Projects DRAG SNAKE "Vintage Terror!"

Randal,
If it's any consolation, watching you struggle with the clutch has convinced me that I will be using an external slave cylinder with the option to change over to mechanical linkage on my track roadster.
I give you credit for sticking to it, but I can't put myself through that. I'm 74 and would be too old to drive it.

 

I don't think he has room for that.

 

I feel your pain. In 1986 I switched over to big block Chevy engines from small blocks. Put in a LS6 and a week later I blew the crank out of the block onto the road. I scared up a new block, crank and rods. Put it back together by Wednesday for cruise night with the club. Racing a buddy I broke the crank and wiped out the cam, pushrods, valves, rockers and 2 pistons on 2 cylinders which cracked both heads. Scared up another engine and was back out on Saturday night where I proceeded to spin the rod, main and cam bearings. I was going broke really fast! Time to slow down and take a good look at all the stuff I had screwed up in one month and about $15,000.00 in parts and machine work.
The only common parts were the valve covers, carb and intake, water pump, distributor, alternator, power steering pump and cheap Black Jack headers. Nothing there that would cause the kind of problems I had. So my attention turned to the big pile of blown up shit. After looking at broken stuff for three days and figuring and sorting out the collateral damage I came to the conclusion that I had no idea what was going on. Then I had the brain storm (more like a wet fart) to look at the oil filters and started cutting them open. The first thing I noticed is the oil in them was like asphalt. The second thing I noticed is there was a lot of coke like burnt oil, hard and crusty. Then I started thinking all the engines were hot tanked, washed out with water and soap by me and all oil passages were scrubbed with my gun cleaning brushes. So I was confident it was not old crap in the engine. So then I wondered what else would cause this in the oil filter. So I crawled under the Camino again and looked at the filter and the area around it. #1 header tube got pretty close to the filter but I figured there was enough room. I built yet another completely new engine and got a new set of Hooker Super Comp headers with a 2” primary. Put it all in and never had another problem. With all the engines I had great oil pressure until they grenaded. It was the damned cheap set of headers causing all the problems! So see Randall we have all been there. Buck up!

 

Maybe you need to re-engineer the plans on this thing. First reconfigure the driver area to fit Zoe. Second, the 1st step should allow you more room for clutch engagement needs, Third, order new harnesses and fit them to Zoe, Fourth, Zoe will drive it like she stole it and win constantly. Fifth - Problems solved!! And on top of that your baby girl will think you're the greatest Dad ever! lol Don't you love it when a plan comes together! Larry

 

Larry I offered to give it a test and tune but noooooooo I thought he might need a real stick shift driver to teach him how to shift lmao but realistically after I seen the mess he has I feel for the guy but I think he has got it figured out once he got some proper info on what he has

 

Well I am in a better mood today, I think we are going to hit a big car cruise in the a.m. then bring it back home and start tearing into it again. I feel bad, the good folks that run the Dirty South Gassers made special last minute concessions for us to join them this weekend at MOKAN's Funny Car Chaos and of course we had to pull out that...just another Urban Legend Appearance! LMAO!

Mike from RAM told me yesterday that it is sort of good news and bad news. The bad news of course not knowing what model we actually had caused all of the crazy nonsense. However the good news is as far as he was concerned, the Tremec Model I have is what he considers the best one they ever built. Probably the reason Silver Sport started with this model. I do remember Jack Silver saying this was the last one they had to sell and from that point forward the lower gear set that is in this unit would no longer be available. Mike said if given a choice of any of the Tremec units, this is the one he would choose. So that made me feel better.

We have a race in Bethany, MO in two weeks, and I am bound and determined to be there. There was a mix up on the parts coming from RAM, I was going help out a bit with the shipping and have it all overnighted but it accidentally got shipped out standard UPS and of course with the Holiday, it will not be here now until Tuesday or Wednesday but I really can't complain.

 

Well Randal since you’re waiting on parts you can get started on the A coupe! Lol

 

Take a well deserved breather Randall.
By the way what is the status of dads Thames?

 

That is interesting I had a friend with a 454 in a 66 Chevelle. It lost two new motors in a short period. Always bearing problems. we never could figure out why.

 

Just got the Pistons last week, they out being balanced. It is our Winter Project this year.

 

Tough lesson to learn and expensive too. Never buy cheap headers and use a PF30 GM oil filter. A good set of headers solved my problems and for extra insurance and clearance a PF25.

 

Great write up in Street Scene .Congratulations Randall

 

Thanks Hoop! Good to hear from you. Hope everything is well up your way!

 

Doing great. Thank You

 

Being a Feature Car is pretty cool, I think Louie (NSRA Photographer Plus) really digs the car. It made its NSRA debut last year and I think he shot and mention the Cobra in all three of his normal weekend walk around videos. This year we were idling around the fairgrounds (the only speed this car has) LMAO! And I see Louie going to one knee to take a photo.

Now I don't want to give him a stupid wave and mess up his shot so we just roll right on by. Then a few minutes later on the other side of the Fairgrounds I see him aiming at the car again, same deal for me, a no look pass! LOL. We put it back in our parking space and have a seat and I see him headed for our tent. He said, "Man I have been waving and trying to get you to stop all morning!" LOL. oooops!

