UP CLOSE: Ernie Irvan's 1991 Daytona 500 Winning Intake Manifold & Cylinder Heads (Larry McClure)

unbelievable amount of hours that's in this intake and so if people were bleeding the air through these things where were they doing that we push as far as we can push it you weren't even allowed back there yeah right what is this right here do do you ever do anything that either got caught doing or didn't get caught doing when they first before they had that the video you're about to watch was filmed on the same day is two other videos we did with Larry McClure and Morgan McClure Motorsports history he has Sterling Marlin's 1995 Daytona 500 winning car we also drove all over Abingdon with him showing us every single Race shop that they had occupied throughout the entire team history and this video takes place at Larry's personal garage I guess he had these heads just in a cabinet or something which is pretty cool so don't forget that check out those videos when you're done with this one if you haven't seen him yet this is the winning uh intake instead of hey it's off a 91 Daytona 500 car that Ernie Irving won our first Daytona 500 1991. the heads and the matching intake that Larry had kept uh as souvenir pieces are but as you can see right here on the end it says set 33 44 and a half Chambers 259 Runners 18 degree valve angle so they're typically 23 degree heads that have been rolled 18 degrees what does that mean for somebody who doesn't know well instead of being like this they're like that there's a better valve angle moves more air how do you do that the bottom of the head great machines and welded up re-machine it so somebody has to weld on the bottom of the head for days to build up material so they can cut it back down at a different angle yeah yeah if you'll see the valves hang below the head wow the intake valves so if you lay them on the table you gotta be you've never laid them on the table because you damage the valves you always sit cylinder heads like that right there unless you're on a rug interesting what these heads see the uh the valley plate is made under the intake manifold because it's not separate yeah one piece so when you change it you got into antifreeze these are all epoxies to change the runner volume one of these little holes between the runners for for the in keep the gaskets from moving really I don't know if you had a light you could probably see down in there but this intake I mean no telling I mean you look right here at the whale beads oh wow so you know it's been uh they've got another Marine back anymore yeah what the heck is going on in there it looks like cylinders with ridges and little holes and what is all that to distribute air better after the plate did they make you put on there yeah what kind of power gains would this contraption make over an intake that didn't have any of that oh probably see all the 30. 30 horsepower yeah so if you didn't have this figured out you were screwed in this little the center chamber here is like completely blocked off from why is how does that work now that I don't you'd have to ask somebody that you know really worked on these things you know and Larry might know I don't know you know a lot of us weren't allowed back in the engine room when all this was going on because it was top secret you weren't even allowed back there yeah but you didn't ask you didn't you wouldn't walk up go run what does this right here do uh nothing so you know what I mean yeah you just didn't want to get out so it uh but you know Larry might know this is so cool but yeah as you can see all the welds see where it's all been it's been cut up and put back together well you would what you would do is that would be cut right here you'd take this chunk out and you'd have two or three of them laying here and you put it back in there put a gasket on run it on a Dyno it didn't work you took this one back out your final piece you weld it in oh yeah this is the best piece let's weld it in that's right because you there was like a rule that your height could be whatever you want but it had to you couldn't have a spacer over a certain height because that's what Screwed Mark Martin in 1990. so if you weld all this together it was legal is that how that works right okay see yeah Mark Martin's intake was not welded oh even though this is welded and cut up in there too yeah I mean there's it's unbelievable amount of hours that's in this intake and Mark Giles did all this welding really yeah yeah he welded all the aluminum intakes welded all the heads and then it would go to the machine shop and they would do the work but marked it all the welding on this intake right here in these heads and Mike hips would do the machine work back in the back and then we had other guys that you know je beard it took care of the intakes and and knew what all this meant I told him I didn't know what it meant because we didn't get out yeah we had a we had a we had a gauge it went down it fit that gate as long as you fit that gauge you can do whatever you want to do you understand how this how it works or why it made more power that way than or not well I mean we just can't we just kept trying and I mean I could if we had like little rocket boosters on the bottom of those things that's what you saw in there huh those the cylinders that had the ridges on them yeah how did that work work good I mean like did the air going over The Ridges area better I mean what you're trying to do is get make the signal to the carburetor as strong as you can so it'll ask for more gas and burn the fuel huh plus you're trying to get around a restrictor plate that's laying there so if people were bleeding the air through