Congratulations go out to John and Stan Zerucha for clockin their first 8 second pass at Cecil this week end.After John hit the first 8.96 he was over heard saying as he got out of the drivers seat,"Holy Sh*t"!! Some ride eh John. That new motor is cookin.Stan backed it up shortly after with some 8.9's of his own. Way to go guys,good job. gary
That's how ya do it....... I'm just happy the thing didn't get stuck in the 9.0's........ Lotta hard work over there,They diserve the fun and reward of an 8 second pass........ Someone needs a parachute:Smarty:
WOW !!!!!ou: Very Kool . Alot hard work and lots of $$$$! Congrats to all !:beer :beer Excellant :TU: :TU:
Second that! First John did a shake down pass and came back and ran a full pass but shifting early around 6200 rpm's (John can give you the details) ran it out the back door to a tune of an 8.97! Next up Stan took the wheel and backed up the number with an 8.98! Rick Martinez
another shot. Though I have to say the Zerucha's are "Top Shelf" people! Real sportsmen, friendly always helpful, a true top class team! I can only wonder when they get this combo worked out by the time Norwalk rolls around we may be seeing 2 or three big block Buicks running solid 8 second times! The shot below is John at the wheel on the 8.97 run. -Rick
I like the way that car looks taking off, nice and level a lot of the time. Nice looking car too. Congrats.
Thanks Guys!!!!!! I get to change my signature now. I really have to say that this would never have happened without my dad!!!!!! Over the past week he put in 12 to 14 hrs a day working on this car to get the engine in and ready to make the trip to Cecil. I can only hope to have his energy and drive when I an in my 60s. Sequence of events!! Tuedsay Sept 30th (my Bday) Frank Urbinati and I made the deal ot purchase the 523 CID BB Buick. Friday Oct 3rd dad and I went up to D&D Machine in Canada to pick up the engine. We left at 1:30 am and made it back home at 11:00 pm that evening. Saturday Oct 4th the engine was completed disassembled and inspected. Sunday Oct 5th the heads were put and the flow bench and improved from 300 cfm to 350 cfm. Dad worked on strengthening the lifter galleys and correcting a few minor problems in the engine and rerouting the oil. Monday Oct 6th Dad reassembled the cylinder heads and cleaned all of the components to be ready for actual assembly on Tuesday. Tuesday Oct 7th Dad assembled the short block then later in the day we degreed in the cam and finished the assembly. Wednesday Oct 8th Dad pulled out the Stage 1 engine and installed the new 523. After I got out of work we did the finishing touches and Started the engine at 8:30 pm. It ran for only a few minutes and we cleaned up for the evening. OH... and we both became very sick this day to boot!! Thursday Oct 9th Dad and I both went to the doc for our health issues then proceeded to clean the car and load up for our trip to Maryland. We left at 4pm and made it to the hotel at 11pm. Friday Oct 10th..... Dad wanted me to make a few passes first. The first pass was to watch the oil pressure and get an idea of what our old converter was going to do with the new engine. Everything seemed ok so I made the second pass. ALL I CAN SAY IS..... WOW AND HOLY S()!T.... 8.97 @ 149.... WHAT A RIDE. At that point... OK DAD... its all yours now. His next pass.... 8.98. Well.. its been a busy week and now I have to give my wife of 12 yrs some time. Without her support none of this would have been possible.... To DAD and My WIFE.... thanks a bunch!!!
Truth Rick You couldnt have said it any better about these guys! These are 2 of the nicest people you will ever meet in your life and are always willing to help, no matter what the problem. There has been many times that we needed help and John and Stan would drop what they were doing to help, and that is a total class act! You guys deserve this with all the work that you have put into it. Enjoy now!:grin:
Seems like you have been through a lot to get that car to run as good as it did at Cecil. You deserve that 8 second run for the work you put into the car. Do you think you could get anymore horsepower out of the engine so you can run an 8.7 or something better? I'm sure you can do it if you work at it for a while. keep the good runs going.
Steve, We went to this event thinking the car would run 9.10s because the converter in the car is the same converter we used when running the 464 Stage 2 engine. Our biggest concern was trap rpm. Ideally I would like to see the trap rpm around 6600 rpms. With this converter the engine was turning to 7200 rpms. For me thats about 600 rpms to loose. There are some who believe you need to spin these engines or use more rear or tranny gear to get them going. I am of the belief that you have to use the torque of our Buicks to accelerate the car. I dont know which is a better choice but I will say that next year the car will have a tighter converter and less rear gear. Therefore I will let you know next year!!! Thanks
John & Stan congrats:beer Welcome to the 8 second club. Not many V-8 Buicks out there doing 8's with a carb and gasoline!! I know both of you were very ill and I really appreciate you making the long haul for our event!! The Ohio and MI. gang really made the event!! I believe you guys had about 5 or 6 cars in the Quick 16 and Gary Paine takes home the $750 winner money. The bump spot was 10:98 I believe but we had alot of breakage between Friday and Saturday and that caused it to be so high. It would have been in the high 9's for sure otherwise. There were at least 6 9 second or faster cars that could not make the call for first round. Thanks again for everyone that attended and I hope you had a great time.
