But first, sorry about not updating the web site for a while now… it has been about 3 months since I posted something here. Some big changes in my life has been happening. I quit my job at Rainbow Studios / THQ and joined my cousins’ company to do programming work for them. I’ve been working for the new company for about a month and a half now and have been really enjoying the work so far. I am going to go back and update the web site with news back dated to when they happened. It will take me a week or so to get all caught up.

But anyway – Ryan Johnson has sent me an e-mail with some pictures of some parts for the new motor. He expects to be able to put together the short block real soon now. This is the latest major parts list for the motor:

• 48 degree R1A 340 block with bushed lifter bores and partially filled
• Fully ported W5 heads (flows 339 @ .700) angle milled to 16 deg
• 498 W7/W8 intake fully ported
• 950 CFM Proform carburetor
• K1 Technologies 4″ 4340 crank with 2.10″ GM journals
• Crower 6.125″ middle weight billet I beam rods
• Diamond flat top pistons
• Custom bullet 48 degree cam shaft
• Crane ultra pro .903″ 48 degree .210″ offset solid roller lifters
• Custom manton pushrods
• T&D offset rockers 1.65/1.65 ratio
• Comp 955-16 pacaloy roller valve springs
• Ferra 6000 series stainless race valves

And here are the pictures:

Here is their web link: TPI Torque Converters (http://tpiconverters.com)

Important: If you buy a torque converter from them, be sure you mention HerboldRacing.com!

Click on the pictures to see the captions:

I went three rounds in this race.  I think I was 2 rounds away from the finals.  I lost to Vic Sibilla on a double breakout.  You can see me hitting the brakes in the video – big puff of smoke coming off of both tires.  That can be dangerous but I did not even feel the wheels lock up.

Here is the in-car video:

And here is the helmet camera video:

The next race is going to be on May 14.

Basically this cam is part of their Xtreme Energy Mechanical Flat Tappet Camshafts line, and this particular one is described as “great for street machines and mild bracket racing, 9.5:1 compression with 2800 stall, lopey idle”

Duration at .050 is 236/242, advertised duration is 274/280, and valve lift is .502/.511…

Here is a picture of the estimated horsepower and torque curves from CamQuest6 after I input all the pertinent engine and car information into that software:

I went 3 rounds and got tossed in the 1/8ths with 12 cars left. In that round I anticipated the yellow a bit and went red by .0099… and let me tell you the story of how I got there! I was pretty bad ass…

I managed to hold onto the left lane the whole night. During test and tune, I stayed in the left lane. For eliminations round 1 my name was called first so I got the left lane. For eliminations round 2 and 3 I won both coin tosses (called out heads both times) and chose the left lane.

The car was reaching for the sky! I could clearly feel the car launch harder and my fronts were definitely pulling off the ground by a good couple of inches. My 60 foot numbers were 1.7061, 1.6962, 1.6821, 1.6836, 1.6854, 1.6848. I am not kidding – the 60 foot numbers followed the weather perfectly.

My motor liked to stumble, and even died once, when I did my burnouts. On the 3rd pass burnout the motor died at the tip in of the throttle, so for the 4th pass and each pass afterwards I loaded the motor against the converter before mashing it down for the burnout. That seemed to help a bit.

Ok… eliminations round 1. I go up against Olszewski. He’s pretty tough. He goes a 10.4087 on a 10.40 dial… I go a 12.3111 on a 12.29 dial. His R/T was .1074, mine was .0802… His package was .1161 and mine was .1013… that was really close!

Then… eliminations round 2. I go up against Richard Church. Crap. He has a 9.90 car that runs great. He is also currently #1 in points! Sure enough he dials a 9.90 and gets a 9.9187. I dial in a 12.30 and get a 12.3643. I lifted by mistake at the 1/8… I saw the 1/8 markers flash by and briefly thought they were the 1000 ft markers before I corrected myself. His R/T was a .0835 and mine was a .0268. His package was .1022 and mine was .0911. So far, two guys basically gave up the win to me at the tree.

