Steve Morris you’re the man who else would have the balls to tear one side of the motor apart and drive 40 miles and still win drag week. Love y’all.

Ned is the kinda guy who can suck a valve out of the cylinder bore... never let him forget 😁

I've heard of someone sucking the chrome off the bumper.....but a valve through a guide...impressive.😮

Never thought Steve would build a Displacement On Demand (DOD) engine! 4 cylinders under power and 4 going for a ride. The lid blowing off, may have some connections with a supersonic shock wave propagating out of an inlet runner from an early combustion event. Shock wants to go straight, and the blow off panel would need a 90 degree turn.

Steve makes drag weeks awesome! Congratulations to Steve, Tom, Clark, Ned what a kick ass team SMX !!!❤

If the explosion happened in the intake runner then the force will follow the path of the runner out, like a shaped charge explosion. This would cause the pressure wave to slam into the top of the intake before it was redirected outward. If the explosion happened in the intake plenum it would more than likely rupture the burst panel due to the shape of the blast.

You should find a good airbrush artist, and let them paint the wood panneling on the wagon to look like the friction from the air is starting to char the wood. Charred wood, glowing embers and whatnot.

At GM, we had a similar situation. On the Saturn engine we suddenly had a situation where exhaust valves would get stuck. This only happened at light throttle cruise on a fairly slight incline. To make a long story short, the engine shop was chamfering the valve end of the guide. At this light throttle, low load situation the tiny, and I mean tiny, bit of buildup on the exhaust valve would get very hot and begin to flow. Because the guide had a very slight chamfer, as the valve closed, the chamfer would jam the buildup between the guide and stem, and the valve(s) would stick. After cooling the engine the problem would right itself, usually. To prove this to engineering I took a guide and a valve, put some White Out on the stem, then, without much force, I used the palm of my hand and drove the valve home. It was stuck solidly. No one could believe it. I then did the same demonstration with a square cut guide, and no problem. So I made a piloted mill that could be used in a drill to square off the guides and the problem was solved. Engineering used my process to fix field issues and stopped chamfering the guides in manufacturing. The problem never occurs at heavy throttling or on decel.

Find the thread capacity (either tensile or thread shear) of all those bolts holding the intake on, call it F. Measure the sealing area (simple length X width) of that lid, call it A. Find max pressure by F / A and compare that to your burst panel pressure rating on the lower intake manifold.

I wonder if the guide expanded enough to allow exhaust soot to form inside the guide closing the "extra" clearance when hot.. Then when it cooled down like you state the clamping force suddenly comes into play since the ID of the bushing is now reduced by the very thin coating of carbon that built up.

Steve’s videos are quickly becoming part of my favorites! I was smiling ear to ear when he was talking about getting the dropped valve out with a hose. I absolutely love that kind of on the fly ingenuity!

Heavy foot= danger to manifold😂

Man it had to be a gut-punch for Ned when it happened, with the engine and busting the carbon fiber front end, but he took it like a champ

The Monte is absolutely gorgeous car...thanks for a little better look at it. Has to make you proud knowing your engine is in it

You, tom and Clark were the only reason I watched drag week this year, made it exciting and I kept hoping for a good trip and big numbers out of both cars! Thanks to you and Tom for taking us along and showing all the details! Can’t wait to see the wagon back in action

Yet another fine example of exemplary engineering and performance from Steve Morris Engines! Anyone who buys these engines is definitely getting more than their money's worth! Beyond impressive, Steve!👍🏼💯🇬🇺

Next time you drop a valve try using the compressed air and sucking technique together. Stick the hose on the valve guide like you did. Cut a slit on the opposite end of the hose about 3" from the end, just big enough for your blow nozzle to stick in the hose. Blow the compressed air out that end of the hose and it should create a vacuum on the valve guide end of the hose to hopefully pull it up. Give it a try. I have used this method to clean trash out of the bottom of a fuel tank.

