I sure remember my first p*** in a front engine dragster. My thought I would make a 1/8 mile run in it to get comfortable with it. When that 1/8 mile marker came up I was still ready for more and looking for more throttle and made the full 1/4 mile p***.
Not sure if this is solid or not, I don't mess with LEDs. Seems there would be quite a few for 9 Volts. Could you run those in series for your 18 volt feed? Tuck the other facing down, or really just anywhere. Probably less draw than a resistor. Sorry to hear about the mag. ****s it happened, but better than after a tow to the track! BTW, looks great out on the driveway!
Ah, the light is done so I'm moving on. If there ends up being an issue I'll revisit it then. You are so right about the mag - always best to troubleshoot at home.
Turns out 2025 was pretty much a "lost year" for me stemming from a back injury early in the year that ultimately resulted in back surgery over the summer. Not at 100% yet, but back at the dragster the last couple months to get it ready for initial shake down runs in June. On Sunday, fired it up to work on setting up the airgap, arc, and barrel valve on the Hilborn, checking the timing on the magneto and to test the transmission I rebuilt earlier this year - it was the first time I'd ever opened up a powerglide. It works, though I need to add more fluid - I didn't correctly account for the volume the trans cooler would take, as well as the amount of downward rake I've got on the engine and trans, so it wasn't building up enough fluid pressure to engage reverse with the trans brake on. At least that's the hope that's what the issue is! As with this whole project, it's a steep learning curve, but that's kind of the point. A hand's on education. It's getting there, and the process is fun. This week in the garage is addressing the trans fluid, fixing a small trans cooler leak at a hose connection, as well as adding some clearance to the homemade gated shifter so it operates smoothly. We'll fire it up again next Sunday to see where we're at. Here's a short video of the last fire up for the day. (click on URL below photo if interested. https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/media/fire-up.599360/
Double check shift linkage. Rear engine dragster I had when I put it together reverse didn't work with transbrake, found the shift cable connection point on the shift lever was in the wrong hole and when in reverse it was off just enough to not allow it to work.
Haha! Nah, it's just another strain of my gearhead disease... The Studebaker wagon behind the TR4 under the cover should be though!
Will do - I have a solid rod linkage on my home-made gate shifter, (seen here when it was in mock up) but I will double check.
Don't know what brake you've got, but on my old race car (powerglide), I had to put it in reverse AND push the trans brake ****on for reverse. Not great with a ****erfly wheel backing up into your tracks. It was bad enough with a wheel.
Just found and read thru the whole thread; best I've come across in a while. Can't wait to see more. Thanks for posting.
I'm operating under that impression as well. I bought the trans used and then freshened it up, but I'm not super conversant on the ins and outs of powerglides - the trans and converter was originally built by a local shop that was around for decades and did all their own work. They are still around, but had moved and is run by the son. When I called to see if they could decipher the codes they had put on it to tell me exactly what they had done to it, the son told me that they threw away all the old records when they moved and his Dad did all the race stuff and had p***ed away. That's the long way round saying the valve body is a modified GM version. Because of the nature of my dragster and wanting to keep it as 1964 as possible, I'm only using the trans brake to reverse. I don't want a wheelie bar on it - I put a caster wheel on to protect the body/bottom of the ch***is- but it will be high gear only off of idle to help keep the front end down.
Okay, just wanted to make sure it wasn't something simple! I know it's early in getting used to the car, but you should practice with at least the suit on. You were having to struggle to reach a couple times. It's going to be worse all suited up, helmeted and strapped in. Make sure you can operate it by rote and change things now if stuff isn't in reach.
Great minds think alike.. The struggle you were seeing was the shifter, because the holes in the stops welded to the rear end housing are a bit too tight. I need to ream them out just a little bit so the ball check on the quick pin still works, but the shaft can move easier. The "gates" I have are: park is all the way back, then you hit the ****on on the quick pin, push forward and that gets you into the reverse/neutral gate, then hit the ****on on the quick pin and push forward and that gets you into the low/high gear gate.
Great to see. I know it's toasty, but that's the only way. Is the brake ****on left foot? Wheel brakes are right hand, correct? The only other thing I'd suggest from the peanut gallery is to talk AND hand signal with the crew. Have a gesture for every possibility and talk/signal each startup. When the time comes, the helmet, PA, other cars and the crowd are going to make you deaf. They are your eyes and safety net.
