Found: Piece of Americana, and Inception of a Dream

Got it..........see you on the salt.

Chris

 

leaving in the morning for the salt.

Look for us 5553 F/BFRMR


And for all the Houston peeps



and one last parting pic before the trailer and the trip to Bonneville and the Great White Dyno

 

Wow!

 

Full chub has been achieved

 

I'm so beat from the thrash this past month. If we'd thrashed this hard in winter it would have been fine but 115-120 in the shop makes for miserable conditions, and slow going.

I'm over the top happy with the car and the Motor already. But even saying that there is already a pretty long mental note list of things to change either when we get back or on the next one. Never satisfied.

Oh and sending pics to Foyt to tell him we're done and taking his motor back over 200!!!!

 

Wow

 

Back home in Houston. Talk about an awesome yet humbling experience.


I tell ya we learned alot, some of it, we could have only learned on the salt, some of it was "well duh, why didnt we think of that before".

Car passed tech 1st try. HUGE ACCOMPLISHMENT!!! I mean new build, and I've never been to Bonneville or seen other Landspeed cars up close so the fact that my other racing experience carried over and helped us prep and ensure the car was up to SCTA snuff was HUGE!!!!
Drivers not so much. With the new build Hans rule, we had trouble getting out in full gear. Our hans would hook the supports for the ICP helmet padding. Some mods to that and we were good to go.

The Gods of Speed were just not working in our favor. We had Tach issues, no tach no way to shift. Then we had sensor/gauge issues. Though we had trouble with our Racepak, I give Todd, and Dan huge credit for all their hard labor working with our setup and their Racepak to make it work. I'd recommend that product and will be using them going forward after the experience we had with our current IQ3 Data logger.

Altitude, well we live at near sealevel in Houston, so tuning for 4k is tough, then you add in the Altitude Density with ambient temps at it feels like 7k. We just never got the motor to love it. What was turbo in warp drive ppulling hard in Houston at 5000rpm's was 6500rpms at the salt.
What was geared for 300mph wasnt cutting it for licensing on the short course. Live and learn.

I will be doing a reverse build on this thread, but wanted to pop the news of our trip now. AJ Foyt's 43 year old motor still screams!!! Amazing we found in in a trailer in rural Kansas.




Triple Nickel Racing 5553 F/BFRMR



At tech


Getting stripped







In line


At start line talking to Buddy


Successful Licensing run, chutes deployed




Racepak guys working on the sensors and gauges


Dad, Tom Teske, and myself


Heres vid of one of my successful Licensing runs.
The turbo came in nicely around the 1:30 mark.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxlgsCRBPIg

 

Maybe some pics of the motor in her resting place












And one of my favorite details. How I did the exhaust and the wastegate blowoff

 

Thanks for the update.......and GREAT to hear about tech.......I told BenD to look for you guys on the salt when I called him on Sat. from St. Louis.

Chris Nelson
Kansas

Oh yea, what kind of speed/times where you guys running?

 

twasn't good

we totally blew the understanding of licensing. Car is geared for the long course, so it was very very hard to make it work on the short course.
I got my D license, but ran it up to 160 before letting out and coasting praying my average was under 150. Subsequent runs I couldnt get the car to stand up and go by the turnout at the 3.

To fix, I'm changing the rearend gear, adding another gear between the current 1st and 2nd on the Lenko, and adding an intercooler to get that air density back up.

Our goal was 250, though on paper the car should do much more than that.

 

It sounds like an awesome experience. I love the story even if you didn't get the numbers you hoped first time out.

 

Too me whats awesome is that the motor won the Indy500 43 years ago, two years ago we found it in a trailer in Kansas, and last week I drove it at Speedweek and got one of my SCTA Licenses on it.

Sure we had problems, new car, old motor, rookie drivers, come on!!!! We accomplished an amazing feat for something we found in a trailer in 2008.....

 

Thats Soooo Cool man. . I wanna Ride!!!

 

god I wish you knew how hard I was biting my tongue when you posted this!!!

 

Guys, Great job and story!
I searched back but did not find the HRM story about running one of these motors at Bonneville in a Mustang fastback around '70-'73 ? I don't recall now if it was 255 or 270 inches?

 

My god. This thread is epic.

 

You are right naturally aspirated this motor was 255ci when it won Indy. We ended up with a Turbo setup and its now the 160ci. turbo displacement.

Little girls screams down the salt!!!

 

The engines in that trailer all looked to be in good condition. How was the internal condition of the Coyote? What all had to be done to get it running again? Sounds GREAT! Congrats on your efforts!

 

That Indy motor is just so cool. You are one lucky guy. Also glad to see the rest of the stuff go to the right folks. Gary

 

DAYUM! 'Dreams of Exotica"!

 

So my cousin randomly sends me a message today he found a bunch of pictures he took of the trailer right after we got it.

I'll just let the pics do the talking.

 

Few of the sleeping quarters in the front.







Sweet ass lamp!

 

The signs that go with the small Hit & Misses are good times!

 

Crazy

 

Very cool!!!!!!

 

Kinda sad really, those are the last pictures of this whole collection together.

 

Wow, great thread I never saw before. Did you ever make it back to Bonneville?

 

It always amazes me, all those inventors, a hundred years ago, and they all came up with a different design. using stone knives and bear skins. and they all ran

 

What a story!! What happened with the Merlin?

 

Hit & Misses went to one collection, and the Merlin to another. Both in the Kansas City area.

The Foyt motor is at a shop in Arizona as I tyoe this getting retrofitted for EFI.
We had hell running that motor at Bonneville where it was extremely cool in the morning, and blistering by afternoon. So the motor would go from fat to lean and back depending on what time of day we were running it. Hard to swap the pills in the Hilborn depending on time of day, especially if you made your qualifying for record run in the afternoon and then get your car from impound in the weee hours of the morning with an hour to report to the start line.
Now it will be as simple as leaving it to the wideband O2's.