Adjustable Strut Brackets and Other Technology Updates

NHRA ProMod racing has a minimum height that the frame of the car has to be to be legal. The "Black Hole"has been too low ever since I got the new tires. I decided a couple of weeks ago to update everything on the frame to be the latest technology. One of the things that all new ProMods have are adjustable top strut brackets. These brackets allow you to raise or lower the front end of the car with a ratchet.

I am also changing the parachute brackets to spread the parachutes out and get them to open quicker. Spreading them out also prevents them from tangling as easy as they would if they are mounted right next to one another. Spreading out also allows me to mount a push bar to move the car around the pits in to the staging lanes. This push bar attaches to the front of our pit vehicle and makes it easier to maneuver than towing with a strap. Have a push bar allows me to drive the car where I want to go and the push vehicle just follows me. The push bar also allows the push vehicle to pull me backwards if we need to make an adjustment where the car is pointed.

The push bar bracket is attached to the new parachute anchor brackets. The original parachute anchor bracket was on the differential of the car. The new rules require a separate bolt on each parachute to prevent a double parachute failure. My bracket only had one long bolt instead of two. Also, low mounts have a tendency to lift the back of the car when the parachutes open. Instead of trying to modify the bracket on the differential, I decide to use a more modern approach and mount the parachute anchor points high up on the back of the frame.

Here are some pictures of the adjustable strut mounts and the push bar bracket.

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More Fabrication

I am back to working on the "Black Hole" after getting the fuel injection system installed on the "Blue Banana" The fuel injection system works fantastic! I cannot wait to run it at the track. I think it is going to make a big difference.

I am trying to get all the fabrication finished on the "Black Hole" so I can paint the chassis again and get the chassis certified by the NHRA.

This weekend I fabricated the drive shaft safety retaining tube and loops. These are designed to prevent a driveshaft that fails from flying around inside the cockpit with the driver. A 3.5 inch diameter carbon fiber driveshaft spinning at 9000 rpm could do some serious damage if it was Flying around inside the drivers cockpit!!

I also mounted the air shifters in the car so they are easy to access when I an manual shifting the car.

Here are some pictures of the cockpit:

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New Electronic Fuel Injection

Traci and I want to run all of the races in the Bay Area Bracket Racing Series next year and try to get as many points as we can. We are trying to make the "Blue Banana" as consistent as possible. I decided to install one of Holley's new 4500 series electronic fuel injection systems on the dragster.

This system is capable of supporting up to 1500 horsepower so it should be perfect for my 1250 horsepower engine. The system is very high tech and should give me a lot of flexibility to add more horsepower later if I want to. The system has the capability to add extra fuel if I add Nitrous Oxide injection for more horsepower. This makes it possible to add Nitrous without adding a separate Nitrous fuel supplement system .

I just finished installing it tonight and started it up. This system is amazing!!! The car starts instantly and idles super smooth even with a "wild" camshaft in the engine. The most impressive thing is how the engine accelerates instantly now!!!

The "Blue Banana" is going to be a hard car to beat next year! I think 2019 is going to be an excellent year for us!

We are planning on taking it to a test session or two before the end of the year to tune the new fuel injection and get ready for 2019.

Here are a few pictures of the new system.

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Major Progress!!!

Traci and I made major progress so far this weekend! We did not win any rounds on Saturday but it was because we made major progress on the performance of the car, which created a new red light problem.

The car has not been performing like we knew it would and we have been making baby steps to get it to perform better. We have been studying the data and noticed that the car was sluggish off the starting line. We made the transmission oil change which moved us in the right direction and led us to the real problem.

We are using a device called a "Two Step" that keeps the engine from revving too high when I lock the transmission and go wide open on the throttle. The device is supposed to let the engine go full throttle about 1/2 second before the car launches. Turns out the device was not triggering in time to allow the engine to build maximum horsepower prior to the car launching. We decided to do a test this morning and bypass the device and allow me to have direct control of the throttle. I decided to go wide open on the throttle as soon as both myself and the car in the other lane have staged. This allows the car to rev to the electronic ignition rev limiter setting.  Our test gained 3 tenths of a second in ET. We did it the next round and got the same results. It was amazing how much harder the car launched!!

The car went from 1.3 second 60 foot times to 1.0 second 60 foot times. That is a big change!

