Building a 1100+ Horsepower Jon Kaase Big Block Ford - Engine Power S6, E5

It's a good time to be a reducer for the weekend. 1,000

horse

power

was once a dream, but today, on

engine

power

, John Kaase has invited us into his shop, where we're

building

a high-

horsepower

bolt-on big-

block

Ford using his latest model. cylinder head, produces more than a thousand horsepower and you can build one in your garage at home. This modest

building

looks like any other you might find in a light industrial park, but beyond this shop, one of the world's best

engine

manufacturers and his team are researching and creating cutting-edge power plants that master several forms of races and they called us to come here to the store because they prepared something spicy for us to work on, let's take a look last time we were here, we did the Bigfoot project was extremely fun, so we are here, there are a lot of new things, starting with one of your famous creations, but it's a 1958 Edsel engine, it's a little old, they call it Mal, it has some special things. done in the chambers and the chambers extend down with these big brass things, but it's a 1958 model, 60 years old, with black heads and color, and it makes almost 900 horsepower if you rev ​​it high, you know it's completely incredible and you get a lot of interesting things.

You have engines that run well like everywhere in the world they really don't run well. This is a crate engine that we just finished for a guy who goes to Australia on a tram. It has all the accessories and stuff. I have air conditioning but 880 horsepower, it's a small nice ride at night from the street boss, you know, and this would be more of a drag racing engine, but it has the new sr-71 heads, it would probably make around 1200, ok. Wow, yes, boat engines, lots of boat engines. those two go to the same boat to boat race book that is in Trinidad Trinidad now you don't see many boats with the

block

signs we built them just for him and we dressed them all and filled the boat, it's a 95 mile per hour boat always In one of those class offerings yes, today it is a world-class engine builder that has won dozens of championships and awards across the racing spectrum in big-block Ford circles.

He's considered royalty, but this soft-spoken guru started out like many other teen outfits. heads who go drag racing and build racing engines after earning a degree in mechanical engineering. John worked three years for one of his early mentors, Dino Don Nicholson, in 1979 he opened his own Kazi racing engine shop and on rented property built the existing shop in 1998. For over a decade the p51 cylinder head has powered engines big-block Ford racing cars everywhere and now there's a newer, more refined option, the SR-71. He may notice that his heads are named after legendary airplanes, one of his passions.

Well, I always liked it. You respectfully know the planes of World War II. I've actually flown on a P-51 and some of those older airplanes and you know if I wasn't doing this I'd be working on those little airplanes believe me trying to decide between the p-51 and the sr-71 the p- 51 is still a big head but the sr-71 is a little bigger in the right places and a little better at upper RPMs in a ditch, better with a larger cubic inch motor the sr -71 hits the John's facilities already cast but needs final machining. They recently installed a five-axis CNC machining center.

This state-of-the-art equipment allows them to accurately and quickly machine heads to the exact specifications of the five-axis market CNC programming. It's always been very intriguing to me, well, what this allows us to do is just bring in a five-axis and we also have a four-axis and a three-axis to move into other avenues of manufacturing. Kazi has entered marine engine development and with great success with characteristic humility, he admits a little concern upon entering. I hardly knew if we were up to the task. It's tough, it's a tough race, but we met up with a Geico sponsored group and when we ran into those guys. it was like a natural fit you know they needed a good engine job and we were almost starting for top team and boat racing so you know we started at the top since we joined the Miss Geico racing team in 2015.

John has provided powerful and reliable power. engines that have led to multiple wins in class one, which is a limitless division when talking about his success. John is modest instead of saying I, he says we, he refers to a team of dedicated engine builders working in the shop. His philosophy is simple but profound. It is that simple. You try to treat everyone right, you know, and we try to be a little humble, we do that when we win a lot of races and stuff, but you can be right in a dumpster next week, so you know, you learn to be humble. if you know try to figure out if you're on top it won't be forever next build starts with a solid foundation

ford

performance a big block 460 you should do this with a small block chevy we're back in the assembly room I'm here quietly and I'm with Chuck Laurence Chuck is going to put together the bullet that we'll run later, so Chuck tells me a little bit about what the cubic inch of this is, what a diameter of 600 is and a four and a. half stroke, so it's going to be 598 cubic inches, okay, very good, now I see we already have some bearings in place and we're going to check the bearing clearance here in the last row on something like this, what would you like to see? ? bearing clearance my engines are going to put out this kind of power and this kind of abuse, you know, just over three, you know, three and a half thousand, somewhere in that range of four, we're aiming right and as far as components Yes, we have a good crank.

Then you will see that all the tolerances depend on the parts you are going to use. You never know, some of them are bigger and smaller than others, so we have bearing options, you know, to try to make up the difference. It's good, very good. uh let's see what this front has and we'll go from there. We usually start the crank hard, so this was a POW underneath, it gives us a little bit of room, we like to set the meter to the brand we check it with that way. We're dead, yeah, dead, so we're going to check them out, so we've got about three and a half thousand, that's perfect for a racing engine, it'll run it that hard, looks good to me, with all the bearings checked and completely lubricated, a 1 made to measure.

The rear main seal piece is prepared for installation by cutting it at the marked location. You'll have to do this with a small block Chevy that's slippery right there. I always feel better about an engine when the crank goes in and works at work, yes. These blocks will have a lot of power. I've built almost 4000 with some turbo engines that really hold up well. Oh, my next Chuck gently adjusts the main caps before tightening them. Well, what were we talking about here? One hundred foot-pounds. Tell me a little about the rod and piston assembly that you were using the Rth Allen beam rod.

It's a Chevrolet rod. We use a Chevy 2200 journal and a 990 pen. A diamond piston. These are coated and help a little with power. with gas port, it's a pretty serious piece for what we're doing here and of course you'll see it's a flat top, mm-hmm, it gets a good flame path without a dome compared to some of the other brands like I'll Pro, I'll put spiral locks on my fingers. There's a lot here now, tell me about the ring. Go for our total seal rings, we even have an idea here, but I'll use a c33 stainless steel top ring for that kind of power level.

It is maintained very well. Oh, 43 thick, we use a second Napier caste ring. Napier does a very good job of cleaning them and keeping them dry, oil control, yes, and then we use a three millimeter oil ring, how long have you been building engines? Chuck, since I was 15, in fact, the first engine building job I ever had was for John Deere, okay? heavy equipment, many of us engine builders all start out doing the same type of things. I start with the bill and two and a half horses to get to Detroit and everything else, you know, I had nothing. to do with careers and getting a job here and being around Kazi and sometimes it's fun just sharing ideas with him mm-hmm and you know he might not say anything just look at you a month later he'll be back you know?

Are you on to something or do you know we have to do this with that? You know I like the ER or he'll just tell you not to mess with it, we'll talk about the 75 lb-ft garage and with that the pistons are going up, the big block gets a top-notch top end, then let's go looking for horsepower in the Dino Sal with the pistons installed, the big block Ford is ready for a camshaft, this custom ground solid roller is competition with great lift and duration is designed to generate power between five and seven thousand rpm the Timing set comes from West Innovators It is made 100% in-house with precision CNC equipment The front cover is billet aluminum and the set features anodized pulleys The belt drive set provides fully adjustable cam timing in precise increments The damper is also from the innovators West is a billet part with full 360 degree timing marks like any good engine builder Chuck always grades the cam the oil pump has a cozy zone design after years of breaking down original pumps Kazi designed this with a more robust mounting boss to prevent the pump from breaking off the block during extreme use Proper oil pan clearance is sometimes overlooked when building an engine mandrel, however, it uses precise measurements to set the truck perfectly.

I'd like to have it around 180 to 200k check your max that way it can't suck towards the bottom of the panel and when the oil thins out at higher rpm you know we want to keep it submerged in oil the oil pan itself is an aluminum design manufactured by Stef created to fit. Next up from fox bodied Ford are the massive 960 diameter AARP head bolts and a set of mechanical roller lifters and now the signature piece of the build is a set of sr71 cylinder heads with ease, they have a 70 chamber CC along with deeper intake and exhaust bowls.

Kazi refers. to these heads as ported as cast, meaning the heads are full as ported without the need for additional work, the valve seat guides and rocker stud bosses are built to handle high horsepower operations, the heads are blowing at 130 pounds each, which is demanding in terms of upward direction. boom Oh less, yes, I have to have every right and follow the same path myself. I don't know, it's the people who are dumber than the engine or cylinder head manufacturers. Porter is fine once he has them organized. Chuck drops the pushrods that top off the The valvetrain has a 1.73 ratio.

Steel rocker arms called flanges are set at 18,000 on both the intake and exhaust. What you have with us, Sarah, we have a built-in spacer that we have to use since the collector went up to the China wall, whatever you want to refer to. and on the SVO block they have holes for pins, drill them, they are not threaded so we can drill them, thread them, screw them in and they stay in place for you. A strip of silicone seals in the block, next to a dominating flange, a single-plane intake manifold. From Trick Flow, a blocked MSD Pro Billet distributor will handle engine ignition.

