Late Model Engines Shop Full Tour & Assembly Process! BIG POWER Chevy LSX/LT Specialists! (LME)

yeah this one's set up for like 1800 horsepower this is the stuff everybody drools over and sticks their fingers into they start out as a as a block of aluminum and then this is the first operation a little top secret here this was the very first machine you want to leave a little bit of a sharp angle on the bottom cut that helps reduce reversion he's on lots of drugs so we were going to do like this real nice like oh hey welcome to this late model engine stuff but you know don't work that's just how it is real life here nothing staged this is our this is our intro hell yeah so we're out in houston at late model engines with the man who owns it and founded it brian what's up man brian nealing late model engines we're here in houston uh going to show you guys around our shop and show you a little bit about our process and uh how we make some horsepower yeah so uh i guess we'll start where it would start if you brought your motor here like i just did yeah pretty much yeah we pulled it in right here uh we'll we'll unload the truck uh it'll then it will ultimately go back into our down area and uh from there it makes the whole loop through the shop through our through our process we'll head back to this tear-down area and see some of the the torn downness of my own motor which you can check out in a different video if you haven't seen that already but yep so here you are right here so basically we'll put it up on an engine stand we'll get the engine torn down if it's a brand new engine you know brand new engine block which is common uh we'll take the engine block out of the crate and we will start with the line home so this engine here not being a brand new block it's disassembled we're gonna clean and inspect it to make sure that it's a worthy piece we have our initial thoughts are that it's a worthy piece so we're gonna do some more we're gonna do a little more checking before we get too crazy on it but it'll go through our jet wash uh and ultrasonic cleaner to do our preliminary cleaning uh to get it ready for machine work uh the first step of the whole process is the line home so this is what's going to establish the center line of the main so the block will go in this machine upside down and we will hone all of the main housing bores at one time with this mandrel so a brand new block um we will cut the caps as well as a used block so i talked to you about earlier in the other video uh cutting the caps this is here your cap grinder so the the main cap will go into this into this grinder it'll clamp down and we'll able to actually grind the surface of the cap to make the housing bore smaller um that's cool i've never seen one of these before that's some that's stuff like some serious industry what's the vintage on this stuff i know the best stuff is always like yeah so this one i don't this one is actually probably from the fire to guests probably from the late 70s or 80s if i were to guess the red the red all the sunning gurus might know what this one is but yeah it works well they used to have a uh an old stone but this is a kind of the new technology is using a cbn material um so a lot harder you don't have to dress it and stay super uh super flat and creates a really nice surface finish so once we've cut those main caps we'll get it in here we're able to we're able to get our housing boards round and straight four decimal places out so the distance between zero and one each one of those is a tenth which is point zero zero zero one of of an inch and we're looking for to have the housing boards absolutely as round and straight as possible so when we're in the assembly room and we're checking our bearing clearances we have consistency from one to the other as well as having the journals in line with each other so there's no distortion that way so uh that's crucial this is kind of the foundation of the entire process is the line hone you know when you talk about blueprinting a block it's not only doing all the the different operations but it's the order of operations which is extremely important so everything starts with the line home if you think of a blueprint and an engine you have the center line the main out to the deck surface the center line of the main out to the other deck surface that angle which we're going to correct in the next machine getting those surfaces perpendicular to the mains you've heard the term 90 degree v8 yeah that's where that comes from so we're actually making the deck surfaces perpendicular to the to the main so it all starts out with the main if you surface your block before you line honed it you would actually change the center line of the crankshaft by a couple thousands potentially uh by machining it after the fact because you're actually dropping you're actually dropping the housing board or the housing board uh closer to the cam essentially when it's when it's home interesting so that's the first process [Music] you know all kinds of cool stuff in here i was just looking around at all this billet awesomeness we'll check that out in a little bit so the next process is going to be going into our 4-axis cmc uh 50 taper cnc machine very rigid very powerful machine we there's an lsx block that we have in here now uh this one has not been machined yet so this is getting ready to to be machined once we have it up in in this machine we've uh indicated it in it will rotate on the center of the mains so the center of rotation of this rotary rotary table is the center line of the main and then we have uh the block indicated off the main and the cam so we probe the thrust surface on the main and the uh and the dowel pin here that gives us our x and y axis for the center of the bores the deck surface goes off of the center line of the main and cam so all this stuff is pre-programmed we're not sitting in programming for each individual block it's essentially we're running a a precise program for the lsx block to give us the bore size fours that are perpendicular to the mains as well as the deck surfaces that are perpendicular and to the right height uh in this block in this machine we'll also do the half inch studs to your stuff as well as the uh receiver grooves so each program uh we'll bring that up and we have tooling all made up to to achieve those different those are different dimensions that we're trying to to machine here so um any questions so when this is in here if it's doing multiple tasks can you just do you just set it and let it run like could it you know do something and then change its own tool and cut the receiver groove right or do you