You and Tom killed it congratulations on job very well done all week, and another win on the 10th anniversary of Sick 1.0. The whole unsubscribing isn't just your channel I've experienced with other channels but so far not with yours thankfully because i love the content and usually always learn something. Thank you for all the hard work you put into making content for us gearheads to enjoy.

Thanks for answering my question Steve! Was awesome meeting you and super cool to by chance be wearing matching shirts. The fact that he was able to drive it to day 5 is a testament on how Incredible the SMX is! Great video as always! Austin Hart

Out of curiosity will we be seeing what the other bank guides look like? I’d be super interested in that! Great video, congrats to you and Ned on his 6.40.

Tom changed the exhaust before this Drag Week. He separated the Waste gate and turbo exhaust into two separate pipes instead of one. Maybe that increased the temperature on the exhaust valve or guide? Ned needs a SM shirt for the SMX parts altitude record.

Have to wonder if there is a metallurgical issue with those exhaust valves guides? Might be worth a couple bucks to check into that. Love Alan’s Monte. That thing looks a flippin’ show car! I love the still picture someone posted of Ned’s intake lid close to 3 birds flying by. 😅

Hey Steve thanks for all the content you guys do, always enjoy your shows and usually a learning experience as well 👍

17:30 you should be able to calculate the tensile strength of the hardware and compare that to the spike pressure and surface area of the intake top and compare that with the intended burst panel failure point. One thing to keep in mind is the tendency to (over)tighten hardware, especially teeny 10/32 bolts and subsequent overstressing the aluminum threads in the manifold possibly created a weaker "connection" than what was engineered.

About the blown manifold. I recall some information from The Pressure Vessel Manufactures Association and The American Society of Mechanical Engineering that suggest the most likely root cause is a failure in an applied torque sequence (human error). If a sequential torque pass or pattern was used, (meaning screws were tighten in a linear/serial pattern vs. a starred type pattern. Even if an initial and appropriate torque pattern is used, a followup or final sequential/serial pattern may result in a disruption or distortion in the sealing flange surface) a pressure wave can be formed in the flange interface that creates a weak sealing point (pressure wave causes the flange interface to stand proud despite applied torque) and result in a weak point in the system in which gas can more easily escape. Once pressure penetrates the weak point, the screws adjacent to the weak point see an applied force multiplication that opens the system like a zipper... and BOOM! In these cases it is rare to see mechanical or physical damage to the flange surfaces.

Awesome video Steve and thanks for all the love! That SMX powerplant is bad to the bone and is going to take us lots more places from here. Thank you for everything and keep doing what you do my friend… You watch next year everyone’s gonna be stocking, rubber hoses in their trailer for valve retrieval lol.

So, Mr. Sissy Foot stayed with it on that last pass. Good for him. Glad you guys got it done. Thanks for everything you do on this channel. You are a pretty damn good teacher.

Longer screw’s (bolts)! Holds the boost, doesn’t need to burst the plate the top intake blew off the before the burst plate. Glad to hear they made it. Version “x” longer intake blots (screw’s)! Nice build…. Version “XI” valve seats! Great build Steve live and learn.

Steve Morris Engines valve suction hoses. 10 bucks each for a limited time 👍 Thanks for taking the time to speak with me each day, I appreciated it.

Again that MICHIGAN HORSE POWER Knocks it out of the park Great job Steve on building those absolute stunning pieces of machinery with most of the whole motor being built from a chunk of solid aluminum right in house absolutely a game changer for those drag and drive car's you should be Soo proud of your accomplishment from getting put out of shops to some people keeping the equipment you paid for to wear you are now truly amazing sir.....

Great showing for Steve Morris engines at drag week. You just keep proving the smx is the ultimate drag and drive engine. ❤

This video had two great stories. You and Tom running on one bank of cylinders and then to top that Ned's valve recovery was incredible. Both of those are some real "get it done" racing stories.

I remember my Old man do that on the trail in a Jeep 250 miles from nowhere, Genius circa 1974, 20 miles an hour

Funny thing I learned over the years is heat cycling on parts you run for a decade or more does crazy stuff to the composition of those parts. Think about how many heat cycles those guides had on them and you really can’t be mad they failed, just when they failed.

I think it's the direction of the force that contributes to what breaks or blows off the car. For it to blow the burst panels the entire inside has to fill up with so much pressure that it bursts out back. For instance for a cup of water to overfill the liquid must fill the cup all the way before it flows out the top. Now if there was burst panels built into the intake manifold lid directly over where the pressure is coming from then you probably wouldn't see that as much.

When you were describing the valve that fell into the cylinder, my thought was: turn the crankshaft and raise the piston just far enough to make sure the valve didn't fall any farther and then put some sort of a dowel rod, obviously smaller diameter than the valve guide, with something sticky on it and see if it could be pulled back up; but I never would have thought to use suction, especially not just sucking through a hose with your mouth... Freakin' awesome!

Great job on the Viper SMX dropped valve recovery with the hose. Thank you for the explanation on the burst panel not bursting.

He bailed on the run and his name is Bailey.😂 too perfect!

Rule of thumb when replacing valve spring/seal without pulling the heads... always put the cylinder we were working on at TDC... Then put a ziptie or rubberband around the stem to lock them up whenever u were going away leaving the work even for a minute 😁 Just to avoid this kind of headache valve dropping..

Steve, if you can talk to a metallurgy guy to see if the bronze guides are annealing from heat, changing the "hardness" of the guides causing them to shrink when they cool. Just a thought. Awesome job on drag week, congratulations to you and Tom.

I can just imagine the reception you got when started it up at 2:15am 😂😂 Top work as always.

Hello from Brisbane Australia. The intake explosion ~ I can offer one opinion. I drove Ford taxis with inline 6s (the forerunner of the Barra motor) in Brisbane for years, mostly with LPG. If the owner - operator did 'services' for a time, change the oil and the filters but not touch the plugs or plug-leads, they'd get to a point where there would be 'cross-talk' between the silicon plug leads, and the spark down one lead would jump into another, and the engine would backfire. This had a way of not happening when you had manifold vacuum, but if you sat at a red light for 30 sec or more, and then started to accelerate, the damn car would backfire and stall, 6 ~ 10 feet into the intersection, and blow the lid off the air-filter box. It would then not restart until you opened the hood and replaced the lid on the airbox. Usually, there was no real damage and it simply went back on, but sometimes it would split & burst the box. It generally didn't fill the passengers with confidence. Or the driver. I suspect what's happened here, is the same thing. Spark has jumped from one plug-wire to another, and fired 2 plugs at once, one on the intake stroke, where the intake valve was open. Result ~ massive backfire, and blowing the 'airbox' apart. TLDR ~ that's an ignition problem. Change the plugs, change the plug-leads. If it is using a modern coil-on-plug arrangement, look into why one coil-pack has fired at completely the wrong time.

A old timers trick to change valve springs without a air compressor or even if you have one and don't want to have a issue is to roll the motor over until its at bdc then stuff sash cord or some other soft line in the spark plug hole. Turn the motor gently by hand until it locks up and r&r the spring. Don't forget to leave the tail hanging out so you can remove the line.

Thank you Steve for breaking down and explaining everything. Sharing your wealth of knowledge is fantastic!

Steve the week was such a blast watching you do interviews with the other racers, good stuff always intertaining with you. Crazy week for sure. Congrats to Bailey and you for winning for the 6th. time.

Man that Monte is an awesome street car, remember seeing it on Devin’s channel when he was wiring it. Super clean car! Congrats on your engine program! Working well for everyone!

That Monte Carlo is AWESOME! I had a friend with one the same color inside and out. Came with a 400 small block that was notorious for overheating back in the day.

Sounds like these events teach you a lot about your engines. They get tested in ways you haven't been able to test them before. Now you probably have good ideas on how to make them even better. You are badass Steve never change.

