Draglist.com Drag Racing

Thanks again, good read.

Great report! Thanks for taking the time to post it.

Any wins over Radar are tough to come by!! Good Job.

Rapid

Thanks Eric!! Cool pics and great reporting!! I like the tech stuff too! Again, thanks!!

Great read and it sounds like a great weekend, Thanks for an excellent report with pictures, Eric! WC1

Eric,
Good read. Nice you made it to my home state. Of course, it might not have been a state yet when I was born.
Anyway and anyhow you can win one over the "Crate" is doing good.
IA Al

Well.... I figure I had probably post an update.

Saturday morning Brittany (Slick) and I headed down to Montezuma to work on the Hot Rod. Dan Russell (owner of the Nitemare N/Top Fuel car) had called Friday night and wanted to know what the plan was for the day so I called him back and told him the plan.

The plan was to get the Hot Rod unloaded and to pull the injector/intake manifold off and replace the intake gaskets. We had determined that they were leaking while I had the car at the Drag List Nationals at Eddyville. While idling all was good, but when I would open the throttles and the engine started to pull a good vacuum it would suck oil vapors up from the bottom of the intake runners. This would cause the pipes to smoke and be wet with oil.

When Dan got to my Mom & Dad's I had the car unloaded and the intake ready to come off. We cleaned the heads and the intake and glued new gaskets onto the heads. We also glued (siliconed) the gasket to intake side of things to make sure there were no leaks.

Once we got it back together I double checked the valve lashes to make sure they were close. I also had to re-index a few spark plugs. Pretty soon Dad was back home and we fueled the car and decided to fire it off. The starter was kicking back a little so we adjusted the timing for a bit more advance. I had been fighting with this the last time I worked on the car. We went ahead and started the car but it was only at aboot 36* timing and I really wanted it to be at 40*. We went ahead and built some heat in the engine and checked the throttle response. We weren't happy with it so we shut it off and bumped the timing up to 40*. This meant we had to pull the wheel off the balancer and clock it around so it would meet up with the pickup.

We also had a bad main poppet, the poppet (although new) wouldn't move freely and would stick open. Luckily, Dan and Joanie had a spare at home. They headed out to pick the parts up while Mom and I worked on other issues.

When Dan and Joanie (co-owner of the Nitemare N/Top Fuel car) returned, we double checked the BV leakage, and fired it off again. This time we were looking good although still a bit lean on the main. The timing was where I wanted it and the rotor phasing was dead on. We shut it down and richened the fuel system a bit. We cooled the car down and refueled it. Once it was cooled and fueled Dad was in the seat and Dan, Joanie and I were up front with the engine. We fired it off and all was great. We made a few fine adjustments to the BV and idle and all was good. Joanie was eagle-eyeing for fuel, water, oil, etc leaks and always had the right wrench ready anytime I reached for it. She is so sharp at this she can anticipate what Dan or I want and have it ready when when reach for it.

As far as I am concerned, she is like my older sister!! Cheesy

Although all was now good it was way too late to head to the track so Dan & Joanie headed home and my mother and I put all of the tools away and then Mom, Josh and I loaded the car into the trailer.

All I have to deal with prior to the next outing is the leaking water pump and the poppets.

If it isn't one thing, it is 5 others...

EDB

PS I want to say again, I am truly thankful for the help Dan & Joanie give me. I consider them to be family.

Great update. Thanks. bp

Nice update Eric, sounds like you are going to make the beast go down the track this year or else!!!

The Russell's are great people. I am glad to call them friends for sure.

First of all, I want to apologize for not posting many updates lately or being very active on the boards. I have been lurking, but back on 09/01 I took a new job and have been very busy with that. Hopefully this winter I will be able to post more on the "general' boards instead of just the "tech" boards.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I went down to the shop yesterday to winterize the car and also work on the nitrous systems. Since I didn't get the car to the track this year I plan to bust my butt this fall/winter/spring to have it ready to rock & roll for the season opener.

I started out by draining all of the water out of the block, radiator and pump. I took all of the AN lines loose and blew compressed air through them to get any water out. The block has petcocks on it down at the pan rail so I opened them up and left them open. I also drained the puke tank.

Next I pulled the valve covers and backed all of the rocker arms off so none of the springs are compressed. Over the winter I will be rolling the engine over every couple of weeks and I will need to recheck this to make sure none of them get compressed. I still need to pull the plugs out and spray lube into the cylinders. I forgot about it at the time...

Next up was to verify that there was no methanol in any of the fuel lines, tank, distribution block, etc. I blew all of these out again (I always purge the system at the end of the day) and sprayed a teflon based lube into the barrel valve, pump and into the lines that run into the distribution block. I then chased it with some compressed air. I reattached the lines, but left them finger tight. I will completely clean everything in the spring.

Now that I had the car winterized it was time for me to get busy working on plumbing the 2nd and 3rd stages of nitrous. As you recall, I plumbed from the distribution blocks to the nozzles before the "season" started but just capped the distribution blocks on the solenoid side so I wouldn't have any vacuum leaks. Being a fuel injected engine I do not have the physical space to place the solenoids in the traditional/conventional location. I have been thinking about how to locate the solenoids all season and finally decided to just put them where I had room and move along...

As you can see in the following picts, things are getting pretty busy but I still have plenty of room to access the MFI nozzles, the barrel valve and poppets. If I plug a nitrous jet I will have to call it a day as I don't believe I will have time to take the spiders off the car... Due to this, I will be running the restrictive little filters at the solenoid inlets. I realize that they cut power potential, but I don't think I will have to worry about that....

After I located the other 6 solenoids, I went ahead and took that hat off intake, removed the Bird Catcher from the adapter plate, and installed the 4th stage N2O system and my blower restraint.

Does anyone care to guess what Top Fuel car the blower restraint came from??!!

By this time it was starting to get dark so I snapped a couple of picts and decided to call it a day. I want to thank my younger brothers Josh & David, my cousin Chad and my daughter Tiffany for helping me with winterizing the car.

Next time I plan to plumb the braided stainless lines from the fuel solenoids to the distribution blocks.

Even though I didn't get to make a pass this year I am very happy with the season. I had a great year hanging out with great friends and I learned alot and have a ton of good memories.

EDB