The Secret’s Out. Are You Mad ? Are We Ruining A Classic? Jeff Lutz / Clay Millican

[Music] I smell rubber now he's just a good old boy who loves burning rubber and driving [Music] fast turn right then turn right we we have made our way to Brighton Michigan we are at Arrington performance arrive at your destination not only are we at Arrington performance we are also at Diversified Creations home of Mr Mike Copeland and the Gen 3 Hemi place which y'all know I love the Gen 3 hemmies hemmies period that's me all right we are at what I'm going to call gen 3 Hemi heaven and I'm here with my buddy Mike copelan how's everybody doing all right Mike you had this crazy idea you know Jeff and myself and CRC edel Brock we're doing another car that's going to be auctioned off this coming year and we bought a beautiful 57 Chevrolet but I'm going show y'all what what's going to be next year's SEMA project and I think y'all all going to be surprised check that out I'm just messing with you that's a beautiful 77 truck there it is right there so this is the next year's project that will be with CRC and edel Brock this thing is absolutely gorgeous and y'all can't imagine that we were going to do a 57 Chevrolet with Jeff Lutz involved could you so y'all check this thing out it's absolutely built to the max got a bork 350 in it got air condition interior is perfect you being the Gen 3 Hemi guy what are you getting us into here well you should have known when when you invited me to come be part of it that uh we were going to build you a gen 3 Hemy and uh you know I mean people that know my background know I'm I was a Chevy guy forever I mean I built ls's since the late '90s but uh you know here we are today I build hems you know my team and I do every day and uh I think it's just natural Jeff's running a Hemi now you've been a Hemi guy forever let's put a Hemi in that thing Dam y'all heard that correctly we are putting a gen 3 Hemi in a 57 Chevrolet hey if you don't like it put it in the comment in com go ahead comment down below you're either going to love it or hate it but we're doing it and I am pumped up and excited to be here y'all know dentley it's got a aing performance Hemi in it baby D the 57 Hemi in it lot of parts from this guy right [Music] [Music] so what are we going to put in this thing what are what are we building for the 57 well we're going to start with a 5.7 L Hemi uh and then we're going to of course update it you've got a lot of great friends in the industry and all of them want to help you and want to be a part of it if you look behind me you'll see malus supported us with pistons and uh and bearings and all the parts they make everything uh edel Brock supercharger cylinder heads Comp Cams of course cam shaft lifters everything for that I mean all you got to do is call and tell them you know Clay milikin and they said you parts so that may not work I'm just saying well he has to call for you too but uh anyway so we're going to do that uh we're only going to Target like a 500 horsepower engine it's going to be something super Dependable something super easy to drive going to put it in there I know that TCI supported you with a 4l8 85e that's all built and so we'll bolt that behind the Hem and uh and give you a great daily driver kind of package yeah this is going to be a a car that that you can get in and just take off and go anywhere anywhere yeah go run events we run Power Tour when we last talked and uh you can come run Power Tour you can go anywhere you want cruising the coast any of the events that happen across the country drive it a couple thousand miles yep but that's not all we're doing and you're going to have to come back for another video for that we're going to save that Mike so let's talk about uh so we've got edel Brock heads that are actually they're brand new that's that's going to be a new product coming out very soon and these may be like the first set they've made actually yeah they are these are early castings you can see this is uh they'll be available as a full CNC port or as a standard uh where we're at we just they're just gasket matched that's all we need for what we're doing these things flow like crazy uh obviously bolt right on a Hemi all of the upper structure and everything they come complete or you can get just a bare casting but Chambers are full CNC ported on our set you can see that stainless steel valves again this is a you could treat this thing like a daily driver you bolt this set of heads into your whatever car your Challenger your charger your Durango and and never have to think about them again that's really cool the the thing is with this this car again I want y'all to know that that Mike is building us an engine that is basically a 500 horsepower which is a lot of power daily driver yeah so if you wanted it a 57 is a daily driver yeah well hey it's got air it's got power steering got power brakes it'll make a great daily driver it's not this is a very popular package that we do obviously upgraded with the new edel Brock head uh but uh it's very popular we got cars all over the world with these engines in them and you know many of them are 100,000 plus mile just keep on going and going and going your 5'7 can outrun a 64 Scat Pack car when do this package yeah even at the 500 horse so these things they make a lot more torque and torque's what moves them right yep yep y not in your world erasing but in that other world they say you know horsepower is how fast you're going when you hit the wall torque is how far you move the wall when you hit it exactly exactly but it's some cool stuff I mean we did this this Ed Brock E4 supercharger on the the GTO we did and have you used any of these yet or will this be your first one oh no we've used a lot of them yeah this the 2650 version you know there used to be a 2300 version and then before that there was a 1900 version so that's all the size of the rotor set inside it mhm 2650s make so much power we have to slow them down really yeah I mean it's easy to make 1,000 horsepower with