AUGUST 2020 | ENGINEBUILDERmag.com 9
Mike Moran
of Moran
Motorsports
got his start
street racing
around Detroit.
In the years
since, he’s
dominated on
the dragstrips
of NHRA.
was it. Intakes and pans were sheet
metal. Valve covers were cast. When
you’re doing something like this,
the advantage is you’re drawing it all
anyways, so it didn’t matter that you
were going to make all these other parts
as well because you had to draw them
before you build them. I would just
contract di erent people in the industry
to build the parts and that’s how we
kind of evolved this thing to where it’s
at now.”
As easy as that sounds, Moran ran
into numerous road blocks for his
engine design, both in components
and in nding an engine dyno capable
of running an engine at over 3,
horsepower.
“When you build something
from scratch, there’s no, for lack of a
better word, infrastructure ¬– there’s
no support at the ready,” Moran says.
“ ere wasn’t a dyno that existed to run
an engine with that much power. ere
weren’t turbos big enough to support
that much air ow through an engine.
I took a leap of faith building this
combination because you’re in for the
long haul. It was ve or six years before
I was able to get a dyno in place that
actually could hold that kind of power
because it wasn’t an industry standard, it
didn’t exist.“I approached all the dyno
companies and none of them were
interested because I was the only one
asking for something like this. Land
& Sea listened to me and worked
with me. My idea was to take two
3,000-horsepower absorbers and run
them in tandem. Land & Sea were
the only ones that didn’t look at me
like I was crazy. ey worked with
me and it took us a year and a half to
get everything in place and then work
through all the bugs. We did a bunch
of redesigns on our end because they
just did the best they could with what I
wanted. at was a work in progress for
nearly two years.”
For the engine itself, Moran
contracted local machine shops to
machine his designs for the engine
block and various parts. e engine
is 670 cid and features a 5.300 ̋ bore
center. Moran designed everything to
be perfect such as making sure the bore
spacing from the driver’s bank to the
passenger bank was even in such a way
that he could use center rods.
“All the engine combinations out
there whether it’s Chrysler, Ford or
Chevy, they’ll use o set rods because
their banks aren’t shifted the correct
amount to center the rods,” Moran says.
“Obviously, with a clean slate, you dostu like that and then it just builds
from there. e engine doesn’t follow
anybody else’s plan. Instead, it follows
the perfect path.
“For example, it’s got 10 head bolts
similar to a Ford, but they’re 5/8th studs
instead of 7/16ths, so they get torqued
to 250 ft.-lbs. for ease of maintenance
so you can have the heads on and o
without moving the intake, but yet you
don’t sacri ce the clamp because you’ve
got a bigger fastener.
“In the front of the engine with
the accessories, there’s always been a
problem with sharing the camshaft for
magnetos and fuel pumps, so you get
into all these elaborate drives. With
this engine, I put a remote drive o the
side so that a guy could run either a
fuel pump or a mag and leave the cam
open to run the other. It’s a lot cleaner
up front.
“In addition, the cam is raised
up in such a way that it wouldn’t
be considered a .400 ̋, .600 ̋ or a 1 ̋
raised – it’s more like a 3 ̋ raised. It’s up
there to where the pushrods are laying
horizontal practically, and they’re much
shorter than you would nd in any
other engine. at adds a lot of stability
to the pushrods. e engine features a
lot of cool stu like that.”
e engine block was done by08-12 eb.aug20 Engine Development.indd 9 8/7/20 8:37 AM
Naresh Jariwala