A pair of high school students, who are concurrently enrolled in automotive classes at Arapahoe Community College, won the 2026 AAPEX Student Competition. John Parmley, 16, and Schafer Eirich, 18, tore down and rebuilt a V-8 engine in front of hundreds of people in just 39 minutes and 11 seconds, shaving more than an hour off the winning time from last year’s competition.
“It’s absolutely surreal,” said Eirich in an interview immediately following the competition. “We’ve been working towards this for so long; we saw it [the competition] last year, and we knew in that moment we needed to do this.”
The competition tests the basic auto technician skills these students are learning. Each team starts with a small-block Chevy V-8 engine and must dismantle the engine, including the pistons, crankshaft and camshaft. A judge then confirms the team has met the disassembly standard, and the team races to rebuild it. The engine must turn when assembled, and the fastest team wins, according to a press release from AAPEX…