Build Thread 84ttop: I Suck At Updating This Thread...

Probably the best choice, I don't get why they outlaw a fuel that is most forgiving on parts and runs so cool. I bet a few will burn up some pistons trying to conform to the rules. There is a very fine line on a tune on a gas engine vs methonal.

None of us do this for a living so no doubt u made the best choice and Probably will save you money and head aches.
 
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Uhhhhhh rumor has it Dave O didn't like our new thread title change here or something ;) .


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And THAT is why I never committed to any sanctioned racing. I always did mine... off the radar. Back before it became a felony, anyways. It's really tough to conform to class rules and compete with people of means. That's why I liked the "non-sanctioned" events. No rules. Run watcha brung.

My Orange and black car was built for one set of rules w/ regard to engine displacement/weight running then ORSCA rules back in 07. At the time I chose to run a 363 and was restricted to (I think 3000 ) lbs running Meth and a single 94mm turbo. ( which was already too small against the 427 C.I. limit at that weight break) By the the time the car got even close to being sorted out, the rules were "loosened" to allow up to 615 C.I. restricted to 91 mm and only penalized to 3200. Traction control devices were supposed to be illegal, and the MSD 7531 that I had w/ a manually plotted timing curve was the only thing allowed to accommodate for poor traction.

Despite that, certain cars started to be able to go down the track regardless of that surface condition and the solution to staying competitive meant spending an additional 8 grand for a black box that was being used (illegally) by the few guys that didn't seem to have a bottom in their pockets (i.e. Davis Black box tied to DS, sensor counting revs, and pulling timing accordingly). The mentality of the "rule makers" was to again loosen the rule so as not to offend the big boys that had snuck that s hit onto their cars in the first place, and effectively forced the rest of the field to "put up or shut up". Against those guys I was three tenths back from even having a prayer on a good track, and flat out "why bother" at some of the lesser ones.

With the engine failures, and the frustration that came from dealing w/ an ever evolving new set of rules I sold that b itch, and haven't regretted one minute of that decision since.
 
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No weight penalty on blowers . Turbo has the 100 pounds


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This exactly! I'm glad they came to their senses and can't wait for this weekend!
I'll be doing a little "maintenance" on the car tonight and Tuesday to get ready for the race. It sounds like I'll be taking the day off Thursday to go test with the crowd and get a decent parking spot. I'll be sure to keep this updated as things move along in the next few days
 
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So far so good!
A new set of Menscer shocks have done the trick. 1.28 60' on the back tire first hit!!
I expect it to pick up as we keep leaning on it and get the front to stay down. It's been a wild swing in chassis setup, from fighting to get the car to hook to now driving the car through wheelies 300 feet down the track lol. We're getting it dialed in and will be more than ready for Friday night qualifying. We went 5.40 today with the timing locked out at 19 degrees.....Once we get a handle on that little tuning glitch and can throw 28 degrees or more at it we will be in the mix.

View: https://youtu.be/MwGXtJYUpI8

I'll have more pictures and video as the weekend progresses
 
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:eek:

WOW! I'm going to ups my car to you so you can make it do that...


...wonder if they have a box big enough?
 
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Car looked good today can't wait to get down there tomorrow and watch that bitch fly


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All I can say being down here with these guys is wow . The car is nothing short of amazing . I can't thank Nick and Kris enough for letting us hang and crew with them . These are people I've made a friendship for life at this point and I feel confident enough to say that after yesterday . (Nick your stuck with me sorry buddy ) LOL

First class all the way in this camp

This car makes dumb power . Trying to get it down has been an issue. I'll share some pics but let Nick fill in the rest .
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when throwing ribs goes wrong and bbq sauce is everywhere !
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dinner time last night !
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kris bonding with the car
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View: https://vimeo.com/138385781



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Ok, so here goes the story of this weekend...

Things started out great! We had the car hooking and were close to making full hits under power on the Gen 1 M/T 275 radial. The car made a few passes on Thursday that looked really promising, carrying the wheels out almost 300 feet on one hit. This is about where everything started to fade on us...
Friday morning was a new day, things were looking up. We had a great breakfast at the track and the car was ready to go. We bring the car around for the first hit, put it in the beams and annihilate the tires 40' out. The car hooks off the hit and proceeded to blow the tires off just shy of a second out. No biggie, a shock adjustment should take care of this. We make a change to the chassis setup and bring the car right back around for a hot lap. Again, put it in the beams let it all hang out and watch the car put down the track in second gear :nonono:... Waiting on Kris to bring the car back around and he doesn't show up... This is when I jump on the golf cart and ride to the end of the track to see what's up. "The only gear we have left is Park" muttered Kris :notnice:. I head back to get a tow strap and while he gets on the phone with our trans guy (we intended to replace the trans at the track at this point). This is about when @TOOLOW91 calls me to let me know the cavalry was at the track, I probably sounded like a sobbing widow that just lost her husband or something... boy was I disappointed. I get the tow strap and head back to the top of the track, now we can't get the car out of park to tow it...:shrug::mad: We look under the car and the linkage isn't moving, is it a broken cable? Nope... the damn shifter broke, yeah I know what you're thinking right now "How does a shifter break?" we were thinking the same thing. We get out some McGyver tools to pop in in neutral and tow it back to the pits. 30 minutes later we manage to fix a stripped pin in the shifter gate and are back in business. Just as we are getting ready to pull around for the last test hit before qualifying we hear "Lanes are now closed for testing" FML....FML... Now we have to wait to finish testing during first round of qualifying. While we are waiting @srtthis shows up with some corn on the cob and we proceed to eat smoked chicken wings and smoked corn on the cobb. It wasn't until 11:00pm that we were call up for our first qualifier. As we are standing in the lanes we watched 9 out of every 10 cars spin off the hit and didn't have the warm and fuzzy about the radial track prep. Sure enough, we went out about 40' again and blew the tires off. :(:(:(
Wait wait wait... I missed something important here. So after messing with the shifter we must have knocked a wire loose or chaffed a wire on the line lock, this arc'd and shorted out a portion of my one relay board in the car. When going to leave for the lanes we had no transbrake (for reverse) and scrambled to find some mini fuses to get things working again. I thought that was the end of this.
Saturday morning comes and I wanted to check over a few electrical things after last nights mishap. I test a few things and find the circuit for our ramp retard had a blown fuse, I'm sure this is the cause for the lack of traction as we were applying more power than we should be off the hit. Problem solved! I replace the fuse and arm the system to test things. I flip the switch and the entire car promptly shorts out.... No XFI, No MSD, No digital dash, No gauges, Won't Crank.... NOTHING! This is a FML moment at it's worst. We trace the wiring and finally find one of the 12v pathways in a printed circuit board under the dash has burned up. I wire around it and we are back in business, what else could go wrong? Why did I just say that... WHY??? After this debacle we were able to meet up with Marc Menscer who built the new shocks on my car. He reviewed some video that we had and gave us a chassis setup to help with the wheel spin down track. This is a busy dude and I can't believe we were able to get a word in with him let alone some seriously personal attention. Felling good about this next pass, we drive up to the line and get ready for today's first hit (second qualifier). Burnout goes great, stage the car and light the first bulb no problem. Then, from the crowd behind me we hear "SHUT IT OFF, SHUT IT OFF" so we do. I see a dinner plate size puddle under the front of the car and we push it back. It looks like condensation for a catch can maybe so we start the car up and see somersetting still leaking, we open the hood to find 100 lbs of fuel pressure (alcohol) spraying out the front of the fuel rail about 2"s away from the drivers side header. Are you kidding me??? NO, not at all. While the track was clueless to what they almost just let us go down the tack with, the fans behind us saved the day. While I was pretty disappointed that we had to pass up the 2nd qualifier there is no doubt in my mind that the car would have caught fire going down the track with as much fuel was spraying under the hood. After towing the car back we needed a game plan to fix this thing. We took the car apart and found the front of the fuel rail was about .025 out of square and the oring pushed out of the fitting in the front of the rail. We tried replacing the oring but had no luck sealing it and I didn't want to take any chances. We hoped on the golf cart and were off to look for help. I stopped over to see our friend Frank Solridge as I know they keep a Tig welder on the trailer, just so happens they didn't have the adapter to plug it into their generator. They sent us down to Bruder Brothers pit and much to our surprise Rich Bruder stopped what he was doing ( they qualified #1 in X275 this weekend so you can imagine how busy they were) and welded my fuel rail up in their trailer. I had to force him to take a few dollars for helping me out, maybe a case of beer he could buy with what he would take. These are the most stand up dudes in racing, I'm nobody to them and they offered to bail us out no questions asked! Car is fixed at this point and ready for our last round, this doesn't happen until almost midnight. That round went like the first round and we got the car to go 20' under power before blowing the tires off. All in all, our performance on the track was less than stellar, we did learn a few things and were able to overcome quite a few obstacles all of which will help us be better prepared for our next outing. Big thanks to @TOOLOW91 for pitching in this weekend and hanging out! @srtthis thanks for hooking us up with Marc, lending your insight and providing some grub. I can't wait to see both of you back at the track!

Next update will be about the food but my finners be tired:bs:
 
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The pleasure was all mine Nick. Thanks for having us again. I think i just relived each stage pandemonium as i read what you wrote lol. @srtthis Thanks for the bomb ass corn on the cob buddy that was off the hook !
 
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I saw the article dragzine did, but didn't see much about a green T top. Made me sad.
There was too much notable ish going on there for us to even get a mention, lol. Jason (who wrote the article) did send me a few decent pictures that he took from this weekend. I'll get them up today or tomorrow, work is interfering with my Stangnet time today lol
 
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I guess the biggest reason I felt the need to describe in detail how bad our weekend was race wise is to show the side of things that no one ever talks about. Sure I would love for everything to be perfect but the reality was far from that this weekend. We still have our heads held high and will get back at it next week or so
 
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btw part of me wants to say strap the front down loosen up the extension ( good bit) and leave the timing where it is.
I'm with you on this!
The only thing that I'm thinking (this is dangerous I know) is after the last time we slapped the car down Thursday is it possible that we trashed one or both front struts? It seems that they are full loose or full tight and the adjustments in between don't make a change at all even though they still click. Is it possible that the valving in the struts is damaged? It shouldn't be winging the front up so fast 2 clicks from full tight