What did you do on your Front Engine Dragster TODAY?

[coupemerc]

Ordered final Pistons, wrist pins, valves and push rods today. Bad day for the wallet.

[Quartermiler]

We made it through tech at Bowling Green without any issues! Cant wait to make a pass tomorrow!

[GlennLever]

We made it through tech at Bowling Green without any issues! Cant wait to make a pass tomorrow!

Good deal, what index are you running?

[masracingtd1167]

Ordered final Pistons, wrist pins, valves and push rods today. Bad day for the wallet.

Just the price of a set of pushrods hurt's today!

[Quartermiler]

Glenn we are running Jr. Fuel the field is full with 8 cars. We ran a 7.78 at 173 and change. We had the car to rich and hurt our ET. Get 2 more tries tomorrow. The density attitude was 3018 feet with a lot of water in the air!

[GlennLever]

Boy am I bummed, it has now been three weeks since I went down the track.

I was supposed to go night and tomorrow and the track owner just canceled both tonight and tomorrow.

Grounds are to wet.

http://www.empiredragway.com/





Between Monday's 3/4 of an inch of rain and yesterday's 2 inches of rain you can see from the photos below that the grounds are not going to handle 20 & 30 thousand pound motorhomes & trailers. Although the forecast is for sunny and 74, it will never dry in time. As difficult as it is, I have no other choice but to cancel both tonight's and tomorrow's events. Sorry, I hope to see you all next week. Bob 

I should have gone to HRR even bang Shift is having problems

[Dolmetsch]

I worked on the tunnel ram for my rail today. Spent about an hour hand filing the first exhaust stub flat. Will do one at a time. Takes about 1 hour to 1 1/2 hours for each stub but it is worth spending the time not to have trouble. Also talked the the owner/ driver of the BB Ford altered I matched raced with at Picton. He got me twice but I got the last one. Says he is removing the tunnel ram and installing a blower. Unfortunatley he has one for it (actually several) I was a bit disappointed. I enjoyed racing him. Seemed 246 cubes against 485 cubes in a relatively similar weight car was fun. I didnt mind getting spanked because of the difference in engines one should expect it. I will of course have no chance against his car with a Blower on it (and Injection probably burning alky) Makes one wanna spit!!!!!!!!!! Apparently what really bothers them so my old boss and friend tells me is I leave on them all real bad. I know why (Thank you Frank Lupo Dynamic Convertors) and at one time would I have helped them with their launch but NO MORE! Party's over. Its time to get vicious (again)

Don
Did another yesterday and will do another this morning.

[Dolmetsch]

You neighbour noise story brought a smile. Many years ago back in the 70s I had a homebrew hemi dart. Hemis are very loud and I was careful to not run it at home if possible even though I lived in a semi rural setting. One morning after returning late at night from a race at Cayuga I had to rise early , unload the car from the ramp truck and take over to R&A racing who had lent it to me as they had a race in Luskville that day with their junior stocker (E/S 68 Camero). I arouse about 4 AM and fully intended to just unchain the car and roll it off. However our next door neighbour whose house was literly just next door had recently thrown her hubby out and her brother who worked in TO was staying there. He had an old Buick Electra with a bad muffler and had a bad habit of starting it and leaving it running while he went in for coffee. Often very early in the morning. It would wake us up and was very annoying. Just so happened he decided to do it right when I was rolling the car off the ramp truck . I had had enuf. I switched on the battery power and climbed in. I drowned the big hemi with sevral pumps of the gas pedal then flipped the switch and pushed the starter. It barked to life and I had given it a big enuf drink it didnt snuff. I dont know if you have ever heard a 426 hemi with 12.7 to one compression  running through a set of Hooker adjustables at 5 or so in the morning but it gets your attention. Iwarmed it up to safe zone and backed down the driveway and onto the road in front of their house, pulled the shifter to 2nd gear, set the brakes with the line lock and "Gave er". Around 7500 she began to bounce a bit but I made sure to give it a good burnout and then let her drive out as I backed off and popped up the driveway. Still had enuf momentum even though I killed igntion to drive up the driveway and around the back of the house. That night when he arrived home the muffler was fixed and we were never bothered again. Marks were on the road for a long time. Nothing was ever said e. Where I live now on a small hobby farm no one minds too much if I am running something. Donuts? Now I am hungry. Anyway  hope you find a work around. Maybe they will go away for a day.
Don

