CNC Porting IS NOT All It's Hyped Up To Be! #shorts

While you might be able to get away with a little sloppiness when building an engine for a street car, that’s not going to fly when it comes to dedicated race engines. In this episode, we sit down with Tom Hughes from @hughesraceengineering5262 to discuss exactly why that is, how we can ensure we’re building our engines right, what makes a great naturally aspirated race engine build, and much more.

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The conversation this week kicks off with Tom’s background and journey towards owning and operating his own high-end engine building business. Tom went through the apprenticeship route, first starting out learning the trade at a reputable race engine builder, before pivoting towards rocketry of all things.

After a few years spent building engines for @RocketLabNZ Tom decided to put the house up for sale and bet it all on what would become Hughes Race Engineering, which focuses on high-end race engine builds. While the business spends plenty of time building monster RB26s, 3S-GEs, and even GR Yaris G16E-GTSs, Tom’s speciality is Toyota’s venerable 1UZ-FE quad cam V8. These four-litre alloy V8s have long been used in the popular speedway scene in New Zealand, and Tom is a wizard when it comes to squeezing big power out of them, all while sticking within the restrictive Super Stock class rules.

These engines are covered in great detail in this conversation, as is a wider discussion around what needs to be done in order to build dependable, high-revving, naturally aspirated engines that can’t hide any shortcomings behind a wall of boost. There’s also plenty of talk in this episode around tolerances, flow numbers, when to outsource parts of your process, and much more — so if you’re even remotely interested in engine building or starting a business in the industry, this one is well worth your time.

#hughesraceengineering #speedway #superstock #1uz #1uzfe #highperformanceacademy #motorsport #enginebuilding #rb26 #learntotune #enginebuilding101

[corbbinrabus]

This almost sounded like someone had it out for CNC 😅. It’s always fun to use what we can in the best of ways.

[hughobrien]

Finally getting to do some port work on some 823 LS castings.
Still much to learn but the first flow test went very well on the intake side.
The exhaust side……not so much especially for the amount of work I put into them.
91% throat diameter works well on the intake side. I don’t think I’m going to bore the exhaust throat. That’s always been dicey and I think it puts you into a bad position on the long side of the port leading into the valve seat.
The LS 3 head came out right as I was making a career change into another field.
The first time I was able to get hands on one it went in the flow bench and it flowed every bit as good as it looked.
I’m good mid lift up to .765” with a 50 degree valve job. On a 4.155” bore. Just need to work some back cuts and maybe a too cut on the seat. Then I’ll do another until I get it as right as I can.
Then off to be digitized.

[bluesky-udwg]

Uh, you are so wrong. I'm sure you believe conventional oil is as good as synthetic huh??