June 2007

Dyno day!

So i got a call from timmy on friday he said he would have a racecar on the dyno sunday, an AMC Javelin i think it was, im not too familiar with these cars, not to mention it was tube chassis and totally fiberglassed etc. Very neat car and nice people, i believe it was running a 430 some cube motor with 14:1 compression, running on alcohol. they made some pulls taking the car out of a sub 10.0 AFR into the 12s, and they were around 36 degrees of timing and on one pass the motor let go. Sorry to see the car go like that, i was excited as im sure they were excited to see it make a few nitrous passes. i dont know if the gear ratio's were huge or what but the motor seemed to really not want to rev, they were going to inspect the damage and see if the engine builder was to blame, Im sorry to admit that i didnt get the damage on film, it was pretty crazy though, shot hot pieces of rod and pan out the bottom and then smoked so bad i thought there was a fire.

Also at the dyno timmy was installing his master powers blower on the lightning, 60lb injectors, SCT 2400, and dual 255lph intank pumps. Lots of work, i couldent stick around to help or snap pics but i did get one of the new blower. He should be dynoing it sometime soon, maybe i can get video of it. Here are the pics and video.

5th wheel hitch removal

Well also now that the car is down, we decided to remove the 5thwheel hitch from the 250. Dont need it in there, might as well see it can be sold. Lots of cutting, grinding, and using hammers and crowbars. But it went prettty quickly. Here are the fun pics.

Motor teardown

Well today, while ryan completed the exhaust on the diesel truck, i cleaned up the heads and taped off the ports, Then when the truck was all done with both of us working on it, after welding in the rain and pulling the truck into the garage to finish it. We decided to take the pan off the motor and yank the broken piston and check out the bearing. Well here are the pics, and i didnt snap one of the bearing, but that is shot. So now we are gunna look at the rest and see if thats the story with them all.

Diesel Exhaust Complete

After running with open downpipe for months, while the car is down, ryan decided to finish the exhaust on the diesel. Here are some pics and video, not really much to talk about. Started raining while we were welding outside lol.

Turbo Rusty Teardown

Well yesterday ryan checked compresion and he was down on 2 cyl, so it was pretty obvious that the HG was gone. He started tearing everything down getting it ready to pull the motor. I was helping Cory Grove install a new wheel bearing in his WRX wich we butchered so bad i didnt even take pics.... anyway.. hahahah. I finished the wheel bearing install today quickly then headed over to ryans to help him yank the tranny, because thats my job. So i got there and pulled the tranny, and within seconds the motor was out (we will leave out the part where we jacked the motor up and some things were still connected... lol.

Upon pulling the motor out we found that one of the two bolts that holds the motor mount to the block was missing on teh right side lol. Even more funny buisness is we got to work right away pulling the turbo kit off, then the intake manifold etc etc, rockers, pushrods etc. Then took out the head nuts with the impact, and yanked the heads, we clearly saw that at least 4 of the pistons were blowing thru. When cleaning out cyl number 7, we saw that there were 2 lovely pieces of the piston missing, right where the relief's were for the valves, basically the thinnest part of the piston. Now the more amazing thing is, if you look at the head, valves and turbo, there is nothing wrong, it must have been so hot with the cyl pressure if some water leaked in it basically created such a nasty hot spot that the parts of the piston vaporized, the rings are fine, and the cyl walls are fine, Puzzling but we will take any positives we can get out of a blown piston.

So the racing and the rebuild will have to wait, Ryan will have to order a piston and we can hone the cyl wall and fit the ring etc, and when its all said and done we can re install the head gaskets and go nuts all over again. Here are pics from tonight.

Good news and Bad news

Well ever since that last 2 passes at island dragway, the car has had a funny coolant issue, where it gets hot randomly and then finally cools down alright, it basically pukes the rad out into the overflow, and then anywhere from 5-20 min later it seems to suck it all back up, this is usually sign of a head gasket failure, but thats fine, the rusty had slightly weaker composite felpro headgaskets installed as a weak point, so if the cyl pressure got to be too much, it would pop the head gasket instead of popping the motor or the bottom end etc. Tomorrow me and the mad scientist will take out the Tstat and boil it, and see when it opens, if it opens accurately, its pretty much a blown HG, we will also be doing some compression testing...

