Must be something goin around. Saturday at the hit in Seattle, Wilk blew a plug ( ? ) out of the B-valve. Big fire.
A friend called me to tell me about wilkerson. The big show cars do not run the same make bv i do. The car is almost ready to go. The brakes are done and bled. I made my own caliper brackets. We need to set the toe and gas it up. The seats were pulled out and repositioned higher up and further back for a more natural seating position. I now look through the middle of the windshield instead of the bottom. I will be able to see the crew better on the line. I spoke to hilborn about the bv. They have no intention of changing the design due to a isolated incident. They feel that the valves are safe with the current design and have proven themselves as such for decades. They sent me a new one that was pinned to make me happy. Hilborn is a reputable companany and i feel safe continuing use to their products as i have for decades. We both agree there was a failure of the bv as seen on the video. We also agree that further damage to the car could have been avoided if the run was aborted. On the second pass at start up the crew noticed a leak. The spool had come slightly out of the bv. This was the source of the leak. They knocked the spool and bushing back into position. This stopped the leak but didnt fix the problem. I thought they had found a loose fitting. If i knew they did this i wouldnt have attempted to run the car. The warning signs were there the crew just didnt understand the situation at hand. The car should have been brought back to the pits and the bv addressed there. I would like to put this issue to rest without further discussion. We are focussing our energy on getting the car back on the road mid week.
Hey Brian, I'm not trying to keep your BV discussion going, but I did a search on google images for the BV,and can't seem to find anything...of course I don't really know what I'm looking for, I'm just curious is your BV pressed in, screwed in, or? Again, I understand Hillborn treated you right, I was just curious of how things go together.
So now that it's back together, on a smart-assed note, should the thread title now be Rebuilding after the crash, crash ? Sorry, couldn't help myself and glad to see it back in one piece again.
we plan on being in Detroit. we will be at the street drags. due to the rules we wont be racing. they wont let us refill the nitro tank between rounds. im not going to reconfigure the car to accommodate a 30 gallon tank. we will be out cruising on woodward.
Bummer but as you know I am not a fan of the track setup they had last year anyways. I will most likely go take in the race for awhile. There should be some cars worth watching for sure. Their loss on not letting you run-I am sure you would have put a smile on a face or two. Hope to see you out on Woodward.
I doubled checked the space I have for you to park and have warned my neighbors of hoodlums invadingon a Friday morning. Fuck I'm excited! Weather has been wonderful lately
Well done sir. Good luck at the HAMB event and Drag Week. Here's a promise for Rock Falls ... You, Me (and anyone else) Lawn chairs, Canadian beer and at least 30 minutes of NOT thrashing on a race car... It's about time we made good on that arrangement
Well it seems in a show of good faith that you'll reach the end of the track this time Mokan has gone ahead and repaved the entire return road.
maybe an optical illusion but the engine looks high on the passenger side, like it's cocked over a bit
the rocker cover is off of the drivers side. thats why it looks funny. tonight i removed the front drivers side motor plate. it came right off and bolted right back in. i had a water drip coming from that area. if the chassis was sprung it wouldn't go back on so easy. i went back to look at the recent pics. i had to look at them closely to see why it looked funny.
Brian, glad to see the cars coming back together. We had an issue the other day with starting the dragster. I got in all suited up, and didn't have any throttle movement. We backed off and didn't start the car. Like you said, especially playing with nitro back up and look at the situation. Pulled the injector and throttle linkage off, found the issue and getting it out back together. Sent from my iPhone using H.A.M.B.
The Ramchargers were learning about running nitro in 1964-65 and found out the hard way it will do exactly what you said. From Ramchargers article almost your words LOL. So we continued to test on the Tuesday Test Days at Detroit Dragway. The lab car, #558, was the primary test mule, and the Ramchargers tested with our racecar. As stated earlier, there was a small fuel tank mounted on the radiator yoke that allowed gravity feed to the Hilborn fuel pump. Hilborn had supplied a shut-off valve installed between the tank and pump. We found out the hard way that the valve leaked. On at least three occasions, twice in #558 and once in our car, there was a large detonation upon the first revolution during starting. The detonation pushed one piston down over the crankshaft with the rod looking like a pretzel. The side of the block was blown away, both outside and into the tappet chamber. The head and intake manifold were broken, and camshaft was also lost. The headers were salvageable, with welding, but most of the engine parts were lost. The leaking fuel shut-off valve allowed nitro to leak down into the injectors and into the cylinders with open intake valves. Upon cranking the nitro was subjected to critical pressure and detonated. Needless to say, we located a better valve, and from then on we shut down the engine by cutting off the fuel.
the issue with the ramchargers was not a shut off valve issue. the shut off is attatched to the pump. the pumps location is about the height of the cam depending on how its driven. when put in the closed position the fuel stops at the shut off. the fuel lines are still full of fuel. dependind on how the fuel lines are run some fuel can run out of the lines and go into the intake manifold. there are nozzles made with a check valve that is supposed to prevent this kind of thing from happening. the check valves are not 100 percent effective so the thing to do is still rotate the engine backwards to clear it.
We made it to detroit. I spent some time in my sons shop working with him on his 69 super bee. It was recently upgraded with a fast efi system. The car is crazy fast now. We were going to take both cars to the road kill event. Were being the key word. The torsion bar broke on the righr side. This bar was bent in the crash. Sway away told me i could straighten it in the press. We did this compaired to buying new ones because of the eight week delivery time. I called the owner of sway away pleading my case. He pulled some strings with a expedited charge attatched. The heat treatment is a two day turn around alone. A better m-300 material is being used this time. Red labelled it should be here thursday by noon. He also told us we could weld it back together with a sleeve but dont race it. We tried that with poor results. So whats another grand in this anyway. Im spending the next few days getting ready for the hamb drags and drag week while i wait for the bars. Good news is the little trailer fits in the big trailer as planned.
Maybe you won't say it, but I will, That Sucks, glad you will be getting the replacement expedited though! Edit: Good thing is that it didn't break at a most inopportune time, while under power and high rate of speed which would have been much worse!
Sitting on the side of the road broke down some where during the hamb drags or drag week would have been bad. Yes it sucks but at least it was found before i was making a pass. The bars take about 15 minutes to install and set up. Its no big deal. I should have it all back together and loaded up before my copilot gets out of work.
hah, you HAD to try the little trailer within the big trailer? You and I both know that you had it all figured out ahead of time. But it sure is fun to put it in place and admire the results of lots of planning. Planning puts you in Control!
I had to try it out. its a very tight fit. I also needed to install some mounting rings on the floor. this should be a lot easier than putting all of my stuff trailer included into the back of my truck. success favors the prepared. one of my favorite quotes from vince Lombardi.
We made it to tims just fine. Unloaded the car and trailer. We stopped at super bell to personally deliver the axle. Now off to mokan. One of the things we are experimenting with is driving with the trunk off. Its good for 20 degrees. Running a cool 180-190.
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