Mark Peebles

This is Mark Peeble’s F production SCCA 914. In 2001Mark started dialogue with us about his engine and that dialogue was typical of a racer that had suffered from a non Type IV specialist as his engine builder. Mark was plagued with engine failures from bottom end spun bearings to several dropped valves, some that occurred in less than two laps on a fresh set of valves. Of course Mark told me his combination and he was a typical statistic- wrong cam, too much lift for sustained high revs, inadequate compression ratio for race fuel, no balance work and unknown tuning because the engine had never been dynoed. Till this point Mark’s racing adventures were simply filled with guess work, failures and a wallet that repeatedly opened with no wins to justify it. After a few talks with me, and one final failure, mark sent the engine to me to finally be done right.

We stared from scratch, tossed his old builders ideas (if you call them that) and used our theories to develop HP where he needed it and also to create power that would run cooler, and not wear out in one race, or one lap. Mark was open to my ideas and didn’t question anything. He did exactly as a good customer does and let me run with the ball so to speak.

The engine we prepared for Mark was built to SCCA rules for the F production class and is limited to 1800ccs with a bore and stroke of 66x94mm and all power needs to be made with excellent head work, camshaft and efficiency. The engine was finished “our way” and ran a very solid season with no further failures. The first year we used Marks car to back up some of cooling tests with the Porsche 911 cooling system in a race environment. He ran that same engine for over a full season with no freshening up, or attention other than valve adjustments.

After our comprehensive cooling system tests with the Porsche 911 cooling system and since his head temperatures were higher than we would like to see in late 2002 we convinced Mark to switch to our DTM cooling system in hopes of finding some extra power, through less heat soak and a more efficient method of creating the cooling air.

Mark installed our first DTM to ever be installed into a 914 and made no other changes to his engine. In the first race his head temperatures IMMEDIATELY dropped from 350F in the infield of his favorite track and 400F (with the FAT 911 cooling system) on the 3,000 foot straight away down to a whopping 275F in the infield and no more than 350 on the straight (with our DTM)! This was accomplished with only a 1.24:1 drive ratio as Mark turns super high RPM all the time, and we wanted less energy to be used than with the 911 system to free up power. After the DTM was installed Mark started winning more races and placed second in the Southeast SCCA SARRC Championship just behind a 5 year reigning champion. If he would have sported our DTM that entire season- he would have been the champion I feel quite confident!

This past season just finished up for Mark and after a catastrophic engine failure in Birmingham earlier this year that was attributed to an oiling system issue Mark missed two very important races and finished up second again in points.

BUT the last race of the season found Mark sporting an engine that we prepared from Junk parts just to get him the points. That engine ended up finishing first in class and 1400 feet in front of the champion! This was all a forced occurrence due to his new and improved engine not being assembled yet and still waiting on a set of custom pistons.

As of this writing Marks new engine is being assembled and he will have it for the beginning of his 2005 race season. Stay tuned for more developments with Marks car and his standings in the points series. Just as the decal on the rear of his 914 states “Not A SIX” he is MassIVe equipped and ready to spank 6 cylinder ass at any time while representing our abilities!

Jake Raby

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