Riley Technologies: The Deep Dive Into 60 Years of Racing Excellence

My dad said that everybody was hell-bent to be Ferrari and that was that. This has air conditioning, too. >> Yeah, it was real hot in there. Here's a Buick Regal arrow chest from March 17th, 1988. My dad engineered AJ all the way up to I think that's might be from '91. That's my dad, Bob. That's Mark Scott who So, that became Riley and Scott. That's Gary Pratt from Pratt and Miller. You can step on the spoiler. It's for our crew. Don't think he'll hear me say that again. Yeah, step on Step on the car. So, they built this car and ran it in '74. There is a lot more going on in here than you would think by seeing this place from the road. >> [laughter] >> I passed this building a hundred times and never thought this was in here. Is there any kind of car you don't do in here? No. It's a lot to choose from here. I'm telling you. Wait till you see the other building. Well, my name is Phil Riley and I run uh Riley Technologies in Mooresville, North Carolina. We're primarily a sports car builder and sports car race team, but we also do other work like the build the drag pack cars for Stellantis, uh Car Craft Mark IV. This is a continuation of the car that won Le Mans in '67 with the Ford and Gurney and we built continuations of these cars. There's another chassis sitting right there uh waiting for the engine and drive line to be installed. Back then, there was a rule they had to carry a spare tire in the luggage compartment. Ah. That's why it has that. That's probably the biggest question we get on this car is why is there a spare tire in the luggage compartment on a race car. So, that's like the part of Ford versus Ferrari in the beginning when he can't fit the suitcase in the back. >> Yeah, yeah, exactly. Same kind of thing. This car would have been a year after that movie. But, that movie ended in '66 where it was Ken Miles getting killed and then this was uh you know, '67. I was kind of wondering like we get historical movies like that for the people who were actually there. They just sit there and watch it and be like, "That's not how that happened." So, uh my dad like when the movie came out, a couple people had him speak about it cuz he was there, you know, all during all that time. And he said First he said my dad and my mom loved movies, so they went to all They went to every movie that came out. And uh my dad went to it thinking that it was a movie, you know, since it wasn't So he kind of set that expectation. But he said the two things he took away from the movie that he felt weren't true was everybody liked working with Ken Miles. All the four people did. You know, everybody loved Ken Miles cuz he was so good to work with. And the second thing was that Leo Beebe, guy who they made look like the villain, was a My dad said he was just an an average nice guy. You know, there's nothing wrong with him either. Mhm. So there was kind of a weird deal about uh you know, but they had to you know, to make it a movie they had to make villainize a couple people or add some drama to it. So there really was no internal struggle like that. It was just guys building a car. My dad said that everybody was hell-bent to beat Ferrari, and that was that. Like that was the enemy. That was the common enemy was Henry Ford telling us what to do, and then they went and did it. We build them all here. We have all the original blueprints to build the cars from. There's uh 3,900 rivets in the chassis in the aluminum chassis. The greatest is regular paint, but the white and the black are done by a pin striper. So you actually can see the brush strokes in the in the white and the black. >> I did see that walking over here. I always like that. You make all this in here? Yeah. How long does it take start to finish to build one of these? Got a couple thousand hours in them. Yeah, I mean that's It's It's a bit of a work of art, you know, with the body off and with with the mounting It actually gets an aluminum roof, too. Aluminum roof skin, which we build here. So that That roof skin there is aluminum. And you make that out of a flat sheet and English wheel and all that. >> Yeah. Sure do. Yeah. That's That's the way the original car was. We recast the the wheels and the uprights out of magnesium, recast the brake calipers out of steel, recast the the steering rack out of aluminum just like the original car. It even has the original Boeing 707 uh wiper motor in it. I mean, it is as accurate as they can possibly make it. Really? I didn't know that. That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. All the way down to the Corvette tail lights. Why did they use a Boeing wiper motor? I think at the time when they were doing the cars, that was the most reliable thing to use in the '60s and the lightest. That makes sense. This looks a lot of a lot of this looks aircraft derived. >> Yeah, I mean, it's a This is one of the first aluminum monocoque tubs uh in