#1 Qualifier at season opener... Hooray!

First race, new car, and it looks like we just might be competitive...

But... we hurt the motor before I could get to elims... Boo!

While it wasn't easy getting there, this weekend we attended the WCHRA season opener in Outlaw 8.5. Our trouble started last month when we broke our blower shaking down the car. With the help of Procharger and Chris Alston's Chassisworks, we were able to get new blower and gear drive in hand by the end of last week.

With little time to spare, we got the blower and gear drive on the car and worked to modify our existing fuel, cooling and charging systems. In the end, we ended up ditching the radiator for intercooler water, ditching the alternator and fabbing a new bracket for the fuel pump drive. Cool... everything is set except the fact that the car will not start. After three days of pulling everything apart and putting it back together MULTIPLE times, we thought we tracked down the problem to a bad crank trigger pickup. We get to the track for TNT and run into even more problems with the car and trace it down to bad plugs and wires.

Off to the races...


Our first qualifying hit left us as the only team in the class able to get down in the 5's on the new Goodyear tire. Sweet! Number one qualifier and class record holder... if we could back it up. Back in the pits, we looked at the data and saw this graph. Two problems here, (1) something ate about 10 pounds of my boost and (2) there is huge flat / bad spot right smack dab in the middle of the run. Fixing the flat spot in the launch curve was mission #1. Looking at the data in the BS3, I was pretty sure we could smooth it out a bit and also add a bit of power down low. I made some changes to the tune-up and thought I had problem number one solved and moved on to the boost issue. Well, try as I did, I was unable to find any significant sources of boost lost and qual  2 was coming up quick.

The next pass wasn't so good. Off the hit, the car bogged and lugged really hard to a 1.77 60' which was more than 3 tenths off our best, almost 3 tenths off our last pass and more than 3 tenths behind Mark Washington in the other lane. Then, about 2 seconds in, the car took off like it hit a stage of nitrous, caught up to the other lane by about the 330 mark and then really fell off at about 3.90 in. As I was rolling through the top, lights started going off, I had about 5 PSI oil pressure and the weekend was done.

Our guess is that we hurt the motor when the last blower seized and stalled the engine at about 7000 RPM and whatever bogged down the motor in our second qual run, finally broke loose cause a serious internal leak. Motor is out and hopefully the damage isn't too bad as we've got to go racing in just over a month for the WCHRA June race.

Wish us luck!

What's that goofy looking red thing?

Bye Bye Belts!

I always said if I lost two belts... I'm done with them. Last trip out, I lost a new $200 polychain and I'm not buying another.

I spent some time on the phone with the Alston's and Chassisworks and they have begun building me a brand new ProDrive" unit. Along with the cool things they add into their drives like a timing pointer and pickup, Jr. is adding some "yet to be seen" provisions that will allow for faster gear changes and ease of fuel pump and accessory mounting.

Chassisworks Supercharger Drives

If you're looking for the industry's best supercharger drive, you just found it. Take a look at the first offerings from Chassisworks' new ProDrive line.

• Models available for most Vortech and ProCharger superchargers
• Other engine applications available
• Multiple gear ratios
• Timing pointer, built-in
• Crank trigger pick-up mount, built-in

http://cachassisworks.com/cac_superchargerdrive.html

Thanks Jake from FSC Mag for the Press!

About a month ago, Jake Amatisto from Fastest Street Car Mag contacted me with some questions and a request for pictures. When I opened up my March issue of FSC mag... low and behold, our first piece of press for the car. I was kind of embarrassed that the car is not painted but plans call for going fast first and paint later (as the budget allows). 

Oh, and before I get flamed, we hope to eventually get the car into the 4’s, it’s not there… yet. Thanks again Jake and FSC Mag!

Let's make some hits!

We made our second trip today to button up the NHRA license passes but some belt alignment issues prevented us from getting the last hit in. It’s becoming clear how tricky this tire will be. We knew the tire wouldn’t hold any portion of the boost so on the first hit we pulled a bunch of power and ramped in slowly, it spun about 2 seconds into the run. From there on out, we decided to unhook a blowoff valve just to get a feel for the car without all the boost. With one of the blowoff valves disconnected, the car would only make 20 pounds of boost instead of the 37 pounds we had seen on the dyno.

The car seems to leave fine with the low power tune-up. We were running consistent mid 1.40 60’ numbers which are not too far off from the Goodyear’s reported best of 1.38 and with more time, I’m pretty sure we can get there. However, the top end needed a little work and I think we’re getting close. One of our later passes spun really bad but still ran 153 out the back with one blowoff wide open. The next pass hooked a 1.44 60’ but broke the belt just before the 1-2 shift. 

We’ve decided we’ll give the belts two more tries and then look into a Chassisworks gear drive unit. 

First track outing!!!

We took the car out for its first trip to the track today and ran some shakedown passes to rough in the tune-up, get the driver (me) reacquainted with racing and see how tricky the Goodyear 26x8.5 really is. Well, it's definitely going to be an interesting season with this tire. After a few shakedown runs, we tried one hit off the brake before packing it up for the day... it didn't go so well.

On the Side auto does good fab =)

Thanks Joe and Kevin for the help in the way of installing my TRZ rack and hacking up the front cross members for easy towing and oil pan clearance.