Custom Engine Builders
 

Do you think there is room in the market for another custom engine builder? I'm talking like Sterling, Cheif or Teague.

The reason I ask is the shop I work at only does NASCAR engines and the NASCAR market is going away and I thought that custom marine engines would be a good market to get into to keep the shop from closing.

Thanks,
Jim

why not, join the club.....

Sterling, Chief, Teague, Scorpion, Potter, Innovation, Atco, Pfaff, Gary Teague, Baker, Troy Dennis, Joey Griffin, Cobra, Exact, Carolina, Gentry, JC, Zul, Mercury, Ilmor, Harold Grady, Keieth Eickert, Lightning, Wazzup, and about 4,382 other guys......

Exactly, go from a dying market to dead.

Unless you are going to come up with something very innovative, there is no reason to try and make a living off building custom marine engines based on a GM Pushrod V8.

The next builder to have success will likely be building something similar to the 1350Merc platform with SC on top. If you can do that with a competitive warranty in the $50,000 range, build plenty of them.

That's what I'm talking about, there are a lot of builders. We have a 40 person shop 4 dynos 5 CNC machines a chassis dyno and a full engine shop. It takes a lot of money to keep the doors open. Not sure we could do enough to sustain the shop.

Thanks,
Jim

Not that big of demand in the marine industry anymore, mercury has captured the higher hp market with their new products, the big cube blower motors are absolete today, unless you can build them for less $ . The 1350's are selling in the 100k range , with a 1 year warranty. There is no money in engine building anymore, too much competition. Most shops have few emplyees and low overhead. You can buy 1300hp blower motors for 40k all day long now

What's happening to the nascar market? There has to be a way for your talent to stay.

Teams aren't getting the money from sponsors anymore.
A truck takes between 3-4 million
A nationwide car takes between 6-8 million
A cup car takes any where from 20-40 milion
if you want to be competitive.
Companies just aren't spending the money on motorsports any more unless you are a big name team.
For instance a good friend of mine was talking with Farmers insurance to run a truck, he's asking for 3 million(he's a nobody) they tell him they can't afford that. Then they go to Hendrick's on the 5 car and spend 34.5 million.

What kind of money does it take to race these boats these days?

Jim

Nice list!!! BoostPower too! :)

Professional motorsport marketing urban dictionary:

Can't afford it:
The return (ROI) isn't there for the money you are asking for.

Most times its not the number of zero's on the check if the company already has a marketing budget. If they are asking (or even talking to you), they already have a fair idea what it costs.
It nearly always gets down to what they get back in exchange for their dollars, and how can it be quantified.

This is why the bigger race teams are successful. Not because they have more money - that's the result, not the reason. The REASON is because they understand the business of racing and understand that they are a division of their customer's (sponsor's) marketing department before anything else, and they'd better be able to deliver a better ROI than most other directions the customer could spend their marketing money.

The real reason why NASCAR doesn't have many (any?) successful small teams left. And those small teams buy from independent engine shops. Everyone else is at Roush Yates or Hendrick buying engines - me included.

My totally unqualified opinion is getting out of race car engine building and into the marine performance engine business is jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.

But then again, I don't know chit! Its been proven over and over again :D

The future should be in GM LSX motors. I have an engine in my Denali making over 750hp at 9psi on a custom built 434 cui LSX block with a Kenne Bell 3.6 Supercharger for less than $25k built by a Nascar engine builder that has provided Dale Earnhart Jr. motors for some of his championship years. Why do marine motors need to cost so much more?