I can't believe how fast this year has flown by, nearly time for the the best meeting of the year, Dragstalgia, if I didn't have any involvement in a team at all I would still attend just to watch and it looks like every year the event just keeps getting bigger and bigger which is good for our sport. It's always difficult doing any work on the dragster as it is located in a secure parking establishment but we only have one entry key fob to get into the place so organising anything is a nightmare and that's discounts the distance everyone has to travel.
So that parts that were ordered gaskets and nozzles finally turned up the nozzles took nearly 3 weeks to get here,
New larger nozzles = more fuel
the new Diaper only took 3 days???
There was a time when the injection system was in London the heads in Swindon, the headers in Sutton Coldfield and the car was in Bedford and I was beginning to wonder if all these parts would ever see each other again. The heads and rocker boxes were finished last Friday so Steve arranged to come up to the car and fit as much as possible in one day with help from Brother Dave and Steve's friend and now part time crew member Justin who took most of the photo's on this page.
It's not easy working in a confined space and the trailer is a smaller than the old truck so a lot of the loaded gear had to be placed outside, first job then was to replace the heads, these had been welded up and had new valve seats cut by Mr John O'Sullivan,
Again not an easy job when you haven't got much room to play with, god how I envy those lucky racers with a garage big enough for their cars or a workshop, Once both heads were back on and the in let manifold dry fitted to check the part alignment it was time to bolt everything together and this time we used the correct size inlet manifold gasket, this time they might actually hold and save us from more engine damage!
Obviously there is a lot more going on here push rods valve train and everything else has to be fitted as well and checked, and on top of this Steve had to change the sump gasket which is even more of a pain because of the lack of room, but after a long day everything that was planned to be done was completed.
Even the new rocker boxes as the old ones had one side chamfered to fit the old inlet manifold and the were starting to crack, so the car is just about together again, jobs still to do include setting the back lash re-fitting the headers that are with Andy Stones waiting to be chromed up, we still have a high speed lean off valve to fit with help from Mike Oates of Fiddle Head slingshot fame, then we need to run a heat cycle through the engine if not two or three but that will have to wait till the Friday of Dragstalgia so we are cutting things a bit fine but! as long as everything works on that Friday it will all be worth it. The Tow truck, Dodge Ram was MOT'd last week I still have to sort out the levelling on the trailer but that can wait till after Dragstalgia.
As always it's been a bit of a rush but we are nearly there so now looking forward to Dragstalgia 2017 bring it on!!!!!!
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