The car my dad bought for my mom just as they got married was a 1970 ss454 Monte Carlo. Dad restored it when I was a kid. It doesn't have the original 454 but it has the period correct parts on it again.

Hi Steve Thoroughly enjoy the content Have to make a comment on the intake cover reaching a high earth orbit. First reaction is that you only use 10/24 hardware in aluminum, solution is to either helicoil the 10/24 or upsize to 1/4" 24 Ultimately the best choice was the first one, using 10/24 in aluminum. Your only as good as your weakest link, if the fasteners in the intake were more robust other components would have failed. Would like to also comment on a previous past video where the transportation of Pearl over rough roads caused the roof glass to break. I used to be a crew chief for a winged sprint car. Sorry. Trailered travel of a race car if not secured correctly WILL CAUSE wear and tear on the suspension components as if the car traveled the miles itself. We built specific blocks to stabilize the chassis during transit and anchored the car frame against the blocks to prevent any chassis movement during travel. This way the suspension components, and shocks don't experience any unnecessary wear. Just my 2 cents for what its worth.

Steve, the procharger NPK cars have the burst panel in the top of the intake and most of the time the panel blows out. But everytime the front end is damaged. The flames that come out of it is wild.

Im so happy for you steve. Awesome to see how proud you are of your work. Top top top engineering. Well deserved self righteousness. 0% arrogance. 👍👍👍 keep it real and boosted from england

I have a bit of an alternative theory regarding the intake manifold cover taking off in the direction of the moon 😊 Joke aside, it looks to me that something like an effect of the shape charge or HEAT projectile happened in therr. That explosion hot gasses were focused by the length of runners into the beam that was directed towards the intake top cover. So, most of the energy worked on/was applied to the cover. Like when the shape charge is cutting precisely where it was focused and almost not touching things a few inches further or how HEAT projectile makes a little hole and almost does nothing few inches further. Explosion was so fast, and the transfer of the energy was so fast that there was no time for the gas expansion to happen to equally rise the pressure in the manifold and blow up the security blow out panel. In case of slow rise of the pressure or extreme boost, there is a volumetric thing happening, and pressure is almost equal in the whole manifold and then sure weakest link is going to fail. But in the case of the shaped explosion, that explosion is focused in one direction, and that's the direction of the line that comes from the runners. Considering it happened at high rpm, it was like multiple explosions were most probably more of them that happened were on the driver side bank because cover flew but to the right side. This is what I think happened. Imagine flames of the back fire explosion running out cylinder, true the runners getting focused and hitting that cover sending it to the moon. Shaped charge effect.

It's funny you should mention Blower's coming off engines, as Kye Kelley just had a Blower jump off his Noonan Billet Hemi and he said it's a safety feature to run Aluminum Studs, so that they shear. He replaced the aluminum studs after the blow up and everything ran fine.

Did some quick maths of the forces based on estimated measurements. Assuming the manifold lid is approximately 20 inches long and 9 inches wide, that's a surface area of 180 square inches (ignoring that it's curved). The burst burst panel seems to be rated to burst at 200 to 250psi. 180 sq. inch * 200psi is 36,000 LBS of force acting on the lid alone. 250psi is 45000 LBS of force. 36,000 to 45,000 LBs of force (potentially) that caused the manifold lid to blow off! 😮 42 bolts holding it down, that's 800 - 1000 LBS of force on EACH bolt

Whole lotta "wha-ha-happen-was" in this video 🤣

Hey Steve, thanks for a wonderful week of awesome drive, repairs, in the pit interviews, and racing.

Crazy roundup for the end up the week. Grats guys! Cool ass valve trick!

Time 2540 When using air to hold valves in place, I always turn the engine to TDC, apply a test burst of air to make sure the crank won't rotate then pull the valve spring. This way if the air is lost, the valve won't fallout.