a supercharger that's really cool I know the GTO sounds cool when you rever up I'm sure this one's going to be the same oh get that that that wine that wine is love that supercharged wine yes indeed yeah so and it's kind of cool like I say so many people that we already work with got involved I mean you can see the M Pistons here Rings bearings all the things and and I think that's some parts you use pretty regular as well we do absolutely yep they they build all first class parts right and uh even it's great that they support you by giving them to us but if I didn't believe in them and we didn't trust them we wouldn't be using oh yeah we wouldn't talk about it we would just we would put the parts in that you use all yeah we do a picture we do this video and there'd be no Pistons but this is a great forg piston they come coated they're I mean they're they got a A 1 mm 1 mm 2 mm ring package they got all the good stuff that improves uh it reduces the friction when they run improves fuel economy and improves performance so it's a standard kind of package bearings again same deal right they they're a great piece you can use them with a aftermarket crankshaft where the fillets are larger but they'll work in in a standard crank as well which is what we're doing here so all first class stuff I mean we run these very same bearings in the top fuel car you know it's we put a beating on them if there's any torture tests to be done the the nitro engines will make that happen and that's the very same stuff we using that I am excited I mean this thing going in a 57 Chevrolet like say I know a lot of people will probably be like why are you doing that but to me we're we're taking what some people consider the most classic car ever you know and we're bringing it into 2024 essentially you know with a gen 3 Hemi yeah well that's all part of it right I mean it's it's you know the Hem is a later version of the early ones right we're in gen 3 right now no different than the the ls side of the world right there inversion now they've gone to the LTS but they did gen you know the third gen and the fourth gen of the ls's so so you told me something that absolutely shocked me about the Gen 3 Hemi and you were GM engineer for a long time I spent 26 years at GM yeah so where the story I want you to tell is about all you engineer guys hanging out and LS might have had something to do with a gen 3 H yeah well so when the ls was designed it was a clean sheet right and the guys did a phenomenal job with cylinder head design and the block and the the 4.40 boore spacing and all the other things that go along with it when you know we're all in Detroit right it's it's Ford tier stellantis or today but it was you know Mopar uh GM all of us are all here and we know each other right especially those of us that tend to work in advance stuff we all know each other cuz we all poke fun you know hey we made more power than you did you made more power than we did dang it you know but anyway the first uh Chrysler Hemi gen 3s that were built were done on LS short blocks so they actually that's so crazy to me well and literally the head kind of interchanges so they had built they bought short blocks from us at GM and then they they pulled the heads and everything and converted them to Hemi changed the Pistons and did a Hemi valve train kind of setup in them so they could start doing development work obviously they did a raised Camp shaft in a Hemi that was a step further ahead than what GM did but the number one thing they did and we actually did it in the first gmls cuz I happened to put that one in a car uh it had external oil drain backs and uh they eliminated them on the ls for cost and they were worried about the gasket leaking but in Hemi they actually did the external oil drain back so the oil drains down the back instead of down through the center of the engine it's the number one Archilles heel to LS engines wow when you Road Race them and you wind them up a bunch it's why dry sumps are so important in that Arena if you run extended RPM for extended periods of time especially as the cubic inches went up cuz if you remember LS started as a 5.7 so as the cranks got bigger and they filled up more of that bottom end they had to do some more work in the block for windage and it would pick the oil up and it would rotate with a crankshaft so that would suck all the oil out of the pan and that's an Archilles heel for LS so essentially the Gen 3 Hemi is an improved version of the ls is kind of in around about way I mean I hate to I know that's going to make some people mad in the comments below yeah you you'll get some of that I mean they're both great engines right and the continuation to the direct injected version of the LT off the ls that's a a great upgrade more for emissions than anything else I could give you all the results and why it works but it's all boring stuff so we'll save that for another day exactly but the Hemi is a great engine it works exceptionally well they fixed the couple of those little things that that GM didn't do initially for a number of reasons and then you know you can always say Hemi wouldn't exist if it wasn't for LS that's true the Gen 3 Hemi gen 3 Hemi y another thing I wanted to ask you about I've been thinking about coming here me and youve been trying to figure out how to make this happen was how does a GM engineer end up with Arrington performance how how did that happen well it actually goes back one step before that so so I grew up a Ford guy really yeah my dad uh was a service manager and a Ford dealership uh I mean I I just I I loved cars from the time I was young I'd be out in the garage with my dad I was 5 years old working with him I remember having my hand up in the door of a 54 Ford holding a nut so he could put a window regulator in right right I mean that's just the way I grew up and and I always just wanted to be a mechanic my dad had so many Fords you know 64 Ford G Galaxy 500 427 dual quad car I mean that was our that was our really only car that was what