Round 3 of eliminations. I go up against Paul Sanders. Easy win! He has a mustang that doesn’t ever run it’s dial. This is the first pass for me where my opponent launches first. He has a 14.34 dial, and I think this was enough to make me screw up and anticipate the 3rd yellow. :-\

I asked Paul if he ran the car all out, he said yes. So, to add insult to injury he broke out pretty big. He ran a 14.2759 on a 14.34 dial. I had him! :-\ I lifted blowing past Paul and got a 12.3051 on a 12.30 dial, throwing away about 3 mph. I would have gone a 12.29 or so if I ran it all out.

I borrowed a helmet camera from work. It is called the Contour 1080p and it sticks to your helmet. All those videos turned out great. I wish I had the helmet camera aimed downwards a bit more. So, if I decide to buy this camera, I’ll be sure to tilt it down some more for the next race. But it is cool – you can clearly feel my head jerk back at all the launches, and you get a real feel of the shifting and the top end action. Normally my wife films my car but she was out of town, so my uncle filmed the outside of the car videos instead.

Here are my times from the last pass:

12.30 dial in
-.0099 r/t (boo!)
1.6848 60 ft
4.9960 330 ft (whoo hoo broke the 5 second barrier for the first time!)
7.7861 660 ft
87.57 mph 660 ft
10.1506 1000 ft
99.51 mph 1000 ft (100 mph barrier so close now)
12.3051 1320 ft (lifted)
105.21 mph 1320 ft

The DA on that run was 2251.

He seems to think my problems with the crank are because I did not properly set the thrust bearing. I described how I did it and he said there is no way what I did would work. He showed me how he would do it – it involves a metal spacer thingy and a 5 pound hammer. He is pretty confident that he can get my crank to work in the block. He will also get back to me as to whether my bearings are still usable or not. I had scuffed the bearings up quite a bit. He will also clean everything up. His eyes boggled at the amount of bearing guard dripping everywhere the block. He says that I used way too much, and that it would take up some clearance by itself. He also showed me what he uses for bearing guard. It looks like some kind of tan paste, and he says it works better and sticks to the journals without dripping. It also dissolves in oil. I need to email him to ask what the name of that thing is and where he gets it.

And, it was so much easier loading the block up into the truck with the hoist.

I think I got too long of chains.  They are 4 feet each… ah well, I could probably have gone with 3 feet each.  The chains are nearly $6 a foot.  Each chain is rated for 3,300 pounds.  Those are grade 8 bolts in the block that the chains are connected to.  You can’t be too careful!  The hoist is supposedly strong enough to lift the entire car up.

That is the crank in the box behind the hoist in the picture below.  I am hoping the machine shop doesn’t find anything seriously wrong with the crank.

For giggles I also pumped the hoist way up to see how high it could go.  It goes pretty high!  :-)

Today, I decided to take a look at this. I was right – that the car was running off of only one battery at Tucson. I disconnected both batteries and put the driver’s side one on the charger. The charger needle instantly went to “full”. I then put it on the passenger side battery. The needle went to 50%.

I took the ground straps off and was pretty surprised at what I found… the straps were connected to PAINT! I just redid both ground straps. I used a wire wheel and made all the washers, bolts, contact surfaces, etc., all nice and sparkley bright bare metal. Then, I used a fine file to make all those thing smooth to the touch. I just put everything back together. The passenger side battery is still charging up. Once it is ready, I will hook the batteries back up and give her a test fire. Man, the car should run 100% better now. Wouldn’t be surprised if I break into the 9′s.

Update:

The car starts right up, no problem. The voltmeter gauge seems to show a much better reading of the battery. 12.5+ volts and climbs to just short of 14 when the alternator kicks in.

Also today, I dropped the Caltracs traction bars and reconnected them to the lower holes. The last time I adjusted the Caltracs I had my wife sit in the driver’s seat. Today, however, she was sick so I ended up using some boxes with iron heads and also my aluminum heads to simulate my weight for setting the preload. The combined weight of all those heads came out to be exactly my weight. Cool. So, I set the preload on both bars to be a half turn. It was a quarter turn before when the bars were connected to the upper hole. There is much better clearance for the passenger side tire now. I shouldn’t have to worry about the passenger side tire rubbing against the quarter panel any more.

Then, I parked the car outside and covered it up and also covered up the slicks. It is ready for the next race.

I put the chains on the hoist and it looks good. I think tomorrow night I will put the block on the hoist and get it ready for loading onto the truck bed. I might deliver the block to the machine shop Tuesday morning.