Herbold Racing!

Today I took the time to make really precise measurements of the piston to deck distances for all four corners of the block.  Piston in cylinder 1 is .009 down the hole, .011 for cylinder 7, .007 for cylinder 2, and .011 for cylinder 8.

I also put one head on the block and took some pictures.

Today I took apart a rod, put the piston and wrist pin on it, put the upper rod bearing on, and put bearing guard on that bearing.  Then I put that rod / piston assembly in each of the four corners of the block and measured the piston to deck distances.  I think I will redo this step tomorrow just to double check all the measurements and make sure they all came out right.

I put the stroker crankshaft into the motor.  First I cleaned all the mains and bearings, put the upper bearings on, and put bearing guard on the bearings.  Then I cleaned the crankshaft journals and put the crankshaft in.  Then I cleaned the main caps, and put the lower bearings into them.  Then I put the caps on with studs and very snugly tightened everything up.

I finally got my block back today! What I had the machine shop do was steelabrate and magnaflux the block, sonic check the bores, add a tube in one of the oiling holes, align bore and hone the mains, and bore & hone & plateau finish the cylinders. Paid about $750 for all of that, not too bad. So I brought the block home and got it up on my engine stand. Getting it on the engine stand was relatively easy. I found a table that was almost a perfect match for the height the engine needed to be at – just put the block on the table, and rolled the stand up to the engine and bolted everything together. Tomorrow I will finally start mocking up the motor.

Today, under the advise of my good friend Andy, I checked out what the ignition timing was set to on the Dart.  With the vacuum advance plugged in, it was 23 degrees at idle and 38 degrees all in.  With the vacuum advance unplugged (and the port capped at the carburetor) it was below 0 (meaning retarded) at idle and 21 degrees all in.

Then I started wiring up the old tachometer that was originally on the Duster.  I opened it up and set it to work with 6 cylinders, wired up the trigger to the negative side of the coil, wired up the ground to the battery, and wired the key on power to the radio slot on the fuse box.  This is all temporary and will have to be redone when the Dart gets the 418 motor anyway.

Then I took the Dart out for a joy ride to test the tachometer out.  It seems to be shifting from 1st into 2nd gear at 2500 RPM at wide open throttle.  Enjoy the pictures and video!

I took some time today to adjust the kick down linkage on my Dart.  During the first race of the 2010 ADRA season, the Dart was having a hard time doing the 2 to 3 shift.  It felt like the motor just couldn’t go any higher in RPM and yet the transmission would not shift.

So, I took the car out for a spin and launched the car from idle and figured out where it was shifting from first into second.  Then I took the car into the garage, lifted the car up, and adjusted the kickdown lever so it doesn’t go as far in at WOT.  I dropped the car back onto the ground and took it out for another test.  The car is shifting noticably earlier from first into second.  So now all we can do is wait and see if the car performs consistently in the second race, which is on February 13.

Here is a picture of the adjusting part of the linkage before I made the adjustment.