the era. Um so, it's very aircraft uh Brunswick Aircraft built the tubs for Ford back in that era. Oh. Uh my father was on the design team for this car. So, uh you know, it was a pretty special to build it and it was always my favorite car. You know, the you know, the shape of it is almost unmatched on how pretty it is, especially for you know, an American-built car. What did your dad do on the design team? Uh he was did uh front structure, suspension geometry, um just kind of a little bit of everything. There was a large group that was involved in the design. So, he was at Ford from the from this program or mid-'60s all the way to the mid-'80s. He was at Ford so doing mostly Ford road race programs or in stock car programs. Did he work with Jack Roush back when he was a drag racer? Yes. That's cool. I worked for Roush in '84. Really? Yeah. Well, cuz the Trans Am cars uh that Roush when he Roush started with the Trans Am cars, that were cars that my dad designed. And actually, I did a little bit of design work on that when I was a kid. You know, 16. You know, my dad would bring me out on a Saturday and I would draw parts for that. What kind of parts would he assign to you? Uh it was a simple part. I drew uh the fuel tank, which was a rectangle. >> [laughter] >> And I drew some little drive pins to go in uh in the wheel hubs, you know, the the pins that drive the the wheels. Just simple parts. Yeah. But in the summer, I uh Gary Pratt and Charlie Seelix were in the team and I um you know, I cleaned the body work and all that kind of stuff. You know, it was just a grunt. What was his uh area of expertise? And was it suspension? Uh yeah, he had dual degrees. He had one in mechanical and one in aeronautical. So, he kind of did a little bit of both. This was like very early on. It had full ground effects, which was new back then. Like no one did it yet. That explains the some of the aircraft influence, too. >> Yeah, for sure. Yeah, he worked at Convair Aircraft on the B-58 and he worked uh on the Saturn V rocket, also. So, he had a lot of aircraft experience. His first love was motorsports and second love was aircraft. When did he start doing this, the racing? >> Racing? 1949. When was Riley Technologies founded? Uh 1990. Huh. Yeah. It was It was called Riley & Scott before this and then it it had evolved into Riley Technologies. We started in Indianapolis and then moved down here in um 2006 to Mooresville. Well, this is a Drag Pack uh Charger. Um you know, for uh NHRA or IHRA. This car These two cars are in the uh final assembly and um you know, they'll be running later this year at the in the at the races. So, we build the cars all here. We did the prototype here, did all the testing and then um that car's actually running its first weekend at Gainesville this weekend. Uh I've never seen one of these. It's sub-assembly in there. We do gearboxes, uprights, um you know, they all get redone here. Mostly, you know, road race stuff. Here's a '70 Mustang for Ben Keating, who's a big road racer. Uh this is for These both these cars are for Champ Car series. You know, so it's a lower budget series. We just ran this car in Dallas, had an engine issue, so the engine's out and getting ready for its next race at VIR later this year. And this one was wrecked. Uh an old Corvette we built and um it got wrecked, so we're uh going to put a new front end on it, get it ready to go. And its next race is going to be end of May at Watkins Glen. These are kind of the two, you know, kind of fun projects, not normal for a race shop. So, there's another Mark IV going together. Is there any kind of car you don't do in here? So, the machine shop back in there, all along here is steel fab. So, here's two more Chargers going together. Uh getting the fab work done on them, getting roll cages put in, getting some structure cut out, and new structure will welded in. So, those cars are being done. And then um Is that what they look like when they come to you? Yeah, they We get bodies in white straight from Salina. And then uh you know, then cut them all up as as needed for racing. Huh. That's all like the piles of sheet metal that are going into them right there behind you. You know, for all the panels. Those are all panels. And this area here is all the carbon shop. So, that's our carbon laminating room in there. So, they're building, you know, they're building parts for the for the drag pack car, whether doors, hoods, doors, those are panels. That's uh panels that they're doing right there of a um of a air box that they have to have to get out tomorrow. And then uh that's our body room inside those doors. Project carbon. There's a big autoclave for baking the parts and putting them under pressure to get all the resin out. And then we have a big oven, and then back in there's a trim room. Wow. I didn't know you had a whole You had a whole carbon shop mixed in here, right? Like right in the middle of car building and everything. >> getting ready to move to a bigger facility here, you know, at some point we'll have to move to a bigger facility. So, they're all kind of crammed in right now. Even with having three buildings? Yeah, we're pretty We're pretty much stretched on um on the amount of room we could get. That's a nose mold for the for the Charger right there. Huh. Wow. Sorry, I was looking for my splitter. I can't find >> [laughter] >> So, this is Jared This is Jared and Jared here. Hi. Nice to nice to meet you. Yeah. Jared, Jared runs a BMW We run a BMW program together in SRL. Oh, that's cool. >> Yeah. So, and then Jared's dad, John, and my dad worked together at some point. We're not sure exactly when, but we do know that they liked working together. