Also, I got out the Mothers Mag and Aluminum polish for our Front Weld Wheels and ZOW! They are really clean, very sharp, very shiny. looks awesome. I also have a new set of valve covers that are aluminum and I started polishing them with it last night. They are coming up VERY nicely. Very bright finish. The valve covers are great because they are slightly taller, have no lip and are wider allowing more room on the valve area for our stud girdles. I am also cutting custom oil breather holes in them so they match on each side. Its going to look very sharp under the hood.

Finally – we have alot of stuff going on in our personal lives and many things we have planned around being able to race this Sunday. As is the case with drag racing, though, we have zero control of the weather. And this is a big deal because the weather report right now bookends Sunday with rain. Sunday is just supposed to be overcast. Overcast is good for racing, but you rarely see overcast with low humidity.

So here is to hoping that we get to take our shiny Firebird out in the spring air on Sunday with minimal delay and trouble. We’ll let you know.

Success!

Turning on the car and watching the live data come in, especially when we put the car in gear, was awesome. It was so great to see all the sensors working and pulling in data while it ran in the garage. In two weeks, we’ll put it on the trailer and head over to mason dixon dragway where we’ll actually capture this data during real runs. Looking forward to getting some insight into the car’s performance.

We are probably going to record everything that happens with the run from the time I turn it on in the staging lanes, until I return down the return road. It will be interesting to see driveshaft RPM during the burnout and watch how temperatures change during the course of the run from the time it starts until we go through the traps.

We’ll keep you posted on how it all goes.

Pretty excited to be getting closer to race day. Looks like we have just about 3 weeks until that day. I guess I better start practicing on my tree.

With the collar mounted on the driveshaft and the bracket ready for install on the transmission, seems like we are really close. What’s left? Well, we need to find a way to attach the bracket to the tranny. I’m thinking hose clamps that have a rubber “insole” that is, lined with some rubber. This should give us the ability to tighten and have some “give”. Also – the customizing of the bracket was to Gorilla Glue a nut to the underside and give it enough height to be above the collar. So it sticks out far enough, and it is high enough to be within the limits of detecting the magnets go around on the collar. This is good. The next step is to find a safe place for the wiring. I’m thinking about putting a hole in the floorboard and on each side of it, putting wire tie mounts. this way, I can be sure to keep all my wires clear of moving parts and also not have any eye sores because we use the same hole on each side of the floorboard.

I have installed the racepak unit, given it power and a toggle switch to set. that toggle will get hit when I toggle the recording option on the tach. Different button, but an easy process to make sure both buttons get hit before i light the bulbs.

So what is left? Besides finishing the driveshaft sensor and finishing wiring up the front of the car racepak cabling, i will still need to figure out the EGT sensor install and the manifold air temp install. I am willing to take the car out with just the driveshaft sensor, tach, accelerometers and water temp setup. We can add the other pieces in the 6 weeks between races. I also need to replace the fuel regulators and then do some clean up on the car. I had intentions of installing a light inside the car because of how dark it is/was during eliminations. We’ll see if we get that far. Might not be necessary if we are going to be plugging into the racepak and therefore have a lit computer screen between rounds. We’ll see.

That said, I did do some work on installing the unit in the car and got together a plan for installing the driveshaft sensor and the EGT sensor. We already have one EGT in the #2 cylinder (it is a separate unit) and I am going to install without a bung, the racepak EGT in the #1 Cylinder. I decided to go with a non-bung install and instead use a hose clamp / set screw collar combination to save time and possible damage to the headers. Its also easier to move the EGT to another cylinder and simply cover the existing hole with a piece of tin and another hose clamp. We have done this on other sets of headers so I know it can be done without any leaks (although I wouldn’t have believed it if we hadn’t done it before)

So we are getting closer to the first event and I need to spend probably another 30 hours in the garage to get all the things ready that I want to be ready for race 1. It should be a very nice spring.

Where I was at before – it was racing all year long. It was still too cold to really think about risking breaking car parts – but you could go to the track in January and see some streeters running. Here? No way. Wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) even consider it.

Anyway, I’m in the middle of a Racepak install and can’t finish it because I would spend $100 just heating up the garage to spend a Saturday getting it done. I’ll wait for a warm day and git ‘er dun.

Its pretty amazing to me how well the car is holding up given the time between runs, the age of the rubber on the tires and all the factors that use/abuse racecars.

We are going to build a high horsepower race engine.

It is going to be high compression, and either a 400 or 455 block.  We have both sitting in the garage, so it will be a matter of determining what stroke we are going to use, and which blocks are in the best shape for this application.  Also, we are going to consider buying new main caps that have the splayed bolts to add some rigidity to the bottom end.  Shouldn’t be too big of a deal since we will need the block line-bored for our new internally balanced rotating assembly.  Usually we wouldn’t necessarily go for this trouble but with this engine we are stepping into previously uncharted territory.  That territory is to use something other than stock heads and crank.  We are still using a stock block, and we have used after-market pistons with steel or aluminum rods on several engines.  I just don’t want to see this thing implode because we didn’t choose a solid block or take the extra steps to beef up the bottom.

I imagine it will take a month or two until I get the block picked out and have a plan for what parts we will be buying first.  Its going to take some discussion with dad on rotating assemblies.  There are some great combinations on the Butler Performance website.

The other thing that we are going to have to discuss before we can get to buying parts is whether we are going to use O port heads or D port heads.  The reason this is important is because of the cost of headers – and budget is certainly a concern here.  We have some O port headers, but they are pretty rusty – they also have different clearance issues with regard to the ride height of the car.

So there is alot to consider.  We’ll try to keep the blog posted with details.