Projects Austin Somerset Gasser Build (DragNasty)

The Austin will stop. We spent most of the day running hard brake lines and getting all the correct fittings in place etc. But we started by installing the pedal platform for good this time.




The quick access door in the firewall that has been screwed shut for nearly a year worked perfectly. We just had to drill exit holes for the 3/16 hard lines. As you can see they are wearing split rubber hoses to protect them. After they exit the firewall, they drop straight down into the frame area where the front "X" member begins.


Right after dropping through the frame, the rear line heads straight to the back down the inside of the frame and the front line makes a quick detour through the line lock.

It is a very nice place for the line lock solenoid as it is completely tucked away and out of sight but very easy to access when needed.


One quick change or upgrade are the brake hoses. Originally we had a factory style fitting and rubber hose but recently I opted to change them out for braided lines at all four corners. After all the fittings were double checked we bled both systems. Then after tightening two fitting we missed when we double checked all the fittings, we finished the job. She will stop!

 

We rolled the car off the lift and out into the sunshine for the first time in quite a while. We towed it up the driveway and double checked the brakes. Then we sat in lawn chairs and smiled for a while.


My neighbor said, there appears to be a very large motor in my driveway with some sheet metal attached to it. LOL!




While it sat in the shade we decided to go ahead and install the tail lights for real as that one on the passenger side is just stuck in the hole. We soldered our home made pigtails to the sockets and got them ready to put in place but then got distracted by the parachute.


Of course we had to take the chute out to mount the bag...kind of a pandora's box if you ask me!


There is Dad getting ready for attempt one to put it back in the bag. At least I think this is attempt one...I sort of lost count! LOL.


But somehow before the sun went down, both tail lights were in and the chute was packed!

 

We also dumped the better portion of a case of the good stuff in the Doug Nash and the 9 inch.


AND....We created the little toy below from the original GM distributor that has been riding around in the back of my truck for a good year now. Looks like we are about to prime the motor...it won't be long now before we get ran out of the neighborhood with noise abatement procedures maybe even the County!

 

More of the purple stuff up top today, breaking in oil. We are figuring 7 quarts with the cooler and lines etc.


We also had to address the valve cover vent issue (That I created!)...as usual. If you have been following along you probably remember the cool vintage valve cover vents I installed a while back.


As you can see looking in side the cover, they were a pretty easy bolt on addition and of course, I drilled a few extra holes to make them functionals. THEN I decided to go with the crank case header evac. system. So before we wrap the top end up, I needed to block the holes in vents.


The quickest way to do with what we had on hand this afternoon was just cut an aluminum plate the same size as the vent mounting area. Then just bolt the vents back on with the aluminum plate between it the valve cover. Easy breezy.


After it was all back together, we took our new little tool and primed the engine. It seems to have gone really well.


It held 60 plus pounds on the drill for quite a while with no leaks. We spent the rest of the afternoon and into the evening working on wiring which is a serious pain in the backside. Our plan is to fire it this coming weekend.

 

Video please?

 

Definitely with someone other than Dad running the camera. I still tease him about it, but when we took the Model "A" Pulp Friction to the H.A.M.B. Drags he took my smart phone down near the finish line to get videos. The first pass he shot the grass between the track and the pit fence. The second run he accidentally hit the screen reverse and while you HEAR the car make a nice pass, all you see is him staring at the phone with a look of panic while he tries to figure out why it is not shooting the track. And then this:



Yep that's his thumb over the lens and Model "A" screaming past on the last run.

 

Can not wait to hear this monster. When I fired the blown 406 in my coupe the first time, and with zoomies, the police came. Good times.

 

I have already warned the neighborhood!

 

Great job, keep us jazzed. Dick

 

Well at long last, today was the day. We fired the Austin for the first time. It sort of turned into a party and several friends popped over for the occasion (or at least for the Steak)! Saturday, Dad and I went to breakfast at 7 a.m. and put together a punch out list to fire the Austin the next day that took us all of 12 hours to complete. This morning all I had left on the list was check all the fuel fittings, wire up the tach, and fill it with water before the scheduled 1 p.m. start up.

Like I said it was a normal day for us in the shop and in like fashion I started filling the radiator with the drain cock completely removed. My favorite song was blasting on the radio or I might of actually heard my error before I washed the garage floor down good. I checked and double checked all the fuel fittings (and there are a bunch of them)! All of them except two small plugs:


I never really thought about them until we tested the fuel pump and they came to life as two large E85 geysers. Actually it would not have been so bad if the fuel regulator was not adjusted backwards. Instead of turning it down to nearly nothing, we allowed that huge fuel pump back there free range!

After all the fuel was cleaned up on the outside we decided we better pull the plugs just incase we dumped a bunch inside as well...no sense in hydraulic-ing this thing right here in front of God and guests etc. Good call too...after doing some starter spin air drying and a bit of gentle "re-lubing" we put everything back and prepared ourselves to fire it. Dad hit the button and it backfired twice! Something was obviously not right.

