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August 26, 2012 - The Road to Drag Week 2012

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jayb:
I'm typing this Sunday morning before getting started on the days work.  The big question mark this week was would I get the parts I needed to get the big SOHC together, and finally everything showed up on Friday.  On the heads, they had to go back and forth to the welding guy four times before all the porosity got welded up; turned out that five of the exhaust ports and one intake port had serious porosity issues, with casting sand coming up out of the casting during the welding process.  My machinist was driven nuts by these events, continually having to get the castings rewelded after one porous section was fixed, and the porosity just showed up in another spot. What a nightmare; so much for the quality of Bill Coon's head castings!  These heads were worse than any of the Dove SOHC heads I've had problems with.  On these heads I also had to have new guides put in, and the guides had to be custom machined because of the oddball guides used in the heads.  The reason they had to be replaced was that the tops of the guides were significantly out of round; they appeared to have been hammered in during installation, and were distorted by nearly a thousandth at the top of the guide.  You can't hone that out on a guide, so they had to be replaced.  This is the second set of Coon heads I've had this problem with.  Warning to the other guys out there who have Coon heads; check your valve guides!  If your shop doesn't catch that during the valve job, you could be in for a nasty surprise when running the engine.

Finally, on Thursday, both heads passed a pressure check, so the shop finished the valve job and did a flow study on the heads.  This was another big surprise.  I had purchased some of the hollow stem Ferrea valves to run on these heads, and had also given my shop a sample intake and exhaust of the Manley valves I had run previously.  The Ferreas were very attractive due to their light weight; they are about 20% lighter than the Manley valves, which of course is a huge deal for valvetrain control.  Unfortunately, they were way, way down on flow numbers compared to the Manleys, with exactly the same valve job.  I will put a post in the technical forum detailing the differences, but as an example, at .800" lift on the intake the Manleys flowed 455 cfm, but the Ferreas only flowed 426 cfm.  That is a major difference.

Another hurdle I had to overcome appeared last Sunday, when I was trying to assemble the short block.  The first piston wouldn't go in the hole, despite all the coaxing I could muster.  I finally figured out that the second rings were not the correct ones.  They had a radial width of 0.170", and they were supposed to have been back cut to 0.145".  When installed in the piston and compressed, the ring groove in the piston wasn't deep enough to let the ring go all the way in.  So much for assembling the short block last weekend.  I got the pistons and rings through Blair Patrick, so I called him last Sunday to let him know what I'd found out, and he called CP and Total Seal on Monday to get the new second rings going.  They were supposed to ship directly to me via 2-day service for delivery on Thursday, but instead they got shipped to Blair!  He overnighted them to me so I finally got them on Friday.  With the heads, this gave me all the parts I needed to start getting the big SOHC put together.  Two weeks before the start of Drag Week LOL!

Also on Wednesday this week, I got the email from Hot Rod saying that enough people had dropped out so that the Galaxie could attend.  Sheesh, what a bummer.  I emailed them back and told them the car couldn't make it. 

Yesterday I had help all afternoon and into the evening from BradFORD and my friend Steve P.  Steve is going to come with us to Drag Week this year as well.  In the morning I'd planned to get some of the last things done in the engine compartment of the Mach 1, and then work on getting the SOHC together while Brad and Steve worked on getting the EFI system installed.  As usual, things didn't quite go according to plan, and I was working on the engine compartment stuff with Brad and Steve until mid afternoon.  Here's a photo of the engine compartment at this stage:


 
At this point I was going to start the SOHC, but when Brad pulled the EFI harness off the dyno it was obvious that it needed some cleaning up before we could put it in the car.  The only one who could really do that was me.  So, while Brad worked on getting the MS3X box and the big bypass capacitor mounted under the dash, I laid the wiring harness out on the floor and started to untangle and organize it.  Turned out to be a three hour job.  While I was sitting there on the floor I had a flashback to doing something similar with a stock Mustang wiring harness back in the early 1980s.  I remember thinking back then, "Boy, it sure would be nice to have a big shop, and maybe a 4X8 table, where I could lay all this stuff out and work on it without sitting on the floor!"  Well, now I have a big shop, and I also have a big 4X8 table.  The shop is a mess, and the table is stacked with parts and tools, so I'm still sitting on the floor organizing a wiring harness LOL!  Old habits die hard, I guess...

After getting the MS3X box and cap mounted, Brad cleaned up some other interior wiring items and then he and Steve assembled the rest of the headers underneath the car while I was finishing the harness.  Brad, Steve and I spent the rest of the evening on Saturday getting the wiring harness threaded through the firewall and hooked up.  I was in the shop until midnight working on that last night, and there is still quite a bit more to do on the harness.  BradFORD could finish it up, but he may not be able to make it over today.  I have to get going on the SOHC short block today, so depending on the schedule we may not be able to start the engine in the Mach 1 today as I had planned.  Two weeks from today is the Drag Week registration and test 'n tune.  We still have a shot to make it with both cars, but it is getting very, very tight.  I will try to post an update tonight on the work accomplished today, and see how things are looking for the next week.

cdmbill2:
Jay, you are a picture of perseverance in the face of adversity. I'm sure you'll them there, the HR looks great in the bay of the Mach 1.

I have had to drop a number of things off my prioritized lists to get to something reasonable before we head out on the sixth and Lord knows there will be more deletions before we head out.

See you in Tulsa.

jayb:
Hope you're right Bill, but it isn't getting any easier LOL!

Today my friend Steve S. came over with the modified shaker hood scoop; he stretched the opening so that it is 3" high to let more air into the scoop, and also built the base plate that sits on the throttle bodies.  It needed a little bit of a trim after the test fit, so Steve took care of that, and then we discussed the rest of the fiberglass hood modifications.  I wanted to make a foam block that sat up on the top of the hood and then surrounded the shaker, so that the bottom of the shaker was flush with the top of the foam block.  From there, the foam block could be used as a guide for the fiberglass work, and then discarded later.  Steve and I discussed this, and after settling on the dimensions Steve went to work on building the foam block from some 2" foam construction board that I had upstairs.  While he did that, I got started on the short block assembly.  About an hour later Steve had the block done and fitted to the top of the fiberglass hood.  We took another 15 minutes to look that over and decide some more details, then Steve grabbed the hood, the foam block, and the shaker and took off for home.  He is going to get the glass work finished up this week and rough in the bodywork so we can use the hood at the track next Saturday.  Steve is really good at this kind of stuff, and I'm looking forward to seeing the hood when it is roughed in.  After the trip to the track, Steve will finish the bodywork and paint the hood to match the rest of the car, so at least that particular project is in capable hands and I don't have to worry about it.

Just about the time Steve was leaving Joel showed up, and I got him going on some of the wiring on the car.  He and I were commenting on how long the simplest tasks seem to take.  Joel had to run two #10 wires from the battery in the trunk up to the EFI box, stopping next to the box to hook up to a bypass capacitor before continuing onto the MS3X.  It took Joel a good two hours to finish what seemed like it should be a 15 minute task.  But between fishing the wires through the quarter panel area of the car and running them all the way up under the dash, soldering on connectors at both ends, fighting with the wire connections to the capacitor, etc., it was a lot of work.  Joel went on to do more wiring under the hood after the power wire project; here he is working away on the car:



While Joel did this I continued on the shortblock.  By the time Joel left around 6:00, I had the shortblock finished up; here's a photo:



I spent an hour or so in the house after that, getting re-acquainted with my family, who I haven't seen much of for the last few weeks.  Then it was back to the shop to work on the SOHC heads.  Here the next delay appeared; in inventorying the parts I needed to assemble the heads, I found that I had the wrong spring seats.  The ones I had were too big in diameter to fit the heads, so I couldn't start the assembly tonight as I had planned.  As a result of this I decided to go through and inventory all the parts I needed for this engine, to make sure I had everything else needed, and that it was right.  An hour or so later I had all the parts collected, so at this point I don't think there's any other parts shortages that can hold me up.  I placed an order tonight with Summit for next day delivery of the spring seats, so I should have those on Tuesday.  Joel is coming over tomorrow night and hopefully between the two of us we can get all the wiring finished up on the Mach 1.  Even though we didn't fire it today we are very close, and I feel pretty good about our chances for making the track next Saturday.  That is important, because Joel needs to get his license passes in before Drag Week.  My schedule at this point is to try to get the SOHC together by the end of the night Friday, put it on the dyno Saturday night after we get back from the track, dyno the engine on Sunday, and stuff it in the Shelby clone on Labor Day.  There won't be too much to do on that car, because it is going together exactly the same way it came apart, except hopefully it won't leak water into the oil this year, like it did last year.  Although with those welded up, porous heads, I don't know.  We'll have to see what happens.  I'll try to do a mid-week report this week, if there is time.  Drag Week competition starts two weeks from tomorrow! 

thatdarncat:
Work continues as Dragweek gets closer. The Mach 1 is almost ready to fire. I took a photo of the engine compartment tonight, and although it doesn't look much different than Jay's photo from a few days ago lots of projects have been crossed off the list. Throttle linkage has been fabricated by BradFORD and Jay. Joel has been working on shock tower braces. Hoses and wiring continue to be hooked up and so on. As Jay has posted before everything consumes more time than one would think. A few things are still temporary here since Jay thought we might be ready to test fire tonight so don't be too critical.

And here's the braintrust talking over what's left to do.

JamesonRacing:
Great to hear progress is being made, should be a wicked ride! 

Had a question about the throttle linkage.  The picture shows a bearing block between the throttle bodies...does the bearing block float, or how does it adjust to the change in linkage vertical height as the linkage sweeps through it travel?

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