[GlennLever]

You neighbour noise story brought a smile. Many years ago back in the 70s I had a homebrew hemi dart. Hemis are very loud and I was careful to not run it at home if possible even though I lived in a semi rural setting. One morning after returning late at night from a race at Cayuga I had to rise early , unload the car from the ramp truck and take over to R&A racing who had lent it to me as they had a race in Luskville that day with their junior stocker (E/S 68 Camero). I arouse about 4 AM and fully intended to just unchain the car and roll it off. However our next door neighbour whose house was literly just next door had recently thrown her hubby out and her brother who worked in TO was staying there. He had an old Buick Electra with a bad muffler and had a bad habit of starting it and leaving it running while he went in for coffee. Often very early in the morning. It would wake us up and was very annoying. Just so happened he decided to do it right when I was rolling the car off the ramp truck . I had had enuf. I switched on the battery power and climbed in. I drowned the big hemi with sevral pumps of the gas pedal then flipped the switch and pushed the starter. It barked to life and I had given it a big enuf drink it didnt snuff. I dont know if you have ever heard a 426 hemi with 12.7 to one compression  running through a set of Hooker adjustables at 5 or so in the morning but it gets your attention. Iwarmed it up to safe zone and backed down the driveway and onto the road in front of their house, pulled the shifter to 2nd gear, set the brakes with the line lock and "Gave er". Around 7500 she began to bounce a bit but I made sure to give it a good burnout and then let her drive out as I backed off and popped up the driveway. Still had enuf momentum even though I killed igntion to drive up the driveway and around the back of the house. That night when he arrived home the muffler was fixed and we were never bothered again. Marks were on the road for a long time. Nothing was ever said e. Where I live now on a small hobby farm no one minds too much if I am running something. Donuts? Now I am hungry. Anyway  hope you find a work around. Maybe they will go away for a day.
Don

I have a woman that has been divorced three times living next to me, she calls the cops for anything. The one that got me was when she called and complained that my Christmas lights were to bright.

[Dolmetsch]

Her three X s must feel fortunate to be free.
Spent all afternoon filing the exhaust stubs and got it done.
Don

[ricci32]

More done on the chute pack body.

[Dolmetsch]

I have been working away at my tunnel ram project for the rail. Been modifying carb linkage for clearance and making linkage and brackets to run the pair of carbs from the existing car linkage. It is tedious work but is going well. I can see the end in sight. I try to spend a hour per day on it.

Don

[Foot Feed]

I got an aluminum T-33 canopy jettison handle to repurpose as a brake handle. 

[GlennLever]

Well it has been awhile since I actually posted anything on the dragster.

Well it has been raining, raining, raining, and more rain.

I did get out two weeks ago and really hope to get out again tomorrow to do some more testing, but it looks like rain.

It is really important to get out tomorrow as I want to go to Norwalk the 20th for an NDRL race. The problem is that, one it is an index race and I have not gotten that squared away, two it is a pro tree and have had no practice on a pro tree, I may go anyway to get away from this RAIN (and yes I am tempted to use a forbidden word here), and three it is ¼ mile and lately for one reason or another it seems all my racing has been 1/8 mile, I hate 1/8 mile.

Went club racing Friday June 21 club racing 1/8 mile. Here is a summery

First run, Friday night 8:23 PM
Air Density 2200
Top Pulley 60
Pill 90
Fuel Pressure 60.38
Top end Boost 9.02
60 foot 1.316
Calculated ¼ mile   8.443
A/F ratio 3.808
Comments, I did not write down the pulley size and pill so this was done from memory, data is questinable.

Second Run, Friday night 9:22 PM
Air Density 1810
Top Pulley 62
Pill 90
Fuel Pressure 59.82
Top end Boost  8.31
60 foot 1.303
Calculated ¼ mile   8.586
A/F ratio 3.810
Comments, This is really unusually good air. Took away some air, but the density go better the end result was little change

Third Run, Friday night 10:15 PM
Comment, I had to throw this run out (won the race), dew had fallen and after the 1/8 mile marker I had to get out of it as it got really squirrely (rear tires started to spin in the dew on the track). Data was all screwed up and graph was useless.



