It is probably no surprise to everyone that reads my blog (is this thing on?) – I am not the greatest tuner in the world. I wish I was. My dad is a PRO. He has AMAZING techniques for troubleshooting, is extremely logical and tenacious. I admire these things about the guy.
Me, though – I have other skills. I’ve won some events, driven the car with no brakes, through farm animals and other border-line extreme conditions. So perhaps that is where my gifts lie. I am usually pretty good at having clarity during situations that there is little margin for error.
So here I sit with an engine that is capable of, between 600 and 700 horsepower and yet I can’t get it to idle. The big problem is that I can’t test and tune it in my neighborhood because it is too loud and the neighbors have already labeled us as the people with, “the loud car”. I don’t want to wear out our welcome in the neighborhood.
I am really only able to test at the track and yet I can hardly keep it idling enough to get it on the trailer. Yikes.
I got a chance to talk to John Gaydosh at the Atlanta NHRA event and he gave me some confidence to keep trying to solve this problem. And since I am definitely one who is “in to” logging stuff (a la, dragtracker.com) – I’m going to try very hard to keep good notes and solve this problem. I also thought I’d share some of what he and I discussed.
- Definitely bump up the timing to 36 degrees (we’ve been running 32, and I’ve been comfortable with that for a while but we USED to run 36 and John recommended it so I’ll go back to it)
- Get better at reading spark plugs. You can tell a few things (lots, actually) looking at them – fuel ring on the ceramic, there is a mark on the probe if your timing is right, plus they won’t look dirty if it is not overly rich and right now – we might be over-rich and getting hot EGT’s because of excess fuel in the chamber that is not burning
- Start adjusting the air bleeds and try to get that ironed out
I’ve got my work cut out for me. I would love if some other company had built my engine and had given me a setup that was guaranteed carb to oil pan, but alas – I wanted to try building my own setup and it is for that reason that I am facing these challenges. Its my own food to chew and I am going to do my best to solve this so I can get back on the track and be competitive. I’m looking forward to it!
Tags: air bleeds, dominator, holley, tuning
