Winder Georgia: Jon Kaase, winner of Thursday’s Vintage class in this year’s Engine Masters Challenge at the University of Northwestern  Ohio in Lima, has proposed that the perennial three top performing teams, Bischoff Engine Services, School of Automotive Machinists and Jon Kaase Racing Engines, should be sequestered in the same class and all three should compete using the same engine make and model.

In so doing, engine shops could enter the contest without butting heads with them—unless they wanted to—and “to make it more interesting,” said Kaase, “we should consider selecting an engine that’s unknown to us—maybe a Flathead V8 or a Buick or similar.”

In this year’s EMC, rules had been dramatically altered to the delight of some and the disquiet of others. In the changes, the Challenge had been elevated from a one-class contest, where winner took all, to include five classes—one for each day of competition. Accordingly, Monday was devoted to the Mopar Hemi; Tuesday, Spec Small-Block; Wednesday, GM LS; Thursday, Vintage; and Friday, Big-block.

Needless to say, the advantage of the new rules soon became obvious: about half of the competitors entered were rewarded with money—$12,000 and $3,000 for each winner and each runner-up respectively. Also, peak horsepower and peak torque were worth a further $2,000; that is $1,000 for each category. In addition, with the increased number of winning engines as well as their broad diversity, the magazines could run significantly more feature articles about them than in the past. (Read more).