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Technical Details and Career Transition

6:04
50:34
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At 6:04 in

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

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John further elaborates on the technical advantages of the new cylinder heads, explaining that original SBC (Small Block Chevrolet) heads had 23-degree valves, which race teams would 'roll' to 18 degrees. Their new Brodix heads featured an even steeper 11-degree valve angle, a significant improvement for power (modern LS engines are typically 15 degrees). He emphasizes the challenge of designing valve trains for such extreme angles. He also discusses his later career path, moving from Pontiac to starting a crankshaft company due to a lack of suppliers, and then a lifter company with Ed Morel, which has been in business for 17 years. He notes the fun and continuous learning involved in these various ventures.

Goal: Explain cylinder head mechanics and summarize Callies' entrepreneurial journey.

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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

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