It’s unlikely that anyone is more recognized among performance automotive enthusiasts than David Freiburger. His media presence was first established as the editor of Car Craft, 4-Wheel & Off-Road and Hot Rod magazines. His following expanded quickly through the Internet with YouTube videos, and then he was a co-host on the hit cable TV shows Roadkill, Roadkill Garage and Engine Masters. Always approachable, Freiburger anchors his celebrity status among the racing and hot-rod communities with his hardcore DIY passion for cars, engines and all things performance. Fans easily relate to his budget-minded projects and willingness to share solutions that solve big and small problems. They are inspired by his in-depth knowledge of engines and his own racing efforts, including 8-second runs on the dragstrip and setting 12 land-speed records at Bonneville. TorqueJournal editor Mike Magda, who was a colleague with Freiburger in the automotive group at Petersen Publishing throughout the ‘90s, caught up with him at the 2024 PRI show in Indianapolis and recorded the following conversation. Some content has been edited for brevity:
TorqueJournal: You’re a self-described engine geek. How did your appreciation for engines develop?
David Freiburger: I was into engines back in high school auto shop where I rebuilt the 383 in my Super Bee and the 289 in my dad’s car. So, it goes back to me and my friends in our late teens and 20s. But I didn’t really know what I was doing until getting involved in the magazines in 1991 and meeting a lot of engine guys—finding out the technology behind them. I got further into it, especially at Car Craft magazine while dyno testing with [Steve] Brulé. At that point, magazines hadn’t done tests like bore/stroke ratio. I definitely learned the most on the Engine Masters show.
TJ: Following a cursory review of all the Freiburger appearances I’ve seen, it’s not a stretch to conclude that you either like to go fast or get a frozen engine to turn over.
DF: Yeah, pretty much.
TJ: Is there anything else in between? I mean, do you really enjoy both extremes?
DF: I do, very much so. And I like engines more than the rest of the car. I’d rather buy a car that is functional and make the engine work or buy a car that’s okay and put an engine in it. It’s my favorite part of the car. I do like troubleshooting and making an engine run after it’s been sitting forever—which is, of course—the anchor of our Roadkill show.
But I also like the higher end stuff. Although I would say that on Engine Masters I always said the show was really good at street-strip engines below 7,000 rpm. We weren’t into high-end engine development, but I think we learned a lot about the street-strip segment, which is the bulk of the market.
TJ: When you headed up Car Craft, you led almost a religious awareness of salvage-yard possibilities. What drove that direction, and was there any penalty for taking that approach?
DF: Oh, of course. People called it Junkyard Craft. I’m sure you remember those days. They thought that I was too dirtball for the magazine. My argument was always, these kids have to get a start somewhere, and pulling a 440 out of a motorhome somehow leads to a life where they’re eventually building a 632.
And the other thing I remember at the time was I would get a lot of criticism from advertisers who would say, you’re not covering our parts that we want to sell. And I would always say, what’s your biggest selling part number? At the time it was always a cam for a small block Chevy or an MSD 6AL or a Holley 3310. I’m like, I’m catering to that customer.
TJ: Do you remember one or two engine projects that were particularly popular or turning points for that editorial approach?
DF: You know, back then parts were much cheaper. We did a $499 small-block Chevy that was always popular. When I went to Hot Rod, we did the 500-500 engine. It was a 383 that made right at 500 horsepower and 500 pound-feet. I hear people to this day tell me that they’ve copied that formula and that it’s a good street-strip engine for them.
TJ: Nowadays, SBC or BBC junkyard projects are hard to find. You almost always have to start with a World block and a Scat crank. Has the junkyard approach slipped away?
DF: You mean, pulling something out of a junkyard? No, now it’s just become an LS project.
TJ: That’s what my next question. How long did it take you to embrace the LS platform?
DF: I did my first LS swap in 2007, and LS came out in ’97. So, it was 10 years later but I don’t think the aftermarket really embraced it until about that time. It took a while. The first one I think I had ever seen was built by Hotchkis. It was an orange Camaro on the December 2000 cover of Hot Rod. I remember we were at the Wilshire building and shot it straight down from the balcony while it was doing a burnout.
I remember going to the press event where they first announced that engine. It was actually a pretty in-depth technical presentation around late ’95 for only a few select magazines. I was sitting there going, “they screwed this up.”
At the time, I didn’t understand everything about airflow and what they were doing with the cylinder head and what was going to make it spectacular. I was like, this is just weird. I thought they took all of the universal aspects of the small-block Chevy and threw it out the window. I wondered, what’s the aftermarket going to do with this? And obviously they’ve done absolutely everything with it.
TJ: As a pioneer in the Fastest Street Car competition, do you think it was important to be flexible and liberal with the engine rules?
DF: It was wide open. There were no engine rules. It was big tire, small tire and show up. You could run multiple power adders. I don’t think there was any limits at all. In the first couple years there may have been no spread-port or Big Chief heads. We wanted a conventional port configuration, and I think there were some classes that turned into single four-barrel. That was about it.
TJ: Do you remember any fights over engine rules?
DF: The big one at the time was whether we should allow methanol. That was the real biggie, starting from the very first shootout in Memphis.
TJ: In the early 90s, did you have a favorite engine builder that you liked to work with?
