Making Bail

Max Rolph’s Corvette and Harley run COMP Performance Group™ products . . . or they don’t leave the garage.

By Cam Benty

Fifteen Corvettes later, Max Rolph is still dedicated to the marque. His current 2001 Corvette sports over 860 horsepower and it is feared amongst true performance fans living near Max’s suburban Toronto home. Certainly having all that power on tap tends to be a good thing especially when you are a full time repo man/bounty hunter . . . having the power to evade can be handy. Max is also known by performance fans for his custom engine “tunes” having received double EFI certification from Greg Banish, author of “Engine Management Advanced Tuning” and founder of CalibratedSuccess.com.

Rolph’s love affair with Corvettes, Harley Davidson motorcycles and ultimately COMP Cams® started a long time ago with his first early Corvettes when he tried a COMP Cams® camshaft at the suggestion of a local engine shop. As the owner of a ’68 big block tri-power Corvette at the time, COMP Cams® tech engineers suggested that a custom grind would be perfect for his car. Rolph is one of the founders of “HAR–COR”, a club dedicated to Harley and Corvette owners and an executive for 14 years for the “Corvette Club Of Ontario.” With out a doubt, he prides himself on building the best in “performance entertainment” be it on two wheels or four.




















“I have had excellent success with COMP Cams®, never a failure or a disappointment,” stated Rolph. “I did a lot of work dyno testing with classic stroker 383cid engines in my early Corvettes and COMP Cams® offered the best lobe profiles. They were exactly what I wanted and needed.”

Rolph’s current 2001 convertible Corvette sports a 428cid LS engine built by Billy Briggs of Briggs Performance, the chief builder for the former Wheel-to-Wheel operation in nearby Detroit. The engine uses not only a COMP Cams® camshaft but also the Racing Head Service™ 225cc Cathedral port cylinder heads, a ZEX™ 125hp shot of nitrous and the obvious engine topping, a FAST™ intake manifold with 90mm throttle intake diameter. The dyno tally: 703 ft. lbs. of torque at the rear wheels and 860 horsepower – and on a recent run to Vermont for a Corvette competition averaged 24.6 mpg.




















“I’m very pleased with the results, obviously,” stated Rolph of the current state of the engine. “But I’m looking for more power still and just ordered a new COMP Cams® LSr camshaft that should increase the power now that I have the L92 block enlarged to 428cid. I was going to go with a custom grind because I felt I needed the bigger lift but the new LSr lobe numbers are exactly what I wanted. I should be able to run 9.90seconds in the quarter mile when I’m done.”

Fast is a uniform theme with the repo man from Ontario, although his bikes are not known so much for what they do on the track, but rather the speed with which they take shape. Case in point is his 2003 100th anniversary Harley Davidson which went from concept to finished, show-winning machine in under a week – three days total work by his own estimation.

States Rolph, “I bought the bike just before the end of the year and immediately began the disassembly to get it ready for the big Toronto Motorcycle Show just after the first of the year. I had a number of the parts painted pearl over black while they were off the bike making sure not to remove the signature 100th anniversary stripping and added a ZEX™ 50hp shot of nitrous oxide. I reassembled the bike a few days later and collected second place in the mild custom category at the show.”

While the Corvette and Harley are the objects of his greatest fun, his real “work truck” is a late model Hummer H2 that is about to receive a Magnuson Magnacharger backed by a TCI® automatic transmission featuring an enhanced TCI® triple disc torque converter. When the bad guys bust loose and a big bounty is on the line, Rolph should be more than up to the task of chasing them down.

Concludes Rolph, “I could not be more pleased with the COMP Cams® camshafts I have used and the tech support that backs them up is terrific . . . and that goes for ZEX™, TCI®, RHS™ and FAST™ as well. When I order over the phone, I know they are going to get it right the first time and I also appreciate their expertise in answering my questions. It has been a great experience.”