"Like a Glove"

I finished with the fabrication of the new headers and installed them on the "Black Hole".

They look pretty good for an amateur! I still have to do the final welding. They are only tacked together to make sure they fit.

I pulled the front end off so you could see them on that big ole Hemi. They really fit well in the frame.

I still have to build some supports that connect to the frame to keep the headers from breaking if the car has "Tire Shake".

Tire shake is something that happens with very powerful cars if they are not set up correctly. I have never experienced it but it is supposed to be very violent and is hard on the driver and the car.

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Drivers side header are fabricated

Today was a very productive day.

I worked all day and finished fabricating the drivers side header. It turned out very well and fits the car perfectly! All of the joints must fit very close so that the joints are easy to weld. It is a tedious process taking the tubes on and off. File the joint, put it on, mark the places that need to be ground, take it off, file, put back on............... You get the point.

You will notice one of the header tubes has a dog leg shape to it. That is so the header clears the left front tire when it is turned all the way to the left. You don't want the front tire touching a 1000 degree header when you turn off of the track!

One I ge the other side done, I will clean all of the joints very well and will permanently weld every joint. They are jus tack welded for now to make sure everything fits.

Once everything is welded, I will polish the stainless steel to a chrome like shine.

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Header Fabrication Begins

Some of you may have figured out by now that nothing on the "Black Hole" is purchased and just installed as purchased. Almost everything on a high end race car has to be fabricated and is a "One Off" custom piece.

Now that the engine mounts are fabricated and the body is temporarily installed, I am going to start fabricating the exhaust headers. This process starts with bare exhaust flanges and a box of 2 1/2 inch stainless steel tubing (some curved pieces and some straight pieces). Each header tube has to be hand formed (Like a blacksmith would do) on the header flange end to fit the shape of the exhaust port. Once the shape of the exhaust port is formed, the tube has to be out at the perfect angle so that the tubes exit in the proper place in the body of the car. Both the downward angle and the back sweep has to be right. It is easier said than done to get them exactly right and it is a very time consuming process. The gaps between the pieces of tubing have to be perfect so that they can be welded together to make a strong joint.

Once the tubes are all cut, they must be tack welded together and test fitted on the car. If a piece does not fit correctly, it has to be cut apart and refitted. Once everything fits correctly, the tubes have to be welded together permanently. The welding process that is used to weld stainless is called TIG (Tungsten Inert Gas) Welding. The process uses a tungsten electrode that melts the base metal while you feed filler rod into the molten puddle to weld the pieces together. Because molten stainless steel reacts with the oxygen in the air, a inert shield gas (pure Argon) is used to displace the oxygen and protect the molten puddle.

The TIG welding process is somewhat of an art form because it requires a coordinated effort of holding the electrode very close the the metal (without letting it touch), controlling how much electricity flows to the electrode (to melt the metal) with one of your feet (using a foot pedal), and feeding filler material with your other hand as you move the electrode around the part being welded.

Practice is the only way you can get proficient at TIG welding.

Here are the first two pieces that I have hand formed and cut them to the correct angles. Still a long way to go but it is very rewarding once you get the headers done.

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New Transmission and Maintenance Sled

I am getting a lot more people watching my blog and some of them are not gear heads so I am going to try and explain how things work on each of my updates to try to help the people who don't understand the inner workings of a 5 second drag racing car. I will try to explain things as simply as I can.

I received my new torque converter drive yesterday. I mounted the transmission to it and put it in the car so I could start building the mounts and frame crossmember.

The transmission is basically broken down into three distinct sections. They are the torque convertor, the converter drive, and the transmission, The first section is the torque converter which provides a method of transferring the engine's rotation to the converter drive input shaft. It is bolted to the engine's flywheel and rotates at engine speed.

The converter drive is a device that provides the motivating force for the transmission. This is done by pumping fluid into the torque converter as the engine spins the converter. Inside the converter are vanes or fins the are welded inside the converter housing and a drive turbine (that freewheels inside the torque converter) that turns the converter drive input shaft. As oil is pumped into the converter by the converter drive, it is forced to swirl around inside the converter. The swirling fluid impacts the turbine and causes it to spin. The higher the speed, the more pressure that is exerted on the turbine, the faster it spins, which in turn spins the converter drive input shaft. The converter drive then transfers that rotation to the transmission input shaft and turns the transmission gears.

The new converter drive is the latest technology and has what is called a lockup converter. Normal torque converters slip a little and waste horsepower and generate lots of heat! With a lockup converter, I can program it to lockup in one or more places during the run to minimize slippage. This is possible because the torque converter has a set of clutches inside that are squeezed together by hydraulic pressure. When they are squeezed together it locks the transmission shaft to the engine crankshaft and drives it at engine speed. This can be done after every shift to allow the car to experience a soft shift without causing the tires to spin and then lock up as the car's momentum increases. The lockups can be triggered by engine RPM, time, or a combination of the two. Prior to having lockup converters, transmissions could easily have 5% or more slippage.

