How BluePrint Engines Builds 80 Crate Motors a Day

When racers, hot-rodders, and hobbyists need to put a new powerplant into their drag car, restomod muscle car, or weekend cruiser, they often turn to a ready-to-run crate engine to make the process as painless as possible. Chevrolet Performance, Ford Racing, and Mopar Direct Connection are some of the big names in the business, but BluePrint engines has been growing steadily and offering drop-in solutions for all sorts of applications. If you’ve been around the automotive aftermarket you’ve probably heard of them. We visited BluePrint’s Kearney, Nebraska, facility where it designs, machines, assembles, tests, packages, and ships 80 crate engines a day to see how it all comes together.

Norris Marshall started BluePrint Engines in 1982. At that point, it was called Marshall Engines and focused on building engines for local racers. The BluePrint name came in 2003. In 2009, the Origin line of industrial engines was introduced, filling a gap left when GM’s 8.1-liter big-block engine ended production. Today, the facility operates out of a 210,000-square-foot facility with 270 employees. Its output includes Origin gasoline, propane, and natural gas generators based on GM pushrod V-6, small-block, and big-block architecture up to 632 cubic inches and an even larger line of industrial V-8, V-10, and V-12 engines up to 1,460 cubic inches. The BluePrint lineup includes Ford and Chevrolet-compatible small-blocks, Gen III Hemi-compatible V-8s, and big-block Chevy-compatible V-8s.

The first step in manufacturing a Blueprint small-block Chevy-compatible crate engine is designing a new block. Starting with a new block makes the whole process much faster and assures the finished product will stand up to high power levels. These new castings are improved over the factory parts that reached their last stages of evolution at the end of the last century. Modern casting processes, along with changes in design that give the blocks thicker cylinder walls, main bulkheads, and decks, along with improved cooling and oiling, make the blocks a better foundation for longevity in all applications. The design process can take up to two years and cost about two million dollars.

Frank Hromadka, one of BluePrint’s engineers in charge of developing its LS-compatible blocks, explained some of the other benefits of vertically integrating block production, “We want to have design control, because it gives us better ability to maintain the quality that we want and our customers need. Supply, that’s another good reason,” Hromadka said. He gave an example of LS lifter trays, which are hard to find in stock, leading Blueprint to buy from a dozen separate suppliers. If they designed and manufactured their own, they could order enough to last for an entire year, which not only solves the supply problem but keeps costs down as well.

Before an engine block, cylinder head, or intake manifold is cast in metal, it’s 3D printed and tested at full scale to make sure it fits properly and doesn’t interfere with any other components. Some 3D printed plastic components, like intake manifolds, can even be tested on a running engine.

Many of BluePrint’s customers have strict requirements for longevity, so components are tested to failure to make sure they’ll hold up. This fixture, made from a single crank throw, is essentially a tuning fork that vibrates the crankshaft to simulate the harmonics it experiences under load. Using this tool, Blueprint proved that rolling the fillets on the crank journals vastly increases its strength.

Before a new block or intake can enter production, it must be thoroughly tested. A machined block can be measured in thousands of locations using a coordinate measuring machine. It’s time-consuming to set up, but the process can be automated to ensure production blocks are still coming out within spec. Measuring a vintage factory block in this manner showed how often decks weren’t square to each other and lifter bores weren’t parallel with one another.

Each engine configuration is also thoroughly tested before it enters production. BluePrint Engines has several dyno cells dedicated just to engine development.

The casting process is one of the few parts of engine building that doesn’t happen on-site. Blueprint contracts a foundry in Germany to cast its small-block-Chevy-compatible blocks. The same facility casts blocks for American and German auto manufacturers. This is how they look when they arrive.

Norris Marshall explained how  BluePrint’s process differs from how a small-block might have been machined in the ‘60s or ‘70s on a transfer line where each stop completed one milling operation. “So you’d have this big long line and there might be 15 different machines. Because there were 15 different machines, there were 15 opportunities for something not to be exactly in the right place,” Norris said.

The first machining process at BluePrint uses reference points on the casting to create parallel faces on either end of the block. On the front, that means the timing cover, and on the rear, it’s the bellhousing. This process creates surfaces and drilled holes that will serve as references for the complex CNC program that comes next. A huge CNC machine, one of many at the facility, is tasked with machining the cylinder, cam, lifter, and main bores as well as the oil pan and deck surface. The blocks come out weighing about 50 pounds less than when they started.

When the blocks come out, they look ready to assemble, but there are still a few more machining processes left to go. One is the align hone, which makes sure the crankshaft will be perfectly placed in the block. The tolerance for this machine is important, so BluePrint is shifting over to a vertical-align hone so that the long honing bar won’t flex due to gravity. We’re talking about tolerances in the tenths of thousandths of an inch.

Cylinder bores also need to be honed to their final diameter. Blocks are fitted with torque plates and placed into a Rottler machine which keeps close track of the process. Machinists keep tabs on the bore with either a dial bore gauge or an air gauge that’s set up to each engine’s specific bore size. When placed in the bore, the air gauge measures how much air flows through it, accurately calculating the bore based on that volume.

Next, blocks enter a washer, where a robotic arm sprays a pressurized cleaning solution over all the machined surfaces and into the water and oil passages to remove machining debris and grit.

Blocks get painted using masking boards that are held in place by bolts, magnets, or sometimes by hand. The assembly begins as the blocks move to the front of a new line where casting plugs and oil gallery plugs are driven home.

On another line, workers prep the rotating assembly for installation. A balanced engine will be quieter, last longer, and make more power, so plenty of steps are taken to keep things spinning smoothly. Each connecting rod is weighed and sorted so that sets can be made that all end up within a gram of one another. At the volume BluePrint builds, sorting this way saves a lot of time and labor as it means rods won’t have to be ground individually. Unlike vintage connecting rods, modern powdered metal rods don’t have large balancing pads meant for grinding off excess weight.

Each crankshaft is balanced to within a couple of grams. A lot like the balancer at your local tire shop, the machine spins the crank and determines where the imbalance is located. Unlike your local tire shop, these machines require bob weights that match the weight of the piston and connecting rod and the precision is much higher. Drilling out the crankshaft counterweights in two places got this crank balanced within two grams.

Cylinder heads are cast off-site. When they arrive at BluePrint, technicians clean up the combustion chambers and bowls before installing the valves, seals, springs, and retainers.

Back to the blocks, cam bearings are placed into the block and a tapered mandrel aligns them all as they are pressed into place all at once.

Crankshafts are bolted in vertically with carefully calibrated tools. Each fastener’s torque is logged and recorded with the rest of the engine’s specs as it progresses down the line.

Piston rings are either installed by hand or by this machine that carefully expands the rings and sets them in their lands each time a new piston is inserted. Rotating the piston before it’s inserted each time staggers the ring gaps.

Pistons and rods are mated together at a station that can heat up all eight small ends simultaneously. The assemblies are then inserted into the block on the assembly line just after the crank goes in.

Next, the assembled cylinder heads are placed on the block and the head bolts are started by hand. A pair of robotic arms torque the heads down in stages. This keeps workers from doing the kind of repetitive and straining movements that can lead to injuries.

Every cam gets inspected before it’s installed to make sure the lift and duration match the advertised specs on the cam cards.

After the valvetrain is installed, engines get buttoned up and it’s off to the dyno cell. A door opens up so the engines can roll right into place. Once the engines are warmed up and broken in, they’re tested to make sure they deliver on the power goals set by BluePrint.

Each engine is drained of oil before it ships. The engine oil contains a UV dye so dyno operators can check for leaks using a black light.

The lead photo at the top of the page shows an engine cooling down with help from a few fans. Once engines cool down they get bagged and crated so they can be shipped off to their destination.

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