these things where were they doing that how did they they weren't they weren't Bleeding Through the cylinder heads if you're watching this video I'd be willing to guess you're technically inclined to some capacity otherwise you probably wouldn't understand what was going on and I got a question for you why do you prefer the particular kind of oil that you use is there a real reason for it they have a specific well several reasons why I like Pennzoil and we use that in all of our builds here it's very important technical we're using this for that which I'll explain later you know we love history and Pennzoil has a really pretty awesome racing history has evolved in it it's important to them it's important to the people who work there and we think that's really cool this Pennzoil Platinum full synthetic is actually made out of natural gas not crude oil because it's derived from natural gas and not crude oil they actually have to put this coloring in here to make it Amber otherwise it's completely clear and I think we all know somebody that would probably like try to drink it or eat it or something if they didn't put that in there I also have my own historical personal tie to the origins of me and how that all relates to the origins of Pennzoil too the garage I built the Escalade in learned how to work on cars and all that stuff was owned by the son of a guy who founded this natural gas company that guy was also the owner of that Rolls-Royce there the flooded one that we have videos about he was hired by one of the guys who founded Pennzoil through working there they had a good relationship they enabled him to do his own thing on the side also which led to them having this chunk of garages and later on having me be able to use some of it to work in if there is no Pennzoil I'm not standing here talking to you right now because I never have a spot to learn how to work on a car it's pretty cool well that's my story that's why we run Pennzoil and everything so next time you find yourself at the parts store standing in front of a shelf oil not sure which one to pick about it they had this thing machined right here to where this thing would come up and down closer this was to the restrictor plate the faster you'd go if that thing would move up that far you're talking about 40 horsepower really yeah so whenever Doug Yates is talking about something they had a weld breaking the card off faster is whatever Contraption they had put in here came out yeah that centerpiece came out that's what happened he was talking on Earnhardt's show yeah that centerpiece if I'm not mistaken came out it is formed a different another wall for the air to follow huh but you couldn't have it up there because their gauge had to go in this far right okay that's very interesting and Yates talked about us pulling air through the valve cover studs and these here yeah carburetor studs yeah talking about this yeah he thought we were doing that really yeah I could show him I said game there's no holes in here no sir nope there's no holes in there oh when the studs yeah yeah there's nothing yeah I'm telling you I told you I made this statement going down the road we never we didn't cheat and we pushed it we push it as far as we can push it we've never cheated they couldn't come back and say we cheated we go we go down there and go to NASCAR with with real friends down and Bahamas and he would get on that y'all did say hey Larry tell me you can tell me you can tell me what you all were doing well we weren't doing anything yeah he said you tell me I won't tell him let me tell you we didn't do anything then he tell you one time not to sneak up the show every race every day time and every time they get double stink at my show did you ever do anything that you either got caught doing or didn't get caught doing when they first before they had that plant them like that right there we got we went through inspection people were using they called them Hooter tubes I was there when that happened clear plastic uh washers washers washers and we just let them fall down on top of it the thing when we were putting the restricted plate on and then had a walk made at that Walgreens about 40 50 horsepower and Tim harp called us with it I think going through inspection didn't he and so what what was that how does that work well there was a restrictor plate that was here yeah and then the washers laid on top of the restrictor plate right underneath we dropped them down there okay so when Wright would go over there with the Restriction yeah see you would they would hand you the restrictor plate or no you'd put the carburetor on they'd put the restricted plate on initially we were putting a restrictions that's right that's right that's right yeah we went after they caught us with them they were little circular things that just fit in those it looked like white plastic washers yeah and he's sitting down in there and you put your research plate on and that gave you a wall but I heard a follow-up oh so that's a restriction plate that closed the Gap from this thing to the carburetor okay so and they were clear and after the race they caught us with them to come in we'd take ours off and we ran the race without them but everybody else had them you could go down there and take a foot and kick them after after the race inspection the races oh you just kick him out of the way so nobody used them after that but never one time did they catch us with anything penalize this and same thing on restricted murder what are these holes for the epoxy resistance for the epoxy to Anchor into so it doesn't doesn't fall under the motor right and when Larry meant by he said don't stink up the show