540 cid Vortech Blower Top Sportsman Engine

Growing up, Phillip Oakley'sgrandfather would bring him to race tracks and introduced him to the wonders ofracing. His family also owned an automotive repair business, which honed Phillip'smechanic skills and piqued his interest in cars and engines. As Phillip gotolder, he would build engines on the side while working at the repair shop.

"After a while, the repair businessjust wasn't making me happy," Oakley says. "I thought I could make a living buildingengines and racing. I have a pretty good race sponsorship with Texas Roadhouse fordrag racing. My engine building career bloomed from there. As soon as I madethe move to get out of the repair business and into the engine business, ourphones blew up, and the rest is history. Our business took off."

His business is Oakley Motorsports located in Owensboro, KY, which Oakley started back in the mid-2000s. The business began as a repair shop that also ran a local drag strip called Windy Hollow Dragway. As Phillip had in the past, he would build engines on the side. However, it wasn't long before Oakley Motorsports became strictly an engine building business.

"For a long period of time, I builtengines for people, but had a machine shop called Automotive Machine Performancedo most of our machine work," he says. "Eventually, it got to the point theycouldn't keep up with us, so I started looking at buying all my own equipment. Forabout six and a half years now, we’ve had our own equipment. We’ve moved twicein that time due to growth. We bought a 5,000 sq.-ft. building that wecompletely redid, which sits on 10 acres, so we shouldn't have to make anothermove."

Today, Oakley Motorsports is a full machine shop with four full-time employees and two part time employees. The shop specializes in drag racing engines, but also does work on truck pulling engines, open wheel modified and dirt track engines, and mud racing engines.

"We’re a family based shop," Oakleysays. "My son Jay is 21 years old and works side by side with me. That's how Igrew up, working for my dad. Jay and I have a pretty good relationship, and mycustomers know he's very involved in the business."

Oakley Motorsports sponsors the Top Sportsman / Top Dragster classes for Division 3 in NHRA. The shop is well-known for building nitrous engines in those classes, however, as centrifugal blowers have been getting more and more popular, Oakley knew he’d have to try his hand at one of those engine builds.

"We needed to do something to keep usinvolved in what's going on as things progressed in that field and show potentialcustomers that we could do that," Oakley says.

With the pressure on to build ablower engine, Oakley Motorsports recently built a 540 cid Vortech Blower TopSportsman engine.

"This blower drag engine originallystarted at PRI," he says. "I was very interested in learning more about Prochargersand Vortech blowers. I was kind of undecided in which way I wanted to go. Theguys at Vortech explained to me how their system worked and they really sold meon their product. That's how this engine build started."

Recently, Top Dragster and Division 3moved the index from 6 seconds flat to 6.10 in the 1/4-mile. The top 20 cars gofaster than 6.20, so Oakley knew he had to have some pretty good power tocompete at that level.

"We started by knowing we’d use aVortech blower and built a new car," he says. "On the engine, we started with aBrodix 9.800˝ deck aluminum block. We hip all of our blocks. We also used BrodixBB-3 Xtra 380cc intake runner cylinder heads, which have conical chambers and berylliumseats in them. We use Manley titanium valves on the intake and Inconel valveson the exhaust. We used a Callies crankshaft, MGP connecting rods, custom Diamondpistons, Erson camshafts, BAM lifters, Trend pushrods, Jesel rockers, Clevitecoated bearings, a Moroso wet sump oil pump, and an APD complete fuel system. Wealso have the Vortech blower, which is a V30 123 – V30 is the drive and 123 isthe blower size."

According to Oakley, one of the mostimportant things on these engines is to build an engine that is tunable. Becausethese engines have so much power and the cars are light, you can't have toomuch torque down low and you need big power in the higher rpm range to run bigspeed.

"Due to that, we decided to go with a540 cid engine for our Top Dragster stuff with a 4.250˝ stroke and a 4.500˝bore," he says. "Then we do a 4.375˝ stroke and a 4.530˝ bore in our Top Sportsmanstuff. We put a little more torque in the door car side of things."

As far as the block machining goes, OakleyMotorsports makes sure everything is accurate in terms of the line hone, deck,lifter bore sizing and things like that. This engine is a pretty straightforward build, but Oakley says the key is good, quality parts and proper machining.

"Everything we do is jig fixturedwith our block work," he says. "On the cylinder heads, we do a 45-degree valvejob because we want it to be durable. These engines turn anywhere from 8,000 rpmrunning Top Dragster to 8,800-8,900 rpm running a quick 1/8th-mile."

In these Division 3 classes, everybodyis aiming to run around 230 mph.

"With the ET reduction this year, wereally have to take a lot of power out of these engines up front to get them tothe speed in the back half," Oakley says. "If you take the average 540 cid enginethat we’re doing, we have to run a 3.98 to the 1/8th to run 6.10. I recentlyran 3.80 with it, so we’re having to knock a couple tenths of power out of it inthe 1/8th mile – that's how much reserve power you have to be able to run thosein the 1/4-mile."

To finish the build, Oakley sets thecompression ratio anywhere from 10.5:1 to 12:1 depending on the application,then uses the shop's 2,000 horsepower-rated DTS dyno to break-in the engine ongas without the blower.

"These engines make about 940horsepower on gas with no vacuum pump or anything," Oakley says. "When switchedover to the blower, the 540 cid Top Sportsman engine makes 2,100 horsepowerright at 7,000 rpm. It makes 2,500-2,600 hp at 8,200 rpm to run the speeds thatit runs on race day."

The Engine of the Week eNewsletter issponsored by PennGrade Motor Oil and Elring – Das Original.

Ifyou have an engine you would like to highlight in this series, pleaseemail Engine Builder magazine's managing editor, Greg Jonesat [email protected].