we drove everywhere right I mean my we would get in street races he had 406 Ford and a 54 uh Ford and he would break the transmission I remember driving home from street racing on Telegraph in the back seat of the car with my dad and mom in reverse because he break the forward gears and we'd have to come home in Reverse right that's the way I grew up so I was a Ford guy died in well I mean when I got out of high school I got a job in a Ford dealer uh working as a I started sweeping the parking lot at 14 and then became a mechanic and then became a shop foreman then a service manager uh you know that was my path and um GM came along made me an offer I went to work for Cadillac engineering did that for a number of years uh retired from GM went and ran a little company called Ling and felter maybe some of you have heard of it and that's you know Big G M territory Corvettes and all kinds of crazy Camaros and everything else well Magnuson superchargers was owned by a a group a private equity and Kim Magnuson so she also through her group owned Arrington so is this the same NASCAR famous Arington same company is where it started in like' 64 with the Hemi and then all the way through the years they had refocused when Dodge pulled out of NASCAR and and were building gen 3 Hemi stuff they were kind of the first at the game and uh some of the best frankly yeah well when I retired from lingan felter um she called me up and and wanted to hire me to come run that company and and help bring them you know make more money right that's purpose for business right so I did that I I talked to her a number of times it was in Martinsville Virginia I lived in Michigan I I didn't want to uproot my family and move and everything else I already had one company Diversified Creations here in Michigan and uh so the opportunity came and she said what do you think about oning Arrington so um she called me on a Friday of Labor Day weekend we were on the way to the sand dunes I got a little thousand horsepower Jeep we play with up there and uh and so we talked about it all weekend I'd already done some due diligence on the company called her on on uh Monday and said all right here's the deal I'm going to offer you two options one I'll come to Virginia I'll spend six eight months with your people I'll teach them what I know and I'll and I'll try to help the company grow and and develop your marketing programs and do all that or I'll buy the company you tell me and uh she said uh I don't question that you could help it but I I think you need to be there longer than that and so she made me an offer we bought the company I was in West Virg or yeah I was there in in Virginia on Tuesday morning to meet people and tell them what the future was offer some of them jobs we moved it to Michigan and the rest is kind of History I remember you telling me that like Dino y'all bought everything like all the everything yeah we bought a ton of stuff you have to remember Arrington was a NASCAR shop right and even to the point when I bought it um they still had there was still Dodge NASCAR engine on dinos I mean when Dodge pulled out a NASCAR they literally shut the engine off and left it wow they had five dinos they had three spinons they had their own cam shf grinding machine they had a lot of things the number of cnc's all of that stuff some of it I needed some of it I had space for and some of it I didn't so they let me kind of pick and choose what I wanted to buy um I mean I'd love to have my own cam chef grinding machine but I just don't need that right right we got Comp Cams for that yeah I I you know I'd love to have a spin Tron but got Comp Cams for that too there you go you know and uh so Plus for me we're outside of Detroit and if you lived in our world like I did you know I spent 26 years all in advanced engineering at GM so I know all the players I know everything you can buy CNC time in Detroit if you can buy it during off times for basically paying for the employee alone and so you don't have to pay all the expensive you know math agreements you don't have to update all the equipment you don't have to do any of that stuff right for those of you that don't know CNC equipment is a lot like a a PC laptop computer it's outdated the day you buy it and it just goes downhill from there really good when you write that check for a million bucks and then 6 years ler something goes wrong in it you need a part and they say oh we discontinued that 3 years ago right right so then you got a hun around which is actually where Arrington CNC machines went cuz they were a few years old companies bought them for spare parts wow so they could keep theirs running because you couldn't buy them anymore right but they had so much of the best equipment in the world there at Arrington and you know they they did every Dodge cylinder head really they went on NASCAR engine it was done by Arrington until the day and even after the day that they stopped doing it um the best equipment known to man to do that stuff and while I I'd love to have some of that we just don't need it right I mean we have our own CNC we do our own programming for heads we do all of that we do use a surgy to cut all the seats which is all of the all of the kind of the best stuff not what they use for NASCAR World though I mean it's it's a whole different Arena but yeah it's a lot more time and frankly we don't finite an engine for for a half a horsepower right we're not going to spend we're not going to test 40 cam shafts to find a half a horsepower well I mean who needs that other than you know drag racers or NASCAR guys or whatever you know yeah NASCAR you You' give your heart and soul no different than like a Pro Stock guy for for a third of a horsepower yes right you'll spend $100,000 trying to figure out how to get there yeah our customers don't necessarily need that and they certainly don't want to pay for it right right so we don't do that but anyway so um that was how I ended up owning Arrington my wife technically owns it so it's a female-owned company