090: Street vs Race Engine Building — Is It Really That Different?

While you might be able to get away with a little sloppiness when building an engine for a street car, that’s not going to fly when it comes to dedicated race engines. In this episode, we sit down with Tom Hughes from Hughes Race Engineering to discuss exactly why that is, how we can ensure we’re building our engines right, what makes a great naturally aspirated race engine build, and much more.

Use “HUGHES50” to get 50% off our HPA Practical Engine Building Course here: hpcdmy.co/practicalengineb

The conversation this week kicks off with Tom’s background and journey towards owning and operating his own high-end engine building business. Tom went through the apprenticeship route, first starting out learning the trade at a reputable race engine builder, before pivoting towards rocketry of all things.

After a few years spent building rocket engines for New Zealand’s Rocket Lab, Tom decided to put the house up for sale and bet it all on what would become Hughes Race Engineering, which focuses on high-end race engine builds. While the business spends plenty of time building monster RB26s, 3S-GEs, and even GR Yaris G16E-GTSs, Tom’s speciality is Toyota’s venerable 1UZ-FE quad cam V8. These four-litre alloy V8s have long been used in the popular speedway scene in New Zealand, and Tom is a wizard when it comes to squeezing big power out of them, all while sticking within the restrictive Super Stock class rules.

These engines are covered in great detail in this conversation, as is a wider discussion around what needs to be done in order to build dependable, high-revving, naturally aspirated engines that can’t hide any shortcomings behind a wall of boost. There’s also plenty of talk in this episode around tolerances, flow numbers, when to outsource parts of your process, and much more — so if you’re even remotely interested in engine building or starting a business in the industry, this one is well worth your time.

Don’t forget, use “HUGHES50” to get 50% off our HPA Practical Engine Building Course here: hpcdmy.co/practicalengineb

Follow Hughes Race Engineering here:
IG: @hughesraceengineering
FB: Hughes Race Engineering
YT: Hughes Race Engineering
WWW: hre.co.nz