Ok We weighed my pig

Smart ass? Me?

Well, at least my comments got your attention. Maybe I was a little smart, but I wanted to be sure if everyone takes the time to post help here that it doesnt just go in one ear and out the other. Shoot me. Your original unedited post for help was pretty direct and to the point, kinda of a dont give me any crappy opinions unless you can fix my car kind of attitude. I know you are frustrated, I have traction issues myself right now, but they can be solved. So bear with us.

I will pm you my number if we need to talk. I will be out for a while this evening, but call later if you want.

I need time to ingest your post on your combination. Some of the answers are there, we just have to find them. I may not have all your answers cause I certainly aint a guru by any means, but I will help and I'm sure others will as well. I dont think this will be a 1 step fix all though. And it sounds like there may be some confusion on the TRUE weight of the car in race trim. What is the wieght of the car with minimal fuel, empty trunk, 1 battery, and nothing extra in the driver compartment other than you? I say around 3800 TOPS. Or it should be. If not, then you NEED to find the extra tonnage because something is amiss.

And for the glass hood, put a stage 2 hood on the car even if you have to borrow it. If you had to raise the hood to keep it from being sucked thru your 535 then another inch or so aint gonna help. the motor is starving for air. As for the other stuff, I need to read it a couple times to get it together in my head, which I will do.

Also, produce some more timeslip info if you can, we need to get some averages on performance, not just one shot.

P.S. And I will try much more diligently to keep my smart ass comments to myself. K?

 

Oh, and send me that video if you will.

 

I was referin to the other smart ass comments. I didnt take your post any other way than direct questions.
I am frustrated, everytime the air is good the track isnt. Then the track is awesome and I run at 3500 feet of air or higher. It seems this car doesnt want to play right. I know it can be done, but I have exhausted my knowledge. (Alll 5 minutes worth) I just had to pull the front tire off my car and I weighed itr for grins. 38.5 pounds. It wasnt even 1/2 the weight of the stock wheels I had setting nearby.

Let me take this time to say one more thing, I am not mad at anyone. I am disappointed with my car, I have tried to make it go I cant. I have taken a whole lot of crap over it too. I am more tired of that than anything else. I am waiting on a friend to call me back to see if this chassis guy can help also. My thinking is to get him to the car or the car to him and see what it does and maybe he can help. I dont know anymore.....

 

is that a bathroom scale your using??? Do they go up or red accurate near 1000lbs??

 

That yellow thing is a "fulcrum" of sorts, which reduces the amount of weight on the scale. Looks like maybe a 4:1 ratio?
So if the scale reads 250 lbs, that corner of the car really weighs 1000 lbs.
It's not the most accurate way of weighing a car, but it'll get you close. Maybe thats where most of the "extra" weight is coming from.
o No:

 

I am for sure , not an expert, but reading what you have in the rear suspension has me wondering. From all I've heard, that HR "bar" is a great piece, but you left all the other components on the car that the HR bar was to replace, when you installed it. Why do you still have adj. upper control arms? And the air bag? Just seems that you could put the stock control arms back on and save some weight, alittle, but at least the car is getting lighter. I also think the weight is wrong, my friends '71 GS455 with nothing removed, stock interior and roll cage weighs 4100lbs. with an iron headed 462 ci. What rims are on the car, my stock 15in ralleys were 35lbs each, switching to skinny aluminums cut that in half, the pair weigh 30 lbs. Good luck, keep your head up, and remember, "it's just a car..." I'll be watching this thread, I'll probably learn something.
Gary G.

 

I have a video of the last pass in my car if anyone wants to host it I can email it to you so you can post a link here for all to see. Even if the track was bad the car is doing some weird things.
'
I run centerline drag lights for wheels

 

Me too! I'm working on a car that will be heavy. It will have the HRparts upper and lower rear arms and probably the anti roll bar. I'm figuring on using MOROSO front springs and 70/30 front shocks, probably 50/50 shocks in the rear. Also 10 by 29 slicks out back (bigger if they fit)

The Green car was rather easy, big fat tires in the rear with ladder bars, and all I had to do was hang on! This next one may be interesting.

 

I will continue on being a smart a$$ :grin: :grin:

the scoop w/pan is worth 1.5 tenth and 1.5 mph GUARANTEED, without the SEALED pan, the scoop is worthless.... I still have my pan and carb base, but you declined buying them before. I told you to use the carb I recommended, and you didn't do that either, the bleeds were set up for a pressurized sccop/pan. I told you about the Hoosier radial slicks, and to use EXACTLY 19# of air cold, how to do the burnouts with them (special routine) and you didn't do that either...heavy cars and flimsy sidewalls are a non-adjustable situation.

