We were up early at 6:30 on Thursday morning, and headed to the track by 7:30. Our hotel was quite a ways from the track, so by the time we got there the cars were already running. Steve and I got the car put into race trim, and I went off to change into my racing clothes to make a pass. On the way back to the car I heard the announcer make the last call for staging lanes for the class cars, so I had to hustle. The Street Eliminator cars were already lining up to get ready for the staging lanes, so Steve had to direct traffic to get me out of my pit area and past those cars. But I made it down to the staging lanes just in time, and started getting strapped in to make a pass.
After Brad had gone on the trailer yesterday, I had looked at the standings in my class and found that I had a big lead. At this point, to me it looked like an endurance race, so I had decided to get one good pass in and get on the road for the last leg of the road trip. I got up to the burnout box and did my normal burnout, then staged the car and launched at a fairly low RPM. Cordova is a hookin' track, and the leave felt good despite the low speed launch. For some reason, however, I shifted early, not even waiting for the shift light to come on. I was happy that the car had left clean and straight, and was focusing on keeping it going straight down the track, and shifted before the light came on. I really don't know why. In any case, the car ran great through the beams, and the time slip said 9.139 at 148.01, with a 1.33 60 foot time. I had been hoping for 8s at every track, and I may have got one at Cordova if I hadn't shifted early, but I wasn't going to risk a problem with the car by waiting around for the open track session and trying again.
Steve and I got the car back in street trim, and I went up to the Hot Rod trailer and turned in my time slip, picking up the directions for the days road trip. It was 260 miles, which was actually a little less than I thought it might be, so that was good. There were lots of people at Cordova, just like at Great Lakes, and we talked to quite a few folks while we were working on the car. Steve Engberg came up to chat; I hadn't seen Steve in quite a few years, probably since 2005 or so. Steve used to have a 69 Mach 1 very similar to mine, with a 600 HP FE under the hood. He is also famous for a Boss 429 dyno explosion; he said there is something like 2 million hits on the youtube video. He is working on another Boss 429 car now, but wants to do an SOHC in the future. I sure hope he does that; with his car building skills, there's no doubt he would put together a beautiful piece.
We talked a little to Jack and Scott Miller also; Jack's Mustang went out on Tuesday with a burned piston, but Scott's Cougar is running real strong, in second place in Street Race BB/NA behind Curt Johnson's car. Scott ran a 1.29 60 foot a few tracks ago, with a 9.34 ET I think they said. That 900 HP FE really moves that car along.
Finally Steve and I were ready to leave; we pulled out of Cordova around 11:00 AM. We had high hopes of making it to our hotel by 6:00 PM, and headed straight for the first checkpoint, which was only about 35 miles down the road. Here's a picture of the car at the checkpoint:
The parking lot at the checkpoint was gravel, and there was a big step off the asphalt to get into the parking lot. The car scraped on the asphalt going into and coming out of the lot. Three miles down the road, Steve and I began to smell gasoline. A lot of gasoline. We found a side street and pulled over; I was afraid we had torn up one of the fuel lines under the car on the parking lot. Fortunately, looking under the car this was not the case. We popped the hood and found the problem; the O-ring sealing the top of the #8 fuel injector had pushed out of the fuel rail, and fuel was raining out of the gap. Fortunately for me the coils and plug wires are outside of the intake manifold, so the risk of a fire was minimal.
For several weeks leading up to Drag Week I had been waffling about buying a set of spare fuel injectors. These are Ford Racing injectors, 80# per hour units, and as far as I can tell they are only sold in sets of 8. Finally the week before Drag Week I ordered a set, fearing the nightmare scenario that I would be leading my class and have an injector go out that cost me the race. I was very happy now that I'd made that decision, because I didn't have a spare injector O-ring. I pulled one of the new injectors out of the spare parts box and installed it in the car. When I tightened down the fuel rail and checked it, the leak was gone, and we were back on the road.
Soon it started to drizzle a little as we were going down the road. Then Steve said, "Why is it raining harder on my side of the car than it is on yours?" I looked over and water was spraying out of the rear hood vent on Steve's side, soaking the windshield. I looked down at the temp gauge and it was pegged at 240! Crap! I shut the car off immediately and coasted to the side of the road.
After giving the car a few minutes to cool down, we were finally able to pull off the radiator cap. The radiator was nearly empty. I had a gallon of antifreeze in the trailer, but I really didn't want to use it at this point, because straight water cools better. About this time another Drag Week competitor came by and asked if we needed any help. This is always the same at Drag Week, competitors helping other competitors. I asked him if he had any water, and he gave me what was left of a 24 pack of drinking water that he'd brought with him; there were at least 12 or 13 bottles in there. We thanked him profusely and offered to pay him for it, but he refused to accept anything, wished us luck and went on his way. Steve and I decided that we would fill the radiator partially up with water, and turn on the electric pump to make sure it was circulating. When we flipped the switch, we saw no water movement in the radiator. Had we lost the electric pump? There was an inline fuse to the pump between the runners of the intake, and I wanted to check to see if that fuse was still intact, but the intake was still too hot to reach in there without burning myself on the runners. Instead, I put my hand on the pump motor while the ignition switch was on, and felt a vibration; Steve double checked this and felt it too. The only other thing it could be was a stuck thermostat, but I had drilled bypass holes in the thermostat before installing it, so we should have still seen some water circulating in the radiator, even if the thermostat was stuck.
