My AR Fabrication 540ci stroker motor

ViperTuner

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Very doubtful that they would help, I asked them last year if they would build me a motor.

They basically said they only do the whole thing.

I wanted to be apart of the build, so that didn't work for me.

They still do some nice work on there cars, just way to secretive.

We will let anyone be apart of their personal build(not hands on in our shop of course)... We will give our opinion and share yours as well... If I feel that we are going in the wrong direction I'm not scared of stating it...but I won't take any responsibility for the end result either... We call this a "Racing Development Program". "Stuff" will happen and the owner is responsible. People generally go with our suggestions but there are a few that are willing to learn and pay...


I will have to put the blame on at least 2 months out of the 8 on Mahle for stopping their production line to produce us a set of one-off pistons just for this build... If it was just a standard off the shelf setup then it would have been done months ago...

From what I see we can disassemble inspect / machine / clean a long block in a week. Have the head porting done in another week and assemble the next week. We perform a lot of operations that a lot of others don't do...especially from the looks of what LPE did on this one... So it would not be uncommon for a 3-4week off-the shelf build... No porting could bring the time frame down to a week or 2. But thats of course when your engine is next in line....our back log for engines is incredible...and Full car builds are on a 8month waiting list right now..

Had to service aries other car the other day so we got ourselves off track a few days... ;)

:eater:

Howard
 

spotter

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Man 8 months is nothing. It's been over a year for me, these things take time to properly plan for. If your like me you like to learn about what makes the viper tick and all of the pitfalls around it. Instead of someone just building you a car.

Personally I don't trust alot of the so-called viper tuners out there from past experiences, so I wanted to make sure it was done right.
 

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That's why I hired a tuner like Howard to take on my build and close to home so I can check on what there doing.

Howard, Keep up the good work and post more pictures, I enjoy flipping through the details!

I will never ship my car anywhere again. Especially south florida.
 
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aries

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Just received these pics from Howard at AR Fab this morning of my short block.
 

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spotter

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Very cool.
I love seeing the shortblock of a Viper with new pistons, rods, billet mains. blah.

It's funny when you put it next to a Chevy 350, it looks huge!!!!
 
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aries

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Well it's been a while since I've updated the progress on my car. Well I stopped by AR Fabrication and the BEAST LIVES!!!!! Howard has been tuning the AEM on the dyno and man the car sounds mean. Here are some first HP numbers: Now bear in mind this is only at 4000rpm (the highest he's taken it so far) and only 3.3 lbs of boost:

570hp and 677 lbs/ft of torque!!!!

I can't wait to see what the figures are at full boost and RPM!!! On top of that the AR Fab engine only has 5% leak down, and it's not even broke in yet. Howard says once broke in it most likley will have 3% leak down, maybe less. Needless to say I am stoked!!!! Can't wait to drive it. :)
 
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aries

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Me too. This has been a long road filled with aggrivation and frustration (not at AR Fab but with several other shops and their deplorable craftmanship), so hearing it run was such a boost
 
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aries

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Here's some pics of my custom oil catch can that Howard at AR Fabrication made for me.
 

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ViperTuner

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Lets add more fuel to the camp fire!

Spacers required for the oil cap to clear the TD rockers by "House of Billet/Fast-Hemis.com".

(BTW...for the people that are purchasing TD rockers newer than 2004...do not worry TD fixed this problem a long time ago...BUT LPE had no clue as expected...)

Here is the short version.

Ordered / Prepaid / asked for Overnight Delivery when finished machined.
After (give or take a few days) 2 weeks of our stated delivery day they finally showed!
One of the the spacers look as if it was used a learning mistake.
The o-ring material sent with them was short on one side.
The surfaces were not even close to being flat.
The rear upper bolts can not be tightened unless the cowl is removed. LOL
The studs they shipped were surfaced on a lathe on one side but bolt cutters were used for the other side...along with having 6 different lengths.

In this economy you should not even think about sending something out your door like this...but their excuse? "Well you were in a rush".

To make matters worse....The patch harness we purchased had the VSS wring not correct. I will refrain from "rat'n" on this person since he did help when I called him each time...which was 5-6 times a day for the last week and a half...For the last week I have been testing every component to make sure its only a wiring issue and not a hardware problem... me "HEY MAN, YOUR WIRE HARNESS IS NOT WORKING" him "ARE YOU SURE THE ABS/ECU/DASH IS NOT THE PROBLEM?"

The ABS module checked out fine today as did the dash cluster and the ECU... what a pain in the ass this was without the Dodge DRBIII scan tool... Stupid Snap On Modis did the trick though....

Stuff like this can get people upset quickly, especially when the car is together and you have to take it apart 3 or 4 times to make sure we did not cause the issue.

Once I correct the errors we found with the harness I will be heading back to the dyno to finish this thing up.

:usa:

Howard

PS... please do not take any offense with my sarcasm... This is as diplomatic as I can be... If I had it my way my words would not be so kind. :)
 

Torquemonster

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Lets add more fuel to the camp fire!

Spacers required for the oil cap to clear the TD rockers by "House of Billet/Fast-Hemis.com".

(BTW...for the people that are purchasing TD rockers newer than 2004...do not worry TD fixed this problem a long time ago...BUT LPE had no clue as expected...)

Here is the short version.

Ordered / Prepaid / asked for Overnight Delivery when finished machined.
After (give or take a few days) 2 weeks of our stated delivery day they finally showed!
One of the the spacers look as if it was used a learning mistake.
The o-ring material sent with them was short on one side.
The surfaces were not even close to being flat.
The rear upper bolts can not be tightened unless the cowl is removed. LOL
The studs they shipped were surfaced on a lathe on one side but bolt cutters were used for the other side...along with having 6 different lengths.

In this economy you should not even think about sending something out your door like this...but their excuse? "Well you were in a rush".

To make matters worse....The patch harness we purchased had the VSS wring not correct. I will refrain from "rat'n" on this person since he did help when I called him each time...which was 5-6 times a day for the last week and a half...For the last week I have been testing every component to make sure its only a wiring issue and not a hardware problem... me "HEY MAN, YOUR WIRE HARNESS IS NOT WORKING" him "ARE YOU SURE THE ABS/ECU/DASH IS NOT THE PROBLEM?"

The ABS module checked out fine today as did the dash cluster and the ECU... what a pain in the ass this was without the Dodge DRBIII scan tool... Stupid Snap On Modis did the trick though....

Stuff like this can get people upset quickly, especially when the car is together and you have to take it apart 3 or 4 times to make sure we did not cause the issue.

Once I correct the errors we found with the harness I will be heading back to the dyno to finish this thing up.

:usa:

Howard

PS... please do not take any offense with my sarcasm... This is as diplomatic as I can be... If I had it my way my words would not be so kind. :)


well I hope out of all this frustration you get more work because guys like you that do check things out and will not proceed until you are saitsifed the quality is up to par - are RARE!

The sad thing is someone always has to pay for the poor workmanship inherited by parts ordered in that are pathetic, and outwork that falls short. To top it off, the few that will spend the time to do things well have trouble convincing their customers the cost is worth it because they can get it cheaper down the road.

The good news is there are enough Viper customers around now that have wasted so much money learning the hard way (no fault of their own), they can appreciate it costs more to get it done right once, but is cheaper in the long run.... and more fun :2tu:
 

Torquemonster

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actually, thinking about what I just said and how much some have paid for so little - I think maybe getting it done right by honest charging would still come out cheaper than some of the rubbish I have seen that cost huge sums.

sigh
 

ViperTuner

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Not that it relates to an SRT10 engine but we use Kelford Cams in NZ for our custom camshafts for Skylines, Supras, Subarus and Hondas. Because Kevin really knows alot about vavletrain and has a first class CNC machine to build his stuff and a Fair price that's worth the shipping cost. I would Not expect someone like yourself in NZ to send us a block to sleeve unless we know how to do it properly. I will be sleeving one for our 68 Plymouth Valiant project this winter.(sorry to jack the thread but when I start it I will start a blog about it and share with everyone)

:usa:

Howard
 
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aries

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Here's an update:

700hp, 701 rwtq


We are having a big problem with AIT. It was 50 degrees outside and I have the paxton with the DLM extra heat exchanger and we still had a AIT of 98 degrees past 5000rpm. Now Howard at AR Fab felt the water in the intercooler and it was cool, so that tells me that the intercooler system is way to small to cool the amount of ait the engine requires because lacks the surface area to do the job. So now we are exploring the front mount air to air intercooler.
 

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ViperTuner

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Yea...It comes up much faster if I just stabbed the throttle but it breaks the tires loose on the dyno 3 out of 5 times I do it, so the torque curve is a little shy of what it actually does down low since I am "rolling" on the throttle.

I sent Aries his plot vs a Stock SRT-10 with the identical Paxton setup we tuned on a VEC3 awhile back... The midrange of Aries setup is incredible.

Howard
 
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aries

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Yea...It comes up much faster if I just stabbed the throttle but it breaks the tires loose on the dyno 3 out of 5 times I do it, so the torque curve is a little shy of what it actually does down low since I am "rolling" on the throttle.

I sent Aries his plot vs a Stock SRT-10 with the identical Paxton setup we tuned on a VEC3 awhile back... The midrange of Aries setup is incredible.

Howard

Here is said dyno graph. :D
 

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plumcrazy

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is it me or does that torque seem to be falling off a lot faster now ?

power under the curve looks nice though
 
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is it me or does that torque seem to be falling off a lot faster now ?

power under the curve looks nice though

That might be caused by the intercooler problem I'm having. Howard said the intake air temp spiked to around 98 degrees at 5000rpm to redline.
 

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Reading some of the earlier posts about stroking the engine got me thinking.

Seems to me it's no big deal to increase the ci of a V10. Just a simple increase in bore size by .030" gives 510 ci
on a 488 ci motor with a 4 inch stroke. A 4 inch stroke still gives you a 2 inch journal. 2 inch journal engines have been putting down HP figures into the 1000's for years without a problem if they're built right. So .060 over gives 518 ci and .070 over gives 520 ci.

Bottom line is .070 over isn't much at all when you consider you get 520 cubes out of it. The fact the V10 has so many cylinders is what gives the ci per thousands overbore such a great amount of gain for so little overbore.

If you offset grind the crank you wind up with a 2 inch journal. The stock journal is 2.1 inches so that's a reduction of .05 thou per side. I don't think that has a great effect on overall strenght of the crank compared to the total you get from a 2.1 inch journal. So .1 inches is a 5% reduction in journal size and if journal size and crank strenght is a linear relationship then a 5% reduction in overall strenght is peanuts if the crank was designed with a 100% margin to begin with.

In other words, it doesn't take too much fiddling around the margins to get big increases with a V10 motor. You get a lot of gain for a little input..........

What let go on my 520 stroker was the number three rod..... A well known problem that has to do with the oiling system.

If I were building this engine my biggest concern would be the quality of the oiling system I put in it. I think pressures need to be around 80 psi to keep the engine alive.
 
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