THe road to Drag Week 2016 - Hemi Style

[jayb]

Getting closer.  Plenty of time before Drag Week! 

[TomP]

Good thing you guys have both had all summer to work out the bugs. Hope things go smoothly the next couple days.

[JERICOGTX]

Joel is making sure the finer details are covered...

[BruceS]

Wow!  I thought those horns were reserved just for us Texans!   

[jayb]

Have you guys run it yet, or done the shakedown cruise?

[JERICOGTX]

No. Still have to finish exhaust, install seats, shifter, fuel line to the carbs, make plug wires, wire the fuel pumps, install distributer, and just a few more things. Moving along though...

[Hemi Joel]

Taking a break for a few minutes.
We still need to bleed the brakes. I found a leaky caliper and rebuit that. And install the LM1 meter too.

[cjetmech]

Joel what happened with the red GTX? Did you just run out of time? I was surprised to see the conv out there, it looked like you were real close with the other car.

[JERICOGTX]

We finished the red car at 2:00am Saturday before leaving. We were hoping to leave Joel's place Friday night by 8:00. When Joel finally fired the HEMI at 2:00am, the engine only had 10lbs of oil pressure at idle. Joel figured he had installed the wrong lifters, causing the pressure to bleed off.

While we could have pushed the car into the trailer, had a set of lifters dropped shipped to Natioal Trail, and hoped the push rods might have worked, it just wasn't a god idea. We were both walking zombies at that point. Towing that far with so many variables just didn't seem like a good idea.

[cjetmech]

Thats too bad, great effort though. Atleast it'll be going soon and a definite for DW17, unless Joel decides to run the Dusenberg. THAT would be interesting.

[JERICOGTX]

Actually the red GTX was the plan B car. Joel has been building a 31 Plymouth coupe for the Hot Rod class. The plan is to switch out the 11:1 Pistons for a set of 13:1 slugs and a bigger cam. The car needs to go to a chassis shop and have misc things finished up.

[machoneman]

We finished the red car at 2:00am Saturday before leaving. We were hoping to leave Joel's place Friday night by 8:00. When Joel finally fired the HEMI at 2:00am, the engine only had 10lbs of oil pressure at idle. Joel figured he had installed the wrong lifters, causing the pressure to bleed off.

While we could have pushed the car into the trailer, had a set of lifters dropped shipped to Natioal Trail, and hoped the push rods might have worked, it just wasn't a god idea. We were both walking zombies at that point. Towing that far with so many variables just didn't seem like a good idea.

Sorry to hear that. But you both made the right decision. Hopefully, you will have time this Fall for a lot of drag strip testing to sort things out. 

[cjetmech]

LOL, I wish I had those kind of issues. Joel's backup is a 10 sec Hemi GTX, Jays backup is either a 9 sec SOHC Galaxie or a 9 sec 850hp R code Mach1. The hotrod gods have smiled on both of these guys. I'm just glad that they share so much of it with us. What would be bad is if they were into BBC's. That would suck.

[Hemi Joel]

In hindsight, I wish I had trailered the race car out and attempted to fix it there. 3 years in a row of doing Drag Week in parade cars is wearing on my man-card privileges. Next year...

Still I had a great time, how could I not?
The convert was 2 tenths off from last year and I don't know why.  I need to check into it.

[BattlestarGalactic]

Wow, heard about the project car, very cool.  Bummer not getting it completed in time, then to have the red car go kaput.  Ugh.

There is "always next year"...................right?