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I called the track and thankfully they said they'd let me run anyway as long as I brought a copy of my license application with me. But then the work I had to do on Friday night took quite a bit longer than expected, and I wasn't ready to test drive the car until 8:30. I didn't want to go on the test drive when it was dark, in case I had a problem, and I really did want to do that test drive to check out the steering and brakes before I went to the track, so at that point I bailed on the track day on Saturday. Instead, I spent Saturday cleaning up the car and finishing some little odds and ends that needed to be completed, and then took a test drive with my friend JC following in my truck, in case there was a problem. The car did pull to the left somewhat, so I was glad that I had bailed on the track day (pulling left at 140 is never a good thing), but other than that the car ran great, so after 10 miles or so we came back to my house, and were going to head off together for another test drive. Before we did that I wanted to check the level of the oil in the dry sump tank, which you need to do with the engine running at 3000 RPM. I had JC get in the car so he could start it while I watched the oil level in the tank. But when he tried to start it, it sounded like it backfired! It had never done that before. He turned the key again, and the engine made the most awful, loud clunking sound you have ever heard. What the hell had happened??
First thing I thought of was the timing chain. I broke an SOHC chain once on startup with a backfire, and this had sounded the same way. Through the window the chain looked OK, but to check I put a breaker bar on the crank bolt and turned the engine by hand. Sure enough the chain moved along with it, so it seemed that the chain was OK. I looked for any other obvious problems, but didn't see anything. I tried the starter one more time and got the same noise. Man, it was loud! Sounded like the crank was broken or a rod was flopping around in the short block. Both JC and I thought that it sounded like a major, major internal issue.
We pushed the car into the garage and did the only thing we could think of, which was to pull the starter. Was it possible that the starter was making this noise? It looked normal when we took it out, but when I pulled the inspection cover off the bottom of the trans, it was clear that there was something going on there; small slivers of flywheel teeth were in the bottom of the inspection cover, and still clinging to some of the teeth. Well, I had a spare starter. We cleaned up the flywheel teeth and installed the spare starter and presto - problem solved. I still can't believe the awful noise that thing made. I don't know whether the starter was damaged in the backfire, or if it caused it, but in any case it was the strangest starter failure I've ever experienced.
With the issue resolved, we took off on a 40 mile cruise. The car cooled beautifully, even on the freeway, and ran great. About 2/3 of the way through I had JC drive while I tried to tune in the part throttle setting on the fuel table in the EFI software, and this helped the cruise performance of the engine also. When I stuck the car in the garage for the night, I was pretty happy.
Sunday (August 30) Kevin came over with his 67 Shelby and we took a shakedown cruise together; again no problems. Sunday night I put the car up on jackstands and pulled the rear end, in preparation for the swap to 4.29 gears. On Monday I dropped it off with my pal BradFORD to set it up. Also called the NHRA, and they claimed that they had tried to process my license but that I didn't send them the check! I knew damned well I'd sent it to them, and it was written down in my check register, but it hadn't cleared my account. So somehow it had disappeared; I gave them a credit card number over the phone instead. Then, they would not promise that they would even get the license processed that week, which was disconcerting because my last shot at some track time was coming up Friday, and I didn't want to miss it. But the NHRA person refused to promise anything, except to email me the license when it had been processed. I just couldn't believe how incompetent and difficult to deal with the NHRA seemed to be.
Tuesday morning I called the IHRA to get some information on their licensing procedure. As it turned out, they would accept my expired NHRA license as proof that I had made the qualifying passes, and they didn't require a physical, so I faxed over a membership and driver's license application. They processed it right away and I got my IHRA license via email the next day! It was great to deal with a competent racing organization. With the IHRA license I figured I could run to the car's potential at the track on Friday.
Wednesday afternoon I picked up the rear end with the new gears, and slammed it in Wednesday night. Thursday I drove the car in rush hour to work, and then later that morning dropped it off for an alignment with BradFORD. When I got it back it drove a whole lot better. Unfortunately, it quit on me on the way home, in rush hour traffic. Seemed like it ran out of gas; I was running on empty on the gauge but thought I had a few gallons left in the tank. I called AAA and they came with 2 gallons of gas for me in about 15 minutes. But when I opened the trunk and opened the cap on the fuel cell, I could see at least 3 gallons of fuel still in the tank. Hmmmmm... I added the AAA fuel and the car started right up, so I hit the nearest gas station on the way home to make sure I had enough. I was pretty sure I had a fuel delivery problem.
Because I got home late, I didn't get started on track preparation until around 7:00. I wanted to check the chain tension, lash the valves, change the oil, etc. etc. By 9:00 that evening I had concluded there was no way I was going to make the track on Friday, because in addition to all the planned tasks I needed to figure out the fuel starvation problem. Friday was my last chance at a track day before the test and tune at Drag Week on the 13th, so I hated to give up on it, but I didn't feel that I had much choice. Just more of the same for this screwball summer with this engine, and this car.