Well now that the bad news is out of the way we might as well cheer you up a little bit, ryan was going to order his anti-roll bar and adjustable uppers this week so it would drop the launches out of the 1.5-1.6 range and into the low 1.4s if not better. While talking to a friend last night, he said he has a set. Apparently he bought a whole kit, uppers, lowers, and anti roll, and only installed the lowers, well this is great because ryan has lowers and nothing else. So we made a stop up at vince's house today and bought the goods. So now we will have time to install this stuff right and get her ready to rip once again. Here is a pic of the suspension goodies.

Wes 21psi tune

Today wes came in to setup the big guns, 21 and 23psi pulley's for the cobra, probem was they couldent get a belt tight enough for 23psi, so they threw on the 21 psi pulley and when the smaller belt comes in, they will redyno. Car made great power though, he has gotta be happy with the results, i cant wait to see what it makes with the 23psi pulley

Rusty at Island June 22nd

Corey, Ryan, Meredith and I went to island today too watch the rusty race, You probably wont even read this text, just jump right to the video below anyway, so here it is! hahaha

New n20 line and gauge

I got an inline bottle gauge from corey, and i talked to a hydraulics store today to see if they could make me a custom 5ft line, he could and it was wayyyyy cheaper than a line i could have bought somewhere, thanks to parker hydraulics on tilghman st. I also bought a cap there so i can cap the feed on the inline gauge and check my bottle pressure when it isnt hooked up. Here are some pics of everything

Fathers Day Racing

Me, Corey, Tom, Jeremy, Eric and Caliano went to island dragway for the morning, Tom just put in the driveshaft about 2 days ago and got the car running yesterday. Came out today with a bad launch and spin in 2nd, just coasted thru with a 13 something at 79 mph lol, His next run he spun 1st (with a 1.7 60ft i believe) and really spun 2nd, he let off and then it hooked, he banged 2nd and third and let off a little before the 1000 ft mark because he thought he might be going too fast, still ran a 10.48 @ 136, Now he is the man to beat. Coreys car was doing ok, wasnt hooking today for some reason, and we think his plugs are shot from last nights nitrous noid not working and washing the car down with the fuel jet, we will change the plugs, and redyno on the nitrous before the next dragstrip visit most likely. Jeremy did his best i think today of a 15.0 at 92mph in the VR6 GTI. Not bad for street tires. Heres the pics and video!

Island June 15th

Pretty crazy night, Donovans tq arm broke on the way to the drags, so he could not race. We had some more problems as the day went on, on coreys first race, his nitrous didnt activate, we found out it was the WOT switch wasnt hitting the throttle correctly. So they cut and bent it and everything looked good, on his next run, the nitrous didnt work again, we narrowed it down to the nitrous solenoid would not fire at all. So we removed donovans nitrous solenoid and installed it in the cobra. Next pass the nitrous didnt work AGAIN! we checked out the wiring on the noids and the wire must have pulled out as he launched. So we put them all back together and taped them up good. Then he Finally got a clean pass and a 10.85 at 128 fastest mph yet.

AJ did very good today, nothing broke wich i thought might be a factor with the bigger shot, he did a best of 15.0 at 95, really picked up time and MPH, but the converter is still holding him back with 2.7 60fts. Soon as he has the funds to drop a converter in there his times will really drop. Here is some video

Bike Bottle Mount

Today me and ryan mounted the bottle to the 636, i drilled out two holes and we used lag bolts with lock washers and it holds great, even threw in the bottle and ran the line, i ran the 10 and the 20 on the street, i need to get an inline bottle pressure gauge so i can check my pressure. Then after some more tests, ide like to run with the 30 shot at the track. Here are pics of the install...

Nitrous 636 Tune

Took the 636 down to ride it again powersports with the 10lb bottle to do some nitrous tuning, Tuned the 10 20 and 30 shot. The bike made some amazing power, im pretty proud of it. Now all i have to do is mount the 2.5lb bottle and get some track times. Here are the pics and video of todays event.

Trailer Winch Install

Due to some events recently, as in ryan blowing out a tire at 130mph at island dragway. He bought a hand crank winch to put on the trailer, since itll probably take 5 or more people pushing to get the car on a trailer if something like this happens. He had wanted to install a winch anyway. So a couple hundred bux later he had all the supplies. I missed out on most of this, but you can tell from the pics he cut a piece of box steel high enough to clear the hand crank, and then drilled holes to mount it, welded it in place and then we wound up the chord and installed it and tightened it down. Here are the pics, bonus of the destroyed Weld rim.

Larrys Coupe

I recently got some video of larrys coupe, he finished the motor and i got some video of it running. Man does that 572 sound nasty!