The ATI convertor is holding you back another tenth, maybe more... it's too loose, get an A1 like I told you to do 3 times already, and it's good for another 1.5 and 1.5 mph, minimum of a tenth GUARANTEED. NEVER leave the line/stage at more than 1600-1700 rpm... any more than that and your overloading the suspension free travel, putting the suspension in a bind, and it'll blow the tires away every time. Your front tire/rim weight is too heavy. I told you to set the shocks staggered like Jim Turner did at all 4 corners. It worked for me, and everybody else that did it. What's the purpose of adjustable shocks just to leave them all nuetral??

I don't know any SERIOUS racers that use the scales like your picture shows. You need dead weight scales, not leveraged weight. Leveraged weight scaling is for figuring out trailer tongue weights, and it will always show higher than accurate numbers. You need chassis scales like the roundy boys and pro drag racer's use. My brother has a set of good scales, cause we used to weigh our Camaro all the time, depending if we ran pro tree or bracket tree, and we had to change the weight bias for either setup.

I told you all this 2 years ago at BG, and all you did was roll your eyes at me.

I think JR is pretty accurate on the weight guess. He hit it within 15# of what my car and 99% of the rest of our cars are. I know the GSE guys run better numbers, same weight, go straighter, and with less HP than you have on tap.

Simple as that. Start listening Mike, and you'll get there. If you don't, you won't. If your not going to listen, then just quit asking for opinions. Quit chewing on everybody, and just do what experienced people have been doing already, and telling you to do, for years.

JH :3gears:

 

You told me that the carb I had on the motor was flawless and not to f*** with it as I remember.

The scales I have possession of are from a round and round friend of mine, they seem to work for those guys. Serious racers also spend 3 times as much on the car as I have too. They also have a RACE car not a street car. And some day real soon I will also have a RACE car.

Shocks..... I have no idea how to "stagger " the shocks. NOONE has ever explained it. Saying it to someone and then walking away is differnt then taking the time to explain it. If I rolled my eyes at you it was probably cause you made no sense and I had no idea what you were talking about. If I had your money I would have someone here already and my car would go 9s.

I am frustrated at all the critisism. I have been listening. I have done almost everything everyone has agreed would help. Here is the list

1 Try Slicks not street tires ................... Thank you Jeff Hart for that one
2 HR Bar .....................Thank you all who replied here
3 Get the car scaled ...................... Bobb Mackley BG 03 (yes Im a little slow here)
4 How can I get the motor to quit sucking the pan dry...........Mike @ TA and ERic Ruge (engine rebuilder)
5 what kind of springs on the rear of the car should I buy??? ............... oh yea that one hasnt been addressed yet so I havent bought any. '
6 Still want to adress the tire thing more........about going to the Hooseirs

I am listening but the answers need to be clear. Lets talk instead of critisize. I think I have access to a hood and scoop I plan to take the challenge and see if its worth the 1.5 you say. I am guessing my cars currunt weight really at 3890 at this time I will weigh it soon also as a whole.

 

maybe not. BUT... you can buy these from ads in the back of a few roundy round mags.

I bought these FROM a roundy round guy. He was getting out it. He said they are not perfect, but they tell you what you need to know.

The platforms are cupped for holding a tire. hard tell from my picture. the platforms are balanced on an axis underneath the platform. You can not
balance a trailer tongue with these. that would be very treaturous, as there would be nothing there to keep it from sliding off.

as for the total weight.... if the car was taken to an cerfied scale, the resultant reading could be divided by the total of the scale readings, resulting in a corrected multiplication factor (i.e. 4.0, 3.9 etc. instead of the 4.13 that i generally find to be near accurate).

the point here is to find distribution. he is missing a good 60lbs on the right rear. bad spring i think. the scientific way to prove this would be to swap the two springs and see if the wieght goes to the right. the springs are a pain in the a$$ to swapp so he would rather change to the recomended spring rate while he is at it.

 

Could you measure it out or make up some direction how to build that so it works out right? Id like to do some weighing.

 

Ok, Lets settle the REAR spring thing now. Find a STOCK set of rear springs from a GS or Skylark, preferably a GS, and put them in the car. Put them on the same sides they were in originally. Put the air bags back in with no air for now.

The stock springs are fine. Yours may have given up, its possible, but a GOOD set of stockers will get the job done.

 

By the way, I'm still absorbing your combo post, what distributor are you running, and what springs are in it??

