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BME Forged Aluminum Racing
Pistons: Parts that Win Races
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Jamie McMurray
in Victory Lane right after the end of the 2010 Daytona
500. A part of why Jamie is jubilant were the eight BME
Pistons which were in the engine of his #1 Bass Pro
Shops/Tracker Boats Chevrolet. Image: Copyright, 2010
Action Sports Photography, Inc. |
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NASCAR's crown jewel
is the Daytona 500. In 2010, Jamie McMurray, driving the #1 Bass Pro
Shops/Tracker Boats Chevrolet, won it. Bill Miller Engineering Forged Aluminum
Racing Pistons gave the engine in Jamie Mac's Chevy the edge in performance and
reliability it needed to win the Great American Race.
Another big story in
NASCAR for 2010 was the points battle–the closest in years–between Kevin Harvick,
in the #29, Penzoil Chevrolet, Denny Hamlin, in the BME-equipped, #11, FedEx
Toyota and Jimmie Johnson in the #48 Lowes Chevrolet.
Harvick, driving for
Richard Childress, held the points lead for two-thirds of the season. He had the
best average finish (8.8) in Sprint Cup, won three races and had 16 top fives.
Reliable restrictor plate engines with Bill Miller Engineering Racing Pistons
helped him do that.
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Kevin Harvick,
in the BME-equippped #29 Richard Childress
Racing/Pennzoil Chevy finished
a mere 15 points short of the 2010 Sprint
Cup Championship. Harvick uses engines from
Earnhardt/Childress Racing and Bill Miller
Engineering is proud to be one of its piston
suppliers. |
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Another BME Pistons
user, Denny Hamlin, driving for Joe Gibbs, won eight races, the most of any
driver in 2010. He came on strong during the season-ending, 10-race "Chase for
the Sprint Cup", NASCAR's version of the "playoffs". Hamlin held the points lead
early in the Chase, lost it to Johnson after the third race, retook the lead
after winning the seventh race and was 15 points ahead going into the final race
at Homestead, Florida.
On lap 25 at
Homestead, Hamlin tangled with Greg Biffle's Ford which hurt his car's handling.
Hamlin could not overcome the loss in track position and finished the race in
14th. Kevin Harvick qualified fifth and dueled with the Lowes team until NASCAR
assessed him a pit road speeding penalty on lap 188. Harvick battled back,
finishing third in the race. Jimmie Johnson won an unprecedented fifth
consecutive Sprint Cup. Hamlin was runner-up, 39 points behind. Kevin Harvick,
was third, a scant 2 points behind Hamlin.
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BME's had a strong showing at Daytona in 2007. The #38 M&Ms Ford is
chased by a pack of six Chevys, four of which (#20 Home Depot, #8 Budweiser, #11
FedEx and #1 Bass Pro Shops) were running BME Forged Aluminum Racing Pistons in
their engines during the Great American Race that year. Image: Goodyear/Aaron
Vandersommers. |
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Joe Gibbs Racing uses BME Pistons in its Toyota NASCAR
engines. JGR's Denny Hamlin, in the #11 FedEx Toyota,
won the most races in 2010 and narrowly missed winning
the Sprint Cup Championship. Image: Autoimagery. |
NASCAR Consistency
and Reliability
Cars using Bill Miller
Engineering Forged Aluminum Racing Pistons took five of top 12 spots in 2010
Sprint Cup Points: Harvick, 2nd, Hamlin 3rd, Kyle Busch 8th (#18 M&Ms Toyota),
Clint Boyer 10th (#33 Cheerios Chevrolet) and Jeff Burton 12th (#31 Caterpillar
Chevrolet). BME
Pistons also won all five restrictor plate races in 2010.
Earnhardt-Childress
Racing Engines provides engines for three NASCAR teams, Earnhardt Ganassi
Racing, Richard Childress Racing and Kevin Harvick, Inc. ECR's choice of BME
Pistons helped those three teams win three of five NASCAR events at Daytona
Speedweeks 2010. In addition, ECR used Bill Miller Engineering Forged Aluminum
Racing Pistons in every restrictor plate engine it built during the '10 season
for the NASCAR Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series. "Plate races" are a very
abusive test of pistons and ECR's choice of BME paid off handsomely. Its engines
won every Sprint Cup restrictor plate race in 2010.
Joe Gibbs Racing has
depended on the reliability and durability of Bill Miller Engineering Pistons
for over a decade. Between 1999 and 2010, Joe Gibbs Racing's three Sprint Cups
(Stewart in '05 and '02 and Bobby Labonte in '00), 91 race wins and 361 top five
finishes came, in part, from the BME Pistons the team puts in its engines. In
2010, Gibbs didn't win the Sprint Cup, but the Coach's BME-equipped Toyota
Camrys, in the hands of Denny Hamlin, Kyle Busch and Joey Lagano, won 11 races,
the most of any team in Sprint Cup Racing that year.
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In 1998, the late Dale Earnhardt won at Daytona using BME
Pistons. |
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Since
1996, six NASCAR Sprint Cup Champions, Jeff Gordon (1997, 1998,
2001) Bobby Labonte (2000) and Tony Stewart (2002, 2005), along with
five Daytona 500 Winners used BME Pistons.
Two years running, in
'09, with Kyle Busch, and '08, with Clint Bowyer, BME Pistons won the
NASCAR Nationwide Series Championship. In '09 and '07, Ron Hornaday won
the Camping World Truck Series using Bill Miller Engineering Forged
Aluminum Pistons.
The greatest driver of
NASCAR’s modern era, seven-time Champion Dale Earnhardt, used BME
performance and reliability to put the famed #3 Goodwrench Chevrolet in
the victory circle at Daytona in 1998 and at other races in the final
years of his career.
Why have Bill Miller
Engineering Pistons had such success in NASCAR?
Simple...BME makes a
better product.
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The BME Advantage
In the mid-’90s, the
first Sprint Cup team to switch to BME Pistons gained 8-10 horsepower. In NASCAR
five horsepower is substantial and 8-10 is huge. Soon, other teams switched. By
the end of 1999, all the top GM teams in Sprint Cup were buying BME Pistons.
Fifteen years ago,
most Cup teams used another piston brand. The engine shops of the top Chevrolet
teams, Richard Childress Racing and Hendrick Motorsports, were having trouble
with “microwelding.
In a 1990s NASCAR
engine, the heat transfer path was: from the piston top, to the top ring, to the
cylinder wall and, finally, to the block's cooling jacket. To keep the piston
from overheating, this path had to adequately transfer heat. The other brand of
pistons had ring land surface finishes so rough that heat transfer from the
piston to the top compression ring was inhibited. That allowed the ring to get
so hot that microscopic, heat-softened pieces of piston material would weld to
the ring. Once that happened, ring rotation stopped, ring seal degraded and
power dropped.
The
solution to microwelding is the higher-quality finish on the ring
lands of of a Bill Miller Engineering Forged Aluminum Piston.
Superior manufacturing processes, using Okuma Simulturn CNC
machining centers, and rigid quality controls hold tolerance for
ring groove run-out to less than two ten-thousandths (.0002) of an
inch, 360° around the piston. A BME Piston's nearly mirror-smooth
ring groove surfaces improve heat transfer. That reduces peak
temperature of the top ring, eliminating microwelding. Ring seal
during the intake stroke is enhanced. That increases the pressure
differential caused by the piston moving down on the intake stroke
so the engine pulls in more air. More air means the engine can burn
more fuel. The final result is more power.
Since BME
Pistons are custom-made, we offer a variety of optional services and
one some NASCAR teams choose is a unique piston design. This allows
the team to have pistons of its own, special configuration. The
specifics of these designs are known only to the teams’ engine shops
and the engineers at BME. Teams using specific piston designs may be
getting even more of a performance edge than the 8-10 horsepower
discussed earlier.
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BME's special machining procedures result in a very smooth
finish on ring lands. That near-mirror finish greatly increases
resistance to microwelding. Image: BME Ltd. |
BME makes
400-gram, NASCAR racing pistons for the Chevrolet, Ford and Toyota
NASCAR engines. They give guys like Jamie McMurray, Denny Hamlin and
Kevin Harvick a winning edge.
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BME Pistons are manufactured in Carson City, Nevada. BME's factory is clean,
modern and filled with the latest in manufacturing technology, such as Okuma
Simulturn five-axis CNC machining centers. |
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BME Pistons: The Drag Racer's Choice
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Six-time IHRA Top Fuel champion and
current NHRA T/F racer, Clay Milican has used BME
Pistons in his Werner Enterprises/Knoll Gas Dragster for
17 years straight. Image: Goodyear/Aaron Vandersommers. |
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Bill Miller
Engineering's cutting-edge technology and premium quality wins races in another
motorsport which is a grueling test of pistons: blown-fuel drag racing.
Ever since legendary,
dragster and funny car crew chief, Dale Armstrong, switched to BME in the 1980s,
blown-fuel racers have used BME Pistons in their engines. Since then, in the Top
Fuel and Funny Car classes of National Hot Rod Association and International Hot
Rod Association competition, where engines making 1000-horsepower per cylinder
are the norm; BME products are a benchmark by which racing pistons are judged.
In four of the last
five years, racers using BME Forged Aluminum Racing Pistons won the IHRA Top
Fuel championship, In 2010, it was Bobby Lagana Jr.; in '09, Del Cox; in '08,
Spencer Massey and in '06 Clay Millican. In fact, Millican is a six-time IHRA
Top Fuel Champion and has used BME Pistons in his Nitro Fish/Weld Racing
Dragster for 18 straight seasons. Millican began an NHRA T/F schedule in '07,
finished 10th in 2009 and continues to rely on the performance and reliability
of BME parts in 2011.
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Joe Hartley drives the Hartley
Racing Top Fuel Dragster owned by his Dad, Allen. The Hartley's, a
drag racing family for 40 years, are some of the few independents
who run the majority of NHRA National Events. As "privateers" they
well-know importance of value in the parts they use in their engines
and that's why they choose Bill Miller Forged Aluminum Racing
Pistons...as well as BME Rods and the Gibson-Miller Mark II
Supercharger. Image: BME Ltd |
Racing programs run by
the few independents in drag racing's nitro classes are more focused on cost
issues. For that reason, many independents use BME Forged Aluminum Racing
Pistons for the durability advantage they offer over other piston brands. In
2009, Allen Hartley was the only Independent to qualify at more than 16 NHRA
National Events. His Hartley Racing Top Fuel Dragster, driven by his son Joe,
uses not only BME Pistons, but BME Rods, Wrist Pins and the Gibson/Miller Mark
II Supercharger. The durability of BME parts give the Hartleys and others a cost
advantage highly coveted by budget-conscious independents.
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Bill
Miller's BME/Okuma/Red Line OiI Top Fuel Dragster, driven by Troy
Buff, is a key development tool Bill Miller Engineering uses to
validate its Pistons along with the company's other products. In
2010, the BME Top Fuel Team finished 12th in points, the highest
finish by any Top Fuel team running a partial schedule.
How about
Pro Mods, Econorails, Super Gas cars, Super Stocks, Sport
Compacts...even bracket cars? Racers in drag racing's sportsman
categories, wanting the same reliability had by the Clay Millicans,
Bob Vandergriff's, Larry Morgans of the sport, use BME pistons to
win races. |
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What
better way to prove you make the best blown-fuel pistons in the
industry by running them in your own Top Fuel Dragster? Image: BME
Ltd. |
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Two
well-known reasons many nitro class engine builders choose BME Forged
Aluminum Pistons are
1) their winning record and 2) their reliability. But,
there's a third important issue and that's cost. Top Fuel and Funny Car
teams need many sets of pistons because each of them has half-a-dozen or
more engines. If the pistons are more durable, they will last longer and
a team will need less of them. That makes the BME Piston not only a
winner but also a great value. Image: BME Ltd. |
CLICK HERE To Download Piston Order Form
Piston Tech Briefing
Bill Miller
Engineering Pistons forged from 2618-T61 aluminum. BME has used 2618 for almost
25 years because Bill Miller believes it to be the best choice when strength and
durability are prime considerations.
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Another reason racers
pick BME as their piston supplier is attention to detail. This set
of racing pistons is being built for Drag Racing megastar, John
Force, but whether it's pistons for Force or just your average
bracket racer, every Bill Miller Engineering piston gets the same
care taken in its manufacture.
