Technical how-to

You occasionally hear petrol heads tossing around the term ‘blueprinting’ when referring to an engine they have assembled, and have sometimes altered significantly. What they are probably trying to say is that their engine was carefully machined to optimum tolerances and balanced — probably for racing. But that isn’t what the term meant originally. You see, in the 1950s, when US stock car race cars really had to be stock, the racing teams would go to the factories and rummage through the parts bins until they found components that were closest in tolerance to the original blueprint developed by the engine’s designers.