71. The race is on....again..again..!!!

Phew what a busy few weeks, I have never made so many phone calls in my life, it got to the point where I wasn't sure who I was asking what for anymore!!! I had to write everything down and kee a check on who I was talking to and why.

I will also admit I have spoken to some really helpful friendly people over the last week or two and without whose help we may have ended up right in the soft brown smelly stuff. It also never ceases to amaze me that anything or anyone that has anything to do with drag racing in whatever form move just as quick as the cars.

So where are we at the moment then, well Slimline Racing had?? stated that we were out for the rest of the season after assessing the engine damage as it would take some time to round up all the bits and pieces required and to get the crew together to do the job, as well as pleading with my wife Lorni, to let me spend some more money on the car and promising on my life that I will get the shower fixed and the hole in the bathroom ceiling!!!

First things first was to source a set of rings and the head gaskets so that if all else fails we can button the engine up for the winter so we got hold of the original engine builders and low and behold a phone call on last Monday will see the items in Steve's hands by Friday...this what I meant about things move fast in the drag racing world...

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To help with this I have had to find and buy a piston ring grinder a cam timing wheel and a DTI gauge.

Some of the parts arrived today

Anyway second call was to Alky digger in the States, we have discussed the need for a new injection set up for sometime so now looked like the perfect opportunity to sort out it all out, so I spent some time talking with Mike at Alky Digger and we have now bought the perfect system for our engine..

With a bit of luck this gear wont take too long to get here, I did point out to Mike the difference between the air here in the UK and what they are used to in the States so fingers crossed the injection system will be set-up ready to run when it gets here I have asked for them to stick the lot on their flow bench before they send it which I hope will help us tune the system quick.

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Next we needed a new starter motor and flex plate along with a dizzie cap and rotor arm and probably trigger unit so a call to Dave at  performance Unlimited sourced all those bits....

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..after a bit of a chat with Dave I decided not to get a new cap and rotor arm for the Mallory dizzue and instead I have bought a new MSD dizzie and a set of HT leads, I confirmed the order and paid for it yesterday and the items arrived today..now that's what I call service.

The other problem we have had is with the Torque converter it was ok for the last engine but not for this one so...on the advice of our friend Sam Freeman I gave BTE a call last night..this time difference crap can really be a pain LOL

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I spent a few minutes giving Bryan all the information that I could and within a minute he had the solution for us, there is no substitute for experience, so we now have a new converter on the way from the States.

So! if all the bits turn up in time and Steve can get the time off and put this big jigsaw back together again in the next couple of weeks, remember he has to fit the new sealed for life rings which can take some doing, then we might and I do say might make it to the Hot Rod Drags after all with the car, and as per the season up to now we will only be testing, and if we don't get it done in time then we will be there but only as spectators, what ever happens we are hoping to get the car up the track at least once before we lay everything up till next season.

Dam I have just remembered something..where do I get a sump heater from??????

70. The day I have been dreading..!!

On Sunday just gone I spent the day with my wife on the Isle of Sheppey at one of my wife's friends birthday bash, I did this in the vain hope that I could forget the fact that at the same time Steve and Dave would be taking the dragsters engine apart to see how much damage there really is.

So where to start? well I got reports through the day from Bedford, the first from Steve was to tell me that he had sent Dave to go buy some milk so they could have a cuppa, the engine was slowly stripped......

The valve train, rockers, lifters etc were checked and found to be ok, unfortunately so were the head gaskets, so there goes my hope of an easy cheap fix!!!!.

Then it was time to remove the heads, this is where we found stuck rings Steve rang me to tell me that when he looked down the bores it looked like the pistons were all over to one side..hence stuck rings well that explains why we were burning oil but! at the same time there is evidence of bore wash so it looks like we had both extremes happening at the same time, running far too rich at lower revs and far too lean at the top end..

So a new set of rings required and a new set of head gaskets and a light hone is on the books, but we also need a new flex plate as it appears that our old one has ended up like me and lost a couple of teeth and the rest have been worn down..

