FE Power Forums > The Road to Drag Week 2012

August 18, 2012 - The Road to Drag Week 2012

(1/3) > >>

jayb:
I'm typing this Saturday night, after spending every night this week working for several hours on the Drag Week projects, and also spending a 14 hour day today on getting the engine installed and hooked up in the Mach 1.  Once again there have been several unexpected problems that are conspiring to keep me from making the event - with any of the cars.  First on this list is problems with my second pair of high port SOHC heads.  The heads are still at the machine shop, waiting to be finished up so that I can put them on the short block and finish assembling the big SOHC.  I was hoping to get these heads back early this week, but they were taking longer than the shop expected, and then they called me on Friday morning with some very bad news.  Apparently, they were ready to finish the valve job on Friday but before they did so they ran a pressure check on the heads.  Both heads leak into two of the exhaust ports!  I didn't have any problems with my first set of these heads, but on the second set I was apparently not so lucky.  This isn't a deal killer on the heads; they are going to get welded up next week, and hopefully after that they will pass the pressure check and will be finished up.  But from a time standpoint it really hurts; I need to leave for Drag Week 3 weeks from today.  There's no way now that I can get that engine together, dynoed, and installed in the car in time to make it to the track prior to the event, and it may not be possible to even get to the event with the Shelby clone if the heads don't get finished up fairly quickly.  So this is a big setback on that car.

With the Shelby clone up in the air I focused on the Mach 1.  Thursday night Steve and I got the high riser engine off the dyno, and Friday night I worked on cleaning up the shop a little and getting the engine prepared to go in the car.  Saturday morning Joel and BradFORD came over to help with the installation.  Joel had to leave by 11:00, but when he left the engine/trans assembly was ready to go.  Here's a picture of the engine and trans on the hoist, being rolled over by the Mach 1, and then up in the air ready for the install:





It took a couple hours of monkeying around, but we finally got the engine jockeyed into position.  Here's a photo of BradFORD perched on the back of the motor about halfway through this process:



After getting the engine installed and bolted down, the front suspension reinstalled (the drag link now goes through the hole in the oil pan), the driveshaft yoke swapped and driveshaft fit, etc., we brought the car down off the lift and I decided to install the intake manifold setup.  I was anxious to see how far it came through the hood, so that I had a better idea of what would be required for the hood scoop.  Here's a pic of the intake on the engine:



To be honest, I was very disappointed with how far the throttle bodies came out of the engine compartment.  They were easily a couple inches higher than I had expected them to be.  My concept for the Mach 1 was to try to maintain a somewhat stock feel, despite the radical engine.  But the throttle bodies coming that far through the hood seem to make that concept an impossibility.  I wasn't trying to create another cookie cutter race car with an induction system that sticks way out of the hood, my idea was to keep a low profile but still go really fast.  The position of the induction system seemed to change the whole theme of the car, and I didn't like it at all.

Thinking that it may be better than it looked, BradFORD and I cut the required hole in my fiberglass hood and put it in place on the car.  It did look a little better, but it was still way too high.  My pal Steve worked on a fiberglass replica of the shaker hood scoop, and had stretched it to fit over the two throttle bodies.  He did a really nice job on this, and step two was going to be making the hood scoop a couple of inches higher, to increase the size of the scoop opening and cover the throttle bodies where they stuck through the hood.  But even with this stretch, the bottom of the hood scoop would still be a couple of inches above the hood line.  I'd have to make a secondary bump or something to raise the middle of the hood up to meet the bottom of the scoop.  Or, I could stretch the scoop further than the plan, maybe to a 6 inch height instead of a 3 inch height, but I'm not sure that would look very good.  To try to get a better sense of this, I put some 3 inch spacer blocks on top of the throttle bodies, and put the hood scoop as it is now in position (I used the spacer blocks because I think I need 3" over the throttle bodies to ensure decent airflow in them).  Here's a photo:



After staring at this a while, I concluded that the throttle bodies are just two inches too high, period.  And I've already taken the 1" spacer out that I dyno tested last week, so there is no way to lower them at this point. 

I also kicked around the idea of an intake swap.  Quite a while back I acquired a Dove tunnel wedge that was designed for the high riser heads.  I welded it up and sent it down to Joe Craine, who ported it for me.  If I pull all the fancy intake stuff off this engine and bolt that manifold on, the throttle bodies will be plenty low, and I can use the shaker concept as I had originally envisioned it.  But there are several problems with this approach; one is that I'd have to weld injector bungs into the intake, make new fuel rails, etc in order to use the EFI system.  Or, I could run carbs, and just use the EFI setup to run the distributorless ignition system, but then I'd have to pick up a couple carb and somehow get them tuned prior to the event.  And even if I stuck with EFI on this intake, suddenly my dyno data is out the window, and I don't know how much, if any, I'd be down on horsepower.  So my new converter might not work, my rear end gears might not be right, etc.  Lots of potential problems there... :o

I'm going to sleep on this situation tonight and try to figure out what to do.  Joel is coming over again tomorrow and I'm sure he'll have some useful input.  Any suggestions from the forum are appreciated also - Jay

fetorino:
I don't know how useful my opinion will be but I'll give it a shot.

At this point you need to solve your idle problem and don't need to create a problem with your gears or torque converter so I'd run what you've brung (built).

How about bonding the fake shaker to the hood sitting over the top of the TBs with two holes in top of the fake scoop for TBs to just barely poke through. (if only your TBs were black anodized).  From a distance it would just look like a shaker scoop.  It wouldn't be until you were right up on it that you could really see what is happening.

The shaker becomes the hump in your hood to camouflage the intake.

Heo:
One idea if you cut away the top of the scoop and replace it with a mesch
of some kind. You can make the same pattern on the mesh thats on the
top now. Then you gain 3 inch. And painted black you have to be close
to see the differense. Dont kow how it works with the flow of air though
Or you can just drill a lot of small holes betwen the "fins" on the top
that is the same total area as the throttle bodies

JamesonRacing:
Wow, you've come so far on this installation, you may be best served to ensure the mechanicals are solid and get the car on the road/track as is.  You don't know what gremlin is lurking out there to keep you from finishing drag week, best to find it in the next three weeks.

I wouldn't sweat the hood issue, finish up the details and the answer will come.  I personally think having a pair of throttle bodies above the hood line looks pretty cool. 

How tall would a Boss 429 scoop have to be to cover the throttle bodies?

My427stang:
I have a question that would answer it for me

Barring something breaking, do you expect this one to stay together for a while? 

If so, I'd bite the bullet and prep the other manifold and do an in car swap.  Then you can make the shaker and have the design you want.

If the motor is coming back out, or you have additional plans to go back to some sort of sheet metal intake later, slap an aftermarket Boss 9 tall scoop on it, shoot it all green and go racing

To be honest, I think I'd probably build that other intake because I like to hide things

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page