Shops often keep a dedicated carburetor for use on the dyno. It's just one less variable to take into account when testing a new engine. This is fast fuel. touches and this engine is complete okay everything went well and it was slippery and what's next Dino Dino let's do some hot water with it uh let's do it next it all comes down to this we're at Kazi Racing Engines in Winder Georgia getting ready the big block Ford in the dyno cell We recently built a big block Chevy in our engine shop and since the specs are pretty similar we thought it would be fun to compare the results just out of curiosity, of course the Chevy has 632 cubic inches with a bore of four hundred six hundred and a stroke of 4750, the compression ratio is fifteen point zero three to one on our best dyno from 5500 to 7500 rpm we generated 1022 horsepower and 821 pound-feet of torque , but engine manufacturers thrive on competition, so when we shared the numbers with the Cozzi team, they took it as a challenge from the get-go, their engine performed very well using their daily dyno, but to maximize the numbers They put a racing carburetorFull tilt with motor marked.

After a couple of warm ups we are ready for the first set of records, this is my favorite part and I always say this because while it's true, oh yeah, okay, first come on, it's 1099. on the first pole, that's it which makes me a little sad because my 632, which is 34 inches larger, still has power, but you want to do another pull to see if you get to 1,100. I mean, it's so close it's scary, but man. That's amazing, how long using this at 28 degrees, yeah, well, that 1108 1108 oh, that one no, that's good, that's amazing and we have one thousand one hundred eight horses 933 in 5900 and this thing, look, how many

1100

are are they printing? from 6600, I mean, always 7200, it's printing more than 11, it's, okay, demand, amazing man, good job, guys, you have them happy, yes sir, absolutely good job, amazing.

Kazi and his talented team rose to the occasion and barely edged out our big block. Chevy, but honestly you can't go wrong with either one, you get four digit horsepower in a packaged engine you can build in your own garage. We really enjoyed our visit to Kazi Racing Engines. We built an engine that makes great power and I got to spend time with a team that really loves the work it does. You know, succeed in making them work well, making them laugh, but every time you do it, you learn something. What we do is make things better.

Oh, that's really what it comes down to getting things done. we fit in we make things better and everyone's personality hears you look at something you say hey this is cool we're going to work on it we're going to make it better For more information on anything you've seen on today's show, head over to powernation tv.com as already you know, on the conventional head with a normal 460 valve location. You know, when the air runs through the port, that 400 mile per hour air and fuel we're talking about has to come out. This little window right here and with the valve pretty close to the cylinder wall, the more it opens, the closer it gets.

That window is pretty small and you have no choice but with this new typical course to dump that fuel directly into the cylinder. they obstruct the heavy part of the flow and that's why on these heads in the response there's so many when we move the valves back like this they're almost a half inch into the chamber so this area here has a lot of room to make that turn a little more clearance towards the cylinder wall makes a big difference in power now that we have some things cut here in destructive testing it's part of the learning but it's a little bit of a pain to put something on the band saw, it I know, but I say it.

To me, what you have here is a conventional regular quart size head. Actually, when you break it down, a fifth grade class could tell you that if you have a bigger engine, you know, and you're trying to make more power, you're going to have to move more air into it, the evolution of these headers has grown. at this size now. I don't think there's anything that comes close to this size as far as a conventional 460 head goes, but it's big here, the valve ball is very deep and that's going to help you make that spin, you know, on the high speed of the head.

What we're talking about now, another part, I'm not going to say, that is overlooked but neglected when making one of these headers is the exhaust side, tell me about this one, well, what we did was we stuck to Ford's exact print for the gasket, so it's not necessarily bigger, but some of these people who make aftermarket heads end up making their batches a little smaller because they flow better that way, but what we want is a port that flows well, is big enough to handle cubic inches and fits in a car, you know, if you start moving the bolts and move the piece up and all that, it doesn't fit in an old style car chassis nor anything that can buy heads. because these heads have the exact same location as a stockport bolt that holds the whole thing, but they are not exactly larger than a factory original iron Super Cobra jet head they will run out of joint size so people tend to take them and just fill them. it's a lot of the port up and it will flow a little better.

It also hurts between 30 and 50 horsepower, so we don't care as much about airflow as what the needle on the dyno says. you know we've been through all this and we know that if you make this port small in the right area it will flow better and generate less power. John Owen, thanks for inviting us to talk about airflow, science and engine building, it's very much appreciated thanks later here