Ok, now Saturday, Gasser series racing, June 22.
Gasser series is 1/8 mile ET racing, so I have no ¼ mile times (so for comparison a ¼ mile 8.483 is a 1/8 mile 5.427). We only had two time trails as there was a bad accident that shut the track down for awhile, the guy is ok?, but will be in the hospital for awhile.

First round of qualifying, Saturday 3:07 PM
Air Density 3079
Top pulley 62
Pill 95
Fuel Pressure 51.61
Top end Boost 7.53
60 foot 1.312
Cal 1/4 mile 8.702
AF Ratio 3.688
Comment, Felt terrible, to slow for the 8.5, fuel out the pipes, need to make big changes

Second round of qualifying, Saturday 4:35 PM
Air Density 3249
Top pulley 60
Pill 105
Fuel Pressure 52.06
Top end Boost 8.31
60 foot 1.265
Cal 1/4 mile 8.392
AF Ratio 4.074
Comment, Much more like it, but now too fast. This run was against my arched nemesis (a good friend who in the second round of eliminations I give the race away to by breaking out and red lighting). I had my best light ever a .508 and beat his ET by .1865, now if only I could do that in a race.

Ok, now we are into the first round of elimination so we decided not to play with it and see if we could predict an ET.
First round of eliminations, Saturday 6:13 PM
Air Density 3100
Top pulley 60
Pill 105
Fuel Pressure 50.99
Top end Boost 8.24
60 foot 1.247
Cal 1/4 mile 8.410
A/F Ratio 4.072
Comment, Treed him and won by .0281.

Second round of eliminations, Saturday 7:41 PM
Air Density 2858
Top pulley 60
Pill 105
Fuel Pressure 53.28
Top end Boost 8.31
60 foot 1.241
Cal 1/4 mile 8.355
AF Ratio 4.110

Comments. This guy and I end up racing each other a lot as are ETs are always close. We have yet to have a race, we each keep giving the race to the other one, this time I red lite and broke out. The dragster sounded good and felt good, it likes this air fuel ratio better, but once again I am too fast for the 8.5 index.

Serious consideration is being given to going in the other direction (8.000 index). The problem boils down to engine RPM. I am concerned that this engine will not last if I push the RPM higher, currently turning 6400s at the top end. This is a stroked Pontiac 400 punched and stroked out to 461. A simple fix would be to put a higher tire on the rear. I am currently running a 31X13X15 M/T. by going to a 32 high tire I increase the circumference by 3.96 percent (drop the top end RPM by 253)(circumference 97.0 to 101). No one makes a 32X13X15 tire Hoosier has a 13.5X13.5X15 in a lightweight C07 compound, but the side wall will not clear and I cannot space it out as the tire rim combo I have now is spaced out, so I would have to buy rims also. Hoosier also makes a 32.0X13.0X15 in a D05 compound which is a soft compound and one of the problems is I have low HP and based on the graphs I am dead hooking now. M/T makes a 33X10.5X15 tire with a M3 compound (medium). This tire is interesting in that the compound is a little harder, the with is smaller so it might help with the launch, but I afraid that I do not have the HP to turn a 2 inch taller tire.  INPUT REQUESTED

Tuning, it I stay with the 8.5 I think I want to try a 110 pill and adjust pulleys to get an A/F ratio of 4.1. By taking away more fuel and keeping the A/F ratio about the same I should take away HP and slow it down a little more. Sure would like to go to the 8.000, but have the RPM  / tire problem.

[GlennLever]

I need an ark. More rain.

THIS WEEK AT EMPIRE DRAGWAY
Friday 7-5-13 Weather Update 3:45 pm
We had a huge downpour at 3 pm this afternoon that soaked the facility yet again.  There is standing water everywhere in the pits.  Also, the forecast is for 50% chance of showers until early this evening.  Therefore, we are cancelling tonight's event.  I will post an update about Saturday's (July 6) program in the morning. I will make a decision about Saturday by 11 am.
Saturday 7-6-13 Carquest Auto Parts QUICK 16  & Full Program
Gate Opens 1 pm, Time Trials 2 pm, Racing 6 pm
Quick 16 Qualifiers at 3 pm & 4:30 pm                           
04-02-13  The 2013 Season Schedule has been mailed out on Saturday, March 30.  They were mailed to anyone who raced in 2012 and spectators who called in 2012.  If you do not receive a schedule in the mail by Saturday, April 6 and would like one please call us at 585.382.3030 or email us at empiredragway@aol.com.