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. I just came from doing a video with Daryl Andrews, who was your dad's hauler driver at Sprint. Yeah, he would just tell stories about your dad. Like, I came right from there to here. >> Wait, were you in Was he at Petty's? Um that was it in the 37 car. Okay, so the Petty car Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. You have any good stories? Yeah. Good? Yeah. He said that your dad was a great guy. He really liked working with him. That's awesome. I've never heard anyone say anything bad about his dad. No, me neither. I know I've been looking, too, cuz I want to hold it over his head, but I haven't found anybody say anything bad about Yeah. I'm going to have to I'm going to get your mom drunk and have her tell some stories or something. Yeah, well, I'll see. They were pretty close They were They married Helen for like 20 something years, but yeah, it's yeah, it's um I can tell you some stories. Okay. Okay, we're good. Okay. All right. So, anyway. All right. That's cool. Nice meeting you. And this is the And in the carbon shop, the freezer for the material, you know, before you keep everything frozen. Back in that corner, we have a water jet cutter, you know, to cut all the parts, whether it's for tooling, for you know, pit equipment, or for parts of the drag pack. So, we do all our own water jet cutting here, also. Obviously, this is the race team side over here. There's a LMP3 car. We're getting ready to run that car a few races this year. It's the the backup car for the Mustang, the GTD Mustang. So, the primary car was testing at Sebring yesterday, so it's on its way back to get prepped for tomorrow at Sebring. Wow, I've never seen one of these apart like this to see how low the engine is. >> It's way down in there. >> That is crazy. >> Yeah, yeah, for sure, get all the CG low. Yeah, get the pan as tight as you can, and lower it as much as you can. That looks like like 4 in lower than a production car, at it's welded to the windshield. >> about that. Crazy. Yeah. So, you can buy these cars from from Ford/Multimatic. They're actually built in Mooresville. And this is the backup, so it's halfway stripped. A lot of the parts are with us, and you have to have a car to certain stage with them so you use it as a backup car. This car's kind of at that stage right now. AC recovers. Is that air conditioning? >> Yeah, it has air conditioning. Really? >> There's rules in sports car racing for how hot the cockpit can be. And since these races are long, you know, 12 hours, 24 hours, you know, it's it they it needs to be cold in there. And they get pretty hot cuz they're sealed up. Hmm, I've never really thought about that before, but I guess that's true. They The windows are closed on those things when they're running. Yeah, yeah, they're closed. It gets hot. Is it like a normal AC compressor or like >> there's a compressor on the transaxle. I think the transaxle is out of this car. Oh. But yeah, there's a a normal automotive style Yeah, it's out. There's a normal automotive style AC compressor. So, it just doesn't spin unless the car is moving. Oh, yeah, well, unless the engine's running. Yeah. Yeah. They run it like a There's a shaft off the back of the transaxle that runs the alternator and the AC compressor. And that's fairly common in the in this class to get weight rearward and to get, you know, stuff off the front so you can do more aero work. Interesting. What is this one? Uh that's a GTSR Viper. So, that would have been a car that raced at IMSA in like 2012, 13, and 14. It also raced at Le Mans. And it came in for it On the outside, this car looks really nice, but it was bolted together as a show car. And I know that cuz we're the ones that did it. So, now we're going to make this into a runner. It has a big 8-liter V10, Xtrac transaxle, and we're just going to turn it into a running car for the client. Is he going to put it on the track again? I think he's going to vintage race it, yeah. It'll be a fun car for that. Is this the same one that's on the picture in your lobby? This is the car. Wow. Yep, this is the car from Le Mans 2013. So this is like you know a 15 year gap between this car and that Mustang next door. But same basic class of motorsports. 