 

The distributor is a stinger pick up with the timing all in at 1500-1700 I have an MSD 7AL2 and the timing was decided at the dyno as 36 on the nose made the best HP

 

Mike, tell the truth here bud. You told me twice that you NEVER used or even installed the good carb, because you said the one from your old engine was fine, and *good enough*. You don't fine tune an engine/carb setup on a dyno. Dyno's dont go 135 mph. You also stated you didn't/wouldn't ever want to run the scoop, because everybody back your way wouldn't think it was a street car any more, and you couldn't race against the other *supposed* street cars in your area, with a scoop... those were your EXACT words.

I told you how to avoid the suck_the_pan_dry syndrome, and then you went right out, next pass, and did the exact OPPOSITE two procedures I told you to do to help you, both staging for traction, and after the finish line for the oil issue, and you almost hit the wall in the right lane at BG, remember that??...

I explained the shock stagger settings to you explicitly. And I told you to call/talk to Jim Turner, you didn't, and I told you to talk to all the GSE guys, specifically Gary Laughlin, Tom Rix, Perry Carlini, Oliver Colteryahn, Dave Benisek, Tom Haeffner and Bruce Kent, I don't think you talked to ANY of them, but I could be wrong. NONE of those cars are jacked up in the back like yours is/was, and they all run smaller tires than you. I do know you got some very good advice from both Jeff and Bobb, and GREAT advice from Gary Kubisch.. You didn't/never have, adhered to a thing that Gary told you, and I think Gary is a suspension opinion leader amongst ALL of us.

90/10 RF, 70/30 LF, 50/50 RR. 30/70 LR is the shock settings I used for *starters*, (pay close attention here) the explicit instructions come with the shocks, no matter what brand, did you read them? obviously not, if yours are still set neutral, after all this time..

I also told you to run 22# in the right air bag and 6# in the left airbag, and not below 12.5# of air in the MT or Phoenix/Firestone slicks. You only need 6# equal with your new rear sway bar deal. I also told you to rotate the rear tires from side to side every 6 passes, did you do that? You don't need to rotate the radials btw...

I told you to NOT do your burnout's in second gear, go right to third gear, then bring the rpm's up, using the high gear drum. Second gear burnouts specifically break sprags in a T400... how many sprags did you finally break?? In over 500 passes on my GS, I have NEVER broken a sprag...

I told you to buy the Moroso trick rear springs, which are different spring rates right to left. They are visually different right/left. You didn't do that, you said what you had were fine. The Moroso front springs are NOT really what they are advertised rated at, everybody seems to know that by now. You need the heaviest rated front spring from Moroso, I specifically gave you the part number. At one time the GSCA sold the staggered rear springs, that's where I bought mine. They were made by Detroit/Eaton spring if I remember correctly, from what Richard told me.

Why are you using roundy round leverage scale arms, and methods, for a straight line race car? What *I* would have done right then would be remove both rear springs and re-check the weight bias. They pop right out...

4* pinion angle is too much, you need 2.5*, with the driver in the car, and the car on the ground.

As a final question I have, why are you getting so worked up, if your going to buy a RACE CAR anyways. Your going to a LOT of aggravation just to run one 9 sec. number and then take the car back apart, as I believe Dave Burns alluded to already.

Hope this helps...

JH

 

You most certainly can, and it's done every day, all day, if you don't have a scale that reads 2000# dead tongue weight, you use the bathroom scale deal and figure the offset ratio, dependent on the arm length. In fact several camping, boating and RV trailer magazines have articles showing how to do this.

JH

 

Not to jump in here, but the 60 foots seem REALY lazy.....is it from not hooking up? That car, it's power, and even despite it's girth ought to be running 60 foots in the mid to high 1.30's which alone would put your car in the 9's. Optimized, you should be in the low 1.30's like me.
The weight is a puzzle to me as well.....my car hasn't been hacked anywhere, I still run factory buckets, stock brakes, stock front end parts, and with my largness in the front seat, I'm still just under 3800 lbs. A well known top stock racer has his car ALOT less than mine without cutting anything either. Whatever isn't needed needs to be removed. Bumper braces, door beams, convert to manual steering and brakes, lightweight 2 core alumnium radiator (some heads up guys run one core radiators), wiper motor, heater core, and so on. You would be suprised how fast it adds up.
The pictures I've seen of your car launching really show the tires wrapping up bad. I believe you need a tire with a much stiffer sidewall. I like the hoosier radials too and many of us use them. A great bias ply alternative is MT 10.5 x 29.5 which I will have mounted on a second set of wheels for questionable starting lines, but the radials are quicker.
I'll also suggest not changing 20 things at once. Lets get the car to stick, get the 60's where they need to be, and put it on a diet.
Perry Carlini

 

Converter.....

