Been an interesting season here, raining almost every day for nearly 2 months, so we haven't made a single outing till Friday night. I made a few changes to my carb over the Winter, and wanted to share the results, and to assure those that think you can't have your daily driver double as a DEADLY bracket car using a lot of stock parts, that it can be done. Not that there's anything wrong with "high performance" carbs and such, but you certainly aren't going to get any "priceless" looks in staging lanes like you do when folks take a gander at your dial in, then notice the stock intake, stock carb, and stock air cleaner (Shaker) assembly being used! Due to the long cold spring, I installed an electric choke on it (been no choke for at least 15 years), and put the power piston, metering rods, etc back in the primary side of the Q-jet (been running it straight off the jets for quite some time). This is part of my de-tuning effort, and I'm driving the car more on the street these days, and gas prices are rising way faster than my income! Getting older as well, and love being able to tap the gas once and have the engine roar to life on the fast idle without having to tend to it for a couple of minutes while it warms up. I also installed a new trans last Saturday, and wanted to give it some shake-down runs. 600 ft lb 455's KILL transmissions, so I decided it was time to build a new one as the old one just wasn't liking this new engine. Anyhow, headed out Friday night to our local test and tune with some new tires in place. Late last year I went to 255/60-15 Mickey Thompson ET Street radials on 7" factory Ralley rims vs the 275/60/15's. They fit the rims better, but gave up at least an 1" of tread on the pavement and at least an 1" shorter. Figured that would help the 3.42 gears just a bit. I ran the car in full street trim, with a full tank of fuel. I mixed in about 10 gallons of 93 with the 87 octane that was already there. This would put the race weight close to 3700lbs with driver. Our local track isn't known for good traction, so I really wasn't surprised that the tires spun just a bit on the first half dozen runs. 60' times were OK, most close to 1.68 seconds, but not nearly as quick as I usually run. MPH (94-95) was on par for the weather (2000' DA), so I knew it was mostly the track. For the last two runs, I decided to do a couple of "John Force" burnouts, up into high gear for about 7-8 seconds. I was quickly rewarded with two back to back 1.62 60' times...now we're getting someplace! Here are the numbers from the last two runs: R/T .504 .514 60' 1.6230 1.6289 1/8 7.3169 7.3188 MPH 94.35 94.36 Pretty content with those numbers. I also got enough attention running sub-7.49 and cutting one .502 light, three .505's, one .514, and a .530, that a track Official ran me down in staging and told me not to come back without a fire jacket, and that I really needed to get a roll bar as well. The only down-side to the night was that they cancelled the "Gamblers Race", which I've won the last two times I made a Friday night Test and Tune event. The last time it was a "box-no box" race, and I thoroughly pissed off a few Super Stock racers who crossed over on my dial in only to get outran on both ends of the track! Anyhow, despite not having any extra beer money for the ride home, had a great time and looking forward to the next outing!....Cliff
Lost all of them on the old hard drive. Here's a link to the final round in the King of the Hill race at Norwalk back in 2006. Our little "daily driver" beat up on everyone on the property to get there. Nothing has changed anyplace on the car but a new engine. The old one was making 514hp/587tq. The new one is over 550hp and 600ft lbs. I didn't dyno mine, but a customer duplicated it, with 10 to 1 compression instead of 11 to 1, and it made 552hp/604tq. You Buick guys have the better deal going on, with an oversquare design and HUGE bore, vs undersquare design with a long stroke!.......Cliff http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9eWgLd0q-U