DF: Yeah, actually it was Dick and Mike Landy. I was a Mopar geek, and having access to those guys through being a staffer in Hot Rod was a big deal to me. I became pretty close with them.
TJ: Tell us a good Dick Landy story.
DF: I have a couple, but they’re not engine related. We were up the LACR drag strip with my ‘70 Super Bee—they had built the Hemi for it. The car wasn’t hooking up, and Dick tells me to pull a rear shock off. I hand him the shock and it’s a three-way adjustable. He extends and collapses it and clicks it. Does it again and again, then throws it in the trash can. “We’re going to have to come back another day,” he said.
I also remember we went to the track with a brand-new Viper. I actually 180’d the car at the 60-foot mark. I was humiliated, but I remember Landy telling me that I had my left hand dead center on top of the wheel, and when I shifted I was jerking the wheel to the side. He said hold the wheel down low and that won’t happen.
TJ: Talk about building engines for your land-speed runs.
DF: I take a point of pride coming up with the combination and building my own engines for Bonneville. The only record I ever got that I didn’t build the engine myself was the very first one in 2004 when I got in the 200-mph club. And that was a package that Brulé, I and Dougan’s Racing Engines put together.
My engines would been the 555, a 572, and a 347. I think the coolest thing that we did there was we set five records in five days in five different classes with three different drivers. And that meant every single pass had to be qualifying for a record and then the next morning backing it up, and that afternoon qualifying for a record in a different class, backing it up the next morning, and doing that for five days straight. We ran the car in fuel and gas and blown and unblown classes. I changed the engine configuration every time. We put a supercharger on it or a single four-barrel with nitrous. Actually, the fastest I ever went there was a 572 on a single four-barrel with a 180 shot. It went 261 mph.
TJ: Let’s turn to Engine Masters. What was the mission statement for the show’s development, considering that brand had already been defined by the magazine and the competitions.
DF: Right. The TV show had nothing to do with the magazine and the Engine Masters Challenge dyno competition. It was supposed to be a 15-minute show, and it was largely to try and collect sponsor money, because no other show was doing super-technical stuff. When it started it was a YouTube only show and then a streaming-only show.
I remember they put it on cable and I said, you don’t want to do that. It’s too boring for cable TV. Nothing moves. There’s no challenge or anything, but it worked really well on cable for a long time and then it turned into a full 22-minute TV show.
TJ: In the last couple seasons, you refined it into a concept of taking a single, almost esoteric topic, and then truly exploring it. You also addressed many myths and misconceptions. Any favorites that stand out?
DF: The one that people bring up to me all the time is the header bash. We started with a new set of headers for a small block. Everybody has to clearance headers for a drag link or whatever with a hammer. And some worry about what they’re doing to the performance.
So, we started putting dents in these headers and at the end we had pounded every tube with a typical dent that you would do for a steering column or whatever. I mean pretty severe stuff and it never hurt the engine performance.
And then people called BS on that, so we did it again on a different engine. We A-B tested it with a new set and the bashed set. Same story. Didn’t matter at all.
TJ: Were you able to conclude why?
DF: I think when you deflect the header, you’re not changing the area of the inside of it. I think it stretches and just becomes an oval. And wild guess, apparently that doesn’t affect the pressure wave. It seemed to work, and I think we’re talking a five, about 520-horse motor we did that on.
I always say, we did street-strip engines under 7,000 rpm. If you go to the far ends of the curve, you might find differences from the tests that we did. Typically, we found the stuff that people think matters like crazy, that really doesn’t apply to that realm of engines. Rod ratio is one that we did twice. And the bummer is, whenever you do that test, you always add the variable of the piston weight because the different compression height. So, it was impossible for me to balance the piston weight to eliminate that variable.
But essentially, we found once again that in that range of engine, it didn’t matter.
TJ: But are there engine efficiencies or engine technologies that do impress you outside of the envelope that you normally work with?
DF: Oh, absolutely. I just don’t think it applies to the bulk of the marketplace. And I think that stuff comes out of there that people think is hypercritical. For example, a four-pattern camshaft—it doesn’t matter for your average street-strip guy, especially when you’re buying one off the shelf.
TJ: But do you have any desire to build something exotic like a Noonan all-billet motor?
DF: Oh sure. One of the last things we did was an all-aluminum, 20-degree 582. That was about the most extreme or exotic that we ever did on the show. It was a 1,000-horse, naturally aspirated.
TJ: To close out, what is the most rewarding experience gained from engine building?
DF: The most rewarding would be targeting a power number, targeting a goal. For me, that has been at Bonneville and seeing it through and saying, okay, I know what I’m doing. I put together that combination. It did exactly what it was expected to do and performed in the car. That’s way more rewarding than just scabbing together some garbage.
TJ: The Engine Masters show was killed about seven or eight months ago. Shortly before our meeting, the parent company of Motor Trend TV dissolved all future production efforts for Roadkill—effectively leaving you unemployed. So, what’s in the future for David Freiburger?
DF: I have several offers, and I may accept some of them as side deals. But right now, I’m putting my efforts into YouTube—the David Freiburger Channel. So far, I’ve been posting mostly road trips and wrenching, but once I get my schedule clear I like to do a dyno testing episode at least once a month.
Editor’s update: Following this interview, NHRA.tv announced that Freiburger would join its announcing team and also appear on select NHRA on Fox broadcasts.