don't run off you know and make it aboard we can pull everyone we could pull him off the corner every race really you're taking the whole back stress just because to draft back up he didn't even go in the corner again and it would pull them back off and then drive with the pack he didn't take him straight away before they could get caught there huh so why was that we're aerodynamics my babies are serious those are big yeah those are like triple Springs big heavy duty stuff being like the D9 does your stuff good morning engine failures wait these look like oh those like that inner spring there almost looks like it's just there to keep the two Springs from touching like it's not I don't know if that even does anything that is intense leave for one of the first hands were shaft rockers yeah what was that I think when did people start rolling these heads over was that well that's what this is considered rolled over yeah what was that 90 or 91 because like this is 91. so not not the entire field wasn't doing this yet is that part of why you could do that and this head right here was better than the Chevrolet head this Pontiac head yes they wouldn't let you run a Buick head because it was 15 degrees Yeah you can find out the box you make the runners bigger than he's tired in Pontiacs you remember we were blowing her after this writing boy that manifold was blown out too [Music] we cut that thing off that bed played oh right to make a two-piece manifold yeah and then it came out with a two-piece manifold so you didn't have every time you change the intake you got into water made a mess well that's a lot of welding well you know I changed that manifold prior to that way and after the race the day again silicon was still wet wet it didn't dry that's right because they tear you down because that was that manifold was like five horsepower over there our next best one did you ever run these heads again after Daytona yeah so they came off the car and you cleaned them and yeah and put them in here wow yeah they were back in there in a cabinet and I told Larry I said you need to put these up somewhere and save them and we might have had them in the museum for a little while on display yeah did you ever try running one of these goofy looking intakes with without the restrictor plate to see what it did like did it did this did this in here hurt power if it didn't have a plate you know that that made more power so if even if you took them if you didn't have a restrictor plate that would hurt it yeah yeah yeah that's what I was wondering yeah wow I didn't know you had these in here I'm glad you remembered that well learn I had talked about it prior to you know you coming up here and then we completely forgot about it and he mentioned it if you have any other old Parts like this laying around here that you forgot about too I'm surprised you don't have that Daytona car parked in here so you could just watch TV and sit next to it that's what I do appeared come on yeah you can bring it up here and put it right in the corner right there if the trophy yeah will you put that back oh yeah I'll put it all back together oh that's cool so you never know this stuff is just here I'm really glad when you were born uh five years after you use those okay so let's say my son was born in 91 so you know these are 72 years old my youngest son back in the bag they go well if you made it this far you probably like this history just as much as we do and we're glad you're here welcome to the team yeah leave a comment if you made it all the way to the end because we want to know how many how many of you are like you know really here if you like what we do here and you want to support the channel uh you can check out staplesandautoworks.com and find some of our shirts on there along with these hats these Good Wrench style hats we just got more of those Logan packs all the orders right here and we give you a handwritten note with every single one that we both write on we both write stuff on them because we care and fun fact this x-pipe right here this graphic is an actual Morgan McClure Super Speedway x-pipe that we have let's took a picture of it and had them making sure about it we have these on the website it's got a boom tube on the front too and we got the Monte Carlo the hats pit crew style shirts now if you haven't checked out yet you probably would really like our extra Channel if you look up Stapleton 42 extra we post stuff there that you don't see on the main Channel more personal like if you want to get you know get to know us see what we do in here things like that you can find all that there find stories kind of fun stuff get to know you better and I'm working on headers for the Monte Carlo right now doing an equal length header experiment the tri-wide collectors and you know this will be its own video which is currently being filmed because I'm not done yet so if you're here and you see that there's your sneak peek we're uh we're trying to see if we can get this the 6-2 in here to sound you know get that signature x-pipe howl which it should do with the right headers so we're just gonna make them oh here's a piece of that Super Speedway system I was telling you about we got a whole video just talking about boom tubes all those things you know if you're vibing right now you're gonna love it here just saying pretty pumped that you're here because if you weren't here we wouldn't be able to do any of this this is how we survive I'm taking a minute to think about that it's pretty dang cool that there's enough people out there who all love the same stuff or grew up with it or something that this is able to be done it's just awesome glad you're here