If you felt the earth move a few months back, it was probably the DynoMax Power To The Wheels Dyno Tour finals in Las Vegas. DynoMax offered an enticing $25,000 to the top horsepower street car running on pump gas through mufflers and set in motion a series of 10 events last year where the Dynomax chassis dyno toured the country testing the mettle of some of the hottest cars in the country. The first few cars that qualified started out conservatively in the 500 rear wheel horsepower (rwhp) zone, but then the big guns began to make noise. The Car Craft Summer Nationals in St. Paul, Minnesota, qualified more top cars than any other single event with four machines making the grade, including Jesse Nelson's '70 Chevelle 1,105hp pass as the strongest run of the weekend. However, Brian Anderson and his single turbocharged small-block Chevy bolted into a deceivingly stock-looking '64 Rambler four-door, upped that ante with a stout 1,267hp effort to take the top qualifier spot. By finals time, DynoMax qualified a 10-car field that offered up monster horsepower numbers from a wonderfully diverse spread of engines that included a KB Hemi in a purple '71 'Cuda to a sedate Gen III Corvette.
Three of the top ten couldn't make the trip to Vegas, leaving seven of the strongest to take a shot at the prize money. Better yet, this wasn't a winner-take-all deal with Second Place garnering a handsome $10,000 while Third Place offered a satisfying $5,000 for a total purse of $40,000. On the first day, all cars were given a chance for a final test and tune and as you might expect, there was some drama. Mark Gjavenis' '65 Chevelle, a CC feature car scorched the differential on his first tune-up run. After some frantic searching, Mark found Jim O'Hanley, who rents 9-inch centersections to circle track racers. With help from O'Hanley and fellow competitors, Mark got the Chevelle back together and DynoMax officials allowed him a quick run on Wednesday to test the system to make sure he was ready for his money run.
Each car was required to make two full pulls on the dyno and the top horsepower number had to be backed up within 3 percent to be official. What was surprising was how much the horsepower increased between the qualifier sessions and the final. Most of the competitors had months to prepare, which gave Brian Anderson the time to complete a brand-new engine combination with bigger heads, a pair of turbos, and a switch to E85 fuel, which became the fuel of choice for everyone. This ethanol blend was especially helpful for the supercharged and turbocharged engines because of E85's outstanding ability to pull heat out of a compressed charge.
The field was so impressive that we wanted a closer look at all seven engine combinations, so we polled each finalist to give you a breakdown on what they did to create big horsepower.