We concluded that the water pump impeller had come loose from the pump motor, and was no longer pumping water. We had to change the pump. Fortunately I had brought a spare. Steve and I got to work changing the pump. By now it was really starting to rain pretty hard, and we were soaked. Another guy pulled up behind us with his pickup truck. He turned out to be a local guy interested in the car. His truck flashers were a big help, because I didn't want to run the battery of my car down by running the flashers for two hours on the side of the road. The guy got out of his truck with an umbrella and came up to see what was going on. Right away, I offered him $200 for his umbrella
I think it was the first laugh we'd had since the car quit.
With the local guy holding the umbrella Steve and I got the water pump removed. Here's a picture of the engine at this point:
With the pump removed we could now look inside and see the impeller. I plugged the pump into the wiring harness, and had Steve flip the ignition on. Sure enough, the impeller wasn't moving, but I also didn't fell any vibration from the pump motor. Hmmmmm.... I grabbed the new pump, plugged it in, and it didn't spin either! Crap, did we pull the water pump for nothing?
I grabbed the DVOM and checked the voltage at the connector with the ignition on. Zero volts!
So, now we knew we had pulled the pump for nothing, and had an electrical problem. The engine had cooled enough so that I could reach in between the intake runners and check the water pump fuse. I reached in for it, lifted it up, and it came apart in my hand! It had been sitting on the bottom of the intake, and when I flipped it over the cheap plastic of the fuse holder had melted, and it had separated just enough to break the connection to the water pump. Here's a picture of the fuse holder:
This failure was related to the problem I'd had on Tuesday this week, with the crank sensor cable and connector. That wire runs through the same area of the car, between the intake manifold runners. I'd originally had it installed inside some protective heat shield, and all tie wrapped together. When I had to pull the crank sensor cable out of the sleeve, I'd had to cut all the tie wraps, and had not tie wrapped the protective sleeve back in place. Its really hot in there, and cramped for space for your hands, and the engine has to be dead cold before you can do this.
The fuse holder had flopped out of the protective sleeve, and been burned by the intake heat. Well, at least now we knew what the problem was. I dug some wiring out of the trailer, pulled both ends of the water pump wire out between the runners of the intake, and jumpered them together without a fuse. Then I tie wrapped them to the injector cables to keep the wire off the hot intake surfaces. We plugged in the water pump, and with the ignition on it spun like crazy.
We spent the next 45 minutes or so re-installing the water pump. We had saved the water from the engine in the oil drain pan, so we were able to fill it almost all the way up with the saved water. We used the last few bottles that the Drag Week competitor had given us to top off the radiator. When I flipped on the ignition switch, we saw all kinds of water flow in the radiator.
We thanked our local friend for the help he had provided, and told him how to find information on the event on Hot Rod's web site. I also officially withdrew my offer for his umbrella, because as soon as we got finished with the repair, the rain had stopped
We got back on the road after this two hour delay, watching the water temp closely. It came right up to 175 and stayed there; we had now covered about 50 miles of the 260 mile route.
About 25 miles later, the car started to quit. It would run OK when I gave it throttle, but at 2500 RPM cruise it just didn't want to run. When the engine would quit and then restart, we could hear the fuel pump making a weird noise. Sure enough, soon it started knocking a little, like it was running really lean, so I killed the engine and coasted to the side of the road. I had Steve look at the fuel pressure gauge under the hood while I turned on the key. It should be about 45 psi, but Steve was seeing wildly varying fuel pressure between 15 and 20 psi, and the pump sounded horrible. Time to change the fuel pump
I'd lost a fuel pump in my Galaxie during Drag Week 2008, so at least I was well prepared for this eventuality. I had all the tools and spare parts in hand, and got the pump changed in about half an hour. Sure enough, with ignition on the fuel pressure was back to normal, so away we went. We still had nearly 200 miles to go.
Thankfully, the remaining trip was uneventful. We got into our hotel at 9:30, and went out to dinner with Joel and Jeff. Kevin rolled in around 11:00 or so; we were all glad to see he'd made it. Running 1000 miles on the street with 4.56 gears and a spool is quite an accomplishment if you ask me.
Friday (today as I am typing this) the track doesn't open until 11:00, and the racing doesn't start until 2:30, so we all got a bit of necessary sleep last night. We have 10 miles to go to the track, and I need to make one good pass to lock in the win. Wish me luck, guys - Jay
