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Fletcher hoping to make more horsepower for Bloomquist and others
By admin | August 4, 2009
By Richard Allen
It was a bit of a surprise earlier this year when Scott Bloomquist, one of the most successful dirt late model racers in history, showed up somewhat unscheduled at The Mountain Raceway in Maryville, Tennessee. Then, Bloomquist made another surprise appearance at Volunteer Speedway in Bulls Gap, Tennessee in July. However, the real surprise was in more than just his appearances. The real story was that the famous driver’s car had a new engine under the hood.
Bloomquist normally uses engines provided by Vic Hill Race Engines. At The Mountain and Volunteer the #0 car was sporting an engine provided by a company called Fletcher Made Horsepower.
FMH is located in Bloomery, West Virginia and is creation of Chris Fletcher and Chad Carter.
The company is not new to the race engine building business by any means. They have provided winning power plants for the likes of well known road racer Boris Said on the Grand-Am Series.
Carter said it is the goal of his company to become a major supplier of engines for dirt late model racers as well. “We are looking to build an engine that’s in high demand,” he said.
Carter knows that for his engines to be in high demand they must perform. “Fletcher Made Horsepower wants to win at the ultimate level,” he added. “We have spent one-and-a-half to two years developing this engine because we want to make sure it’s done right.”
The engine is a Chevrolet from the LS Series, similar to the type engine that would be used in a Corvette and other General Motors cars. The engine is not really related to the Chevy R07 used in NASCAR by the GM teams.
When the FMH power plant was used at The Mountain Raceway back in the spring, the company received a bit of a reprimand. “Lucas Oil slapped our hands for using coil packs,” Carter explained. “Since then we’ve gone back to the drawing board and installed a distributor.”
When asked about the eye catching carbon fiber valve covers Carter explained that in the engine used at Volunteer Speedway in July, FMH had made a few upgrades over the engine that had been used at The Mountain. Weight was a major consideration in those upgrades. The carbon fiber valve covers are lighter. Also, the company used lighter heads this time around. And, they had opted to go with a serpentine belt system rather than the V-belt design previously used.
As far as the company’s relationship with Bloomquist, Carter is largely responsible for that. “I worked with Scott for a while back in 1999,” he said. “I have tried to maintain the ‘No Weak Links’ mentality over the years.”
Carter hopes the FMH-Bloomquist relationship can extend beyond its current status. “My goal is to win many races with Scott,” he declared. “We would like to be running every race with him right now.”
However, due to the fact that FMH is still in the development phase with its engine, running every race would simply not be possible. Because Bloomquist is in the midst of a points championship fight, he must stick with the more developed, and more available, Vic Hill engines.
“Right now, we don’t have four or five engines ready for Scott to put in his engine rotation,” Carter said. “That wouldn’t be fair to him, to Vic, or to us.
“After all, he is with an engine builder that has him leading the points,” he added. “It would not be beneficial for a new engine builder to step in at this time. There’s nothing wrong with Scott’s engine program now, but we’d like to be there in the future.”
Fletcher Made Horsepower intends to become a major player in the building of dirt late model engines. “We have entered the dirt late model arena primarily because we had a product that we knew would work and create great reliability,” Carter said.
If FMH is able to get Scott Bloomquist on board full time, they will have gone a long way toward accomplishing that goal. For now, Carter says his company has already made an impact. “We have already had a rule made just for us,” he joked, in reference to the coil packs.
Richard Allen is a member of the National Motorsports Press Association. His weekly column appears in The Mountain Press every Wednesday.
Below is a link to the first story I wrote on this subject, which appeared on RacingWithRich.com. There are pictures of the Fletcher engine with this article.
http://racingwithrich.com/?p=893
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http://racingwithrich.com/?p=913
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