If you aren't using the trans brake for launch, I would put a stock valve body with a Trans Go manual shift kit in it.
A couple reasons: it's a reverse valve body, and I don't want to have to re-engineer the whole shifter setup; coupled with the fact that the burn rate on my bank account for the dragster the last year or two is unsustainable and I'm very close to the finish line. I don't want to go back and spend money on things I've already got that will work now. The combo is close, it just needs tweaks. I still have roughly another grand to go with the required fire system before June 13/14, which is the meet I'm planning on for testing. If after a few meets, the trans brake situation is causing some kind of h***le, I'll revisit it. Otherwise, I'm going as planned.
So an update on the progress. I was busting hump to get the car ready to debut and make shakedown runs at the Kingdon meet last weekend. Got the car done, but when I was getting stuff together for our pit and getting ready to start loading the trailer, I took a header while carrying a toolbox that smacked me in the face on the way down, and decided to punch me in the chest when I was trying to land. Ended up in the ER with a coupla cracked ribs and a split chin that required gluing back together in lieu of s***ches, so the weekend was toast before it started. I actually probably dodged a bullet - they ran tests in the ER and they were concerned about low blood pressure and despite pounding water the few days leading up to it, being m***ively dehydrated. They figured that's was caused, or at least contributed to the spill. It was really hot all that week, and the two days of the meet were the two hottest days of the year, over 100 degrees. I was already not really looking forward to dealing with the heat especially in a -20 firesuit, and was planning on seeing if we could get 2-3 runs in during the morning and shutting everything down by noon or 1pm. Had I climbed in the car not knowing I was dehydrated and dealing with a low blood pressure situation it could have ended badly. Brief PSA- drink fluids, kids! Water doesn't replace the minerals you sweat out, so pound something that has electrolytes in it. Kingdon, our local track is an airport so it only has 4 meets a year. We'll get another shot in September. Anyway, I forgot to take photos of some of the work - mainly the master shutoff switch in the tail section that grounds the magneto, but has a shutoff rod that looks like a period-correct push bar, and the aluminum shelf I built that sits above the switch to make sure the chute tether can't get tangled up in the shutoff switch mechanism. I made a battery tray to keep both batteries together and to make it compact. I made a jumper for the two batteries, and then made up a 15 foot cable from welding cable with a forklift jack on the end that plugs into the male part of the jack mounted on the ch***is rail up at the front of the engine, where the starter ****on is. Three or four Sundays ago I got a wild hair and polished and painted the Cal Custom valve covers. I like they way they turned out and while they aren't perfect and took about 4 hours each cover, I'm pleased enough with them. Adds a little bit of "pop" and the real paint job will be black with red metal flake panels outlined in white, giving it a similar vibe to the Vagabond 60's AA/FD. The red I used on the covers is the metallic basecoat I'll use for the panels, and then hit it with a 2K clear. I didn't want to flake the valve covers because I thought that would be a bit much, but at least the red tones will match when the body is painted. We had to revamp the rolling rear stand we made and keep the car on to make it a two piece deal with a quick pin. As it was, rolling it out when it was jacked up with a floor jack involved three stooges-sized shenanigans that worked like one of those old hardware store puzzles with the two interlocked nails that you were supposed to separate. Sometimes we'd get it, but then forget the order of operations the next time, and regardless it usually involved scratching the bodywork. Not such a big deal in primer, but need to break the habit before the real paint job happens. Plus I just don't like tearing things up if I can help it. I tell you that to let you know that when we took the stand out and rolled the car back into the garage on its wheels, the front end did a period-correct flop over that was problematic. I put an angle gauge on it because I wasn't sure where the caster was, and discovered it was 30 degrees. So I lengthened everything and rolled the axle forward to a much more reasonable 15 degrees, which means it should be able to back up without doing the front axle dosado. However, it meant the heim joints on the drag link were screwed out more than I felt comfortable with. So an order of 9 feet of 1" chromoly tubing from McMaster and two pairs of Ch***is Werks handed weldnuts from the Ch***is Shop and a new drag link was fabricated. The tie rod and hairpins were backed out more than I wanted, but still with in a safe margin, but we'll make new