Tomorrow I have to phone Alky Digger in the states and sort out our new tunnel ram injection system and BTE and try and get a replacement torque converter...bloody hell does it ever end???

Oh and when the flex plate and torque converter had been taken of we  found this damage on the rear engine plate...

So was this caused by the missing teeth from the flex plate or parts of the starter motor when it expired or.....was it from the 8mm spanner we found that had been rattling around down there for a wee while..that would explain the strange noise I could hear on the last couple of runs LOL....

To Be Continued......................honest!

69. Work to be done..!!!

OK so I when I started this little venture I had visions of fun days out with the family , meeting lots of great people and maybe even winning the odd race! I had no idea it was going to frustrate the hell out of me, cost me a dam fortune and make me want to give up the will to live. This is the second time in 18 months when I have had to sit down with the wife and seriously consider giving up on the whole thing.

But first we had to assess the damage / situation, to do this we once again needed a leak down tester as we had cannibalised ours a little, so a big thank you goes to Sam Freeman for the loan of his tester and three hours of engine tuning tips to my son and crew chief Steve. It was three hours because I got stuck in London on my motorbike on the way to Sam's place because of a dam peddle bike race which shut off so many roads I ended up going round in bloody circles for hours on end thank you TFL for all the diversion road signs....not!!!

So in the end instead of meeting up with the crew at Sam's I went straight to the truck just outside Bedford, first things first, move truck out a little, let the tailgate down and get the genny out and running and plug compressor in, remove spark plugs and rocker boxes......

I must point out at this stage we are doing a leak down test on a cold engine, it should be a warm engine giving the rings etc time to expand and seal properly so if the results were okish then the chances are the rings are OK too, the results we got were quite low which was a good sign till we realised we reading the gauge the wrong way which meant the results were actually rather bad, under advisement we squirted some oil into each pot and started the test again..the oil sealing the rings and the results shot up sooo!!!..it looks like we will need another set of of total seal rings... 

...the problem is there are two reasons why this could have happened..1. bore wash..this where the engine has been running too fat (rich) for too long and the oil has been cleaned out of the bores completely by the fuel..methanol therefore no lubricant in the bores so the the rings wear out quick, or 2. Running too lean for too long and having the rings "shocked" which would also wear them out, the problem is we don't which our engine succumbed too!!

And of course we will have to check the bores and hopefully we will get away with a quick hone?? So that is the first problem dealt with.Next is the injection system, it is old but we don't' know how old ?we have had a lot of trouble setting it up and huge amount of problems with the barrel valve which looks like it is starting to corrode, as most of you know we have had nothing but trouble with getting the fuelling right and maybe we it is time to change the injection system..well not maybe we will have to change the injection system.....

It looks like we will have to put a tunnel ram system on our car something very similar to what Mark Coulsell runs on his slingshot. Next problem is our Torque converter our 60 foot times show it is not man enough for the job it was ok on the last engine but that was around half the horsepower our 60foot times have slowed up considerably, so I have now got to get in touch with BTE or similar and get one made to fit out engine.

 Oh!  and did I mention we need a new flex plate as ours now has a few teeth missing and probably a new mini high torque starter.

So we have an awful lot of hard work in front of us if we decide to continue and a lot of money needs to be spent,,as I was told a day ago I have probably spent enough money that would have bought me a complete brand new rear engine 4 link super pro car?? oh well. And while we were tinkering with the engine on Sunday we found another problem.....

This would not have helped with the running of the engine either and once all this work is done we still have the worry that the final drive ratios are correct or not? we will worry about that once all the other work has been done.

So are we going to do this work and get the car back out on the track ?

..of course we are, I was hoping to get everything done for the Hot Rod Drags in September but it does seem that we have more to do than I previously thought so that might not happen now, in fact it may be next year before the car sees the track again but when it does!!!! maybe it will fly like we hoped she would!!!