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Many other
piston manufacturers use a silicon-aluminum alloy, such as 4032 or
MS75. Pistons made from those alloys have good wear characteristics,
because the silicon particulate's hardness improves the piston
skirt's durability, however silicon is, also, their downfall because
it makes pistons brittle. Through race track testing, BME found that
silicon-aluminum alloys are prone to fracturing when subjected to
extreme loads.
This gets
worse. With pistons made of brittle, silicon-aluminum alloys, once a
crack starts; it doesn’t stop until the piston suffers catastrophic
failure. In the rare case of a crack in a BME, 2618-T61 piston, once
the crack reaches an area of lower stress; it stops, making
immediate failure less likely.
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In the tongs is a BME
raw forging that has just come out of the forging die. Just right of the
piston blank in the tongs is a chunk of aluminum bar stock that will go
into the forge on the next cycle. The forging temperature is 800 deg. F
and it applies a force of 18,000 tons to forge a piston. |
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NASCAR Sprint Cup
racers use BME pistons to win races with engines which must produce upwards of
850 horsepower, sustain speeds above 9000 rpm and do that for up to 600 miles.
The choice of a strong and durable raw material, subtle differences in the
design of the forging and precision finishing of ring grooves are just some of
the reasons why pistons made by Bill Miller Engineering outperform and outlast
other racing pistons in stock car racing.
With its blown-fuel
drag race pistons, BME takes durability measures even further by treating each
piston to a very low temperature, hard anodizing process. As a result, compared
to other brands, BME Pistons last about twice as long in blown-fuel, drag race
applications. |
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Bill Miller Engineering uses
state-of-the-art equipment to manufacture BME Pistons. Here a BME
Team Member programs an Okuma Simulturn CNC machining center prior
to a run of BME Sprint Cup racing pistons. The Okuma CNC equipment
is used to machine ring grooves and to "cam turn" the piston's
outside diameter. |
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The Bill Miller
Engineering Forged Aluminum Piston line is focused on the types of products
hard-core racers tend to buy. “I’ve decided.” Bill Miller states, “to
concentrate my efforts on making high-quality, high-tech racing pistons for
professional racers who compete in specific types of motorsports using certain
types of engines. By focusing on a limited amount of hardcore racing pistons and
making those pistons to order, we can give our customers a measure of
performance, quality, reliability and durability no other piston manufacturer
offers. We, also, can do that with very short turnaround times."
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The three most important things about a Bill Miller Engineering piston are quality, quality and quality.
Every step of the way, the manufacturing process at BME employs stringent quality control along with careful
records keeping.
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In addition to NASCAR
racing pistons, BME makes pistons for Chevrolet Big-Block V8 and the Gen 1 and
Gen 2 small-blocks. For Ford engines, BME offers pistons for the 460 big-block,
289-302W and the BOSS 302/351s. Bill Miller Engineering has Chrysler,
late-Hemi-style, blown-fuel, blown-alcohol and Pro Stock pistons, along with
parts for the older small-block Chryslers. Lastly, BME manufactures sport
compact drag racing pistons for Honda four-cylinder engines. Prices for most BME
pistons are listed on our price page. BME offers a number of special services
which are optional at extra cost. See a list of those on our services page
BME makes no inventory
items. All its pistons are either custom-made to customer specifications or, in
the case of race teams who take the specific forging die option, are completely
unique . |
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Not only does Bill
Miller Engineering make the most reliable and durable forged pistons in the
business but it prides itself on great customer service, accurate technical
advice, quick turnaround of orders and fair prices. More importantly, everyone
at BME, from the office staff, to the high-tech manufacturing specialists who
make the pistons, to the shipping department and, of course, to Bill Miller
himself, are intent upon great communication with customers.
Want proof?
Try this with any of
the other piston makers: call and ask to speak to the owner. If you don’t get
the reply, “Uh--he’s not taking calls.”, you’ll at least get voice mail. At
BME, when you ask for help from the top, Bill Miller, himself, answers the
phone.
That’s the sign of a
great business--the one from which you should buy your next set of racing
pistons. |
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