![]() The rear bolt pattern on the bell housing is either Chevy or Chrysler. The rod journals and rear flange is like a Chrysler. It doesn’t have a Chevy bolt pattern but it uses Chevrolet mains in the crank. “The blocks are machined from billet aluminum by Alan Johnson Performance Engines but it is a custom design. Koester says the engines he and Miner provide is based on Chevrolet big block casting but has Hemi heads – sort of. And he also told me I could talk to the customers…that’s been a REAL education!” Koester laughs. “Bob told me he was getting to the point in his career that he didn’t really care about assembling engines anymore – he wanted to focus on the design. Bob was relatively new, and the options for engines were pretty limited.”Īdam went to college at Vincennes University in Vincennes, IN for an education in engineering and technology, but it was Miner who really took him to school. “Dad told our engine builder that we either needed to learn how to build the engines ourselves or we needed to quit pulling. “I started building engines when I was 18 years old,” Adam Koester says. “I told him when he started building motors for other customers to build their engines exactly like you build mine,” Larry says. ![]() Larry says although he knew his way around an engine, he wasn’t an “engine builder” – he had too many things to distract him from being good at it. Miner began working with the Koester family when father Larry needed stout engines to keep him competitive. You may not set them up the same way but you’re trying to accomplish the same thing.” “All of the things you do in drag racing apply to pulling, but the racers and pullers always think they’re so different. “When I first started going to the pulls, people would say ‘This isn’t drag racing!’ Well, you stand behind one of those things and it sure looks and sounds like drag racing!” he says. It’s easier to do and folks just seem to enjoy themselves,” Miner explains. – not to cheat, exactly, but to stretch them. “I come from the drag racing world – each year it gets more and more expensive because they add more rules and guys continue to find new ways to interpret those rules. Today, the alcohol supercharged 8.3L MBR engine is very popular in sportsman drag racing, particularly in the Alcohol Dragster and Funny Car and Pro Mod classes as well as being a winning combination for its tractor pulling customers like the Koesters – and Miner says partnering with Adam Koester as his engine builder has been very successful. The engine’s just fine – it’s just that dealing with customers isn’t always easy.” “Really, it’s no different in any other segment. You have to learn to deal with customers,” he says. “When it comes to buyers and users of diesel trucks, you learn to listen to their concerns, figure out what they’re really asking for. Bob Miner says his background as a diesel mechanic prepared him surprisingly well for his new customers in the gas world. The three Miner brothers, two of whom are no longer in the engine business but still own a Mack truck dealership in California, bought the business from Fontana. I thought, ‘I’ve been developing this thing for the past 5 years – what if somebody else gets it!’” We were going faster than anyone when Joe put the business up for sale. We also helped Joe get a lot of sales to other customers as well. “We started running one of the Fontana 8.3L engines – cast block, still looking like something from the ’70s…I started doing a billet block, put in a bigger cam and made some other developments that helped us win a lot of races. “Miner Brothers had always raced Chrysler engines and suffered through the typical problems with those engines,” said Bob Miner. Originally designed in the 1970s by engine legend Nick Arias and then modified by Joe Fontana, Miner began reinventing the vintage big block engine in early 2000. Koester is a humble, polite young man who understands that what he does is a business – and business is looking good.Īll of the Koester-family pulling vehicles are powered by 8.3L Miner Brothers Racing engines, developed by Stockton, CA native Bob Miner. Super Modified Two-Wheel Drive class.īut don’t mistake his self-confidence for self-importance. His father, Larry, also won Modified Mini championships in 2001, 2006, and 2008 aboard “Footloose,” and his sister, Ashley Corzine and her husband Craig, campaign “Burn Notice” and “Second Degree” trucks in NTPA’s 6,200 lb. Koester, 33, is driver of the NTPA Modified Mini tractors “Beast of Burden” and “Walk the Line.” He began his career in the Modified Mini division by winning the 2005 NTPA Rookie of the Year Award, clinched his first championship in 2007 and his second in 2016.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |