So after the Topeka race, we pulled the engine out for preventive/scheduled maintenance. We found way more wrong than we bargained for. We got new pistons in this week, shoving the engine back together over the 3-day weekend and basically going to run to midnight oil to have it all ready.

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Re-measured the front shock mounts. I had QA1 TC1958P's on it, which are 9.38 x 14.38.

I now have Viking C311AM's in the back, and working with the sales rep to decide between B307AK, D317AK-RT, and D318AK-RT for the front. I measure the mounts as being about 13-3/4" or so fully drooped, which is well outside the advertised fitment of the 304 body shock.

Tomorrow night i'm going to get some 2x12's and build some formal working blocks, now that I know i only need 3" of extra height to fit under the truck.

 

Alright, back to the truck.

I have new rear shocks on it now, have new front shocks picked out and just need to buy. Rear shocks have 6" of stroke and I have them installed about 50/50. I'm hoping I can eventually install them a little more compressed to gain ground clearance.

Engine is 95% ready to drop in, everything is taken care of except for needing to pull the thermostat to drill a bleed hole, and get a thread adapter for the throttle cable. For some reason, the cable end is 10-24 and the throttle body is 10-32.

Truck is legal and insured and about to be registered, so all I need to do is drain fluid, pull the V6, and drop in the V8.

I had spacers made to go between the crank pulleys to tie everything in tight, and made my own spacers to go between the blower plate and the block and a strut from blower plate to motor mount. Everything is absolutely tied together and going nowhere.

At the Topeka race, I went over and checked out Steve Dziorny's Stock Eliminator dakota to get an idea of what I'm facing.

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At 8 AM on Saturday, we had a bare and empty engine block.

By Noon Saturday, we had an assembled short block

By 5PM Saturday, we had an assembled long block in the car

By 9PM Saturday, we had a transmission fully installed in the car.

Sunday morning we bled the brakes, rolled it out the door, and made some noise for 2 warmup sessions before 2PM.

Monday morning we pulled the valvetrain off, re-torqued the heads, put all the valvetrain on, did another warm-up around noon, and drained the break-in oil.

It's now track ready.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/7cd7cXhKgPQH2CuaA



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I'm a wee bit behind here. The last 30 days have been a bit of a whirlwind.

Sept 8 we had the engine back together
Sept 16,17,18, 19, 20 we ran a doubleheader at Ennis
Sept 26th we pulled our primary transmission out and swapped in the spare, also made a torque converter stator change
October 3 we tested our spare transmission at Xtreme to make sure it works, meanwhile I was in 2 places at once (more on that later)
October 9,10 we raced in Tulsa (more on that later)
Today we unboxed and re-boxed the car.

 

 

 

Last weekend of September, we pulled our primary 'old faithful' transmission out. After we got all the input shaft issues fixed from last year and switched to Allison TranSynd fluid, it'd gone 54 runs without having the pan off. We've kept the spare trans in the trailer but never ran it. So we put it in the car and changed the torque converter to our 'cold weather' stator.

We also switched from Mickey Thompson 3197's to Hoosier c1500's because the 3197s have a major blistering issue above 220 MPH. MT knows about it, and production is basically paused and they are unobtainium.

So October 3rd we went to Xtreme to do a combo Tire/Transmission test. First pass was good, right on our 1/4 mile numbers. Second run, it didn't shift. Chased through all the mechanics, made a couple small adjustments, checked valvetrain and found bad juju that we were able to catch and fix before it became ugly juju. Third run I changed some things and it went 3.91 carrying the wheels about 200 feet. Aight, Cool.

Now that Tuesday before, I got a call from Texas Motorplex to run the live stream for the ARDL race the same weekend. So I was Teamviewer'd into my production computer, running the live stream at one track, while running out car at another track a half hour down the highway.

 

Friday, I got off work at 11AM, ran home, jumped in the truck and left for Tulsa for the Mid-West Drag Racing Series season finale. We rolled in around 7PM after a 1-hour delay from having the lower radiator hose come off the water pump in Ardmore, OK. Luckily it was just a hose-clamp failure. Got the hose back on, put 5 gallons of water in it to make it to O'Reillys and put coolant in, and we were back on the road.

We missed the first 2 qualifiers due to our late arrival, but made Q3 and Q4. The transmission was taking 500 RPM to shift instead of the usual 200 RPM, so we knew something wasn't quite right, but figured it would be workable, so we left that transmission in Friday night. Not that there was much time to change it - Q4 was at 11:30 PM and Q5 was at 10AM.

We ran a 3.96 off the trailer with a guess-a-tune in the car. Wanted to make sure we had a respectable lap. Conditions worsened by the minute; Dad didn't want to run Q4 and alot of others didn't either. I wanted to see just what the track and tires would take - great conditions for a Bonsai run.

69 degree air temp. 69 degree dew point. 96% humidity. 77 degree track temp.

Car goes 3.917 with a little steering input. I'll take it.

Q5 the next morning, track's a bit better, I back it down a bit after analyzing the Q4 run. It makes another 3.917.

Aight, Cool. Dial a 3.92 for first round.

Dad's .020 to the other lane's .055 ..... and the car doesn't shift. Dad pedals it, knocks it into high gear, and still runs a 4.05 at 173 for the loss.

We get back, micro-analyze every bit of data recording on the car. Everything seemed like it did what it's supposed to. Has to be the transmission? So we drive home from Tulsa, get home at midnight, and plan on swapping transmissions.

 

This morning we unload the car. Think just for the hell of it, I'll wire up my MSD tester and make sure the output is doing what the data recording says.

And it's not.

Nope.

Not the next 25 times, either.

Grab the spare ignition box. Same thing. so it's not the box.

-stares intently at relay board-

I ground the RPM stud on the relay board, and the shifter still doesn't fire.

<explenative>

So we switch to time-based shift....and it works. Huh? No Comprendhe.

So I wire up an ice-cube relay to go around the relay board...and MSD works off RPM.

So I made that permanent, and we also changed the shift actuator, the shifter cable, and rebuilt/greased the shifter itself.

And tested it about 25 more times to make sure it works.

And put it back in the box.