We pulled the plugs again along with the cap. We ran it back to top dead center and the rotor told the story, it was exactly, 180 degrees off from the original mark we had made on the intake. Way back when we set that thing originally, I was having to crank it by hand and Dad was making the call at the plug hole. Some how we got it set on exhaust...but no issue. For the moment and to prove myself right, we just put the cap back on and adjusted the plug wire placement to our new found TDC. A few minutes later and this is what we got!

 

After we ran it above, we did a real quick check for leaks etc. then fired it back up and put some heat in it to seat the rings. Everything went really well. It is hard to describe the feeling when you fire something you built for the first time. Sort of like rubbing sticks together and creating fire. You step back and marvel a bit that you did this! It is even more rewarding when it sounds as bad ass as the Austin.

I am not sure what is up with the headers but as you probably noticed, we basically burned the majority of the VHT paint right off them. I didn't put a heat gun to them but we were purposely running fairly fat for the initial fire up. So much for white! They do however have a nice roasted marshmallow color to them. I guess, as much as I hate to do it, I will send them back to the ceramic coaters again (if you remember back to that debacle). I suppose we will just go for the polished look, it beats roasted marshmallow!

We are going to tune it a bit this week and try to get it ready to move by Saturday to start breaking in the clutch. We can not Dyno tune it until the clutch is properly broken in. We are hoping to be ready to at least make a few test runs May 14th during the Nostalgia Drags at Ozark Raceway Park in Rogersville, MO.

 

Wow that sounded great. Enjoy the summer in that bad boy.
We finally got home ,7,685 miles on our adventure.

 

Car sounds pretty good man are you sure it's fat and what's the timing set at if the timing is way off and it's lean it it will certainly baste the headers congrats on the fire up wish I could have been there but I was pulling the Trans outta my daily driver cause the clutch decided to take a dump on me thurs night I hate working on my daily

 

Well my blower guy said it was on the fat side. We did start with a smaller jet than I expected for E85 but my carb guy said that is where he wanted to start. We set the overall (Crank Trigger) timing at about 30. 28 to 32 was suggested by Weiand so we just dropped it the middle. It fired and died nicely. I don't really know if the headers was 100% heat or not. You know they we're ceramic coated but looked terrible so I had the shop blast the ceramic outside off so I could just paint them. But I painted over the aluminumized coat...that may be the the issue.

 

Right on I'm not really familiar with e85 and that's a good timing to set it at especially on initial startup I run a skosh more timing but I do have a boost retarder as well

 

Oh and I nearly forgot the most important line on that knock out list Saturday, to fire the Austin was install the HAMB ALLIANCE tag on the firewall. LOL!

 

Better to be fat and happy than lean and mean.

 

Looks and sounds good.

 

I can't remember what or where you said you had your headers done, if it was local or if you sent them off. But I had my turbo headers on the Camaro done by HPC way back in 2000 and they are STILL holding up! They used the "extreme" coating that was good for like 2,500°, but that has to be the only reason that mild steel tubing has lasted so long on that thing with the miles, heat and beatings that thing has had over the years! At the time, it only came in black and charcoal gray, so I got the gray, with a rougher texture. I can't find them on the web anymore, so I guess they went out of business, but I do see Jet Hot is still around and they have a white coating, and it's in OK City, so it should be a quick turnaround.
Just something to think about.

Oh, and congrats on the sexy sounds!! LoL!

 

Thats my kind of music!! Congrats on a job well done.

 

I have had a set in the past done by Jet Hot. I actually talked to them yesterday and they have a white coating now that is good to 2500 degrees. The only kicker is the coating is $800.00 and right now it will take three weeks. Springfield Powder Coating is now able to do white ceramic good to 2000 degrees for $175.00. I may give them a shot first.

 

I really wanted white on my zoomies, but have not seen any white coating that holds up or does not discolor. I went with the shiny silver. Hope you find some that works out.

 

I feel pretty confident in Jet Hot, they have been around for a long time and as I have said, I have used them in the past. But I am not jumping up and down to shell out $800 for them

 

...and last night it moved. IT'S ALIVE!
Still no throttle linkage hooked up...probably a good thing...might not be much left of Elm Street there if it was! Bled the clutch master cylinder last night and there is only one way to really test it....right?!

 

We will start calling you Freddie Kruger as you are driving the true "Nightmare on Elm Street"

 

So we hauled it to Springfield Thursday night and did some tuning on it. Adjusted the air bleeds and timing. We thought we had eyeballed it around 30 degrees for firing it up but the timing light said around 27. So we bumped it back to 30 and got the idle down to around a 1000 rpm, perfect for that amount of timing and breaking in the clutch etc.


We are all fairly impressed with it so far. It pulled 17" of vacuum at idle and held nearly 60 pounds of oil pressure. On demand it appears to push about 8 to 10 pounds of boost. I think we are ready to hit the road (or at least the parking lot).

 

Saturday Dad and I hit a local car show with his coupe and then spent the early evening installing the throttle cable. It is a Lokar unit and it went in without a hitch. I have a some photos I will ad later on.

 

Looks like you will have time to put some paint on it.

 

You bringing that beast to Bowling Green in June?

 

I hope so. This weekend we got a lot of the mechanical questions answered so we are really down to fine tuning and body work etc.