SCORE Journal - The Official Publication of SCORE Off-Road Racing
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/1479178
Patton Racing Engines Leon Patton By Mike Vieira photos by jack wright Back in the mid-1980s, Leon Patton had a general car repair shop when his buddy, who was a crew chief for Dave Shoppe, came to him with some components provided by Ford and asked him to build a race engine. Leon has always had racing in his blood, and started racing in ¼ Midgets at five years old, so he took on the side project. The immediate result was a win in a short course race at Glen Helen. Shortly after that, he detuned the engine a bit, and they took the truck to the SCORE Baja 1000 where it notched a class win. It was the start of some big changes in off-road racing, leading to the birth of SCORE Trophy Trucks. “It was a hot rod engine,” says Patton. “Up until about 1985 or so, everybody just put in almost a stock motor to survive the SCORE Baja 1000. We showed up with this hot rod engine and dominated with it.” That early racing success prompted Patton to sell his car repair business in the late 1980s and go full-time into the race engine business. His early customers were some of the first SCORE Trophy Truck teams coming onto the scene including Paul and Dave Simon, Venable Racing for Rob MacCachren, Scott McMillin, and Robby Gordon. Today, Leon’s son Chris, and daughter Natalie are part of Patton Racing Engines, and Leon has stepped back a bit to a part-time role in the company. Nevertheless, he still spends several hours a day, four days a week in the shop. The “go-to” engine has changed over the years and Patton Racing has adapted. “For years and years, our small-block Fords with eight-stack fuel injection dominated for a long time,” says Patton. “But, we kind of maxed them out at about 870 horsepower, then we started doing the big cubic inch, small-block Chevrolet, and it’ll make 970 or 980 horsepower, and so that became quite popular. Now, we’re moving on to big-blocks, because they’re getting the transmissions and the drivetrains to hold up with the big-blocks, and they’re doing 1050 hp or better.” Pricing has moved on as well, as for Patton’s first engine build, he charged just over $4,400, while present-day builds are more in the $90,000 to $100,000 range, with a large portion of that being in the electronics. The increase in horsepower could have come sooner, but Patton says there was good reason. “We actually had to back down for a lot of years, because our Fords got to be capable of 850, but the Turbo 400 transmissions were not at the time. So, in the early 2000s, we actually stayed at about 825 to 830 horsepower for a while because the transmissions and differentials couldn’t take it.” Time has also brought about major changes in the development and preparation for races with the advent of computer data logging for every aspect of vehicle performance during races. Early on, Patton had a hand in working with Motec to pioneer the development of their first computer management systems for off-road racers. These days, with modern systems, Chris Patton can review all the data from the racers to determine where potential problems might occur, and then replace or upgrade parts accordingly. Leon says that prior to that ability to analyze things so carefully, top teams would replace just about every single part between races to avoid trouble, leading to much higher costs and time consumption. “With an old, simple, carbureted system, you wait for stuff to break, and it happens during a race, but with the data logging, you’re able to run flat-out for a thousand miles, and everybody is able to finish within a few seconds of each other because they’re able to monitor all the systems and predict problems on the car.” In the actual machining processes for building engines, computers have also vastly improved capabilities over the years. CNC machines allow more precise, and more varied angles in areas like valve design, allowing experimentation with small changes to extract the most performance possible from an engine. In addition to the company’s SCORE Trophy Truck work, Patton Racing Engines also builds Class 1 engines, as well as engines for other forms of racing, and have had impressive results in Pikes Peak Hill Climb racing. Although he’s officially sold the business to his son Chris, Leon says, “I’m enjoying it too much to quit. My friends ask why I keep working, and I say, because I like it.'” SJ