Recently AERA held a regional conference that was sponsored by Sunnen Products and Mahle-Clevite and hosted at Hendricks Motorsports in Concord NC. With great support from attendees as well as tabletop exhibitors, this regional conference was a big success.

With the draw of Hendricks Motorsports as conference host, pre-registration numbers exceeded over 140 attendees. Additional on-site walkup attendees and tablet top exhibitors pushed the number who attended this conference to over 180 people for this event.

The day started with a presentation by Bob Dolder of Sunnen Products and was titled “An inside Look at Honing Different Cylinder Coatings and Materials on Engine Blocks Today.” Bob covered a wide range of honing applications from NASCAR engines to street engines and everything in between. Other topics discussed included: Secrets for Honing Nickasil, High Nickel Cast Iron, Compacted Graphite Blocks, The New Aluminum Corvette Block, Sulzer Metco Coatings, Bore Geometry, Surface Finish, Cross Hatch Angle, The Pros and Cons of Diamond Abrasives vs. Conventional Abrasives, Water Based vs. Oil Based Coolants, Hot Honing and Where It Is Used Today. Many of the attendees walked away with a better knowledge of honing after the presentation.

After a short break and a chance for the attendees to talk to Bob and grab a cup of coffee, AERA’s technical specialist Steve Fox gave a presentation on AERA’s specification software, PROSIS SA. The presentation went over the proper way to locate engines, specifications, technical bulletins, casting numbers and many other great features of the program that can be used in any machine shop today.

After Steve concluded his presentation, attendees were treated to a tour of the engine shop at Hendricks Motorsports. For those of you that were not able to attend do not think that we got to see secrets that Hendricks has in their shop. The tour was kept pretty low key and that is understandable given the expensive and highly competitive nature of NASCAR racing.  However, people who toured the facility came away impressed with what they did see.

The third presentation of the day occurred after lunch and was presented by Bill McKnight of Mahle-Clevite and he talked about “Race Engine Bearings – Selection & Technology.” Bill covered bearing film thickness and how clearances influence it. Attendees learned about crush, parting line relief and eccentricity. Coatings overlay materials and bearing prep was also discussed. Finally, Bill talked about installation and how to identify different factors that can cause bearing distress.

Once all the presentations were completed, Todd Williams of Hendricks Motorsports came up and enlightened the audience about the RO7 engine that is currently being used in NASCAR and had open discussion, as much as he could, with the attendees of the conference. After about 30 minutes of discussion, two employees from Hendricks Motorsports treated us to the engine build of the RO7 engine and fired it up. The build time was a little over 26 minutes from a bare block to run time.

We have heard nothing but good things about the conference that was held. Many of the attendees were happy that they had the opportunity to visit Hendricks Motorsports which is highly recommended if you are ever in the area; it was very impressive. But probably some of the best remarks that we heard was that the presentations were highly informative and it gave us all (the attendees) the chance to talk to other shops and network with other people.

If you were unable to attend this conference, you will have a couple of more chances this year to attend one. There will be a conference in Minneapolis MN at Jobbers Warehouse Supply on August 16^th. We will then be heading out west to Rottler Manufacturing on September 30, 2011. Finally we wrap up at the IMIS Show in Indianapolis on December 8^th. Look for information regarding these presentations on the AERA website at www.aera.org/conferences-events. Also we have some short video of this conference on the AERA website as well; short clips of the presentations and the engine build. Visit www.aera.org to view these videos.

Look forward to seeing you at a future regional conference!