THe Converter and springs.

I think you will find your most improvement in a set of front drag springs and a converter adjustment/change. The rear with stock configuration and anti-role bar does the least amount of movement so springs and shocks don't play as important of a role as up front. If you have so much movement that you need alot of shock work to control it, you have something wrong with your setup. The geometry is what is important and it has to work with the converter. If you have a quick, hard hitting converter then you need a suspension and tire combination to match. Generally the higher the stall, the longer the suspension has to respond. On a low-stall, high-torque setup, people tend to get good results out of DM's, Southsides, and other geometry altering components the move the IC back towards the rear so the tire have a quicker initial "hit" on them but have less leverage on transfering the weight. This works well on lower powered combination since they don't require as much weight transfer to the rear wheels to keep them planted. Back to "the stall" compaired to "your stall". It would benefit you as a tuning aid to get a play-back tach or add-on record device. If you don't know if your converter is working right for your combination, you could have a nuclear engineer design the state of the art suspension for your car that wont do anything if your converter is not working right for what you need. You need to be able to launch off idle to about 1000 rpm to keep from loading the suspension. If your loading the converter then your keeping your suspension and converter from working like its suppose to. If its not launching right or its best "highly-loaded" than the converter is WRONG! A transbrake would change things but thats not what were working with. On the playback, you want to be able to drop the playback into a "slow" playback so you can see the flash on the converter, rpm drop between shifts, and wheel spin. This way if your not getting the right flash, you have something to go off of when you send it off to get it adjusted. It gives the converter company a reference point to work off of. Until then a converter company will have to guess just like you would be. I feel you need a fairly high flash @4500-5000 to get things moving and to give the suspension time to respond but it will have to "lock-up"(tighten-up) quickly to keep it efficient going through the traps. Most of your wheels-up time is during your "flash" portion where the converter is multiplying the torque the most. Once the converter "locks up"(leaves the "flash" stage) and begins accelerating with the motor, the wheels come down and acceleration is strictly motor dependent. So if you can hold a higher flash longer(still in the power band) and still get an efficient lockup, this is where your fastest 60fts and et will be. This is generally 9" and 8" territory unless you get into blown/nitrous/1200+hp applications. ATI makes as good a converter as any. It is your size and configuration that is going to make the difference your looking for. Anything BUT a custom converter is a waste of money, PERIOD! You know all your car spec's and dyno #'s so all you need is the correct weight and your set. THere are guys making all different types of suspension combinations work. I figure your rear has to be a bit high to get that tire to fit and this is hurting you. You could probably get a narrower tire to work just as good if not better just by dropping your rear ride height. Not that you need to do this but don't limit yourself to a larger tire just to get it to work. I feel you can get your existing combination to work just as well. I ran the same 1.32 60ft with the "rear-up" running 29.5x10.5W as the "rear-down" with 28x10.5. All my problems and up's and down's revolved around the converter. It just becomes more apparent with the more power you make.

Don't be fooled by a 5000 stall 10" converter, it is nothing like 5000 stall 9" or 8". Each converter has it's own "efficiency" stall range to work with a given weight and Hp. Above this range its just sloppy and never locks up as it should and your et and mph will suffer. Generally on N/A engines, 10" range is 3000-4000, 9" 3800-5000, 8" 5000+. My 9" flashed to 5800+ on nitrous and never locked up. I wasted alot of Hp/Tq even though it ran 5.65 at 123 best w/1.32 60ft. I told them I needed to bring my flash down 1000rpm from what I had so I got a 10" that stalled right @4800. THey knew what I had and what I wanted and they nailed it first try. I never had enough time to dial it in or even get it to hook. It felt like I was spraying another 200hp with the new converter and it acted like it coming out of the hole too. :shock:

I don't have a specific answer or a part number for the "magic" converter or suspension combination, but I will try to explain things to help you understand so YOU can sort out what you need and what you don't. You don't need to "reinvent-the-wheel" to get what you have to work. Leave out the corner scales and just get an overall weight. Converters aren't cheep but if you have the right type and size, they can be adjusted if they are a little off and are worth the investment :beer . I would say a very tight 8" or 9" is what you need. You already have an ATI so I would talk with them about how yours is performing and see what they recommend and go from there. They will know best how to adjust from what you already have if its not working how it should. Understanding helps you interepet the knowledge. I hope this helped.

 

:TU:

excellent advice Rick. My A1 was a VERY tight 9", exactly like Benisek ordered, and it did more for my car than any one thing I EVER DID.

JH :TU: