Program Manager - PROformance Powertrain Products
PERAs Core Corner: Ford Balance Shaft Information For Gearheads

This month’s column is going to be information about balance shaft gears and changes that have occurred in some Ford engines. But I thought before we got to that I would give a little history on balance shafts and their purpose. The basic concept behind balance shafts has been recognized for nearly a century. Contrary

PERA’s Core Corner: No Beginning, No End To Ring References In Engines

This Core Corner is all about rings. It’s amazing how much they are a part of our lives. Of course, a symbol of commitment between married couples is probably the first that comes to mind. Type the word “ring” in the Google search engine and get beyond all the stuff that is being sold and

PERA’s Core Corner: Learn To Read The Bumps On GM Gen III Heads

Back a couple of hundred years ago, some brilliant thinkers believed that the bumps on your head could be used to diagnose your health or predict personality traits. Using the psuedo-science “Phrenology,” advocates would feel your scalp and tell you if you were a genius or a criminal (please, no amateur diagnoses based on the

PERA’s Core Corner: Solving The Riddle Of The V10 Chrysler Cylinder Head

In this month’s Core Corner, we ask the question: “When is something you know not what you think you know?” Sounds like a mystery, doesn’t it? For example, when is a car not a car? When it turns into a parking lot! I know, I know – don’t quit my day job. But that really

PERA’s Core Corner: Trying To Make Sense Out Of Detonation Sensors

Here it is the New Year and I’m sure many of us have gone through the challenge of making resolutions to lose weight, quit smoking and so on and so on. We’ll look back 3 months from now and try to make sense of how our resolutions got lost in the shuffle. This month we

PERAs Core Corner

It seems that the thirst for knowledge on the Gen III GM engine applications is growing almost as aggressively as the information for the 4.6L Fords. I addressed the subject of Gen III long and short crankshafts in a recent column (See September 2004 Engine Builder Core Corner). But based upon the number of responses

PERA’s Core Corner

I am convinced that the 4.6L Ford SOHC V8 engine casting component proliferation is attempting to compete with the children’s movie “The Never Ending Story:” it just keeps changing as it goes along for no apparent reason. However, what we are going to look at today is more of a James Bond mystery since no

Jeeps: 4.0L Cylinder Heads

The 4.0L came on the scene in 1987 and is still being used, however 2005 may be the end of the journey in domestic production. It’ll be a bittersweet farewell: most who have it love it. This is an old school inline six with lots of torque and there are still many of them out

PERA’s Core’s Corner

Some months back (December 2003 Engine Builder, to be exact), I wrote about some of the identification features of the Gen III GM V8 engines. Considering that the Gen IV with DOD (Displacement on Demand) is about to be released, this is probably a good time to go over a few other things that you

Getting To The Bottom Of The Great Ford Cover-Up

Lately I’ve been noticing an increase of instances where an engine may be the same from one year to the next, with the exception of one major change: the front cover, primarily with SOHC or DOHC engines. Well, we are back this month with an old friend: the Ford 4.6L SOHC engine family and its

Core Corner

When you’ve been doing things the same way for a long time, you begin to develop a routine. But it’s amazing how quickly you can unlearn something. Some years back I got up one morning and proceeded to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. Because I have lived in the same house for

PERA’s Core Corner

In this month’s “Core Corner” I am addressing a potpourri of different issues – some old, some new, but all of them offer something that will keep you out of the “Do Over” column and, of course, profitable. I got the idea from my wife some weeks ago while accompanying her (being dragged) to a