General

I finally ordered my the camshaft for the 418″ from Comp Cams.  It is their part number 20-230-4 (grind XS274S) and I decided to let them do their Pro Plasma Nitriding on it.  That doubles the cost of the cam, but it’ll last way longer and the chances of a lobe wiping out is minimized.

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 dropped everything off and had a chat with Roger at Standard Machine.

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.

In Tucson, after the 4th pass, the Duster would not start. The car was having a real hard time cranking the motor. This was unusual. Normally, I can do many more passes before this kind of thing would start to happen. When I added a ground wire for the fuel cell before this race, I loosened then retightened the ground strap of one of the batteries. I had a sneaking suspicion that this was somehow the cause of my problem.

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.