like check it after everything it does we can we can do both so we have it dialed in for example on this lsx block if we we have a specific program that will run we'll run the clearancing for the stroke the deck surface half inch stud and pouring it let's say for a 4125 finish board all that will be one program uh then we'll run a specific a separate program for the receiver group so that'll be a two program run interesting um so all of those first operations uh we'll just run through there basically with the push of a button when uh you said that you started this place with your partner in 2003 when did you get your first cnc machine when did you stop doing everything yourself by hand that's a good question matter of fact and which one was it what's your baby here i know you got one this is it this is it this was the very first machine and we actually had this given to us um by a good friend of ours and he told us to take it away for scrap metal and it was an old punch punch tape computer see the computers that run off of punch tape yeah yeah so that that was this thing right here old old-school cnc machine and it's actually a bridgeport brand so it's actually a very high quality uh mechanically really nice machine and then we outfitted it with this uh retrofit uh electronics here so we've got a computer normal computer in the back of that cabinet it's got the the the dc motors and we can run like little gas port pistons on this we run different little cnc programs on brackets and front covers and stuff we've clearance for a double roller uh if any of you guys ever been building an ls with a double roller timing set you have to clearance for the front cover for the for the oil pump that gets spaced out we got a nice little cnc program that we both bolt the front cover right in here machines for that and it just makes like makes life super easy this is set up for gas sports here so yeah this thing works like a champ and that was our very first cnc machine that's insane i didn't know you could retrofit these old things with yeah cnc stuff that's like the coolest thing ever what is pretty cool so as you see this see this uh control here yeah you look at this machine over here you know you got a quarter million dollar five axis cnc machine with the same control right same company that makes both it's the same panel i mean i guess that makes sense the mechanisms they do the same thing if you just put motors on it instead of where your hands go pretty much that's freaking awesome what what's that thing from like the 40s or something i think it's from the 60s i'm not sure and it's still kicking ass that's awesome there's a couple five-axis cnc's this is kind of getting away from the blueprinting process so we would go down the line but i'll show you that i'll show you the cnc equipment here real quick so this is uh our one of our five acts that we do our uh cnc ported heads just got done running some lsa heads and we're actually fixturing up to do another process here so there is no cylinder head in there right now but it will be running here just in a bit this is another machine we have that is a same same basic machine just different manufacturer 5-axis cmc it's running uh it was doing the id of the ports for our billet intake manifold this is where we are making uh billet valve covers these are lt billet valve covers it's running an o-ring groove right now in the uh for the valve cover gasket hard to see in there but it has a little o-ring groove tool that it is machining and then this guy here [Music] this is making the yeah just a tool change it's gonna it's gonna be tapping the hole right now so it's just going it just went in in reverse directions at the bottom just like a normal tap oh yeah you can see it changes direction so fast you can barely tell yeah and it's actually uh thread rolling it's not cutting the thread forming it's not cutting the threads it's actually forming the threads in the hole yeah a little bit stronger a little denser so it's got it has two snouts in there right now just to do two it's going to change another tool probably going to run yeah it's going to be doing the o-ring o-ring groove for the throttle body so did you have the all reliable over there retrofitted with cnc stuff before you had your first cabinet oh yeah yeah you did sure we yeah we kind of had a progression of we went from that machine just to get our feet wet with cnc that's really what started now i mean or the thought of having late model engines was because of the cnc technology so we were both myself and my partner were working for other machine shops building race engines and they were kind of more old-school in terms of the the equipment more manual machines all that we're super young and knew we wanted to do this for for a long long time so it made sense that if we were going to be successful we needed to learn cnc machining so with our little side gig we had going on we got that you know kind of by default ended up with that cnc machine so we got it working the best we could as far as cheap as we could and then we progressed into an open bed uh large larger machine that we can do blocks on so that was our second cnc machine that we don't have anymore we got rid of it and we replaced it with the uh the one that we had the lsx block in so that was a huge huge step up i mean the cabinets are there's a lot more capabilities um you know these are all all these ones in the back here are really new machines they're latest and greatest technology and they're pretty killer so yeah it's actually machining the logo is what it's doing right now coolest part yep so all of these all these uh these snouts they start out as a block of aluminum and then this is the first operation and then the second off we're going to flip it over and then it will come out as the finished part yeah we don't the first two on this on this run are in the machine now so we'll check those out later well behind the scenes here is our c8 manifold so that's a little top secret here so we should have that first one ready here in the next uh hopefully several weeks we have one more project that we got to finish out and then this is going to be our c8 so it's going to have a huge huge lid you know there's a ton of room from the yeah bonnet hood whatever you want to call it to the ca so we have a lot of room to play in there that's freaking sweet it's gonna be nasty man it's gonna be really nasty so we're to uh if we jump back to the assembly process yep what happens after we go here once we come out of this machine going to go over to the cylinder hone [Music] so going to the cylinder hone this block just got finished