"For the past couple of years, Ilmor has been building performance boat engines, having “marinized” the Dodge Viper V-10. “It’s fantastic and it sounds great!”
Because most big boats run two engines, “You’ve got 20 cylinders firing away, they run to 6000rpm and they just sound beautiful, almost like a Lamborghini.”
Ray thought boat racing -- particularly the popular Poker Run circuits -- would be a good option for the company. “There are not many vehicles built independent of engine and transmission -- these boats and Formula One cars come to mind -- so we teamed with APBA champion Danny DeSantis of DeSantis Chevrolet to make it happen.”
In their first year running offshore boats with former world champion Charlie Haimes, Ilmor utilized a big block Chevrolet as their test wagon to discover the ins and outs of the marine business. During the same period they commenced work to develop the 2003 Viper 8.3-liter engine for the SuperCat class in APBA.
The first time Ilmor ran the Viper engine with Douglas Marine, they pushed the power mill for 100 hours without trouble.
“All of our testing was on the water; we ran 120mph and were flat out for those 100 hours,” Ray grinned. “We had to make sure DaimlerChrysler would support this endeavor and we pretty much [initially] gave away the engines to get the word of mouth we needed.”
In their first year, Ilmor built and sold 40 Viper marine engines, whose power ratings are 550bhp at 5500rpm or an uprated 625bhp at 5800rpm.
In either build form the redheads emit 600 ft-lb of torque, at either 4500rpm or 4700rpm. Another good selling point is the fact that the Ilmor-produced Viper engines weigh roughly two hundreds pounds less than the ubiquitous Mercury.
Ray expects to sell nearly 100 units in the company’s first full year of operation and anxiously awaits delivery of his own Viper-equipped racing boat. “This has the potential to grow into a distinct, separate business,” he said.
The 28,000 square-foot Ilmor building in Plymouth that currently houses IRL and Viper marine programs is getting a wee bit small for the operation, which will entail the addition of a new machine shop in the near future.
At this time, Ilmor has 36-37 of its employees working on the IRL side of the business and has six fulltime engine builders. They use six bays for final engine assembly; have three technicians for disassembly and place four workers in the teardown department.
Prior to the Michigan IndyCar Series contest in late July, for instance, the rebuild teams spent eight days reworking and refreshing 19 IRL Honda engines. Michigan was the third contest in a three-week span; Ilmor will have plenty of opportunity to repeat the endeavour in 2006 with its compressed scheduling and 14 IndyCar Series contests.
This type of scenario is all in a day’s work for Paul Ray and the technicians at Ilmor Engineering Inc. where building winning engines is an ongoing way of life".
Copyright 2005 Anne Proffit
Because most big boats run two engines, “You’ve got 20 cylinders firing away, they run to 6000rpm and they just sound beautiful, almost like a Lamborghini.”
Ray thought boat racing -- particularly the popular Poker Run circuits -- would be a good option for the company. “There are not many vehicles built independent of engine and transmission -- these boats and Formula One cars come to mind -- so we teamed with APBA champion Danny DeSantis of DeSantis Chevrolet to make it happen.”
In their first year running offshore boats with former world champion Charlie Haimes, Ilmor utilized a big block Chevrolet as their test wagon to discover the ins and outs of the marine business. During the same period they commenced work to develop the 2003 Viper 8.3-liter engine for the SuperCat class in APBA.
The first time Ilmor ran the Viper engine with Douglas Marine, they pushed the power mill for 100 hours without trouble.
“All of our testing was on the water; we ran 120mph and were flat out for those 100 hours,” Ray grinned. “We had to make sure DaimlerChrysler would support this endeavor and we pretty much [initially] gave away the engines to get the word of mouth we needed.”
In their first year, Ilmor built and sold 40 Viper marine engines, whose power ratings are 550bhp at 5500rpm or an uprated 625bhp at 5800rpm.
In either build form the redheads emit 600 ft-lb of torque, at either 4500rpm or 4700rpm. Another good selling point is the fact that the Ilmor-produced Viper engines weigh roughly two hundreds pounds less than the ubiquitous Mercury.
Ray expects to sell nearly 100 units in the company’s first full year of operation and anxiously awaits delivery of his own Viper-equipped racing boat. “This has the potential to grow into a distinct, separate business,” he said.
The 28,000 square-foot Ilmor building in Plymouth that currently houses IRL and Viper marine programs is getting a wee bit small for the operation, which will entail the addition of a new machine shop in the near future.
At this time, Ilmor has 36-37 of its employees working on the IRL side of the business and has six fulltime engine builders. They use six bays for final engine assembly; have three technicians for disassembly and place four workers in the teardown department.
Prior to the Michigan IndyCar Series contest in late July, for instance, the rebuild teams spent eight days reworking and refreshing 19 IRL Honda engines. Michigan was the third contest in a three-week span; Ilmor will have plenty of opportunity to repeat the endeavour in 2006 with its compressed scheduling and 14 IndyCar Series contests.
This type of scenario is all in a day’s work for Paul Ray and the technicians at Ilmor Engineering Inc. where building winning engines is an ongoing way of life".
Copyright 2005 Anne Proffit