so remember that when we need some funding somewhere and she's hiding right over here yeah she is but uh she's a Gearhead too she's got a bunch of cars of her own and yeah she's got a pretty neat truck that that's the world has seen for sure yeah that gets around a little bit doesn't it so but I'm glad to be here I mean it's we talk a lot and we've done a lot of stuff together and it's kind of neat to kind of see the place and and I love it I mean look around here there's him parts and pieces everywhere new short blocks customer blocks I mean you can just go online and really just order whatever you want yeah shop.com that's our website from a single part to complete cars and we do yeah which kind of gets into the Diversified creation um I think probably one of the biggest things especially people watching this video is you did the first with for highberger and finegan with the uh Hellcat swap yeah we built the general Mayhem first ever Hellcat swap in the world yep done right here it was same building yep same building so yeah that was a whole deal you know Fried Burger called me and he said hey we just made a deal with Dodge and uh and they're going to give us a Hellcat engine and stuff to put in our car to put in general Mayhem he said they also told me that the the president of Dodge told me he didn't believe anybody could make one run without them being involved he said I figure that if anybody can you can so I said well send it out so went on a pilot transport rig and showed up straight from dirtfish by the way they had pulled the 440 out out of it but the whole outside of it was covered with mud the inside was covered with mud first thing it got was a power wash front to back but uh that may have been the first time General mayhem's ever been washed I think it probably was but uh it took us three weeks to do a Hellcat swap in that car and and uh we we kind of followed the easier path we did the full electrical architecture and everything because we need to keep the H speed alive and in those days nobody had ever done one by coincidence you know having been a GM engineer GM was actually ahead of Chrysler for electronics so what they showed up with electronics in that car I had done 5 years prior at GM so um we went in and isolated all the can Communications and looked at how all that worked and which modules could we eliminate and if anybody's ever been involved in that you know there are thousands of messages that go out in milliseconds so you can eliminate one message and send a whole system out the window so we tested all that in a production car and eliminated with try eliminating this and bypassed the communication and we figured out pretty quick what to do so most of the electrical architecture from a new production car went into General Mayhem uh initially people complain cuz we used the tail lights but they didn't know that those tail lights communicated to work they didn't get 12 volts right so ultimately we actually cheated and and redesigned the electronics and put the 68 tail lights back in it so people could quit complaining at me but uh you know part of the fun right oh yeah and and it wouldn't like you had a long time frame to make that happen either so no well three weeks right three weeks it was actually really fun I don't I hav think I don't think I've ever told this story publicly but we got the car all done Fried Burger and fan came in we went over all the car they took it out and drive it did some monster burnouts in our parking lot and everything thing's insane in the car trailer and went to the drag strip we ran in m and Dragway and we get out there and they got the whole road kill film crew with us and everything else fryberger goes up makes the first hit in general Mayhem right and and he was only going to do a short one and he ended up going, foot before he lifted out of it so he brings it back around comes back and we're parked in the staging lane cuz we had rent into the track pulls up and I said uh told my guy uh that's there with me I said jump under that we had qa1 double adjustable shocks all around it I said I want to take two clicks out of the front and let it transfer a little harder and they give me two clicks in the rear to plant the tire harder and Julia who's her producer she she looks at me says what are you doing and I said well I said it was a little lazy leaving the light so we're going to turn it up a little bit make it weight transfer a little better it's for the next pass she said you can make a second pass she's so used to their normal you know kind of just hacking stuff together that they could never make a second pass she was so much fun I said yeah we can make a second pass normal roadkill stuff right normal this wasn't normal roadkill though it was not so no it it uh I think we made about 10 passes that day and then they they uh left the next day and drove it across Michigan to another track and we got another third member brought in they put it in they made some more passes and so had a lot of fun with that car and we know they're not easy on nothing they drive that's not their style definitely not no if it's got if it's got 10 t0 they're going to use 10 t0 so that's for sure we have got a lot of stuff going on with this 57 Chevrolet and he's he's made it uh way more interesting I can't can't wait to see what you folks think about what we're doing gen 3 h and a 57 Chevrolet I'm excited about it Jeff and Jeffrey they're excited but they're going to be the ones figuring out how to put it in there but I think they can handle that I think they'll figure that out don't you oh I got all the faith in the world in them and we'll we'll help them with a couple little things but they got it covered it'll show up already running exactly so you hook up a half dozen wires and hit the key be good to go yep folks you're going to hear more from me and Mike it'll be in a video upcoming we've got some really exciting news coming up appreciate you guys watching like And subscribe and Sharon see you in the next one hey [Music]