up but you can see here very consistent cross hatch we [Music] put a lot of focus on the surface finish as we were talking about earlier i mean that's uh you've got your geometry of the cylinder bore how round and straight it is and then you have the surface finish that you're actually achieving so with this it's basically a cnc hone it can auto dwell so it can sense taper in the cylinder and and dwell in those areas to help get it as straight as possible and then kind of by default this honing head has a diamond abrasive which creates just a very consistent and round cylinder again we can we can get it round and straight out to four decimal places we've got our different torque plates for different applications this simulates the cylinder head being torqued onto the block when you torque the when you torque the torque plate or a cylinder head onto the engine block it actually distorts it'll distort the cylinder in a certain way that's and then we want to hone it straight and round in that distorted state so when we bolt the cylinder head on it goes back to around so when we take the torque plate off it goes out of round then when we bolt the cylinder head back on it distorts back to a round condition round and straight talking very very minimal and you know fractions of an inch but all that matters the prophylometer that we were talking about earlier is just this guy right here so this little ruby head at the end of this deal here we put that onto the clean cylinder wall and that allows us to get different parameters of the of the crosshatch you've got rra rpk rvk um basically what it boils down to is if you look at a cross hatch under a under a magnifying glass it might look something like this right so you have your your peaks and your valleys we can measure how deep the valley is we can measure the distance at the bottom of the valley and then we can measure the distance between the between the peaks for example so you have those and then the average of all of that so you have all of that that goes in it's all about oil retention so if you have too much oil retention your engine can oil excessively if you don't have enough oil retention the rings have nothing to seal on so it's a balance and we create a specific recipe of abrasives that we use to achieve the surface finishes that are going to give the ra you know all those parameters so it's um everything is a recipe that we have to figure out when a new block comes out we hone that block and keep testing speed uh you know different abrasives and pressures speeds and feeds all of that to achieve the the cross hatch that we're looking for once we have that down we just try to be consistent consistent with it so it's all about consistency from block one to 100 and beyond so that's that so once we've uh once we've now we've line honed it we've decked it board it we've honed it the next process in the engine block is going to be the cleaning of the block so we'll do all of our finished deburr work deburring the top of the cylinders the bottom of the cylinder deck surface the entire block you know in before we before we uh start the machine work we're going to do a preliminary deburring of the block so it's safe you know you're not going to cut your hands on and everything but the the final process is going to be the final deburring of the block we do that back here this guy right here is going to be uh finish d bird it's always pretty far along the way this is actually one of the new uh that's the new lt iron block 6.6 ah sweet so kind of cool we're we keep pumping this i mean we're really excited about this deal kind of like you're for right now it's the lsx block of the lt world so once we finish the bird it and and it's fully inspected we're going to go into this jet wash here this has a high temp water and caustic solution that can clean the block this is only used for the final cleaning of the box so we do all of our dirty you know initial cleaning in the back so the water in this thing is really clean um then once it comes out of there we'll swing it over into this tank here we have a hot water heater that allows us to not flash rust the part so if you put cold water on a uh freshly machined comes out hot you put cold water on it'll flash rust and look like i didn't know that was a thing yeah yeah for sure so um we have hot water that we can spray it down do all the final like brushes through it just like the absolute last final stage of the of the initial cleaning is done in here from there it'll go onto an engine stand then it will get in the assembly room we will then take lacquer thinner lacquer thinner the cylinder walls and do like a kind of you know real fine fine cleaning of the cylinder walls with the atf the cylinder walls as well has a high detergent in it that just allows us to really get that any final debris that's in that cross hatch out of it so again the cleanliness of the of the build is paramount to the end results and i can't stress that enough it's like you see like these see people building engines in a like a dusty dirty environment and it's you're just shooting yourself in the foot yeah it's like every step of the process is the most important step of the process pretty much pretty much um you know i can explain the uh cylinder head process real quick yeah we'll go get over there and figure out how those work and then after here we go to the assembly room yep so essentially we'll tear down tear down the cylinder heads if they're getting you know they'll get ported in the cnc machines then we come over to here we'll do the guide honing so installation of guides and and the finish honing of the guide we use a dialed bore gauge just like we do for the cylinder bores to get the to get the guides precisely size for for the specific valves that are going in it we got a couple seating guide machines uh this is doing a set of br3s here cutting the valve job on the heads this will actually machine the machine the angles for the valve job this is straight out of the cnc machine and this one is cut so you can see these are not very well defined that has a radius cutter on the exhaust that we always use so we have a very specific angles um that that we like for that specific cylinder head so that'll all be done on the flow bench uh and we'll design the valve job that gives us the best flow characteristics for that particular port shape and chamber chamber configuration there's a lot of variables that go into you know what valve job should be used for for a specific cylinder head so once that's done we will then go into this room here so we'll do the finish hand blending of the valve job so this is a…