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Performance car builds typically take some time to pull off. There is a planning stage, a parts sourcing stage, a build stage, and finally, a testing stage before a car sees the track or enters competition. If you’re Chris Hein, you do all that in the span of three or four months and then you come to Sick Week to beat the hell out of said car.
We caught up with Chris Hein, who hails from Canada, during the last day of Sick Week 2023, when competitors returned to Orlando Speedworld to close out the competition. The fact that Chris was there at all meant he had been seeing success all week long – or his issues were solvable and hadn’t crushed his hopes of finishing. As it turned out, Chris’ 1933 Factory Five hot rod and its twin-turbo 6.2L LSA engine had been performing extremely well. He was in the third place spot in the Stick Shift class with one day of racing remaining to either capture second, or secure third. What was even more impressive was how quickly his combo came together for the drag-and-drive event.
“We’re super excited to be here,” Hein told us. “This has been a real great event so far. A few late nights and long drives, but it’s been well worth it. I brought my Factory Five Racing 1933 Ford 3-window coupe. We just put the whole combination together about three and a half months ago.
“We ended up cutting the chassis off at the firewall and rebuilt it all the way back. We put an 8.50 cage in it and did a 4-link wishbone suspension to try to make it go straight. The real heart of this combo is we put a stick in it. That’s brand new to me. I’ve never done it before, so just a couple days ago we were at Bradenton to do some testing just before Sick Week and that was the first time we were able to make passes with a stick car.”
Aside from testing the car to understand what will make it go A to B, Chris’ engine combo was pretty much ready to go after a quick refresh.
“The powerplant is a full LSA long block,” he says. “Nothing too special in it, but we did pull it apart before to make sure everything was healthy and gapped the rings for the additional boost. One of the big keys is the dual fuel setup that we put on it. We’re running pump gas on the street because it’s only a 9:1 motor. Then, we convert over to E85. The Dominator converts it over automatically once we get up into 3-4 lbs. of boost, so it works really well for that.
“Another big aspect are these Garrett turbos. I’ve got a pair of G35 1050s. They work really well with this combination and build boost quick on the two step and make a nice, clean power curve to help keep this stock bottom end alive.”
Out on the track, Chris says the turbos see around 18 lbs. of boost in an effort to get as close to an 8.50 as he can. Helping reach those 8-second times is the LSA engine’s 1,020 horsepower. In addition, Chris was running a beefed up camshaft in the combo as well.
“It’s actually the wrong cam for the combination, but that’s what we had in the limited time we had. It’s a custom ground Texas Speed cam that was meant for the blower that was on here before Sick Week. With the limited time, we said cams are cams, so we left the blower cam in it, took the blower off, put the turbos on, and just hoped for the best. Actually, it’s turned out really well so far.”
Chris was also running an intake from Shear Fabrications that was sitting on top of an air-to-water intercooler and a Holley Lo Ram that housed the dual fuel injectors. Additionally, the Ford coupe features a McLeod RXT 1200 twin-disc clutch kit and Mickey Thompson slicks that helped the car run a PR of 8.90 at 156 mph.
“The ultimate goal is I want to be right on the edge of that cage cert and be able to make it to the end of these drag and drives,” Hein says. “When we built the combination, I looked at one of my fellow racers from Canada “Chuck Norris” Rich Guido. I used a lot of his input when we were putting this thing together, and looking at the field of stick cars, if we can make a really consistent 8.50 stick car, we should be able to put it in the podium just about every event.”
Over the course of five days throughout Florida, Chris handed in ETs of 10.74 at 151 mph, 9.25 at 150 mph, 9.31 at 157 mph, 8.90 at 156 mph, and 9.53 at 145 mph for a five-day average of 9.54 at 152 mph, which secured Chris’ 3rd-place finish at Sick Week.
Engine of the Week is sponsored by PennGrade1, Elring – Das Original and NPW Companies. If you have an engine you’d like to highlight in this series, please email Engine Builder Editor Greg Jones at [email protected].
