1-800-551-4754 Tech Tips
Nitrous Oxide Basics
Nitrous oxide is recognized as one of the most flexible, affordable, and reliable forms of power adder that exist for automotive engines. Just about any vehicle can experience a noticeable increase in power and performance with the addition of a properly engineered nitrous oxide injection system. The most basic type...
Mopar B-Body Knuckle Interchange
Chrysler equipped Mopar B-Body cars with subpar drum and inefficient disc brakes, and therefore, one of the best ways to improve performance and safety of a B-Body car is to install later-model OEM disc brakes or aftermarket disc brakes. In order to accommodate the newer disc brakes, you often need...
Five Golden Porting Rules
To extract maximum flow and therefore maximum performance from a given set of heads, you need to recognize certain principles that affect air flow and therefore performance. If you want to get the most out of your heads, heed the following advice when porting and flow testing heads. Rule Number...
Calculating Piston Speed
Piston speed generally refers to the average or mean speed of the piston as it moves up and down in the cylinder bore during each crankshaft revolution. Since the piston actually comes to a complete stop at the top of the stroke (TDC) and at the bottom of the stroke...
Optimizing Chevy Big-Block Crankshafts
The crankshaft is the single heaviest component in an engine and it is the foundation of the reciprocating assembly–the rods and pistons. As such, you need to select the right crankshaft for your horsepower target and the application. For most max-performance engine builds, and specifically a Chevy big-block with more...
Trouble Shooting Electrical Problems
It’s an art and a science to diagnose and fix electrical problems when they arise. Obviously, electrical shorts, bad grounds, low voltage transfer, and other problems are not just functionality issues; they are safety concerns. The last problem you want to deal with is an electrical fire in your car...
Installing Compressed Air in Your Workshop
Compressed air is one of the most useful features you can put in your shop—a good air system is second only to light and heat in making your shop a more useful place. The best news is that compressed air is not expensive or difficult to install, so you should...
Dyno Testing: An Explanation of Horsepower and Torque
By Mike Petralia Even though the main goal of modifying engines is to make our cars go faster, there’s a certain pleasure to be derived from just testing engines on the dyno. I’ve learned to appreciate dyno testing much more than I do road or track testing. That’s because in...
2005 Mustang Intake & Valve Cover Swap
For some people, owning a hot rod, sports car, or muscle car is about more than just having the fastest car in town. Now I’m not talking about giving up performance for the sake of looking good, but it is possible to improve performance and appearance at the same time....
Ford 8.8 Inch Differential Gear Swap
By Travis ThompsonSwapping gears is one of the first performance upgrades recommended for a number of fast (and half-fast) cars, and for good reason—it gives you a great seat-of-the-pants improvement. Nowhere is this more true than in late-model Ford Mustangs, most of which Ford sold with 3.08:1 and 3.27:1 gears....
Dyno-Proven GM LS1 thru LS7 Performance Parts
By Richard Holdener Test 1: 5.3L Truck: NA vs. With Vortech SuperchargerBy far the best way to make a small engine feel like a big engine is with forced induction. Nothing else provides the power gains offered by a few extra pounds of boost. When you start talking about truck...
Will These Parts Void My Warranty?
By Barry Kluczyk It is one of the most contentious issues for aftermarket performance parts manufacturers and their consumers – will the new vehicle warranty be voided if non-original, non-OEM parts are installed? The short answer is a vague, “maybe.” In general, however, the simple installation of bolt-on aftermarket parts...
GM TH400 Transbrake Installation
The GM Turbo 400 has become the automatic transmission of choice for enthusiasts everywhere due to its durability and simplicity. This has also proven to be true at the dragstrips across the country, where GM Turbo 400 transmissions are common in every class and in all types of drag cars...
How to Install a Fox-Body Mustang Clutch
So, you’ve added new heads, the cam, you have the intake, and maybe some nitrous to top it off. But what’s the point if you’re still running your stock clutch on your Fox Body Mustang?One thing is for sure; with all that power you wont be running that stock clutch...
An Introduction to Sport Compact Cylinder Heads
If the engine block is the muscle, then it’s safe to say that the cylinder head is the brains behind the operation. This isn’t to speculate that it’s the more important component of the modern-day internal combustion engine, but it’s arguably the more complex and misunderstood of the two halves....
A Primer on Ignition Timing for your Classic Ford
The Basics of Ignition Timing Before we get into the steps involved in setting your timing, we should cover the basics of timing and the internal combustion process. That’ll help us understand what we’re trying to accomplish.The timing we’ll be covering here is your ignition timing, or spark timing. Sometimes...
Mod Motor Throttle Body & Plenum Swap
The nice thing about intake upgrades is that they’re easy to do since the whole intake system is right there on top of the engine. Most enthusiasts start with a cold-air intake, or at least a K&N filter in the stock air box. When it’s time to get serious, you...
Sport Compact Exhaust Manifolds
By the time the air and fuel mixture combusts and their waste product travels past the exhaust valves, the whole engine cycle is beginning to repeat itself once again. With this in mind, you might suspect the exhaust system is not really all that important, after all, it’s just letting...
Steps for Adjusting Valves with Hydraulic Lifters
By Bob WilsonA. If your engine is not already disassembled, remove the valve covers.B. You will need a breaker bar or a large 1/2 drive ratchet and socket to rotate your engine by hand via the bolt on the front of the crankshaft. This is much easier if the spark...
Sport Compact Valvetrains
The valves are airflow’s last obstacle on its trip into the combustion chamber and of course serve as yet another obstruction on its way out. The air enters the intake system through a filter, travels through the throttle body, into the intake manifold, into the cylinder head’s ports and then,...
Sport Compact Camshafts
Webster’s Dictionary defines the word “cam” as a disk or cylinder having an irregular form such that its motion – usually rotary – gives a rocking or reciprocating motion to any contiguous part. In other words, when rotated, a cam will impart its irregular, out-of-round or eccentric shape onto the...
Sport Compact Intake Manifolds and Throttle Bodies
While it’s the cylinder head itself that puts the introduced air to work within the engine, it’s the job of both the intake manifold and the throttle body to direct said airflow into the head as evenly dispersed as possible and to do so in a controlled fashion. The intake...
Muscle Car Handling Upgrades: Rear Suspension System
Since the focus here is on muscle cars, I only address rear suspension systems that use a solid-type rear axle. Even so, there are a lot of different types of systems. Unlike front suspensions, which basically fall into either SLA or MacPherson strut configurations (at least for our purposes), rear...
Camshafts Demystified
Camshaft Lobe Separation Angle Matters When finding the perfect cam for a street engine, Lobe Separation can help do the trick. Could you take two cams that are ground with EXACTLY the same lift and duration and still get one to make more power than the other? Of course, and...
