605 Drag Boat Engine - Engine Builder Magazine

605 Drag Boat Engine

Wanting to do things his own way, James Bostick decided to open his own engine machine shop in 2008. To do so he cashed out his retirement, bought some machines and founded Bostick Racing Engines in El Cajon, CA. Fast forward 10 years, Bostick Racing Engines continues to do things their own way and builds top-notch motors like this 605 drag boat engine. Find out what makes this marine engine special.

When James Bostick decided to open his own engine machine shop, he cashed out his retirement, bought some machines and founded Bostick Racing Engines in El Cajon, CA in 2008. Fast forward 10 years, and James now has a second full-time employee, and in August, he finished moving his shop into a new 1,900 sq.-ft. facility, a big upgrade from the previous 800 sq.-ft. location.

Bostick’s decision to go out on his own came from his passion for the craft that is engine building, as well as a desire to do the job the way he wanted it done.

“I was a night foreman at a CNC machine shop and I was getting guys who were wanting to have engines built for jet boats and for sand cars and stuff,” Bostick says. “I was building these engines on the side and I was trying different machine shops and I just couldn’t get anybody to do the work the way I wanted things done. I like my stuff the way I like doing my stuff. Finally, I just thought I need to do this on my own.”

Bostick Racing Engines has added more machines over the years to the point where everything is done in-house on a Bostick engine. In fact, even other shops in the area use Bostick’s machining services.

“We’ve been growing and growing, and specializing in a lot of machine work for other shops and other builders because we decided we wanted to not just be a shop that had barely enough equipment to get by, but we wanted to really specialize in doing high performance and more high-end work,” he says. “We do a lot of marine engines, which is our niche, and it’s been working for us.”

With a focus on marine, Bostick does engine work for jet boats, river hot rods and drag boats, among others, but that doesn’t mean he won’t take on other applications. The shop will do automotive engines and even some restoration jobs too.

“Typically our three biggest platforms that we do are big block Chevy, big block Ford and Chevy LS,” Bostick says. “Oldsmobiles used to be big, but they are starting to die off in the jet boat world. The big block Ford, Chevy and LS are the three big platforms in the hot rod boats these days.”

Speaking of those kinds of boats, Bostick recently finished up a 605 drag boat engine for a repeat customer looking to move up a class. His customers had Bostick build engines in the past, most recently about four seasons ago with a 468 single carb engine. As they moved up classes, Bostick added more nitrous, but that only got them so far.

“These customers had always wanted to run the ADBA Lucas Oil Drag Boat Racing series QE class, which requires making 1,300-1,400 horsepower to do,” Bostick says. They just finished a season and getting used to a new purpose-built drag boat using the old engine, which they’ve now run three or four years. While they were racing that engine for one last year, we started gathering up parts and came up with a plan for a big inch engine – nothing real strung out, something user friendly, low on maintenance and easy on parts. We went with a larger inch engine and then started putting it together.”

The 605 drag boat engine was built around Edelbrock 14-degree cylinder heads, which made getting all the other parts a bit more of a process.

“We started off with Edelbrock 14-degree heads that we hand blend ported,” he says. “We ended up having to have a lot of parts made because it was one of the first times that a few of these companies had dealt with these heads. We picked those heads because they were very nitrous friendly and something that was not going to be real finicky on the tuning.”

The block for the 605 came from World Products, which Bostick Racing Engines machined in order to get the proper clearances they wanted. From there, the shop finished the valve job and sent the heads to CP so they could make models to spec the right pistons for the engine.

In addition to CP pistons, the 605 drag boat engine got equipped with Manley valves, Carrillo rods, a Callies crank, Jesel shaft rockers, a Schneider cam, Clevite coated bearings, Crower lifters, Manton pushrods, a pair of Holley 1050 Dominators, a Profiler tunnel ram intake, an Edelbrock fogger, and a Dailey Engineering dry sump system.

“We basically just had to figure out how to make everything work as far as the cylinder heads go,” he says. “A couple places we ran into problems was trying to get the pistons to work with the heads as far as trying to get enough dome volume without the pistons hitting valves.

“The other issue we ran into was trying to get everything – the rods and crank – to fit in the crank case without hitting places. Other than that it was pretty straightforward. Nothing was overly complicated, but those were little things that made it to where it wasn’t a matter of ordering up parts out of your Summit catalog and then just throwing a pile of parts together.”

Bostick’s dog Frank is well-known by customers.

The 605 drag boat engine build was anything but throwing parts together. Once Bostick had the engine assembled and ready to run, he took the engine to Westech for dyno work.