Congrats John! I know that was a long time (and money) coming. From the looks of it, that car is leaving hard. I bet it's a different feel than the little motor you had in it. No need for a heart check up now!:laugh:
John and Stan, CONGRATS! You really got that car flying. I'm sorry you hurt the motor. I hope it's not too serious and you get back out there and let er rip again soon. :TU: Doug.
Ditto here.. Those are some great runs on a fresh combo. It will be interesting as you go further, with your gear and converter changes. Like Doug said.. Hope it is not hurt too bad.. If you can, clue us in on the car specs.. (weight, gear, trans ect) :beer JW
John and Stan congrats on some awesome time slips. Wish I could have been in the lanes next to you guys again at cecil.( we could see if we could get a race closer than .006 margin of victory like we did last year! Just too far to travel from AZ. Congrats to Gary Paine also I heard you won the quick 16. I would have loved to be racing with all of you guys back east, instead of wasting my time last week in Las Vegas at the "West Coast Nationals". In case you didn't hear I was not allowed to run because I had a trans break and delay box. Oh well. Congrats to you guys again and sorry to hear about all the breakage in Cecil this weekend from a bunch of racers. Mike
Jim, The car is 2606 lbs without driver and 5 gallons of fuel. Dad and I are not very large guys therefore with us in the car it is right at 2800 lbs give or take 10 lbs. The transmission is a 1.76 glide with a Transmission Specialties Super 8 converter that as I mentioned was really set up for my Stage 2 464. According to Paul at Trans Specialties I would probably only see about half of the potential ET increase because the engine will blow through the converter. I think the converter was about 600 rpms off from being correct. I really would like to see this engine go through the traps at 6600 to 6700 rpms. According to the dyno numbers that I received with the engine it stopped making power at 6200. But that was with heads that only had 300 cfm where now they have 350 cfm. The rear gear is a 4.33 and 14x32 tall tires. With the above combo I was going through the traps at 7200 rpms. Thats too much for me!! If you care to know more Jim then let me know and I could give you the engine combo specs and we could chat about camshafts because I think this engine has a cam thats too small which among other things caused us to hurt a bearing. Thanks Scrappy, I wish you could have been there this year but I understand that its a looooonng ride for ya. If you get a chance drop me a private message and let me know what your doing these days! Doug, Thanks for the kind words!!! I dont think the engine is hurt bad at all. We knew going to this event that there were many things inside this engine that we didn't like. The cam is too small creating to much cylinder pressure. They didn't use high performance rod bearings and they certainly didn't make the amount of oil mods that I would like to see. The engine still runs and holds a nice oil pressure but I didn't want to take a chance after what happened to Massoud. Now.... go get those new valve springs and post that 8 second time slip. Thanks
John, Well, from the sounds of it, you guys had a mad rush to get that thing to Cecil, and since you made the 8's, and there isn't a rod hanging out of the side of it, I would say you did very well. Now you have the winter to work out the issues. With Sweesy's deal, we worked all the engine issues out on the dyno, and now that it's in the car, it's solid as a rock. Now we are working out the combo on the car, and it looks like we are gonna run out of race season before we get it all dialed in, but we are headed in that direction. Now, he has a 4.10 gear, and the bigger 14.5x 32 which have a 103 rollout, and a 34.1 grown dia, at 145 mph, and there is some speculation amoung racers I have talked to, that we might not have enough gear in the car. I will tell you that one of the things we are working on is high gear performance.. it hits high gear at around 4 seconds, and it does not pull hard.. Dave Mongeon for one, told me that his "nobodies fool" car was running 9.80's, and he went from a 4.30 to a 4.10, to kill some finish line RPM, and he fell right out of the 9's, and could not get back.. until he put the deeper gear back in. We have tightened up the converter on Sweesy's car 3 times now, went from 6800 in the traps, to 6400, but the car runs no different. But we have a limiting factor somewhere, because the adjusted altitude can change 2000 ft, and the car runs no different. HE was out this last weekend, and once again, experienced battery problems.. he called my at the shop from the track, and the car died, and would not start.. then all of the sudden, it started fine.. When he got it back to the shop yesterday, we were out in the parking lot, listening to strange "clicks" from the solenoids.. curious, I grabbed a DVOM and checked the battery.. 11.4 volts... oh, that's nice.. I am surprised the thing even ran.. Looks like it's time for the new Optima to get replaced.. So, I can't at this point tell you if taking RPM out of the motor is gonna hurt you. It will be interesting.. Sweesy's car is 2760 without him, but he's a 250 lbs guy, so its 3010 race ready. IT will go 1.27 60', but really dies in high gear. That could be the electrical system hurting us some, but until I see this thing go thru the traps at 147-149, at 6300-6400 rpm, I may remain sceptical.. We are already toying with the idea of going to a 4.30 gear. What's the cam spec, and other particulars of the build? I can tell you that the 525 here, has enought compression pressure that when you turn the engine over, with an 18" rachet, you have to wait for the compression to dissipate a little.. no way could you just spin it around with the plugs in.. The other input I can share is that most of us with this type of engine, consider 7500 to be the "give point" where failures start to show up in the oiling system, from RPM. JW
