Former Pontiac Motorsports Manager John Callies: Epic Golden Era NASCAR Stories & Garage Tour!

John College come to the NASCAR trailer today you could never do that they got eight million templates that's an offie Rod 11 500 RPM it weighs like three pounds we're standing here with John Cali's right now in his personal garage he is responsible for a lot of Pontiac Motorsports in NASCAR and a lot of other things but if you're here you're probably here for NASCAR stuff that was chaos carts 83 501 it was it was the show card week before the race right yeah uh kale watered it up and uh and Waddell Wilson magically got another car got it back got it to the racetrack and then they won the race it was unbelievable of course kale was an unbelievable driver you know and Waddell you know top-notch engine guy and a hell of a crew chief so then another project came up for scca so I did a kit car and you could buy the plans and buy the parts and you could go scca racing so that was another project and then I did a what we called a pro street Fiero and uh this particular car has a wild paint job on it for 1984. in fact John caffero who's a designer sent this picture of how to paint it John that's the ugliest thing I have ever seen and he said well you wanted something 20 years out well that could be a paint job today it just shows you how creative these guys that are in the design staff can think and this had a four cylinder and I had done a dual overhead cam and this made 400 horsepower so it was kind of a fun car to drive around in and then of course we went to Indy with the pace car and I was fortunate enough [Music] pace car driver for the race and we had I still remember it today we had 13 cautions and every time I had you when you rolled out of course the the other cars were they may slow down to about 160 and you're going out and your top speed is maybe 130 and you're trying to get there as quick so you don't get your tail run over anyway I was exhausted when that was over you know it would have been a disaster for Pontiac if we had a flat or a failure of some kind but anyway it lucked out so that was another fun experience to have now you were the head of Pontiac Motorsports at the time right right so that's that's the interesting backstory like came to Memphis and went and saw Billy gobbled those guys over at complicated and we couldn't not come by and see you he'd get all the Pontiac backstory so this was a picture John chanella who is the head designer at the time on the firebird and John had this picture and that related to doing the GTP car kind of resembling what John had done so that's how the GTP started and then this was our first show in Las Vegas uh oh SEMA 87 right first time Pontiac had ever been at SEMA and we did this display of the performance parts so we showed our new Pro Stock head and our new NASCAR head and then I also did uh was that the brodix through boatx yes okay yeah we we need to talk to you about those yeah exactly because I I thought I'm sure it's about that's the same what 87 that was the the aluminum Pontiac brodix and and JV who is the owner of brodex I called JV because the Chevrolet was using another Factory and about all they made was sprinklers out of a cylinder head at 500 miles so I flew down to cjv brought prints of what we wanted and it's so funny because JB at that time an era wasn't used to seeing Prince and so there was an adjustment of trying to get everybody on board of what we were doing so we had a lot of fun because he just was a great guy and then I ended up putting the cylinder heads in gmpd so we really kind of changed Pro Stock racing at the time because it used to be you take a Chevy head roll it over weld it weld it and last a couple of races and then it was junk so now you can buy a hand that was already there the ports were not they were small so you could do what you wanted and we just changed at the time of Pro Stock racing we'll change NASCAR yeah I mean I I remember when at my dad's shop when those things first showed up even though we were an Oldsmobile team we got these Pontiac kids and I remember we were like wait that shipping address isn't Detroit it's Arkansas that's interesting but but man they put them on and they made horsepower out of the box they were already better and it changed NASCAR Big Time everybody was running yeah it uh at Charlotte funny story but we at NASCAR had the original hat now of course the teams were taking it and doing crazy things in others they were right rolling it from a 23 to an 18. anyway in Charlotte he says John College come to the NASCAR trailer and I go oh boy so and it and Rusty Wallace was parked next to Junior and I looked over Junior's car and he's got our heads on his car so I thought that was funny so I walk in the trailer and they have my original head and then they had the heads off juniors well Juniors bottom of his Port somehow got raised and so the next the NASCAR technique guys going what's that and I go what's what right there look at that I said look at what so he goes down he says he points to the bottom floor and then goes to the original head and I said well I said you don't know anything about casting I said that's just course I can't help it and I walked and I walked out the door and I thought I was going to get called back but they bought it you know that's a day when they didn't have today you could never do that they got eight million templates and everything but so I was just part of the fun back then you know so it was was that when he was rolling the more or was he welding up the courts and putting it back together he was rolling the head yes see and that's what I found out on the four-cylinder program the valves are perpendicular to the pistol now you start rolling away from that mm-hmm and your power starts to fall off and the way I knew that is I took two four cylinder heads sent them to John lingenfelder he put him on a V8 and all of a sudden the power came up and that's when I realized the straighter the valve is perpendicular to the Piston of more power so now we're down we got 11 degree heads you know crazy stuff and the problem is how do you get the valve train to work when you roll it down so at 23 degrees that valve was laid over 23 degrees and you're trying to stand it up right you're going to stand it up you got to weld up the bottom of the right of your head so they're welding up the whole bottom of the head re-machining it and uh the fellow that was doing it I think he he had like 250 heads to do I mean everybody was doing it so anyway it was trying to get that head approved was a whole story by itself but yeah we finally got it approved