“I use Westech for dyno work, one because we don’t have the space for a dyno room, but two because you have a third party, unbiased person evaluating your work, so there’s no way of cheating things,” Bostick says. “It does what it does and that’s it. Also, they’re a fairly world class, well recognized, well respected, very knowledgeable group of guys up there that if you’re going to be evaluated by anybody they would be the best to be evaluated by.”

That ‘evaluation’ proved this 605 engine could churn out 1,132 horsepower at 7,300 rpm and 892 lb.-ft. of torque on motor. With a small nitrous tune, the engine makes 1,405 hp and 1,121 lb.-ft. of torque. The compression ratio is 14:1.

“We didn’t want it to have to turn 8,000 rpm, so we targeted a lower 7,000 rpm range so it’d be a lot easier on parts,” Bostick says. “ The nitrous tune up was basically the smallest we could put in the fogger, so it really likes the nitrous. That’s the way we cammed it and geared it towards. This engine will run good on motor, but we really wanted it to shine on nitrous.”

The engine liked the nitrous indeed! On just a 250 shot of nitrous the engine picked up almost 300 horsepower. With a larger tune this engine could get up to about 1,600 horsepower, according to Bostick.

Bostick’s customers are going to have some serious fun once they hit the water, and hopefully a few wins as well.

The Engine of the Week eNewsletter is sponsored by Cometic Gasket and Penn Grade Motor Oil.

If you have an engine you would like to highlight in this series, please email Engine Builder magazine’s managing editor, Greg Jones at [email protected].

You May Also Like

Supercharged 388 cid LS Engine

Hoping to reach new heights in the mile, this Cadillac customer brought his car and engine in for the School of Automotive Machinists & Technology to work their magic on. See what went into the supercharged LS engine platform.

Cadillac Supercharged LS engine

During our week in Houston last fall, we got the chance to visit several engine shops in the area, and we also wanted to spend some time seeing where many up-and-coming engine builders get their start and hone their skills, so we stopped by the School of Automotive Machinists & Technology, also known as SAM Tech.

Supercharged 521 cid Brad Anderson Hemi Engine

Amanda Hoover and Eddie Rogers have been campaigning their Chevelle from Hell for nearly a decade. Helping give the car its name is a screw-blown 521 cubic inch Hemi engine. Check out the details of this build done by Chris Duncan Race Cars!

408 cid Nitrous LS Engine

During a tour of SAM Tech, we also got a chance to speak to a few students. One in particular, Jaylon Victorian, was nearing completion of a 408 cid nitrous LS engine. He applied his new engine building knowledge and skill set to the build, and it shines through in our latest Engine of the Week.

408 cid nitrous LS engine
760 cid Billet Big Block Chevy Nitrous Engine

Despite what you may think about nitrous engines, and those that are stock big block Chevy bore spacing, these 4.840″ bore space big block Chevy engines have some significant R&D in them. Just check out this 760 cubic inch billet version done at TRE Racing Engines.

Naturally Aspirated 440 cid LT1 Engine

The folks at Late Model Engines in Houston, TX run a top-notch engine and machine shop. You don’t have to look much further than this naturally aspirated 440 cid LT1 engine build to see what we mean. It’s our Engine of the Week!

Other Posts

Steve Morris Engines’ Twin-Supercharged 454 Big Block Chevy Engine

It had been 26 years since the last time Val Morris, Steve Morris’ wife, was behind the wheel of a drag car. The shop had been working on this project car named Sugar Momma, and got it done in time for Sick Week 2024. When it came time to figure out who’d drive it, Steve

Stuffing a Supercharged 572 cid SMX Engine in a Porsche 928

For Danny Humphreys, drag racing is a progressive disease. Ever since he watched Tom Cruise outrun a pimp in a 928 Porsche, he’s wanted the car for himself. As soon as he got one, he pulled the engine and the horsepower has gone up from there. Today, Danny has a supercharged 572 cid SMX engine

Indy Cylinder Head’s Supercharged 588 cid Hemi Engine

We’ve been following Indy Cylinder Head and the engine work Ken Lazzeri for quite some time. We got a chance to speak with Ken on the final day of the PRI show when he was kind enough to walk us through the details of several of the engines they had on display, including this bracket

Ken Lazzeri Hemi Engine
Kaiju Motorsports’ All-Billet Subaru EJ 2.5L Engine

Hands down, this was one of the more eye-popping engine bays we saw during the 2023 PRI Show. The Kaiju Motorsports-built STi Subaru is a cool car in and of itself, but with an all-billet 2.5L EJ engine featuring titanium piping, this thing stopped you in your tracks and forced your head to turn. We