Race Crew Revs Up Ford Engine Horsepower with Mastercam

“With Mastercam, our R&D abilities have gone way up and our equipment and software have paid for themselves many times over. The program is very user-friendly and Mastercam technical support people are as nice as they are knowledgeable. I don’t think we’ve ever called and had anyone give us a hard time getting an answer we needed. It is frustrating when you call somewhere with a tech question and you get transferred to two or three people. They don’t do that at all.”

- Marcus Bowen
Crew Chief
Cunningham Motorsports

Printable Profile

At Cunningham Motorsports, the Pit Crew has been dividing its time between the race track and its own machine shop.

At the track, the goal is to win races.

In the shop, the objective is to improve their chances by boosting the horsepower and rpm output of standard Ford 500-inch engines to levels competitive with today’s dominant GM and Mopar products.

The Challenge

Cunningham’s stock car racing team was looking for a way to get more horsepower out of its standard Ford engines.

The Solution

Mastercam (Mill, Multiaxis, Solids, Router, Art)

Benefits

Mastercam shortened lead times for outsourced components
Mastercam was easy to learn and use, even for auto mechanics with no previous experience
Exceptionally responsive and helpful technical support every time they needed help
Multiaxis machining capabilities

Project Details

Crew Cheif Marcus Bowen said that one of their biggest problems was over-reliance on outside shops with long lead times to do machining. He said, “If we wanted to change something, we had to make a phone call, set it up, ship it out, wait for it to come back. And when it came back, put it back on the engine and back on the Dyno. That could take several weeks. And when you got it on the Dyno, you may not like what you see and have to take it apart.”

So early in 2007 the team purchased a 5-axis Millport CNC mill with a Centroid controller for head porting; a 4-axis RMC V-30 with a Milltronics controller; and Mastercam X3 software (Mill, Multiaxis, Solids, Router, Art) to develop toolpaths for both CNC systems. The pit crew was now running its own CNC machine shop for engine component R&D .No one on the team had any CNC programming experience but they were undaunted. Bowen said that the specialized nature of the parts they are manufacturing is actually a big help. These users had to know only a fraction of Mastercam’s capabilities, and the user-friendliness of the software allowed them to learn these quickly.Working together, the Pit Crew is now carrying out an aggressive R&D program to improve engine power. It relies on a rapid turnaround of components, 90% of which are manufactured in the Cunningham shop to control time frames and costs.The team has been focusing on a small number of manufacturing activities that have the greatest bearing on improving engine power.
These include head porting, intake manifolds and runners, the valve train and pistons. Bowen said, “It’s one big puzzle to get the combination put together right.” Piston work provides a telling example of fast turn-arounds. Bowen said that the lead-time for a set of pistons machined to specification is 3-6 weeks. Cunningham can machine them on their CNCs and have them installed in less than three days.Head porting is the most sophisticated machining task performed in the engine shop. The CNC is used to rough the port to near net shape. Then desired port geometry is created with hand tools and tested on the dynamometer until power is believed to be optimal. Then a Mastercam 5-axis program is used to digitize the new head port geometry by automatically collecting 3D data from the part with a spindle probe. The subsequent CAD model can then be used for creating 5-axis toolpaths for machining eight identical head ports.

So even if it’s not an actual race week, the pace of work at Cunningham Motorsports is always breathless: manufacturing and testing components, installing them in the Ford engine, and testing the car on the track at nearby Capitol Raceway (operated by team owners Jim and Gloria Cunningham).

During the first 8 months of using Mastercam, the team advanced from having no viable combinations to having three reliable engines with significant engine performance improvements. Power was increased from 1220 hp all the way up to 1360 hp. RPMs went from 9400 to over 10,000. The driver, Jim Cunningham, had to alter his driving style a little bit to adjust to the new power at his command.“We’ve just got to keep working at it, constantly making changes.” Bowen said. “We learn something every day. Now that Ford has committed to upgrading its engine block design, we will essentially be starting all over again when the new engines arrive.”