BME Forged Aluminum Racing
Pistons: Parts that Win Races
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.
Going into the 2010 Daytona 500,
Jamie McMurray had only three wins in 259 NASCAR Sprint Cup starts. He qualified
the BME Pistons-equipped, #1 Bass Pro Shops/Tracker Boats Chevrolet Impala SS an
acceptable–and perhaps lucky–13th.
Vegas odds makers had McMurray 30:1
to win, so the pay-out for a bet on the One-Car was freakin' huge. Good thing no
one told those bookies about Bill Miller Engineering Forged Aluminum Racing
Pistons.
It was a "green-white-checker"
restart two laps from the end of one of the best Daytona 500s in years. BME
Pistons user, Kevin Harvick, who dominated the race in the #29 Pennzoil
Chevrolet, flanked by McMurray, who hadn't led a lap, paced the field out of
Turn Four. At the green, the 29 roared into the lead holding off McMurray
through One and Two. On the Backstretch, Jamie Mac, with Greg Biffle
bump-drafting him in the 16-Car and Martin Truex Jr in the #56 NAPA Toyota blew
by Harvick on the outside. McMurray led, followed by Biffle and Truex, through
Turns Three, Four and back to the stripe.
On the last lap, headed for Turn
One, Biffle went under McMurray, taking Clint Bowyer, in yet another BME car,
the #33 Cheerios Chevrolet, and the #88 Amp/National Guard Chevrolet of Dale
Earnhardt Jr with him. At the exit of Two, onto the backstretch, Bowyer went
high and tucked-in behind McMurray who repassed the #16, taking back the lead.
In the final turn, a fishtailing Earnhardt threaded between Bowyer and Biffle
into second spot, right on Jamie McMurray's bumper.
It was McMurray, in the Bass Pro
Shops Chevy, holding off a charging (and former BME Pistons user) Dale Earnhardt
Jr. for the win.
Jamie Mac is the fifth NASCAR Sprint Cup driver in the last 13
years to win The Great American Race using an engine fitted with Bill Miller
Engineering Forged Aluminum Racing Pistons. Three other BME-equipped were in the
top ten.
(Note to Earnhardt Jr.: go back to
BME Pistons.)
Reliability in NASCAR
Earnhardt-Childress Racing Engines
provides engines for the cars Earnhardt Ganassi Racing, Richard Childress Racing
and Kevin Harvick, Inc. run in Sprint Cup and Nationwide. ECR's choice of Bill
Miller Forged Aluminum Racing Pistons helped those three teams win three of five
events at Daytona Speedweeks in 2010. Kevin Harvick was victorious in the Bud
Shootout, Tony Stewart, driving for Harvick Inc. won the Nationwide race and
McMurray, driving for Earnhardt Ganassi won the 500.
Both
the #1 of Jamie McMurray and the #42 of Juan Pablo
Montoya use Bill Mller Engineering Pistons. Image:
Copyright, 2010 Action Sports Photography, Inc.
Another major team which demands the
performance, reliability and durability of BME Pistons is Joe Gibbs Racing. In
2008, Gibbs didn't win the Sprint Cup, but the Coach's Camrys, in the hands of
Tony Stewart, Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin, won the most races. JGR has depended
on the reliability and durability of Bill Miller Engineering Pistons for over a
decade. Between 1999 and 2009, Joe Gibbs Racing's three Sprint Cups (Stewart in
'05 and '02 and Bobby Labonte in '00), 80 race wins and 329 top five finishes
came, in part, from the BME Pistons the team puts in its engines.
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.
In 1998, the late Dale Earnhardt won at Daytona using BME
Pistons.
Two years running, in '09, with Kyle
Busch, and '08, with Clint Bowyer, BME Pistons won the NASCAR Nationwide Series.
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. Dale
Earnhardt Jr. was a BME Pistons user, too, during the six years he drove the #8
Budweiser Chevrolet for Dale Earnhardt, Inc.
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.
Why do these NASCAR racers rely on
Bill Miller Engineering?
BME makes a better product.
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 brand of piston. 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. Those other 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
microscopic, heat-softened pieces of piston material would weld to the ring.
Once that happened, ring seal degraded and power dropped.
At the 2005
Daytona 500, of the six lead cars in this picture, three
of them ran BME pistons, the Home Depot, NAPA and Cat
cars. That says a lot about how Bill Miller Engineering
sets the trend as far as pistons in NASCAR race engines.
Image: Goodyear/Aaron Vandersommers..
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.
The solution to microwelding is the
higher-quality finish on the ring grooves 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. Those nearly mirror-smooth ring groove surfaces on a BME Piston 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.
BME makes 400-gram, NASCAR racing
pistons for the Chevrolet SB2/2.2 RO7 the Toyota NASCAR engines. They give guys
like McMurray, Harvick, Bowyer and Honaday a winning edge.
All four of these racers, the 2010
Daytona champ, Jamie McMurray's #1 Bass Pro Shops Chevy, Denny
Hamlin's #11 FedEx Toyota, Kyle Busch's #18 M&M's Toyota and
Kevin Harvick's Talladega-winning #29 Pennzoil
Ultra Chevy win
races with the BME Pistons.
Six views of a BME Forged Aluminum
Sprint Cup Piston.
BME Pistons: The Drag Racers' Choice
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.
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.
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 the benchmark by which racing pistons are
judged.
In 2008, Spencer Massey won the IHRA
Top Fuel Championship and Terry Haddock won the IHRA Funny Car title with BME.
In 2006, the IHRA Top Fuel title was won by Clay Millican using Bill Miller
Engineering Pistons. In fact, Millican is a six-time IHRA Top Fuel Champion and
has used BME pistons in his Werner Enterprises/Nitro Fish 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
2010.
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, Alan Hartley
was the only Independent to qualify at more than 16 NHRA National Events. His
Hartley Racing Top Fuel Dragster is driven by his son Joe and uses not only BME
Pistons, but BME Rods, Wrist Pins and the Gibson/Miller Mark II Supercharger, as
well. Not only do BME parts win races, but their durability offers a cost
advantage highly coveted by budget-conscious independents.
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, Rods, Wrist Pins and Superchargers. In 2008, the BME Top Fuel Team
finished 14th in points, the highest finish by any Top Fuel team running a
partial schedule.
And then, there’s Pro Stock. “I
bet you a quarter of the Pro Stock field run my pistons.” Bill Miller says.
Anyone who’s seen the size of the Pro Stock entry list at an NHRA or IHRA event
knows that’s a lot of cars.
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, Mike Ashleys, Larry Morgans of the sport, use BME pistons to win
races.
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: Auto Imagery/Dave Kommel
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.
Bill Miller Engineering Pistons are
made with forged, 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.
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.
Many other piston manufacturers use
a silicon-aluminum alloy, such as 4032 or MS75. Pistons made from those 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 a 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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
