Projects Austin Somerset Gasser Build (DragNasty)

How much lift will those springs take before coil bind?

 

Glad you caught the Bubu! That kind of stuff can really screw with your head. Back to the great roll now! Gary

 

They are Howard 98826 - "Pacaloy" Mechanical Roller Springs. They coil bind at 1.150. At our install height of 2" we could lift as high a .825 however our max lift intake is .793 and max lift exhaust is .800.
Seat pressure is 275 at 2.00. with open pressure 805 at compression.

 

Sounds like you guys are having to much fun.
So now after you start it and run it some and you have some stretch in the chain where will it be?

 

James didn't you read, my new chain came from Switzerland! I have never heard of a Rolex wrist band stretching out? So I figure my timing chain won't either, RIGHT?

But hey, as long as it stretches in two degree increments we are gold!

 

You got that right, I thought my brain was going to explode after spinning that stupid thing for several hours! It was like a Wheel of Fortune game from hell! ....and we kept hitting BANKRUPT!

 

When I was the engine man on a 2 liter pinto powered sprint car I checked the cam timing every time the car came in the pits.
Now I played with the cam timing tell I found the sweet spot on this engine and after that I just made sure it was always at the sweet spot.
We did not run a cover over the timing belt so I was always worried that a dirt clod would make it jump.

 

So my timing chain cover came in today. It is a pretty cool piece from Comp Cams (guaranteed to keep dirt clods out). It came with its own cam button and shims to adjust it. The hole there in the middle is for a dial indicator to check cam end play. I am pretty excited to get this thing home and installed.

 

With a blower and those spring pressures a timing chain wont last. You really need a gear drive at this point. I would up the springs to 340 lbs. Remember there is alot of air pressure on the back side of the intakes. Buying a on head spring tester can be a life saver. The springs get installed new with good pressure. After just a few runs can drop 40 lbs very easy. Over revving a burnout will destroy a set in seconds. A tester can help you stay on top of things. You will find the intakes will get rotated out more frequently. They also make on head removers. Look up good vibrations and lsm tools.

 

Understood. Don't forget we are not running a ton of boost through this crazy thing, only 10 to 12 pounds. I do have a good on head spring tester and a pretty cool new valve lash tool from my cam designer, Roger Hurst (he invented it).

I am also very interested to see how these new Howard Pacaloy springs hold up (they have some pretty tall performance predictions from Howards)...they say they won't wear out as fast as others! LOL.

On the over rev precaution side of things, Dad is fabricating a cool little throttle stop tool that he can remove after the burnout (Personally I think he just wants to look like Austin Coil up there doing something important!) . As far as the gear drive, I understand it but I had a really good conversation with the tech guys as Cloyes and the true roller race billet set "Z" series is what they recommended. It is good through 8500 rpm plus and seat pressures 3 times what I have. Good call though, there are tons of things we are keeping an eye on this time around and that will certainly be one of them.

 

on our late model hemi the springs with a .015 shim came in at 350lbs new. after a few passes they dropped to 320 and held that for about six passes. they then dropped to 280lbs. we would remove the .015 shim and replace it with a .060 spring cup. this brought the pressure back up to 340lbs. they were good for another six passes. after that they went back down to 300. you should check to see if you have the room under the retainer to do the same thing. blown motors are very sensitive to spring pressure. once the springs drop their pressure and new ones go on it can actually be heard when the engine is running. it will sound nice and crisp again. you will probable find the exhaust springs can run for a whole season. I think you will find the chain to be a stretched out sloppy mess by the end of the season. I don't know of anyone with a blown race engine running a chain successfully. cloyes of course will say its alright because that's what they sell. a fixed idler gear drive will always be the gold standard. it could save you a lot of money down the road. its not just the boost but the spring pressure to. with that kind of spring pressure the engine can rotate by itself a little when turning it over by hand. there is a lot of stress on a chain trying to close the springs. chains just by their design stretch ask anyone running a chain on a motorcycle.

 

Well we shall see. Thanks for the input though, I can never get enough of it. I did however speak with Weiand, The Blower Shop, and Good Vibrations today and all of them agreed with my Cloyes chain choice...you never know!

 

technology is always changing. there may be something out there im not aware of. i hope it works out for you. can you keep us up to date on how its holding up? one more thing on the gear drive as a plus. if the engine should ever need a align bore the gear drive can be adjusted to make up for the crank moving up in the block. the chain cant do that.

 

Oh boy. Just got an email from UPS Tracking. The Hilborn EFI unit was just dropped off at the shop. I may have to slide out of here a bit early today to go play with it! Lol

Sent from my SM-G930V using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

What a cool pile a parts to play with... Holy cow we unpacked all the boxes tonight and lost the dinning room table almost immediately. Since it is all here now, I also unveiled my latest most favorite part, a vintage, autographed, Hilborn scoop I scored a while back...

 

SUPER COOL! Gary

 

cool. thats some very serious hardware. i hope you are on top of the safety items. the car is going to make huge power. be prepared.

 

Shit!!! I just wet my pants!!

 

Oh! Now you are just showing off.

 

So here is the deal on the scoop. I have a good friend I met about 17 years ago. I was doing the Motorsport Marketing gig and the company I worked for was the title sponsor of the NHRA Event at the Texas Motorplex in Ennis. We had a big tent in the midway and a suite etc. I had a ton of area employee volunteers working in the tent and when the pro rounds started, I sent them all to watch and I hung out in the tent. Of course all the fans were crammed back in the stands anyway so the midway was quite (just a handful of folks scattered about).

A few of them wander into the tent and were checking out the 1969 Camaro we were giving away that year. One of them was Raymond Beadle (a hero of mine from my childhood). After a bit he happened to glance over my direction and I said, "Sorry it isn't a Mustang II, even with all your amazing work to promote those little cars, they just never made it into the collectors market (yet)!" He just laughed and said you know who I am? I said of course I do. He said you know you are the first person to recognize me all day long. I said well let me see what I can do to remedy that for you.

I took him and his two guests up to our suite and introduced him to some die hard drag racing fans. I also tipped off my NHRA Marketing Rep that Raymond was in our suite etc. etc. At the end of the day he thanked me and I invited him back Sunday and came (as did his friends). One of them was a huge vintage race fan and over the years, when ever we were in Texas (Houston or Ennis) at a NHRA Event, he came to visit. The first time he just stuck his head in the tent to say hello. I said you want to go up to the suite? He said oh don't worry about it, that is Raymond Beadle stuff and laughed. I took him back up there anyway and did so at every one of our races he attended over the next 3 or 4 years. When I started building the Austin I sent him some photos and he has been an avid fan throughout.

A few months ago when I told him I was going to switch over to Hilborn Four Port Injection, he said he had something I needed. I said really what would that be. He said he had a Hilborn Scoop that reportedly once ran on a Mazmanian car (now you have my attention)! He acquired it as part of a trade deal a long time ago. Only after the deal was done, did the guy mention in passing, oh by the way that scoop came off one of Big John's cars. It had a few dings and chips in it but the guy had had it re-polished anyway and hung it on the wall. After my friend got it in 2005 he thought it would be cool to have Big John autograph it but he didn't get the chance. However a few years after John passed, he took it to Bakersfield with him. When he heard Bones was in the house that day he tracked him down and got it signed.





Anyway, a week or so after our conversation about the scoop, it showed up on my door step. There was a note along with it that said you can have this scoop but for one condition...you make it go fast again. DONE!

 

James did you notice that BLACK MSD cap in the pile there? I got that just for you buddy. Now all I have to do is paint my MSD Coil black and I should be in good standing with you... AND...although he didn't ask, it will probably make Jeff Koopmeiners happy as well.

 

Good job.....its all in the details.

 

That's a cool story right there

 

So just for argument - my buddy is determined that a gear drive uses 50HP over a chain drive. In my case the gear drive is my only option. I did a bunch of Googling on the subject and didn't find hard evidence of power lost from a gear drive thoughts?

 

Wow! No wonder those 40 H.P. Model A's were so underpowered.

 

When you put either one in an engine and turn it during assembly, I find no difference in torque required. Gary

 

So we may be talking apples and oranges here. A true performance gear drive such as one from Mildon (below) is a single fixed idle gear and it will not take any more HP than a chain drive to operate etc. This style is what we were debating about earlier.

However, the Dual idle gear units (the ones used to make blower drive noise more than anything else) I have heard rob a bit more HP but I can not imagine as much as 50.

 

Believe it not, THIS is the cool part of the story. That Sunday after the race in Texas, Raymond Beadle finds me and thanks me for taking such good care of them. He said I have something for you and handed me about the goofiest looking hat I have ever seen. It is a trucker style hat with a white mesh back half (which has yellowed a bit with age). It had a Hawaiian Flowery patterned on the front panels and the bill. Then it had a Blue Max Iron Cross Logo embroidered on the front (right over the Hawaiian print).

He said do you know what that is? I said looks like a hat. He said that is THE hat. I said what do you mean. He said a friend of his was at his shop during the winter of 1969. The guy was in the apparel and embroidery business. The guy told him that he needed a hat. Raymond said what kind of a hat. The guy said like a baseball cap. He said like STP or Goodyear has but with your new logo on it. You could sell them at the track.

Raymond said they all had a good laugh. The guy said he would make him some anyway for the heck of it. He asked them what kind of pattern they would want on the cap or if it should be a solid color. There was a Hawaiian print and Raymond said he chose it because one, it was the most ridiculous looking of all and two it reminded him of the Beach Boys.

So Pamona 1970 (debut of the Blue Max Car) Raymond says he had about 50 hats. They offered them for sale and he sold nearly all of them in a matter of minutes. The next round of hats were blue. After that he said, it didn't take long before all the big teams had hats and the rest is History. But that day he gave me one of the few remaining original caps that he had kept. One of my most prized possessions.

 

the dual idler gear drive makes its noise by having a lot of back lash in the gears. the noisier units have even more slop. the directions with the fixed idler say to thread a piece of news paper through the gears to set the lash. the fixed idler is far superior to the dual idler in a performance engine. I agree with the above comment that it cant use much hp if the engine can be turned by hand. the idler can be spun with air pressure from a blow gun. even if it did use some hp im ok with the trade off for exact timing.

 

The Grump didn't like them because of the harmonic that were transfer from the crank to the valve train.