DYNO / ENGINES
The team has been bringing its engines to Vrbancic Brothers Racing for many years. Any time there’s a rebuild or a new engine combination, the engines make a trip to Vrbancic’s for breaking in or tuning on its engine dyno. This saves a lot of manpower to install an engine in the car only to find out there’s something wrong with it or the tuning is off. Doing this saves time, money, and effort.
Even though Larry has retired from his days of performance engine machining and building, he’s still services Big Red’s engines for Dan and RJ. He doesn’t just build them; he works on them from initial fire up, break in, dyno tuning, and engine mechanicals at the events.
Brian Macy, from The EFI Store, was added to the regular faces appearing at dyno sessions and Big Red racing events. Photos start out with the earliest images of Big Red’s first 555 big block being tested at Vrbancic Brothers Racing. The 555 was built specifically for running Pikes Peak. It’s easy to spot with the Hogan’s sheetmetal intake and Holley throttle body. For hood-clearance issues, the guys
switched to a modified Edelbrock intake topped with a low-profile Accufab throttle body. All of the electronics used for the 555 were staged on a piece of plywood and connected during the dyno sessions. This is the best way to prove that everything is working together correctly out of the car so it runs the same once it’s loaded into Big Red.
Just like every other engine, the ProCharged 598 also was completely assembled and placed on a stand for dyno testing. This trip to the dyno shows the first time the Big Red and Vrbancic crews worked together with Eric Rhee. He’s familiar with the engine setups because he tests and tunes them on the chassis dyno at Westech. He’s been helping the team since May 2016. These images show more testing on the Vrbancic engine dyno. The guys tested and tuned the first-ever HolleyEFI system on the ProCharged big block. It ran thecustom intake Dave fabricated for non-SCTA top-speed racing. Vrbancic Brothers ran the dyno, and Larry and Eric read the results and made changes
as necessary. When the Big Red crew shows up at the dyno, they sometimes show up with two or more engines. If the engine is ready to run, they typically bring the backup engine as well to break it in. Sometimes they bring engines from different setups, like these shots of the Pikes Peak 555 with the ProCharged 598. Once the
engine is on a cart, it’s rolled into the dyno room and hooked up to all the components, including the Racepak AF4, for collecting all the necessary data for Eric to work his magic. When it’s all done, Mark and the crew load the engines in the shop Dually and take them back to Precision Welding for installation.