Erebus Motorsport is one of the leading V8 Supercar teams in Australia; in 2013 they joined forces with the championship-winning Stone Brothers Racing team to pack the field with competitive Mercedez-Benz E63 AMG V8 Supercars moving forward. The V8 Supercar series is unique within racing circles as the only four-door-oriented racing series, and the cars are driven by Lee Holdsworth and Will Davison.
The FUCHS Tech Centre is based in Yatala, Queensland, and is the home of Erebus Motorsport V8’s headquarters; there exists a full machine shop, engine preparation, engine assembly, and engine dyno areas within the facility. In this installment of the team’s FUCHS Tech Centre series, we get an inside look at what happens on the engine dyno to prepare one of the team’s engines for competition.
The engines go in one end of the facility, get completely rebuilt, checked, run-in and sent back out the door to the race shop, giving the team full control over the engine building process. Consistency and repeatability come into play here, with the focus on generating an engine program that will perform exactly as expected on race day.
It’s interesting to note that the team spends an entire hour on the break-in process to generate the performance they are looking for, with blowby and crankcase vacuum measurements tops on the list. This part of the rebuild process ensures that the engine is in tip-top shape, and from there they ensure the power figures are up to snuff.
Development work is also handled in this facility, with the team always seeking that performance edge over the competition.
With only three guys tasked with keeping the engines in tip-top shape, each team member has a serious responsibility to include quality and skill within their assigned duties. Check out the video – it’s a neat look into a facility that most of us will never get to see.