He asked about using the Cobra as a Feature Car in an upcoming issue and of course we were all in. We had to be back at the Fairgrounds the next morning by 6 a.m. (you know photographers, always chasing the perfect light). There were two of us there that morning, the Dragsnake and a killer dark green, survivor, Hemi GTX, I think it was a 1965. The owner of that car asked after his session when the car might appear and I heard November or December maybe even after the first.




But last month I was flipping through my copy and there was the Hemi car. To be honest I figured that was the end of it. My guess was there is an editor or two that take all the photos and stories and decide which cars to use etc. I really figured there are two or three photo shoots per event and then they pick and choose etc. At that point I felt it was an honor to have even been considered. Then out of the blue the September edition drops and what do you know!






It was pretty neat for the car to be chosen. I mean when you think of all the crazy cool cars the NSRA boys see in a year, to be one of just 24 of them chosen for a feature is pretty special. Actually it is a down right honor and for the most part I am stills speechless about it. The car has been and continues to be a pain in the ass but little things like this certainly help to ease the suffering a bit.

Right now it is all blown back apart and on the garage floor again, We started playing around with the new RAM throwout kit just before lunch, I will update you here in a bit on the progress.

 

The GTX did not come out until 67. I had a 70.

 

Congrats on the magazine spread!

 

Congratulations indeed. If you know anything about Louie he has a thing for the unusual ( he drives an sbc powered 40 Ford pickup, did I mention he’s a little nuts?) All jokes aside Louie’s a good dude.

 

Great Cobra!

 

Well, I guess the next step will be to raise the roof line to clear the "Big Head "you got now! lol Congrat's ! that's pretty cool! Larry

 

Larry he built that into this thing look back through the thread he knew from the beginning this “urban legend” would only be able to idle around (well part of the time anyway lmao) and photograph very well just remember my car hasn’t graced the pages of magazines because it actually races and isn’t slow enough to be caught by the camera lmfao

 

Oh don't worry Jackson, we are going to make a pass one of these days. Besides I hear the old Poison Ivey may have a magazine spread of its own coming soon!


Damn I crack myself up! Now that is funny. I don't care who you are! LOL

 

Alright! Smack Talk is back! Only reason to build race cars anyhow, lol

 

Good one Randall.

 

Well here we go again! LOL

So to start with if you look closely to the left you can see the original housing which is identical to the new one in place in the photo. So we removed the Mcleod stuff and dug out the original Silver Sport adapter, fortunately it was hanging out on the used parts shelves. I decided to use the original as a test mule for drilling the holes etc.

I put it in place real quick just to see if any holes matched up. Believe it or not two of them aligned perfectly. We also had to make sure all of the hole choices for the floater pin were in the seven o'clock-ish range. The racing gods must be smiling on us this afternoon because that is exactly where they were after aligning the two bolt holes that worked.

Now I had to drill them out a bit to get the large bolts through and then marked and drilled the other two holes and test bolted it down without the adapter. You can also see where I marked the tube there on the end to be cut off. This will prevent it from bottoming out on the back of the rear clutch plate like last time!


Then we took the aluminum adapter, put the test housing on it and rotated it around until none of the original holes were showing, marked it and drilled it to match the test housing. We also marked and drilled out where the floater pin screws in so it did not bottom out on it etc. Then we took the test housing and marked and drilled the new one. Above is where I originally thought the floater pin would go but after test fitting the throwout assembly it hit the bolt head there and would not slide all the way back. So we had to take it apart and redrill the adapter so the pin could go in the next hole down.


We test fit the housing and the adapter etc. I tightened it down and we took feeler gauges around the inside of the housing between it and the shaft. It was as close to perfectly centered as you could get so we took it all apart again, put thread lock on the bolts, reinstalled it and slid the throwout assembly in place.

Now my nemesis, the freaking bearing cushion! I hate this crap with a passion. I think I would rather block sand a car than try and take these stupid simple measurements. The first thing we did was measure from the mounting surface of the trans case or actually the spacer on the case as shown above.


Then we measured from the housing mount surface to the clutch fingers. We did it a couple of times and ended up using a .060 shim. When we did the math that gave us a cushion of .165. We are looking for .150 according to the manufacturer. However I have had several discussions with folks in the know that .100 is a better number. We put in a .030 shim, and double checked our measurements and math again and that gave us .135 which is close enough. About that time I looked over at the test mule housing and that is exactly what we used the first time, so we feel pretty good.

We also double checked the length of the housing tube and according to our match we have nearly .5" between it and the backing plate. Perfect.

 

I gotta admit Randall that’s pretty good but remember your car won’t out run a turtle lol even if my car isn’t as fast a cheetah it’s still faster than yours lmao

 

^^^^^ Makes coming on the Hamb worthwhile! lol

 

I figure that .135 [cushion] is for clutch pedal free play, usually about 1.000" pedal travel. You only have to depress the clutch pedal far enough to get the required disc clearance for shifting; at which point there should be a positive [sturdy] pedal stop. You have to drill a well placed hole in the bell housing [for convenience at the bottom] , 3/4" if your good; if like me then a 1/2" x 1" slot. Have the Zo press the pedal while you check clearance and adjust pedal stop to suit. Clutch brand should tell you what clearance is necessary.

 

Man I miss the old Meltdown Threads. Now THAT was some serious smack talk!

 

I wish I could get motivated. Such a beautiful night here. Just sitting around in the shop listening to 70s Rock n Roll and eating chocolate covered peanuts! Waiting for the garden nomes to put this Turtle Racer back together! LMAO.