ones before September just to build in another margin of safety and make things look better. I also got the fire bottle at the last minute. As anyone who has built one of these deals knows, the burn rate on the bank account is insane, and I don't want to put any of this on a credit card, so each month on payday I buy the stuff I mapped out ahead of time to move the next stage of the project forward. But it means things just bump along as I can afford (?!) it. This last 6 months in trying to make this Kingdon meet has meant nothing goes into savings, all goes into the car. They say money talks, but to me it just seems to say goodbye. I suppose it's a good thing I don't mind PB&J and Beanie Weenie... So my June 1st purchase was the fire bottle. It arrived with a few days to spare. I had a dummy out of date bottle a road racer pal lent me so I could fabricate the brackets ahead of time. In keeping with the theme of hiding all the modern safety stuff the bottle got mounted between the steering hoop and the steering box mount. Would have loved to have put it on the bottom under the rear axle, but the trans cooler is already there. This deal is truly packing 10lbs of **** in a 5lb sack. Thankfully it fits and there is plenty of room for your left leg and it doesn't impede getting in and out of it. I only had a couple days to install and plumb it and ran out of time to yank the magneto so I could make and weld a bracket to mount the t-handle end of the cable, so on Thursday night I put my pal Eddie to work to come up with a temporary bracket made from aluminum and hose clamped it on . I also hated the two "nozzles" that came with the fire bottle. They were just aluminum nuts with a single hole in the end. So I ordered three way nozzles from another company and grafted them on to the ends of the steel tubing. The company I got the fire bottle from used compression fittings, and the nozzles I got were AN fittings, so I just grabbed my double flaring tool and put mushroom sleeves from the backside and slid the nuts over those so I could screw the 3 way nozzles in there. The front of the engine nozzle stood out like a sore thumb and was really ugly, so I grabbed a brush and satin black paint and painted the tubing and it seems to blend in better now. The body had just been in sealer and if you looked at it sideways it scratched and I at least want it to be presentable in public. So I bought a quart of Tamco underhood satin black and sprayed the body. Not super jazzed with the results - the flash time is kind of long, and I was having to paint outside so there is a fair amount of dust in it, and it didn't seem to flow out the way other catalyzed urethane paint I've used, such as Valspar, PPG Omni or DuPont Nason. So there's quite a bit of orange peel in it. But at least it is uniform and there are no runs or dry spray in it. I should be able to color sand it and polish it. Their definition of satin is my definition of semi-gloss, so I'm not going to sweat making it a little glossier by color sanding. Lastly, I had a pair of M/T slicks mounted on a second set of Torq Thrusts, with the idea that the pie crusts (which I prefer the look of) can get used at non-prepped meets like the Eruption Drags and so forth, and the M/Ts will be used on strips that have prep. I also figure while on the learning curve with the car, driving on "real" slicks will be more predictable than on Towel City recaps which also weigh a TON. When I feel comfortable going from A to B under full power, then we'll try the weedburners and piecrusts and go from 1965 to 1963. I decided to paint the spokes - I didn't want a bright gold, but more of a champaign color that was equal parts silver and gold. I used a Chrysler color called Almond Pearl. I like the way they turned out, but I'm still not sure it fits the car. Everything on the car is black, white, red, or polished silver. Other than the AN bolts, nothing is gold toned. The jury is still out, so I'll live with it for awhile and if I'm not 100% sold, I'll repaint the spokes a dark silver. Anyway, that's where things are at!
Got the dragster out for it's maiden outing this last weekend at the Kingdon Reunion meet in Lodi California. Was just out there to make a few test runs. Discovered that I am off on the fuel injection tune up and we got it a bit better by bumping up the advance in the Vertex, but really needed a main jet that was two or three steps leaner, so that is in process. So the ET and speed isn't anything to write home about. The track is a temporary setup and didn't have the time slips going the first time, and then were confused on the second time and gave us the wrong time slip. But the rough estimate was a high 9 second ET at 125/135 MPH, but it has a lot more in it. Even that second run sounded like we had a rev limiter on it. But we were there to discover what we didn't know, and have notes on tweaks we need to make. After 16 years of building, it was just nice to finally get it out on the track. Plan on being back out there for the January 2/3rd meet and will go from there.
The Jalopy Journal
