the cylinder head porting goodness.
07:20 But first we were talking so much
07:21 about the torque curve in there,
07:22 about how much better this engine was
07:24 before we put the big single plane intake manifold.
07:27 - And killed all the torque.
07:28 - Killed all the power.
07:29 I just wanted to show people,
07:30 this is the manifold we had on that engine before.
07:34 It's a dual plane.
07:35 It has longer runners.
07:36 These things clearly make way more torque
07:39 than the race type single plane intake manifold.
07:42 But what we're really after here
07:44 is looking at how much we can improve those parts
07:46 that we just had on the engine.
07:47 So we're not changing anything.
07:49 We're just modifying the intake manifold
07:51 and cylinder heads that we just ran in that dyno test.
07:54 Now cylinder head porting or intake manifold porting
07:58 is just going in here, reshaping, restyling,
08:01 usually enlarging the runners
08:04 that delivered the air and fuel into the engine.
08:07 'Cause the more air and fuel you can get in there,
08:08 the more power you make.
08:09 So Steve probably spent about a week and a half of his life
08:13 and bice on this intake manifold.
08:15 Steve didn't do this one.
08:16 He did the heads.
08:18 With what's called a die grinder,
08:19 and you can get stones for them,
08:21 or cutters, or sandpaper rolls,
08:24 and go in there and just really carefully
08:26 reshape all of this stuff.
08:27 The intake manifold has just enlargement,
08:30 or do you think there's other modifications?
08:31 These knife-edged some of the port transitions and stuff.
08:33 - Yeah, there's a lot more to it
08:35 than you can tell just by a casual look.
08:38 But really you quantify how good you're doing
08:40 by testing on a flow bench,
08:41 like at the back of this shop right here.
08:43 - Or a dyno.
08:44 - Yeah, or a dyno, even better.
08:46 But that tells you if this thing is actually flowing
08:49 more air than when you started.
08:51 - So that's it with the intake manifold.
08:52 Now moving on to the cylinder heads,
08:54 these are not only ported,
08:56 but Steve also did a trick
08:58 to make the port window larger.
09:01 What'd you do?
09:02 - Well, the thing is, with any inline valve engine,
09:04 the pushrod's gonna present a restriction
09:06 to the intake port width,
09:07 because it pretty much cuts through
09:09 in the casting right where the ports are.
09:12 So you can't go any wider than that,
09:13 unless you move the pushrod out of the way.
09:16 And actually, Chrysler started doing this back in the '70s
09:20 on their race heads, like the W2,
09:21 and that's what I patterned this after,
09:24 and I refilled out the original pushrod hole,
09:26 moved it over to the W2 location,
09:29 allowing a much wider port,
09:32 and a bigger port, and a higher flowing port.
09:34 - So you can really see the difference
09:35 in the port size on those things.
09:37 And what's neat is he did all of this at home.
09:40 This is taking the same exact parts
09:42 that we just dyno tested and hopping 'em up.
09:44 I like that you made this epoxy matrix
09:47 of aluminum shavings and JB weld to fill the old holes,
09:51 and then he made a fixture to drill a new pushrod hole,
09:55 and also put a larger intake valve.
09:57 It's 208 instead of 202,
09:59 and he ported the exhaust side as well.
10:01 So the thing is, you can buy an aftermarket head
10:04 that has this type of modification already done to it.
10:07 Edelbrock's got a new Victor series head
10:09 that's done this way.
10:10 Indy sells a bunch of 'em. - Yeah, Indy.
10:12 - The ancient Mopar Performance W2, W5 heads
10:15 are the same way. - Right.
10:17 - But this is what Steve did basically
10:19 just with elbow grease and ingenuity
10:21 and a lot of time.
10:23 So it shows you what you can actually accomplish
10:25 in your own garage if you put the time and skill into it.
10:29 - Yeah, plus I already had the head,
10:30 so just a little grinder work
10:32 and hopefully it'll make more horsepower.
10:34 Don't know about that yet.
10:35 - Free is better than good?
10:36 Is that what you were thinking?
10:37 - Yeah.
10:38 - So that's a whole lot of work
10:40 if it doesn't make more power.
10:41 So we're gonna go bolt it all on and find out.
10:44 - My anxiety level is through the freaking roof.
10:46 - I know, it's, he always gets so worked up.
10:49 So what's happening now is because he's enlarged
10:52 the port so much and they don't make an aftermarket gasket,
10:56 he's gonna take a stock gasket and port it
10:59 so that it fits these. - That's right.
11:02 - This is not normal procedure for intake manifold gasket.
11:05 He's doing this so that he can affix it to the head,
11:08 which will make it easier to hack.
11:11 The other thing Steve didn't show you before
11:12 is that this intake manifold bolt also had to be moved
11:15 because when it's over here,
11:17 it goes into the pushrod hole, right?
11:19 - Right.
11:20 - Or it would have gone into it
11:21 after you moved the pushrod hole,
11:22 so he had to move the intake manifold bolt over as well.
