Finally Got The Car On The Track

[glofria]

We were at the ANRA Season Opener at Auto Club Famoso this past weekend and brought the dragster out for Eily Stafford to drive. She made a planned shut-off on the first pass but was going 150 MPH at the 1/8th mile and would have had a quicker ET had she not needed to pedal the car.

Unfortunately, we broke the input shaft on the second hit right at the shift point. We'll get it fixed and try it again soon.

[Larry Gocha]

Car looks nice and we know it will run good.

[JrFuel Hayden]

any idea why the input shaft broke, we have not broke a PG input shaft during our racing JrFuel for 14 years, running 7.0's and 190 mph, making about 900 hp on alky ?

[Oldschool]

Nice ride 😎

[Draw 3D]

Good looking and performing car and well established driver means trouble for the other cars.


I broke my input shaft at the 1 to 2 shift, sheared it right at the oil hole.

[JrFuel Hayden]

What did you do fix it/ stop it from breaking ?

[Draw 3D]

What did you do fix it/ stop it from breaking ?

Not sure if the question was for me but I replaced it with a stronger unit.

[JrFuel Hayden]

We have used a powerglide input shaft for 14 years, but I have talked to some racers that are using a turbo input shaft.
Did you guys break the PG shaft ?
Jon

[ricardo1967]

We have used a powerglide input shaft for 14 years, but I have talked to some racers that are using a turbo input shaft.
Did you guys break the PG shaft ?
Jon

Hey Jon, is yours a factory stock Powerglide shaft?

[JrFuel Hayden]

No factory input shaft, one trans [ 1.68 gear] has a Rossiler PG input, the other [1.76 gear] has a PG  A-1 input.
One thing of interest is Dean Carter JF , B/nd, A/nd bought a used trailer a few years ago from a Comp racer, and it came with drawer full on different input shafts, like 16-18.
Different oil holes, grooves, and in different locations. The Comp racer was using them to fine tune his converter.
I've heard some blower racers use the 400 turbo shaft.

Jon

[glofria]

Good looking and performing car and well established driver means trouble for the other cars.


I broke my input shaft at the 1 to 2 shift, sheared it right at the oil hole.

Thanks for the compliment. Same circumstances here, at the shift point. Happen twice last year in our '57. Both times during elimination rounds.

John, to first answer your questions I should explain a couple of things. First that engine is straight out of retirement, but once propelled our '57 to a 7.55 et in the middle of summer at Pamona (back in the Goodguys days). Secondly in order to run that kind of number, the Master Engine Builder (my dad Larry) put an aggressive cam timing on it. That with fresh blower and about 20% overdrive, we're putting out about 12-1300 hp.

We really didn't know what we had to start with as this was only the third and fourth attempts on the car. The first two (by a different group) was a waste of time and effort. The input shaft was the weak link in the drivetrain and thus broke.

Trans came out today and on it's way to our Trans builder in Visalia now. Dennis will go through everything and get a stronger shaft for it. For the '57 we went with a Pro Mod style shaft with less and large oiling holes and a bigger pump. So far so good.

We will take some cam timing out of the engine and switch to 8mm pulleys to bring it inline with the other engines we run and go from there. Hope this helps.

[JrFuel Hayden]

That's some good numbers, 12-1300hp, I assume you will race 7.0 Pro.
I'd still like to know what input shaft you end-up with.
Thanx,
Jon

[wideopen231]

Nice looking car.

As for input shaft I am firm believer in over kill.Not only turbo but ringless turbo and would have gone with big shaft except requires new pump.

[glofria]

The chassis was a home built job, by a Commercial Pilot on his spare time. It once was a 7.0 Pro car back when the class got started.Our agreement with Eily is for ANRA events only as she already is committed to driving Mike Zimmerman's "Crower" FED 7.0 Pro  car.

Right now the plan is to make it easier for everyone to work with. Thus detuning the engine. We'll get the $500 shaft this time and not the $1000 Pro Mod set up. The engine itself has what at the time was some leftover components. Aluminum Rodeck block, old Brodix heads from VHS circle track racing days, a street manifold with a pop-off plate and a cast blower casing. About the only thing we purposely bought were pistons for alcohol and the cam. Nothing special about the fuel pump and injections set-up. Enderle 110 pump with nozzles in the hat only and an idle bypass. Because we are going softer, we may add a high-speed lean out just to keep it charging on the big end.

It's suppose to be a fun thing, but doubles the work as we run the other car too.

[glofria]

Got the car back out this past weekend at Famoso for the Heritage Series Fall Sportsman Finals. Our intent was to do some TnT while entered in the NE1 class. There was only 104 cars entered, so it made the turnaround time quick and we only made two of the four qualifying attempts. Here is the breakdown of the runs:

1st attempt was a (.000) reaction time and a 1.09 60 ft., engine shut off about 800 ft and did a 8.09 @ 116 MPH
2nd attempt was a (.055) reaction time and a 1.13 60 ft., driver got out of it at about 1000 ft and did a 7.49 @ 177 MPH. We put more fuel to it and adjusted the barrel valve.
3rd attempt (1st round) was a (.033) reaction time and a 1.17 60 ft., driver let up at the end and did a 7.52 @ 166 MPH. Guy in the other lane (Jason Barta) had a (.001) RT and ran 7.604, we had no chance. We put a bit more fuel to it.
4th attempt was a check out pass and didn't care about the RT, but a 1.19 60 ft., and she ran it out all the way for a 7.43 @ 187 MPH. We went the other way on the tuning but not enough to launch hard so we will put the cam timing back in it and try again next time.