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4 minute(s) of a 66 minute read
3-6-2010
Wow, I forgot that I typed this previous post. First and fore most, the problem was not the converter. Greg at FTI is The Man! I called him that night from the track (red phone) and he spent a while trying to diagnose it with me. At that time he told me about the newer better sprags. He was home so he couldn't remember what converter he had built for Steve. Steve pulled the converter that night (Wednesday) and shipped it the following day back to FTI. Because we are in Florida and so is FTI, they got it Friday. Greg cut it open and by Friday night we knew that it wasn't the converter. As it turns out, this converter had all the good **** in it (with the badass sprag) and looked brand new inside except for the trans fluid.
That weekend Steve dropped the pan on the trans and found a couple of aluminum curly q's in there. That following monday the transmission was on it's way to Rossler. Three days later, Rossler got it and got it right apart. They found that the band was bad and some rear bearing was wasted. They rebuilt it and it was on it's way back that following Monday. Both these vendors stepped up big. Great service.
So Steve got the whole thing put back together and the problem that we were having was gone but it was breaking up up top. Steve ohm'd out the plug wires and found one way out of wack. Fixed it and we were back in business.
While the car was down, he went ahead and switched the rear gear from a 3.73 to a 3.30. Hopefully have some results with a little more boost here real soon.
3-11-2010
On the first pass off the trailer we wanted an apples to apples comparison to see what the gear change did. With the boost controller off, we got a super lazy 1.47 60' with the 2 step set at 4000 RPM. Would only build about 2-3 psi. Ran like a 9.37 @ 149 and only saw about 8 psi total on the long end. We turned the 2 step up to 4800 rpm and I told him to sit on it and see how much boost it would build. That's what he did. Launched on 8.5 psi and almost dragged the bumper LOL. So now we had launch power and just had to get it sorted out. He tightened up the front shocks all the way and we targeted 7 psi for the launch boost. Instant 1.27 60's with a nice smooth launch and just a little air under the front tires. As he mentioned, the first good pass was at 15 psi. We decided to turn it up a little more since it looked so good but for whatever reason, he put too much ramp time (0.8 sec) on the boost between the launch and target of 18 psi. As you can see from the almost 35 mph picked up out the back door, there is definetly atleast 2 more mph left in the 1/8th which would have put him in the high 8.3x.
Next up, we marked the drag radials on the rim and saw that they need to be screwed down. The tires are spinning on the wheel atleast 2 inches. We are still working on the tune which is ULTRA conservative. I have pulled fuel out every pass that the car has made down the track. The Big Stuff 3 does a great job of keeping you close so it isn't seeing unsafe rich condition but it is on the rich side of "ideal" in the 11.0:1 AFR range. Once I get it to a solid 11.5:1, we will start pulling plugs and seeing if the different cylinders are having different fueling requirements. Same goes for timing. It is set at a super conservative 14* right now and once we start looking at plugs, we can get them all looking the same. This corn fuel (E85) is very new to us so we are trying to be on the conservative side everywhere. We may try to push into the 7's with the corn fuel based on some of the incredible things we are hearing about locally. It's ultimately Steve's decision but he seems to be leaning that way.
I have to also mention again that the prep at Palm Beach International Raceway has been OUTSTANDING for the last few months. It is my understanding that many national records are being set down here this winter season so alot of Top Fuel and Pro Stock pro teams have been renting out the track and laying down insane amounts of rubber for us to enjoy on test n tune nights.