and uh and that was an interesting story but anyway we finally did it so the Brokers guys do the NASCAR head and the pro stuff all the heads yeah so we do the design we do the port work do a drawing send it to JV then he'd make the head why did you choose the brodix because he was willing to do what we want run small numbers not well we got to run five thousand s and so he was just the guy to work with plus the quality of his product was excellent if you're the Pontiac guy obviously your interest is in Pontiac teams performing well how did you feel that Oldsmobile and Chevy and Buick teams could put your heads on there and then go beat Pontiacs with that I mean and to me I just was happy they were you know we my intent was make a head that didn't look like a sprinkler system obviously we've made better power but it to me I was just happy to get heads out there it's really for the racing Community to have better stuff that's what started when your boss is happy that you did that for the whole GM Fleet that was never a question I mean they were looking just what we were doing because in Pro Stock we changed again everything in Pro Stock where they had then I did a V6 head so I did a four-cylinder V6 V8 and small block and big block and then in the in like the Pro Stock head we had about five versions over the the years things just changed but uh yeah JV just easy person to work with and the difference was I was probably the only one in GM that could write a purchase order and then sign to get it paid which was totally illegal but somehow he made it work Ed and so that was a riot you know so anyway just a lot it was the one thing I felt is the aftermarket if GM what we were supposed to do is we'd own all the tooling an aftermarket person doesn't want us to own their tooling so I would say okay I'm going to buy five prototype heads well that would be the cost of the tooling so they own the tooling they can do what they want with it you know and so that's how we got so many parts built on the outside because I work with the aftermarket making it easy for them and also at GM at the time a normal pay might be 60 or 90 days all my guys got paid in 30 days because I was okaying it you know so you're working all ends to try and make it work Ed so you had to be a pretty busy guy in there in the late 80s early 90s at Pontiac because you had all the NASCAR stuff and big names you know Rusty and Richard Petty and all that the Penske guys and all that but then you also had all the drag racing stuff too right I mean then we had boat racing and we had road racing so you know you had it was just non-stop in other words my average year was probably 250 days gone in a year wow you know and that's but you know who gets to go and do all this stuff very few people you know and and sure it caused some some problems but the other side is you've got to experience nobody else can get because looking at each type of racing gave you information and what Nascar was doing may not work in road racing or drag racing but each one had its own area so your knowledge got pretty good for doing that so and I had a small group we only had we had had two guys on the drafting on a draft board and of course we didn't have AutoCAD and it was way before and uh and then two other fellows that that helped so in fact uh John Erickson who ended up at Penske running penske's operation back then you know worked no I think six seven years for me so so what'd you think of Don Miller no because anybody that watches Mitch's channel right knows that Don Miller has that tone to all these crazy stories and obviously with Penske Racing South right then you were connected with Don yeah I mean Don was he's just an unbelievable guy and he had the ability to put people together and of course there's nobody like RP or Roger and he's a one-off and if you think you can follow him forget it I don't care what age he'll outrun you he'll do you that guy is a Non-Stop an unbelievable person great for our sport so how do you go from Pontiac to crankshafts and now lifters how does this story arc work how do you do how do you capture three lifetimes in one well our general manager we get a new either general manager or a new sales manager if they want it requires some money out of the engineering budget to run this thing so you need that help okay well I was on my seventh general manager about my eighth sales manager and I went down to Indie drag races I was on top of the tower and showing that this stands both sides are filled and this guy a new sales manager said I don't know why we're here John and I said you see every ass out there sitting in a seat drive here in a car we want that to be a Pontiac that's why we're here so anyway it just the selling I got tired of trying to educate everybody that there's a way to go so I left and I knew that we were short on having a crankshaft supplier so that's why I started crankshaft company doing the racing ranks as I got into that and then it was I don't know seven seven years later I had gone from a development person designing to a banker and pulse Personnel manager I hated it so anyway my partner Rick Norton bought me out and then I came down to help Joe minati merchandise lenati cans so then we ended up working six years sold it to Holly I was out of a job again so I went into crankshafts I mean camshafts and doing camshaft course for all the people that lasted six years and then the fellow old owned camshaft machine passed away and I left there and started the lifter Business Without Edinburgh so I've been there 17 years doing that which fasting has been the most fun for you all all of us is experience right I mean you learn everything you do there isn't isn't one that I say is a Shining Light it's just getting more information you know again I still love the design I like the sales side both so uh my partner in morale he is very very excellent on machines fixturing super guy I mean Ed's one of these people can walk through the plant and you'll hear something and no it's not working right we'll go over what's up you know so you know that we work real well together it's been a good and all these years later you're still doing stuff with NASCAR teams yeah still making lifters and yeah for the NASCAR guys yeah yeah so it's kind of odd but it's it's fun and of course I've seen the evolution of change and again the tighter the rules the harder it is to get more performance so back in the day you could do crazy things and today you can't do that so you're working in a window about that big right now if you see a two horsepower gain it's like I just got 25 I mean it's nuts and so it's getting more difficult to get an advantage you're looking for let's check out some of that stuff you got here upstairs the coolest wallpaper ever yeah massive yeah I want to start decorating with these so this is just different stuff over the years that a Donner worked on and uh only one ball so this is what the project I did years ago which was in a plastic Oil ring and of course the friction was just fabulous got it developed NASCAR wouldn't approve it it didn't melt no no we're great and uh but anyway that was there was some money lost in developing that but it was a crew of Peace So if they didn't melt Mr Ring guy why aren't they using those now well if they're illegal right if they make it where they can't run it Composite Materials then you can't well it's not illegal for my car oh no I guess I guess it's possible yeah the thing is this is not an inexpensive part to build because this is what you're starting with okay so you go from this to this there's still a lot of Machining right in a lot of ways it's expensive but it did what we were trying to do it worked great but then NASCAR killed it and you know you say there's other usages yes but you need something that's pretty constant if you're gonna make sense yeah yeah then this was uh this was a old fuel lifter we did which and Rick Vinnie at the shop came up with putting a second wheel above our 920 wheel and there's only uh about three tenths difference between one wheel so when it's loaded on the exhaust now you have two wheels not quite double the load for and this is uh on the exhaust side right because our top fuel car there's so much cylinder pressure the exhaust valve has to open against because the neither it's 11 000 horsepower engine it is insane the amount of cylinder pressure in a top fuel engine so you have to have that second wheel to support the load because that exhaust valve is trying to push and get so much pressure to get it open so this is about an eight year run we did great with it but then the rebuilds would start to overtake the shot and so we decided to just quit doing this and get back to we said anything from a a one inch down will do but nothing above a one inch we only make one lifter in one inch for pro mods and stuff like that this was uh what I was trying to show us this was a piston with narrow rings and uh worked on this in 1982. 82 yeah wow yeah for 1982 that is a really thin ring and that's only a two ring set up too that's really Advanced for that time yeah I mean you didn't NASCAR was still huge Pistons oh back then it was yeah probably 564 564 3 16. right that thing looks like it's about a 26 27 millimeter or 0.27 oh 27 yeah so tiny uh you know it's just fun old stuff this right here is kind of interesting this is an often Hauser connecting rod that's an offie Rod 11 500 RPM like an Indy car Rod yeah feel the weight of it this is this weighs like three pounds I know it's huge yeah and then a friend of mine in Northern uh Hollywood built these for Offenhauser and these would crack right across here because they're too small radius in there I got took that out of the dumpster then this was a rod that did for a quad four this ran a hundred and ten thousand test miles and nobody thought that it worked because I was running small bolts in the thing so when did the everybody figure out that the smaller Rod journals were better because those ones are huge oh why not and you see the other thing is put holes in here so the rod stretched evenly top to bottom that's why you have those in there but anyway another good idea that never made it to production uh uh the main Distributors yeah the distributor and this is a backlash checker for opinion on your distributor to the cam gear here and so this would sit like this this is a Ford that that's not a Ford Summit this is and what this does is you can check the backlash then you undo this and you'll rotate this 120 here's a four yeah tighten it up okay so you're so when the the bore in here you're trying to find out how much backlash because you would never set a ring and pinion up without checking the backlash but yet we just assume everything's right and what started is it down at uh Roush and Yates yeah yeah once they went over 7200 spark scatter would go everywhere and so then they started having a timing light just set permanently on the dyno well when I went down there they had like 23 thousands backlash and so we made up gears and 2000s increments and so we I wanted to be down at snowballer than six thousands backlash and we did gears see that's a pressed on gear I made that camshaft machine so we'd press this gear and uh at morale we made both gears got it okay so now you had you could have the root of the tooth not getting ever contact with this and then you could have the size to get six thousands once you had six thousands you run away 9 000 never change it's smooth all the way through and of course now Nashville still don't have it so how many how much the timing degree variance would there be with that too much backlash at high RPM that run it that's what I'm saying when you're when you're up at 10 but most of the stuff you get because the difference is on a camshaft you come in and have to go down in Hobbs straight there's a cam gear when we build this we are running cross so with the lead in the lead out is perfect and same with this gear well you can't do that when you plunge hop so that gives a bigger variance so when you make these two which comp buys these bullet buys these you know and that just salted and uh I never got to selling these but a lot of people might send them pictures and they figured how to make them yeah so you're saying well with that but say 23 000 backlash versus six you could have several degrees variance in timing easy easy but the worst thing is when you get your RPM up it starts to chatter and that throws the timing light off and you get this spark scatter when I did the first Gears I my test was on the spindron 50 weight oil started up and instantly rub it up to six thousand so you had high pump pressure a standard gear would go 35 seconds then we shoot up it would it was gone 35 seconds first one I tested with Roush went 200 hours big difference not a small difference big difference we make 270 different part numbers for lifters everything from top end stuff to Street Hydraulics and uh so you know we've been fortunate just or Word of Mouth we don't do any advertising and we sell through distributors so it's for well over the 15 years and not changing aluminum is lighter than iron magnesium vladed and aluminum but it's kind of cool to see for the same size what the actual weight of difference is wow yeah that's pretty…