I still had Friday September 4 off, so I spent the day finishing what I had wanted to finish on Thursday night, and debugging the fuel delivery problem. When I drained the fuel tank, the problem became clear. Once I got down to about 1/4 tank, the fuel began draining out of the tank very slowly. This tank has a sump in it, with walls on the sump that extend up from the bottom of the tank about 3". When the fuel level drops below those walls, all the fuel has to enter the sump via one small hole in the side of the walls, right at the bottom of the main tank. Its designed this way to keep the sump as full as possible during acceleration. But the hole in the wall was only 3/8" in diameter, and with fuel sloshing around back and forth while driving, uncovering the hole, it didn't seem to me that my 585" engine could possibly be getting enough fuel. After checking and cleaning the fuel filters, I decided that I would drill more holes in the walls of the sump to allow more fuel in; otherwise I'd be filling up the tank every 60 or 70 miles to make sure I kept enough fuel in the tank. After draining the tank I removed the collar on the fuel inlet to give me as much room as possible, then went in there with some rags and paper towels and soaked up every last bit of fuel in the tank. Next I blew it out with compressed air to try to get rid of the fumes. I did not want to risk an explosion or fire, so in the end I let the tank sit for a couple days; I was tied up with family stuff on Saturday and Sunday anyway.
On Monday (Labor Day) there was no trace of fumes from the tank, so I went in with a small air-powered angle drill and a 1/4" bit and put six more holes in the walls of the sump, right at the bottom of the tank, towards the front. My Drag Week partner Steve was over, so we decided to put a few gallons of fuel in the tank and go for a test cruise, with some extra fuel in a can in the trunk. We never did run out of gas, and when we finally stopped at a gas station to fill up, there was only about 1/4" of fuel left in the bottom of the tank. So it looked like the fix worked.
Steve had come over to help out with the Drag Week trailer. I was planning to use my small trailer again, but with the wider wheels on the car this year the race tires took up more room and the trailer was a little short on space, so I had decided to add pockets to outside of the trailer, to store some of the fluids (oil, solvents, etc.), and leave more room in the main part of the trailer. I was going to have Steve work on installing those pockets. Back in 2012 I had built a bigger trailer, but never really got it finished. I didn't want to use that with this car, because it was so wide that it was hard to see around with the side view mirrors. But Steve talked me into it, because it would give us a lot more room to haul our stuff; he had spent the day finishing the sheet metal work on the outside of the big trailer. When we got back from our cruise to test out the fuel system fix, we hooked up the big trailer and took it for a test drive. The car pulled it fine, and the view from the side view mirrors was at least livable, if not ideal. But back at my shop, I got to thinking about the dimensions of this trailer, which was built according to the Drag Week rules in 2012. I decided I'd better check the rules for 2015 and make sure nothing had changed. Typical for this year, the trailer rules HAD changed, and the big trailer was too big to be legal for the event. I should've checked this before Steve started the work on it. But, at least now my trailer is done :-) Steve was not happy LOL! And now we still had to do the modifications to the small trailer...
After Steve left I started one more task on the car that I had kind of been putting off. With the new intake on the engine, there was only 2" of clearance between the top of the throttle bodies and the underside of the hood scoop. I didn't think that this was enough, and had decided a while back that I should cut a panel out of the top of the hood scoop, to let air in from the top. I figured I'd screen the opening with the same kind of mesh that is in the other hood openings, and make the panel I cut out replaceable with Dzus fasteners, so I could just pull it off at the track, and then replace it for the drive. I'd been putting this off because it pained me to think of cutting a big hole in the top of the hood scoop, but Monday night I went ahead and did it. Here's a picture of the hood, off the car, with the hole cut and the mesh installed:
Tuesday night I installed the panel I cut out with some Dzus fasteners, picture below:
Not perfect, but it will have to do. Its a race car, not a show car. ;-) Wednesday during the day I called the NHRA division 5 office about my license and - what do you know - no one was there. The phone message said they had another race at Topeka to attend. I left them a message about my license but did not expect to hear from them; thank goodness for IHRA, or I wouldn't have a license to run at Drag Week. Wednesday night Steve and I put the hood back on the car, and picked up Joel's car trailer, which we had decided to use for the trip down to Gateway. Joel's trailer is really long, with room for both the car and the small trailer, so it would be easier to work with than towing the car down with my trailer, and stuffing the small trailer in the box of my pickup. But when we hooked up Joel's trailer (in a heavy downpour; Steve and I were soaked), we found out that the trailer brakes weren't working. We took the trailer anyway, figuring we could fix the brakes. Just another wrench in the works.
Thursday night after work I started finishing up some final details on the car, and got it pretty much completed to my satisfaction on Friday morning (I had taken the day off of work on Friday to get ready). Steve and JC came over and we spent a few hours getting the pockets put on my small Drag Week trailer, and then some more time trying to get Joel's trailer brakes working, but without success. We ended up reverting to using my trailer, and putting the small trailer in the box of my pickup for the trip down. I worked until 11:30 packing up, and the last thing I did before calling it a night Friday was to check my email. There, FINALLY, was my NHRA license, six weeks after I'd sent in the application. Sheesh...
Saturday morning Steve and I loaded the truck and trailer and hit the road. Here's the truck, trailer, and race car ready for the trip down.
Looking forward to the track day today, and seeing all my old pals from Drag Week!
