Going up against 29 of the best engine builders in the country in a competition to determine who is best using a given set of rules is a tall task for any engine builder. It’s even more difficult when the engine is built by a group of students who don’t have the pedigree those expert race engine shops do – that’s why the School of Automotive Machinists‘ fourth-place finish at the recent Engine Masters Challenge is so special. In fact, the SAM team won the Extreme Street division at the event in 2012 and the Street Division in 2011, and has made the finals every year since 2007.

“We are thrilled to once again place in the top five,” said Judson Massingill, Director of Education and co-owner at the SAM. “Engine Masters is a true test of just the engine—no chassis, no driver, just power. When people see we can compete competitively with some the best professional shops in the country, they realize our students are really learning something. The exposure EMC gets shows potential employers the School’s capabilities and this opens doors for our graduates, who typically land at premier engine shops. In fact, I’m proud to say, every team in the finals this year had a SAM graduate on it,” he added.

As reported previously here on EngineLabs, SAM entered the 2014 event with a 436 cubic inch LS engine that used a Chevrolet Performance Parts block, CIC LS7 heads, and a COMP Cams camshaft. The engine produced an average peak of 727.0 horsepower and an average peak of 640.67 lb-ft torque.

“Engine Masters allows us to showcase what we teach. We are an engine building school, not a chassis tuning school, and the competition shows how competitive we can be against professional engine builders,” Massingill added.

Other SAM graduates also performed well at this year’s EMC. BES Racing employee Preston Mosher worked on Bischoff’s winning entry, and Bradley Nagel of Bradley Built Engines finished second in the Challenge with his own engine; Nagel previously worked at BES and now works at Proline Racing Engines. Chris Thomas, currently employed at Jon Kaase Racing Engines, tuned Kaase’s fifth-place engine while putting his own engine into the sixth-place spot.

For more information on the School of Automotive Machinists and the programs they offer, check out their website.