Total Force = Force/Area x's Area Area cover about 200 sq-in (just a guess) Area frangible burst panel about 8 sq-in (just a guess) Total force on cover about 25 x's more than force on burst panel To protect your intake cover the metal area holding your burst panel ( do you have a little groove around the panel wher it is expected to break?) should be smaller than 25 x's less than the 26 (or so) bolts holding your cover on ! Right now your cover bolting is "protecting" your burst panel ! All this assuming the pressure surge travels quite quickly - these are usually "sonic" (maybe 700 mph ?) Love this stuff !! All in all - a great weekend !

The intake being blown off could be due to the direction direction of the pressure wave, the top was exposed to the front of the pressure front and the burst panel is to the side of the front, that's my two cents!

Hi Steve cheers for the awesome videos and my mate taught me a good trick when changing valve springs with the head still on you can use the piston and some plastic piping or nylon rope put in through the spark plug hole into the bore to hold the valve up no fear of losing the valve

The human valve vacuum, good deal then. I think that cover blowout was what we call in the military a FOD strike just like when helocopter blades are taking off in a sandy enviroment you can see at night with night vision gogles sparks on the helo blades. The FOD caused a spark to be thrown up the intake after something was injested through the turbo, striking the impeller blades, perhaps a garbage thrown off a tire or pulled from an intake filter if he was running one. You get the idea. A sparke at the say the number one injector just before the intake valve opened so the flame or shock front traveled from front to back under the blown cover. Its just an idea.

In air cooled VW engines, with turbo.... that part of the guide is cut off as it will eventually chip away and in up in the exhaust side of the turbo. trim the guide down, out of the exhaust stream of the port.

I love how you treat others. No problem pointing out others when they do well and proud of them

Not only did I learn something @ 25:30 My mind is blown by the "Quality" of these problems it's like miracles are being performed.

Steve, in regard to your flying manifold. Wow what a testament to how strong your product truly is.

You guys learn something from the value dropping? I did. B4 you remove the springs make sure the piston is up far enough where the value can't fall that far!

If you are removing valve springs put an elastic band around the valve stem and around the other valve stem.If you loose air the band will hold the valve in place.

This weel looks like it has been a fantastic week, i mean in the sense of what has been fixed it's awesome. Ned was one step away from sucking a golf ball through a garden hose.

The manifold explosion has a flame propagation wave depending on the origin of ignition. Depending on what cylinder misfired, determines the direction and force of pressure. I was at the U.S. Nationals in '79 when Joe Rooks (cameraman) was killed by a supercharger. Probably would be a good idea to require restraints for your manifolds.

My best guess based on the info from the video is a blocked or reduced water flow on one side of the engine. Which may have caused excess heat only in one head.

Time at temperature will cause metalurgical structures to change. The grain stucture changes will produce or reduce internal stresses. Have the guides looked at under an electron microscope to see if their grain structure changed.

Some stock guides have a 1/4" deep counter bore on the port side to minimize sticking from carbon build up.

we have that problem with with our gas pulling engines. we put a little bit of atf in the gas. haven't had a issue since.

What a crazy week for you! That many motors out there is great. Sounds like you have this setup good for the power these things are putting out.

Amazing vid content !!......When Removing a valve spring w heads On, I've Always hand turned the Crank to keep Its Piston at TDC for Exactly that reason.....Valve Tip usually forced to stay Above valve Guide if cylinder air Pressure is lost for Any reason.....Never came close to Dropping one like that.....

What a great bunch of stories Steve ! Very entertaining.

You're right about the surface area and the forces that push against it I believe it needed a lot bigger bolts the hold that kind of force and the reason for the force I believe one of your intake valves stuck for a Split Second during ignition which spike the intake probably over a thousand pounds

Awesome week Steve, So I guess for all your D& D events you will now be supplying a hose & set of extended intake bolts for those with SMX's... LOL

I think you are on the right track re the surface area on the intake manifold - that is a very large area! I would suggest going up a bolt size in future builds if possible or tap them with helicoils to give a higher thread strength if the threads are stripping out. With all the right data I would do all the maths for you to validate it all, pretty much surface area x pressure and then compare to thread strengths and bolt strengths. Although there could also be issues like bolts bending due to flex under that pressure too - that would take them out very quickly. The valve guides - any chance they cooled unevenly and warped? so the hole wasn't straight anymore or the hole went oval? That would cause the issues you describe.

Just when you think the r&d on a combination is over bailey says hold my beer and watch this

I have Never hear of someone blowing an intake manifold off like that before, that is crazy. It was an Extremely vicious explosion to sheer all those threads and bolts.

15:15 It all comes down to psi. The intake is a lot larger than your “blow out” panels so it has a lot more pressure on it. Looks to be 15-20x the side. Maybe more. The pressure also isn’t going to be instantly equalized. One area experienced the high pressure first. Let’s say that was in the front of the intake area. Well, your blowout panels aren’t gonna do shit if the pressure is more than those bolts can hold. There are a lot of bolts but they are spread out. They don’t all break at once. They tore open like Velcro. Say you have a 6”x”6 piece of adhesive Velcro. If you lift straight up evenly across the 6x6 surface it would lift 20-30lbs probably. But if you pull the corner with only a few pounds the entire piece will fail.

Nobody had a small telescoping magnet for the valve that should of worked also but I'm still surprised that anyone would think outside the box so much and it worked to suck the valve closed dudes a beast lol

I love that year of Monte Carlos and that is indeed a really pretty one. I would have chosen different color, but hey... different strokes (for both different folks and compression ratios.) 🤪

I would pick that the explosion started in the inlet tract and the direction is straight at the cover. The burst panels are at right angles to the pressure wave. The old rule that matter wants to keep keep doing what it's doing. Want to go straight out of the inlet tract.

Just awesome presentation!!!!!!!!! You're right.... One just might learn something, i absolutely am. You're fine tuning my understandings of exactly how motors work, thank you bubba 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍🤟

Great work Steve! Ned is gonna be a force to be reckoned with

Thought on intake issue is the direction of the force coming in from the ports having more influence on lid than window. Anyways love the program!

Blasts are directional. If it was a backfire out of the intake runner, the blast direction is upwards towards the cover.

Wonder if Bailey's valve guides were just heat cycled one too many times. Ned is my new hero with that valve recovery!

My guess is that you could be very right with the surface area of the blowoff valve vs the air intake…a 100 psi would create a tremendous force on the air intake stripping all bolts…could be fairly easy to calculate the efforts needed to strip all bolts…blowoff valve necessarily have a design spec to blow open!

Automotive Forsenics at it's best with Steve Morris! Thanks for the insight into the issues that happened on Drag Week. A lot of strange firsts for SMX's. Your experienced intuition was fun to hear. As Always, May God Bless you and yours! 😇

All things considered, this goes to show you the quality of work that is in your Steve Morris engine! Money WELL SPENT!! 🎉

Hi, you can make a cnc bracket over it butt than I would make 2 so that would never will brake anymore

Another suggestion for the dropped valve (only if it is still in the guide), remove intake cover (either automatically like Dunphy or manually by undoing the bolts), get a long pair of needlenose pliers thru the intake port onto the valve stem and lift the valve as much as the guide protrusion allows, rotate the engine a little so the piston moves up to the valve, release the pliers and repeat the process till you can grab the valve. Alternate method is to ALWAYS ensure the piston remains at TDC before doing something like this. SMX heads have ports big enough to sleep in, so I see plenty of access to grab the valve stem thru the port opening.

That happened also to a friend of mine when replacing valve seals in VW diesel engine. Valve dropped ..... and he could watch through the guide the valve standing on the flat piston .... He tried a million times a full afternoon rotating the engine slowly .... but finally gave up and removed the head ..... 🤯🤯🤯🤯

You are awesome and so smart! Keep being a great human. 🙏

Crazy how that intake blow apart like that. I know on blowers they use an aluminum bolt just for it to pop the blower off instead of grenading the blower case. You might have to strap your intake like a blower if this is what is going to happen in major spike cases.