The improvement in the launch of the car also created a new problem. The car launches so fast and hard that it created a consistent .081 second red light and caused me to lose in round 1 today. To compensate, we have programmed and additional delay into the computer to keep me from red lighting on Sunday (hopefully).

Tomorrow is a new day and we get one qualifying run to make sure we have our delay set correctly.

I think we will win some more rounds soon!

Here is a comparison of the data of two runs after the changes made in comparison to the qualifying run before we made it. The upper 3 sets of data represent engine rpm from the the point that I release the transmission brake. Notice the Red line is significantly below the Yellow and Purple lines. The Yellow and Purple lines are from the runs that we bypassed the "Two Step". The three sets of lines in the lower part of the screen represent drive shaft speed or wheel speed. Notice the Green one is significantly lower that the other two. Notice the other two track right on top of one another which means the runs were consistent, which is good. Also notice that drive shaft speed started sooner on the two quick runs which is what caused me to red light.

This has been a lot of fun figuring this stuff out! The "Black Hole” will be about 10 times more complicated!!!!

This is the ET from the fastest run that I have made since I owned the car. We ran a 4.69 ET. Much better! 

Sunday was even better!!!!

We went 3 rounds in the Sunday race and got our computer dialed in where we were getting good reaction times. We had a .015, .004, and a .028 reaction times today and consistently ran in the 4.70s.

We learned more this weekend than any other weekend. Our adjustments on the car are starting to get real results.

It is getting fun now. I wish the season wasn't over!!!

Now it is time to go through and overhaul the "Blue Banana" and get the "Black Hole" finished.

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Last Race this Year

This weekend is the last race of the year. I am going to try and get a little more out of the car this weekend so I am making a couple of changes.

I noticed that the car ran better when the transmission was a little hotter before the run. This increased the launch rpm by about 200-300 which in turn caused the car to launch harder and my 60 foot time was significantly better than the other runs.

In order to try to get the car to launch harder, I changed the transmission fluid to a very thin synthetic oil that claims to let the torque converter slip a little more while it is on the transbrake. We will see!!

I am also going to add a couple of more degrees of timing advance to get a little more horsepower.

I hope to get the car into the low 4.90s and maybe 4.80s.

Any of you that are interested are welcome to come out and watch the races in Baytown. We will be there Friday night for the testing session and Saturday-Sunday for the actual races.

We hope to see you there.

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Great weekend

Folks,

Traci and I had a great weekend at the races. It was the most encouraging so far. We only made it to the second round but we are making progress very rapidly!

Going to the second round may not sound like a big deal but bracket racing is a very competitive and strategic sport.

The way we made it to the second round is what’s exiting! We ran a total of 6 runs this weekend and never had a bad reaction time. Here are the reaction times for the whole weekend:

.008
.016
.017
.018
.003
.013

These are great numbers for a new racer!

We have a continuous string of 9 runs without a reaction time over .019!

Now we have to get the car more consistent. We are working on that now. We have been making small changes and looking at the data that we record to figure out what the car wants. We are making good progress!

We ran under our dial in ET on a couple of runs which contributed to my second round loss on day 2. I was nervous about breaking out (being disqualified for running faster than your dial in ET) so I chopped the throttle just before the finish line. I had the guy beat and I gave it away. The data that i downloaded showed that I would not have run under my dial in. That part of the weekend was a bummer.

I believe next year will be our year to get some racer’s attention. They already know we are not a “give me” win for them. We have put a couple of serious players on the trailer in the last two races.

Thanks for all of your prayers and support. I really am blessed to get the support of my family and friends. I also get a lot of support from one of the best racing families out there (Mike Janis Jr. and his dad, Mike Janis Sr.). We are going to really put Traci and I to the test next year when we debut the “Black Hole”. Mike is instrumental in the Black Hole coming to life next year. I would not be where I am without all of you and God!

 See the time slips below. #457 is me.

Race 1, Qualifying Run #1

Race 1, Qualifying Run #2

Race 1, Elimination Round #1

Race 2, Qualifying Run #1

Race 2, Eliminations Round  #1, It is a win!

Race 2, Elimination Round #2, I should have won this one!

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Another Weekend at the Races

Traci and I are leaving in the morning for another race in Baytown. We are praying for a safe and successful weekend. We are all loaded up and ready to go.

I did some tuning on the car and it should run a little quicker this weekend. It was running extremely rich at the last race. Hopefully the will also be a little more consistent with the mixture right.

I will update everyone how the race went once we get back.

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