This week my objective was to get the car street drivable, and get it to the track and make some passes to further tune the suspension. On Tuesday I decided on a new set of race tires, and had them mounted and balanced by Thursday. The specs from Hoosier said that these tires were only 0.2" larger in diameter than my existing tires, but they turned out to be 0.75" larger in diameter instead. I got them mounted on the car on Thursday night and realized I wasn't going to have enough clearance. I felt I needed the tire, though, so I did a little wheelwell trimming to make sure that I'd have the required clearance at the track. This went off pretty well except for one spot at the rear of the driver's side fenderwell, where I had trimmed the fenders originally before I painted the car. There was a little body filler there, and as I trimmed the wheelwell it cracked and a small chip came out. No big deal, and my friend Steve said he can fix that up this week during the week so the car will still look good at Drag Week.
Also this week I tuned the EFI system to run a little better at low engine speeds, and added a drain to the bottom of the fuel tank so I could drain out the pump gas and fill up with race gas at the track. Finally I machined some air cleaner bottoms for the Accufab throttle bodies, and cut some tops out of some 1/8" aluminum sheet, so I could run air cleaners on the street. Friday night I filled the tank with 92 octane pump premium and went out for the first street drive in the car. I was a little concerned about how it would cool at freeway speeds with the electric water pump, but it ran down the road at 70 MPH and 3000 RPM at 180 degrees, and would drop to 170 at 2500 RPM. The weather was kind of cool, though, so down at Drag Week I think I'm going to have to watch the temperature, but I think it will stay in the 200 degree range on the freeway even if its 95 degrees out. The car needed a little more idle setting with the pump gas, but it behaved fine in traffic and was perfectly happy at idle and part throttle conditions. Towards the end of my shake down cruise it started raining, and I found out pretty quickly that I'm going to have to be light on the throttle in wet weather, as the rear end of the car came around on me a couple of times with pretty minimal acceleration. Other than that it seemed to handle in the rain OK. After about 40 miles of mixed driving I came back home, satisfied that the car was streetworthy.
Saturday morning was practice for Drag Week. I was up early, hooking up the Drag Week trailer to the car, then packing it with the race tires, race fuel, tools, jack and jack stands, etc. By 7:15 I was on the road with a friend of mine who was visiting from California, and my pal Steve following in his minivan. We were headed for a local 1/8 mile track for their test and tune, about 70 miles away. The weather was overcast when we left, but the weather report said that it would be clear at least until early afternoon, so I figured I could get some passes in after the track opened at 9:00. Halfway to the track, though, that plan evaporated when it started to rain. It sprinkled on and off all the way to the track, so when we got there I just parked the car and waited. After and hour or so the rain stopped and it started to lighten up. When the track dryer started working on the track I disconnected the trailer and started getting the car track ready. I got the car teched and was ready to race by 11:30 or so, but they were still working on the track; apparently the light and timing system was wet and giving them some problems. Finally, around 12:30, the track announcer came on and called the test and tune cars down to the staging lanes. But, literally within 30 seconds of his announcement, it started to rain again. We ended up waiting around for another hour, and then they called the test and tune. So, I got rained out on the test and tune. We put the car back into street trim and headed home.
The drive home was uneventful, and I now have over 150 miles on the car with no issues. But I still haven't run with the new tires, and still haven't really finished tuning the suspension. Tomorrow since I have the day off I'm pulling the transmission back out, because my new converter is supposed to be here on Tuesday. I have a punch list of about 20 small tasks to do on the car besides swapping converters, plus I have to get packed up and on the road to Tulsa next Saturday. Its going to be another busy week. Drag Week registration and test and tune is one week from today, and the race starts a week from tomorrow. I'll post another update from the event next weekend.
