Cool Video

Most of you have figured out that I love all things mechanical. I came across this neat video that shows why I love the internal combustion engine so much.

Watch the video to the end and watch the gasoline burning engine and think about how it applies to the modern race engine where the events are happening over 9000 times per minute.

Cool stuff!

http://www.enginelabs.com/videos/tech-videos/engine/video-how-engines-work-in-see-through-slow-motion/

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Testing the Racepak dash

Ran the car with the Racepak hooked up tonight. All of the sensors are working and the display is configured.

Here is a video that my daughter took:

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Checking over the new car

I spend the day today going over the new car and getting it in good shape.

I ran it for a little while and made sure all of the systems functioned correctly (oil system, cooling system, dial in board, transbrake, delay box, brakes, etc. Everything functioned well and the car seemed to run good.

After that I decided to start looking at internals and do preventative maintenance. I set the valve clearance, changed the oil, retorqued bolts, etc.

About the only thing I found that I didn't like was some unused wiring in the wiring harness from th told gauge display. The previous owner was in the process of putting in a new Racepak IQ3 display and data acquisition panel in the car. Some of the sensors had been hooked up but the old wiring was left in the wiring harness. I hate stuff like that so I took the body panels off and started cutting zip ties, hundreds of them! I have all of the unused wired pulled out of the car and I am starting to route new wires and hook up sensors. It will look nice when I am done! Most of the wires have crimp on connections with no shrink wrap on them. That kind of connection is bound to fail so I am replacing everything with 3M shrink wrap terminal ends with shrink wrap one the top of them to prevent vibration failure.

The valve train looked fantastic and was all high quality components. I am very pleased! I also pulled all of the decals off of the car to get it ready to make it mine!

T&D rockers and 904 bronze bushed lifter bores. All good stuff. Valve lash is set and I tested spring pressures on all of the cylinders. I stated a spreadsheet with all of the spring pressures so I can watch for valve spring failures.

The car looks good without the decals all over it

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The New Car

After the Super Comp licensing school Traci and I decided to take a step back and look at the safest (not the cheapest) way to accomplish my goals in drag racing.

We realized that "The Black Hole" was a lot of car for an old newbie to tackle. We both agreed that a better plan was to buy a nice Super Comp dragster that was in good shape and start going to races as soon as possible.

The new plan requires that I slow down production on "The Black Hole" and spend the money that we were about to put into it on a dragster instead. This will push out the debut date for the "The Black Hole" significantly but will increase the odds of me actually making it down the track without ping ponging it off of the walls. If I do that, game over!

We found the new car on Monday and we are going to take "The Long, Long Trailer" to pick it up this weekend (Friday, April 14).

We have a bunch of stuff that is on our schedule until the 4th of July (including the Second Annual Harvey 4th of July Celebration at our lake house), picking up the new (used) tow truck, finishing a bathroom at the lake house, having a new grand baby, etc., etc.

I will tell more about the car on the new car page when I get the car.

Here are a couple of pictures of it.

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NHRA Super Comp License

Just completed a Super Comp licensing course at the Texas Motorplex this weekend.

It was a blast! I accomplished all of the requirements for my license and ran two runs in the 8.60s at 150+ mph.

Fastest I have ever gone on the dragstrip and in a car. I have gone faster speeds on sport bikes but have never accelerated that quickly. It was a surprise that these Super Comp cars are that quick. My car is going to be insane!

Here is a video of one of the quick runs.

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