8 liter V10 uh Roush up in Detroit built the engines for this program. Really? Yeah. Back in you know with air this is a res- that air and what restrictors. Back then it forced balance performance for the power. Like I said this car just came out of storage so you got to have to excuse it looks kind of rough but we'll uh make it look new again. But it had uh you know it was roughly 600 horsepower but it only revved to 4750 because this the restrictors are those sonic. Mhm. So you know you had to play a game with all that but had a lot of tricky stuff in there those those expensive engines. How much would it make if you didn't have to use the restrictor? Okay. But it had like uh it had stuff in the in the intake ports to shrink the intake ports you know to get the velocity correct for the restrictors in the low rpm and stuff like that so there was a lot of a lot of stuff in there. Those are long headers. Yeah. Usually on the header stuff you know we do whatever the engine builder tells us to do. It's always the best. Is that like a load sensor between the shock and the upright? Yeah load cells for downforce. Crazy. That was a ride height adjustment you know we had shims that slipped into there to do the ride height so you wouldn't have to affect the packer gap or your pump rubber gap. Is that a radiator in the back? No that was the AC condenser and the transaxle cooler. Uh this has air conditioning too? >> Yeah it was real hot in there. It was real real hot in there with the with the with the tin with the later and all that. And this car ran on E85 also. Yeah. It had an option where you run E85 or gasoline. And uh E85 you can make more power. What is the maximum cockpit temperature that you have to stay below? I want to say it was 110. Yeah, so it's like air conditioning but just like not a sauna. It's not actually cool in there. >> like it was wouldn't like 68. Yeah. It was 110, I believe. Yeah. So it was still hot. I can't believe this body style of Viper is 15 years old. That's disturbing. That's These are all still like new looking to me. And we worked hard with Dodge when we did this. Big effort together. They were great to work with. And then this car was like the mechanical part of it was designed here. The outside body shape uh design was done up at at Dodge. Then it came down here. We made the molds. We made the parts you know with us and our vendors and then car was designed The rest of car was designed here and built here and raced out of here. So it was all done out of this building. And the the goal was to go beat the Corvettes. Our last year competition at the factory was 14 and we won the championship. So you know, mission accomplished. Is that why the program stopped? No, I think there was some issues up at the board level of Stellantis on or at FCA Fiat Chrysler cuz at the same time we were racing against a Ferrari. Oh. And we won and we won the championship. And you know, it's kind of like that two cars racing each other. Yeah, that that makes sense that they would the Ferrari would take precedent over that. >> Yeah, little bit but it's cool. Yeah. We can go in the parts room here. Yeah, if you don't mind I'll take a picture. So this is like the part the parts room in here loaded up with parts. Everything gets you know a a tracking number and a design. So here's you know a little part getting built for This is for the drag pack. So everything gets made, welded up, inspected and fear of what coating it needs gets coated and gets put on the shelves and then gets brought out to for new car assembly. So, it's just piles of stuff that needs to get run through inspection. The normal parts are in here. We'll go upstairs. This is all Mark This is all old uh Mark IV stock, you know. Is some of this new old stock? Yeah. Wow. >> Yeah. So, here's a There's a wiper the wiper motor cable drive off of Boeing 707. You know, there's a That's the stock, you know, for the for the wiper. That certainly looks more rugged than one from a car. Yeah, doesn't it? A little bit more a little bit uh more robust. There's a transaxle. Yeah, mechanical driven tachs. So, we had to recast a mechanical driven uh distributor to run a mechanical driven tach, you know, so to get that all correct. Here's our cup brakes. We had to recast this automatic. The rear uprights, recast automatic. Did you have the original molds for that stuff? >> Uh we had some patterns, yeah. Wow. Where was all that stuff hanging out that whole time until >> in a garage in Tennessee. Just like a private person had >> person owned it. He made a set of continuation cars, and we got it all from him to continue it. So, it's just a lot of just a lot of stuff. Like Like we had to make the shift knob. One of my guys did that at home. It was a hobby. So, is there any small detail on that thing that is not exactly how it was on the originals? Like nothing you couldn't duplicate? >> cells are a lot more…