The transmission that I am using is a manual planetary type transmission that is capable of handling lots of horsepower. A planetary transmission works by having an outer hub with gear teeth machined inside the hub. There is also an output shaft that has gear teeth machined on the outer diameter of it. There is a void between the gear teeth of the hub and the shaft. This void is filled with a cluster of smaller planetary gears that connect the outer hub to the inner shaft. When one side is spun by the engine, the other side spins at a reduced rate because the planetary gears roll inside between the inner and outer gears and reduce the number of revolutions of the output shaft. The gear sets have a clutch pack installed that allow the outer hub to lock to the inner shaft and create a 1 to 1 ratio of that gear set. This clutch pack is controlled by applying air pressure to a piston that squeezes the clutch pack together. This is what happens when a shift occurs. As many gear sets as needed can be stacked together to create a 2, 3, 4, or 5 speed transmission. Mine is a 3 speed transmission.

The shifts can be controlled by manually diverting air pressure to the gear set clutch packs or by using electric air solenoids that are controlled by the ignition controller or another type of controller.

Because this is a very sophisticated setup and will be abused by a large amount of horsepower, it will have to be serviced regularly. Therefore, I decided to fabricate a sled type mount that would allow me to service the torque converter without having to drop the transmission out of the car.  Traci and I will have to do the service with no help so I wanted to make it as easy as I can on it. We simply unbolt the transmission and just slide it back in the car to get it out of the way so we can work on the converter drive and torque converter.

You can see in the pictures that I fabricated two tracks for the sled to slide in. They are fabricated out of a piece of chrome moly tubing that I split to make two half pipes.

I then fabricated a sled that mounts to the transmission and sits down into the tracks. When I remove the transmission mounting bolts, I can simply slide the transmission backward until i have room to pull the converter drive.

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Puts it all in perspective!

This week I lost the last of my uncles. My uncle Tom was a very special man in many ways.

I was named after him (the Richard part of my name) and another uncle (my uncle Dean). Uncle Dean passed away years ago and was a very special guy too.

I was like both of them in ways but I was probably most like my Uncle Tom (in both looks and behavior). My Uncle Tom was opinionated, stubborn, honest, giving, and had an entrepreneurial spirit.  These are all traits that I either have or I am a work in progress.

Uncle Tom was the first business owner I ever knew and he inspired me to own my own business. Uncle Tom was passionate about his hobbies, interests, family, religion, and everything else. Those same genes run through my body every day.

Listening to the people who talked about him at his funeral made me realize how important all of those traits are to me. I only hope I do those things half as good as he did them.

It was so comforting to hear how comfortable he was in knowing where he was going when he left this earth. I always knew that about him, after all, I received Jesus Christ as my personal Savior while he was preaching and my Grandad's church during a revival. Uncle Tom did not function officially as a pastor but on that particular night, the pastor that was supposed to preach did not show up for some reason. As always, Uncle Tom did whatever he needed to do to help so he was the preacher on that night. I can't help but believe that it was meant to be and that he was given the message to present to me that night which changed my life forever.

You see, I had heard great messages about Jesus my entire life from my grandad, parents, and a lot of other people, but on that night, the perfect message was given by my Uncle Tom.

So if you ever wonder why I sometimes get preachy and tell why I am able to do the wonderful things I get to do, you can partly blame it on Uncle Tom. When you wonder why I am so opinionated, stubborn, vocal, and passionate, you can also blame it a little on Uncle Tom.

So in case you haven't heard me say it lately, I am blessed by God more than I deserve for my wife, family, friends, business partner, business, and this wonderful adventure that I have been working on for the last 3 years.

I know some of you think I am crazy to build this car and drive it, but I am not because I know God is protecting me and is using me to spread his words to anyone that is interested in the "Blue Banana" (the SuperComp dragster) or the "Black Hole" (the Promod Corvette). I know it is  different forum than Uncle Tom used but I hope the message can help even one person.

Besides that, if something terrible went wrong (It is not), I know where I am going!!!!

Thanks Uncle Tom for showing the way.

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Just Because!!!

I  am posting these pictures just because I just took time to look at the car instead of working on it. As I get all of the parts and pieces put together, it is really taking shape.

I visualize all the time what driving this thing is going to be like. I am looking sooooo forward to firing it up for the first time and even more to actually driving it.

This thing is going to be beautiful when I get the frame finished and painted again. I have messed up the paint welding all of the brackets and making the modifications to it.

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