Thanks for the interest Greg. Ill see what I can do about getting you a ball park when we get it all back together. I'm not sure it will be very accurate to the typical rebuild, but I will let you know. It really depends when we get in there how it looks. When we rebuilt the tranny we didn't even replace most of the bearings cause the still looked brand new. Lol. Don is supposed to be spending today finishing cleaning up the shop so we can pull the engine tomorrow. Should get interesting real soon. Haha.
Update. Don did his part Saturday and got the shop all straightened up an organized enough that we have room to work on the Nailhead. I made the trip out to his house today and we got the Nailhead pulled from the car stripped down the top end. It was getting late so we decided to call it a day before we were able to tear the bottom end apart. So far things look OK inside. A couple small areas of concern but we will have to wait and see what we got when we get it completely apart. Just thought the few of you that happen to be following this thread might like an update.
Hey Bob, Not a whole lot to update at this point. We did get the motor all torn down. It still looked to be in pretty good shape. We did find a few pieces of garbage in it here and there. Those pieces have been floating around in there since 90's when Don was working on getting past that 12.0 mark. The Achilles heel to the Nailhead are the rockers. Which have broke on this motor several times. Since he never torn the engine completely down since the very early 90's there were still little pieces in the engine. Surprisingly they didn't cause really any damage. Looks like a piece might have got into one of the bearings, but it wasn't that bad. Don took the block over to the machine shop to have it checked out to make sure it was still true and see if the cylinders needed any work. The cylinders really didn't need any attention other than a light hone. We did find out the crank that was in the car was cracked!!! So the poor girl was running 12.5 second passes on a cracked crank shaft. While not cool, it's still fairly impressive I thought. So we had to get a replacement. We thought that would be easy since there we 3 spares sitting at the house. Wrong again! Two of them had previous repairs and one of them was from an early engine so the pilot is a different size. Don didn't want to run an adapter so he went on the hunt for another crank. We think we finally found one. It's been at the shop for a couple weeks now and we haven't heard any bad news come back yet, so hopefully its good. We are changing the combination up in the engine some which should make us some more power. I won't go into any details right now cause we want to see how it all goes back together first and see how the combination works out. We have also decided, mainly due to the engine not being ready, not to make the trip to Bowling Green this year. We are planning whole heartedly to go next year. Hopefully with the car in tip top shape and dialed in.
UPDATE: While there isn't a whole lot to update at this point, I thought I would keep this thread alive. We finally got the engine back from the machine shop. It's been cleaned up, honed, and polished. Block looks really good. Got a few new internal goodies during the process. The shop mocked it all up and made sure everything was right and the clearances all good. Now it's our turn. The engine is still completely torn apart. I was out at Don's this weekend but the weather was horrible and we were not able to get any work done on the engine. Hopefully soon we will be able to get the block out and onto a stand. Give it a good bath and scrub down. Then the tedious job of assembly will start. Put it together, take it apart, put it together, take it apart, put it together, take it apart. It will all be worth it though. Things are looking very promising. Hopefully it all goes together and works out as planned. As of right now, we are planning on having it back together in time to make it to the Texas Nats that is being put together for end of March. It's going to come on quick, but hopefully we are able to get it all put together in time to make it. Wish us luck!!
Sounds like its coming together. Hope to meet you two at next years bowling green and see this car in action :TU: Hope to drive my car down also...
Thanks Bob! I'm not sure I would call it coming together yet, but it is progress. Slight, but progress none the less. Look forward to making it up to Bowling Green next year and it would be a pleasure getting to meet you. Definitely excited and fired up about getting the race car back in action. It will essentially be a completly new combination with the engine this go round, so it will in a way be like starting over from scratch and testing it to see what the car likes and dislikes again. I am personally excited about the process cause I have never been hands on with a track car before. Will be lots to learn and lots of note taking to keep everything straight.
Joe, When we went to Cecil County my friend Bob's car had a 1.46 60ft. with a 10.94ET. I think the 40+yr. old converter is costing him time & MPH.
thanks Tom. had 1.79 60ft last time out. was wondering what 60ft time for a high 11s car would be,. i guess any one running high 11s would be helpfull for 60ft times even if not a nailhead
Back when I had my skylark with the HC 300/2speed.... I raced more , broke less, and won more trophies than with any other car/combo that I ever had... D/S/A :Brow::Brow:
Hey guys. Sorry. Been MIA on the site for a while. Next time I talk to Don I will ask him. He should know his 60' times off the top of his head. Off memory I want to say it was doing low to mid 1.60's. But dont hold me to that. The thing about the nailhead as I would assume others would agree, is they 1/8th mile really well but thats when they begin to fall on their face since they cant breathe and are typically low end engines.
I wonder with a 6 speed would a nailhead over come that falling on its face? those extra gears might keep it in the bottom end longer. be interesting to see.
A 6 speed would be great. Add that to well thought out head work and intake with the right cam and a nailhead will respond :3gears:
Pfffftttt... I once did a full 1/4 mile run in first gear! 2.93 rear, St300 and L60-15 tires. Just under 60000 rpm at 93 mph! ET was around 14.9. I only did that once.... I was concerned about it surviving for the 680 mile drive home from the GS Nats!
