Projects DRAG SNAKE "Vintage Terror!"

Gotta change your Luck Randell
Peel off that Tick Bite sticker off your back window, then pore in a couple of shots of Saltys Moonshine in your tank and call me in the morning
That should get you in the 12s

Tickety Boo is sold so get ready to race Hacksaw

 

Yep. She is nearly ready to go back in. Hopefully this weekend will see her alive again and kicking. We had to wait on some fittings but they are due tomorrow.

 

Eitherway. Lol

 

I did peel it off, hated to but it was fading a bit. Cheap decal. I know a guy that can help you with that next time around....LMAO.

Is the Hacksaw ready to roll?

 

Well she is back in place as of 10 p.m. last night. We are ready to start putting it all back together this week hoping to make it to the Route 66 Festival Car show here in Springfield, MO Saturday.


This was our test bed, LOL. We had issues again with the bearing cushion. When we slid the trans on Sunday morning, very certain of ourselves and the process, it slid right on but stopped about a quarter of an inch from flush. After the last issue I stopped to have a good look right there and then. AND of course, the bearing was already touching the fingers. Now we had, as shown by our calculations two .050 spacers on it. So we pulled it back apart, took both of them off and we tried again. Same outcome.

The crazy thing was still making contact with the stupid fingers. So we pulled it all apart and put the 3/8" spacer back between the trans and the bellhousing and put it back together. This time I could spin the bearing so it was not in contact. I took a .035 feeling gauge and tried to stick it between the fingers and bearing and it would not go. I tried a .025 and it went. I tried a .028 and it went but was tight. So I figure we are in the neighborhood of .025 ish, looking for .150. We spent a while to contemplating (if you were anywhere within a state or two you probably smelled the wood burning). LOL!

To start with Dad found some huge flat 2" washers with that were just under a .120. We thought about just putting them between the block and the scatter shield plate. We could have probably got away with it but really hated to half-ass anything at this point. The scattershield plate was 1/8" thick and then suddenly it hit me. I have another one of them. When all of these parts started rolling in several years ago we didn't get a scatter shield even though there was one listed. I called them about it but didn't hear anything back and in the meantime I took the part numbers and snagged one from JEGS because I needed it in there as were setting up mounts etc.

Then about a year later, out of the blue one arrived from Ford Racing. Anyway we just tossed it on the shelf (the special FORD shelf where I am pretty sure misordered or miss fitting Ford parts go to die around our bowtie shop). Anyway sure enough I had one and it is .125 which puts us just over the .150 cushion mark by the hair of our chinny chin chin, but I will take it! The only modification I had to make was a precautional cut. The starter works perfect and butts up against and bolts through the current scatter shield. I didn't want to move it out any, not even an 1/8" so we marked it and cut it out were the starter goes, slapped them all back on and we are ready to rip tater chip!

We hooked it all up there on the floor and bled the clutch. I took some doing to get all the air out of it but in just a bit, this is what we got!

https://youtube.com/shorts/7vnPUmUexHY?feature=share

As I said in the opening by the end of the night we had the engine and trans back in the car and bolted in place.

 

Go Man Go
Hope this problem is in the past.

 

I am hoping we are good to go for a while. Not trying to jinx us or anything but at this point, we are sort of running out of things to go wrong, outside of seatbelts expiring! LMAO. Of course I know that is not true at all but I think we have driven it enough to work most of the minor bugs out of it here and there. But the clutch area has been a major plague for this car from the beginning.

Most of the craziness I sort of expect. I mean I hear folks at shows say they restored or built their car from the ground up. But in our case there could not be any better description. I mean here is the ground from one of the early posts. LOL Something else I have noticed, my garage floor was much cleaner back then!


That photo reminds me of something my Uncle said of my Grandfather (who was an amazing carpenter and journeyman). After his death folks were reminiscing and my Uncle ask my mother if she remembered him building her bedroom set. (Which by the way was still in my grandparents house). Twin bed head and foot board, large chest of drawers and vanity with a mirror and drawers all from cherry. It was so nice, I had no idea he had built it. Mom says yes, I remember when I picked the trees!

Every once in a while I glance back through some of the early stuff. Basically when I am feeling down about the car or some issue we are having. It always makes me feel better seeing the daunting tasks in front of us at any point in the build versus our refinement issues we have in the present.


We have come a long way.

 

Well she is all back together again and ready to roll but I think we are going to skip out on the SPAM Drags at Mokan. We fought all week to get it back together and ready and now that we are there, I just don't have the energy to drag it down there race. I think we are going to hit the big swap meet at the Fairgrounds in the morning and see what kind of trouble we can get into there.

 

I assume you checked for disc clearance when fully depressed? How much at each disc?

 

Might want to look for some engine zippers at the swap meet.

 

Huge turnout at the Springfield swap meet Friday. Spent $4 on car parts and $60 on wife stuff lol. good exercise.

 

At least she went with you!

 

Wow big spender I only spent $2 on a taillight lens I needed it certainly was a lot of walking

 

Man we really messed up. We should have gone to MOKAN. All I ended up with on Saturday from the swap meet were sore feet and set of taillights for the Coupe. Spent a grand total of $10 not counting the kettle corn. LOL

It sounds like it was a killer day at the SPAM, sorry we didn't make the trip. Hope to be there for Funny Car Chaos in a couple of weeks. AND I totally missed the fact that folks were meeting at the Hotel on Friday night as usual. Yep I am pretty bummed today seeing what we missed. Sorry Carl, we should have been there.

 

There were a boatload of folks at the swap meet this year, but not a great selection of things to buy. Unless of course you were there Thursday afternoon fighting the other vendors for the good stuff!

