2010 Front Engine Dragster Week 2013 03 09

The blower needs to be bolted to the intake. We have been using steel threaded rods for mockup, but that will not due for running down the track. Roo Man made up some aluminum bolts which will break if there is a problem. The threaded holes in the intake are blind threaded holes and each is a different depth. I measured, cut and numbered each rod for each hole to get the maximum depth and still have as much thread in the arcon nut as possible.. I still cannot get the show car out of my blood.

Spent a little money on pulleys today. It turns out that after these arrived, two reasons why these may not work out came to light. One is my fault and the other is out of my control, more on both these reasons later, read on.

This is leading you down a guided path to a dead end, I’ll let you in on the secret in just a minute. If yo look closely in the first picture you will note that for some reason RCD used cap screws to hold the stand offs for the belt guard on the two center bolts. These bolts over hang the pulley. I am under driving the blower which means there is a large pulley on the top and I want to be able to tune to a 8.5 index. That means I might want to go to an even larger pulley.  So…. off came the guard, the standoffs were shortened and the cap screws were replaced with countersunk Allan head bolts.

Ok, I will now let you in on one of the secrets why these pulleys. The current setup on the blower drive (43 tooth lower pulley, 54 tooth upper pulley) will give me a -20.4 percent under drive. Preliminary stabs at a tune-up suggest that will be to fast for an 8.5 index and that a larger pulley will need to be installed on the blower. When we were doing the above fix the problem below came to light. Now I know you are saying why didn’t you see that earlier, in my defense at lest 15 people have been working on this and no one saw it. You had to get down at the right angle to see it. When we turned the engine over with the started there is just enough clearance that the belt doid not hit.

So…. I obviously cannot go to a larger pulley to slow the dragster down to the 8.5 index. The second shoe fell when I went to the Gasser Racing Series drivers meeting. They handed out the new rules for the 2013 season (got a feeling for where this is going)? The new rule inserted in the rule package read, Supercharger Permitted but limited to standard roots type, well I have been working on this high helix modified retro blower since last fall. So… $3,500 later and new standard Littlefield blower with a new spacer has been ordered. That will put me within the rules and decrease the size of the upper pulley (kind of like hitting a nail with a sledge hammer, but it works. Oh yes, one more thing, I got a call from GRS officials after I place the order , that is not what they meant by the rule, they just did not want centrifugal blowers. My High Helix would have been ok.

Another stumbling block for firing the engine is timing so we (the car nuts) made a cylinder stop out a spark plug and found top dead center. Anone that tells you that breaking out the ceramic in a plug is easy has not done it. It easy to crack the ceramic but to get it out without damaging the rest of the plug is hard, we went through 4 plugs to do it. TDC was one and a half degrees off a ten degree mark on the degree wheel. It has been permanently marked on the degree wheel.

With the pump back, the final fitment of the bracket to hold the pump could be done. the end result was a bracket that can adjust the belt tension of the fuel pump, and hold the cable for the fuel shut off cable.

Now starts all the little tasks that is 10% of the total task, but 90% of the time spent fiddling. The feed line to the distribution block hits the blower restraint.