Nitrous kit on the bike

So i put the one spare noid i have laying around in the bike, and wired it to my lap timer button, i wanna take the bike to a powersports store and have them spray it on the dyno with the 10lb bottle sitting next to it, 10-20 and maybee a high 20 to a 30shot... if i like the results i plan on mounting a 2.5lb bottle for some extra umph at the track. I first moutned it in the side, but i was told that position wouldent work, there is a V split near the steering neck and all the nitrous would goto cyls 1 and 2, in the center it gets a better mix into the middle of the V and neck. Here are some pics of it installed and some video.

Friday night excitement

Well the day started off normally, and we took the turbo rusty to the dragstrip, very hot and humid weather, but why the hell not get some runs in. Car was doing good. 2 passes were very low 11s at 128mph or so. Third run, something funny happened when ryan tried to slow down, and by funny i mean the front right tire exploded! i didnt notice it when i was recording, but i did see it on the replay, the white cloud of smoke is his tire letting go, somehow he managed to keep the car strait and safely come to a stop. The damage is the tire obviously and the rim is shot now, it also bent the front fender up a little wich we will try to fix. All in all pretty crazy... check out the pics and video

Island dragway, wednesday night

Pretty nice day for drag racing, beautiful weather and good prep at island. We rolled out to island dragway from the dyno, i was driving corey's civic, he said he would pay for me to race it hahah. Wes, Costas, Ryan, and Corey went, and we met up with Pete, Dave, and Dave. Everyone did pretty good today considering no one broke anything. I beat corey's civic so bad that the check engine light came on hahhaha. Corey ran an 11.0 @ 124 blower only today, so the car is running amazing! Ryan was running low 11s, subject to the boost only hitting 8psi, we are going to try a different boost controller setup. The AEM one is just being a pain in the ass, works great on the street for a day of tuning, take it to the track and the damn thing doesnt do what you want, getting old.

Costas's car didnt seem to be pulling as hard as it should, but he decided to pull out early and call it a day, later on we found out that it was running a bit lean. Wes ran an 11.8 today, he is going to try to regularly visit the track to get better, and wants to put in a solid rear and really cut his times down.

I was just beating the shit out of the civic today, burnouts in the burnout box in 2nd gear for no reason on street tires, other than to watch the smoke show... I missed a few gears on some of the runs, weither or not i did that on purpose is for you to decide hahah. I ran a best of 16.4 @ 84mph not too bad for 120whp and a 2.3 60ft. The car STANK like tires and clutch so bad even at the end of the day and after the long ride back from the track it still wreaked! Here are some videos and pics from today.

Ryans Incar Runs

Me In corey's Civic

Ready for Island

Well wednesday night we are gunna be racing at island dragway, so the mustang is on the trailer and ready go roll. I will be racing corey's civic and he will be racing the cobra.

Look forward to some video and pics!

Nitrous Minivan, Stage 2 nitrous install

Well a few days ago, we decided to take out the 75hp solenoid AJ had with his nitrous kit, and upgrade it with my 175hp solenoid, since the only thing holding him back was the solenoid. He tossed in a 90 shot and instantly found the power he was missing. So today he decided what the hell, might as well spray big, so we hooked up coreys 125 and 150 jets and nozzle. Took it out with the Wideband and made a 125 pull and it was still rich, so we upped the nitrous jet and kept the same fuel. the tires cant hold the power now in 1st and it easily chirps 2nd. It seems to really fly on the juice. We had to put it on the dyno, and eventually ended up putting in smaller fuel jet again. I traded him strait up for my shark nozzle ( a higher flowing nozzle) and he is getting the right sized jets for it and we should have it at the track within 2 weeks time. Here are pics and video you are sure to enjoy... Check out the difference on the stock chart vs the 150 shot. I dont care what this thing ET's the trap should be crazy for what it is haha.

Intermission of Corey driving the goped for your enjoyment

Nitrous Rental Number2

Well today, I guess corey and timmy got bored, they rented another car, a lincoln towncar this time, they called me up and asked to use my nitrous kit, so we threw on what i had, since this wiring was identical to the nitrous mercury, the install took seriously about 5 min. We were using the 80 shot right away and that got old fast, so we drove to coreys shop and installed the 150 shot jets with the NOS nozzle. Here are pics and video from tonight.

Island Dragway

Well, we drove out to island dragway for some friday night racing, the weather was sketchy but nice the whole ride out, and well, of course it was raining just at island dragway and nowhere else... So no racing today, hopefully sunday.