I had a bunch of stuff to get rid of so I stuck it out through Saturday. I wish I had gone to the drags also... the shoppers Saturday were not very interested. I did sell out more-or-less so that was great. Next year I'm skipping Saturday and going to the drags!

 

Well I think we are done. My plans for the Cobra, at the moment, are take the body off, hang it in the rafters and take everything else and build one badass Model A Coupe!

 

Say What!!!

 

It's not April 1st!

 

Randall, you're not coming down with that "FUCK IT" syndrome thing that's going around did you! The building another car vaccine doesn't work! Side effects are twice as bad as the original syndrome! Larry

 

Fix
Or
Repair
Daily

 

Don't just leave us hanging. At least explain the what and why.

 

There should be a crisis center hotline in your area ... just sayin'

Might be worth "dropping a dime"

 

Just park it by the curb; someone will take it.....

 

This thing has just about wore me slick! So we get it all back together AGAIN. If you have been reading it you know what we did. I just gave up on trying to fit their parts and took something I knew worked and made it fit. I have no problem with it. We floor tested it (you saw the video). It was working perfectly so we went for it.

After we got it all back together, we had some issues bleeding the clutch, we just couldn't get a good pedal. It was mushy at the top but felt good at the bottom. I really thought we still had some air in it. I drove it a bit, nothing hard and it shifted. I am thinking if we just get this thing bled good we are in business. So last night we bleed it again. Kicked out a bit of air and actually got a good pedal. I am on top of the world. I drive it around the block and even at low RPM it is dragging a bit going into second. I made a few laps, tried pushing harder etc., pretty much the same deal.

I am not happy at all. So I get back under the car with my light and Zoe in the seat and she depresses the clutch and man it moves in and out no problem. And it looks like to me it is sinking itself pretty deep in the fingers. Originally, Ram said their throw only moved about .75". In fact it has a keeper at the end to keep it from over extending. I can see we are at least moving that deep if not deeper.

So Zoe pumps it a few more times and I am watching it and finally I asked her to look where the pedal is as she is pushing. I said start pushing the pedal down and when I say stop tell me where it is at in relation to firewall etc. She starts moving it and it immediate shoves the fingers in, I said stop. She is says, what? ...it hasn't even started. What she meant was it had not gotten to the solid clutch pedal feel. It had only moved about halfway to the firewall.

I said go ahead and push it on down, she did and I watched it. When the clutch pedal felt like it was really pushing hard and what I had assumed was the main movement was just the opposite. Pushing through what felt like the real pedal was after the main movement and after watching it a few times I was able to see that harder push only went an 1/8 of an inch or so deeper.

I sat for quite a while. Running over in my brain what could be causing all of this. Then it hit me. It is the bearing width. The original RAM Unit that came from Tremec had a much smaller face, the second slimmer unit from RAM had the same size bearing on it. The one on the McCleod is three times as wide:

The Mcleod is designed for a clutch where the clutch fingers are set in a wider configuration, our RAM unit has the clutch finger tips much closer in. So while this throw out is working perfectly in the beginning (in that it makes contact with compression points on the RAM fingers) but as it pushes them in it quickly gets to a point where (because of its width) the outer face area comes in contact with the fingers or bottoms out on them higher up. This totally changes the strength it needs to continue to push them etc. It totally explains everything.

I talked with RAM this morning and Mike is amazing. He had not seen my transmission and simply sent me what the specs called for, not really his fault. After seeing photos of the front of my case he was floored. That is not what it is supposed to look like! The reason there were no real holes tapped in the case from Tremec was because on this transmission there is supposed to be a quill tube pressed in there. If you remember back to the stupid little aluminum adapter that Silver Sport sent with the trans in the first place... well apparently they removed the factory quill tube and came up with the stupid adapter to go in its place. In fact instead of being the model as marked on this trans and sold to me, this unit (while brand new) is actually the unit for early 2000-2004 Shelby Cobras.

Had RAM know this (rather had I know this or the difference there in) none of this BS would have happened. So what to do? ....well the car is coming all back apart again, which I absolutely hate. I said as we were putting it back together this month if I have to do it again I am done!

However after brainstorming with Mike here is what we came up with. Tear it all back down. Take the Mcleod unit out but since I have the case all drilled and helicoiled, drill out the aluminum plate so it can be put in place and properly screwed to the case. Then take a new RAM bearing cover, measure and take enough off the end so it does not contact the back of the outer clutch plate which is the issue that caused all of this nonsense. Then install a new RAM throwout bearing on it as we destroyed the last one, plumb it and put it back together with correct bearing cushion.

I guess we will give it one more try. Mike took amazing care of me by selling the all the new stuff we needed etc. at cost and covered the shipping. I thought that was a pretty stand up thing to do since none of this was really his fault.

 

Consider (my) plan "B" and yes, I know you have some tight packaging issues.
Richmond Super T-10 and mechanical linkage and old school Hurst Competition Plus shifter, just seems too easy to me but I know you are heavily invested in both money and effort with your current setup.

 

That’s why I like an external slave cylinder better. Just saying…..

 

Randall, I know your pain. I have lost count on how many times I or my customers have order kits that were supposed to be engineered for our applications only to end up with a Hodge podge mess of parts that I had to re-engineer to work. You buy the kit or system thinking you're going to save time and money and not doing either. You know where here to support and cheer you on! And of course, to throw in a few smart-ass cheap shots along the way. lol Larry

 

Randal is building a F word car "just saying"

 

He just wants the thrill of going REAL fast!!!! lol

 

Ouch! That just sucks... I tend to agree with DDDenny on this one.