11:25 That's the type of stuff when you're really going all out
11:28 with backyard hot rodding,
11:29 you sometimes have a domino effect of stuff you need to do.
11:33 - But that's the way it used to be done back in the day.
11:35 I mean, people didn't buy performance,
11:37 they'd made performance by experimenting
11:40 and cutting and changing and machining and hacking
11:43 and hot rodding, right?
11:44 - I'm thinking this episode is not so much about,
11:47 you know, hey, go hog the stuff,
11:48 but it's just an example of the mad scientist stuff
11:51 you can do in hot rodding to make stuff good.
11:54 - Who said?
11:56 (laughing)
11:57 - Oh man.
11:58 - The best thing about this test is watching him squirm.
12:00 - I know, it's not about the power.
12:01 - No, not really about that.
12:03 - I feel like a hog on its way to slaughter.
12:06 (laughing)
12:07 - So I think we all agree
12:09 this is gonna make more horsepower, right?
12:11 It can't not.
12:12 - As long as we have some engine speed.
12:13 - The problem is we discovered out there
12:14 that the lifters bleed down really easily.
12:18 Brulé was lashing the valves and you could just
12:21 collapse the lifters like with one finger.
12:23 - Yeah, it's a little scary,
12:24 even with the good springs and lighter retainers and stuff.
12:27 - We about there?
12:28 You wanna run it?
12:29 - We're good.
12:30 - How do you feel, Steve?
12:30 - Great.
12:32 In the words of Tony Tiger.
12:33 (engine revving)
12:36 (engine revving)
12:39 - Wow! - Bam!
13:01 Bam!
13:02 (laughing)
13:03 Dude, that was a win!
13:05 - Yeah.
13:06 - Dude!
13:07 - That's a hundred horsepower up, dude.
13:08 - A hundred horsepower gain!
13:11 Let's look at the actual numbers,
13:12 but it's somewhere around there.
13:13 So our final number, 530.8 horsepower at 6,400 RPM
13:18 and the torque peak, 488 pound feet at 5,200.
13:24 And again, if we go down here at 3,800,
13:27 which is where it peaked with the old cylinder heads,
13:31 it's still right there within five numbers.
13:34 So the overlay tells you that this is absolutely worthwhile
13:39 and Dulcich looks like a superhero.
13:41 - Will you port heads for me?
13:42 - I don't really port heads for anybody
13:44 except Fryburgers and things.
13:45 (laughing)
13:46 And my stuff.
13:47 - What was your mobile number?
13:49 - Wow!
13:50 Okay, well let's go wrap up this show
13:52 and make you look like a superhero.
13:53 - I'm already feeling pretty happy.
13:55 - He is a superhero.
13:56 - Oh, brulee, thanks.
13:59 - How do you feel?
14:00 - Good, I feel good because the motor's good now.
14:02 - That was great.
14:03 - I, this, legit, the biggest win
14:07 in the history of the show.
14:08 - You think so?
14:08 - Completely.
14:09 - And it could've--
14:10 - Because 92 horsepower with nothing but manual labor
14:14 and it took this engine that was making like 435
14:17 and turned it into, what did it make, 539 or something?
14:20 - Yeah, something like that, it was pretty good.
14:22 - And you did it.
14:24 - Oh, dude.
14:25 - That's what makes it really cool.
14:26 - It wasn't all me.
14:26 My buddy, Bryce Mulvey, he did the intake manifold.
14:29 - Yeah.
14:30 - And he did do the valve job
14:30 and a little bit of tuning up on my port work, but--
14:33 - But still, it just shows what's possible.
14:35 And I would like to say that anybody who's watching the show
14:38 could get the same results home porting their heads,
14:41 but that just isn't true.
14:42 It takes a lot of skill.
14:44 This isn't Steve's first set of heads.
14:45 But the lesson is buy the best cylinder heads you can.
14:49 It is completely worth it.
14:51 And there are a bunch of small block Mopar heads
14:53 on the market that can probably match or beat this.
14:56 And they're available on the Edelbrock Victor series,
14:59 which is new.
15:00 - Right.
15:01 - And Indy Cylinder Heads makes a few versions
15:03 of the same thing where the pushrods moved out of the way
15:05 and it uses different rockers and stuff.
15:07 Big stroker engine, completely worth it.
15:09 - Yeah, that's what I always say.
15:10 If you've got the cubes,
15:11 make sure you've got the air flow to feed them.
15:13 - This episode made Steve look like a superhero.
15:16 And that was really the whole point
15:18 of this episode of Engine Masters.
15:20 - Yeah.
15:21 - I wanted to test my theory of gravity.
15:26 You know, Sir Isaac Newton proved the theory of gravity
15:29 in like 1720s.
15:32 - What hits the ground faster,
15:33 an aluminum head or an iron head?
15:35 - I know which one hurts more.
15:36 (dramatic music)