Archive for May, 2008

And yes, Day 3 is indeed the very next day after Day 2. I’m excited about making tons of progress on the car in a short amount of time. We’ll be burning rubber at the track with this car before we know it!

We were all pooped from yesterday so we got off to a mid-day start. I took a few pictures of the new black seat and floor interior – it looks way better than the old interior, which was green carpet and rusted floor.

Today Jerad focused mainly on getting the new gauges into the car which involved a lot of tedious wiring work and my job was to get the headers back on the engine. I also took the opportunity to take off one of the valve covers to see what’s under there. I snapped plenty of pictures of the rockers and whatever else is in there, making sure to get as many part numbers as I could find.

I also drained the engine and radiator completely of fluid (which has antifreeze) and filled it back up with straight water. In the process of removing the headers yesterday I disconnected some of the spark plug wires to make room, not thinking to label where each one went. So part of today was spent trying to figure out the firing order of the engine and where the spark wires went!

Here’s the answer… the firing order of a Mopar V8 engine is 1-8-4-3-6-5-7-2 where the #1 cylinder is on the driver’s side, front of the car. On the distributor the firing is clockwise from #1.

We put everything back together and got the car started! It ran well, but we noticed a puzzling problem with the new fuel pressure gauage we put in – it was registering low-ish numbers (5.5 to 6.0) and the holley fuel pump was making weird noises. We thought it might be the batteries – so we checked them. Both batteries showed over 12 volts. Then we decided maybe the fuel filter was clogged up – so we proceeded to start draining the tank so we can check the fuel filter. To our surprise, very little fuel came out of the tank… we’re out of gas!

The tachometer also didn’t work correctly. We’re going to have to check the wiring on that next time! Day 3 came and went all too quickly. There really isn’t much left to do to the car to get it ready for Speedworld. We figure maybe 3 or 4 more days of work on it should do it.

Day 2 has come and gone and we made tons of progress on the car. Jerad mainly focused on getting the new seat in and I worked on getting the headers off and replacing the header gaskets. We also added a couple of steel bars underneath the new fuel cell to make the mounting stronger. Before it was wobbling a bit, and now its as good as welded on.

First – Jerad (with the help of Ethan) put the tip over valve on the fuel cell and finished the rest of the plumbing. The fuel system should be good to go now.

It was pretty much my first time turning wrenches on an engine, and I ended up with the usual mechanics badge of honor (skinned knuckles). Jerad had a freak accident with the grinder where a hot bit of steel landed on his gloves and set it on fire. He ended up with a bit of second degree burns on a knuckle and a nice sized hole in his glove.

Jerad fabricated some seat mounts from angle iron and bolted them to the car and the seat. We figured out the best place to position the seat was slightly off center to the right so my head and helmet have some room to move. He also used my angle grinder and ground the rest of the old carpet and glue off the floor. We vacuumed up the interior and then sprayed flat black Rustoleum all over the floor. It looks so much better now!

After I finally got all the headers off, Christian helped clean the old hi-temp RTV silicone off the headers and mounting adapters (whatever they are really called). The I put some new hi-temp RTV silicone on and put the adapters back on, torqued to 24 foot pounds per bolt.

I also drained some of the radiator fluid out of the car before removing the headers – and to my surprise there was antifreeze. Antifreeze is generally frowned upon at race tracks because if you spill it over the track it takes forever to clean up.

We also went to Checkers to get stuff we needed like the RTV silicone. While we were at Checkers, we saw a smoking deal for a 300 piece tool set with cart – after rebate and military discount, the whole thing came to 40 bucks. We also picked up some odds and ends like funnels and a filter wrench. We also found hood pins! We are going to put that on the car eventually.

It looks like Day 3 is going to be tomorrow!

The last of my most recent Summit Racing order has arrived from Ohio today. I got my new blue RCI racing jacket in one box and the TCI deep transmission pan in another. Of course I tried on the jacket, and it fit really well. It even looks a lot better than I thought it would! I had my wife take a picture of me wearing the jacket. In the picture I practiced my mean look – the one I’ll use to try and intimidate others into submission at the staging line!

Also pictured is the tranny pan – it holds 4 quarts more over the stock pan.