Took the car out and the weather was perfect. Judd was a bit nervous because it was his first time to make passes at the track. Car ran good but I left my datalogging cable at home so I had zero info to tune. So I just let him make laps. His quickest was a high 13 at 105 which is a full second quicker than it would run na here. We are at 3600 MSL and the DA is usually in the 8000's this time of year, so sucky air is the norm. Judd was not very aggressive with the launch or shifting and he was leaving on zero boost so there is definitely more performance to be realized. It's a ways off from what I hoped, but I know we will get there. I think the header bolts are loose as I found some pieces of copper rtv lying near them. So it probably isn't making the boost it should. Judd was so amped on each pass he couldn't remember to watch the gauges. Lol.
Judd had a great time until his very last pass. He did his burnout, staged, and snapped an axle. Boo. Thankfully the diff is shimmed super tight and thankfully we have c-clip eliminators so we were able to nurse it back to the shop at 35mph.
Judd went over today and took it all apart to assess the damage. It broke way out on the end. The spline area actually looks pretty good. These Motive 28's lived for many years in this car behind a 545 launching on slicks so it almost seems funny that they snapped behind the 302 on street tires. Haha. Maybe it was just their time to go. We are just relieved it broke now and not at Rocky Mountain Race Week in a few weeks.
Fwiw Judd beat that black SRT Challenger, so he was pretty excited. Not bad for a sbe 302, T5 and a cheap turbo. He just made laps. Make a pass, return road, staging lanes, make a pass, return road, staging lanes... Haha.
There's a story for the first time... so powerful it ripped solid steel in half! LOL - they won't believe him when he's telling it in the old folks home and everyone rolls around in an autodrive Leaf.
Snapped behind a t5 no less... wow. It doesn't look twisted? Crack and fatigue maybe? Dang good thing it was already built for 10's! Glad nobody got hurt, those rules must be there for a reason.
Good for Judd - and for you. What a great experience for a young guy. Making laps is exactly the way to learn to settle and begin to focus without letting the jitters take over, which is not easy.
All the parts to fix it showed up today. My buddy Jonathan had an extra set of 5 lug axles, so I ordered a new set of c-clip eliminators. I would have just ordered new bearings for the old ones, but for just a few bucks more I could have the whole kit. This set uses a tapered bearing vs the sealed ball bearing the old ones use. Supposed to be better for street/strip. Since Summit racing is only 6 hours away, all the stuff arrived next day via Lone Star Overnight. Whoo hoo.
We are also going to stick some Remflex header gaskets in it while we are working on stuff.
I pressed the new Strange c-clip eliminators onto the new axles today. I also crawled under the car and looked at the ring and pinion. They look perfect. We should have this end buttoned up pretty quick and then we can move on to the headers.
I got to comparing time slips last night between Judd's best pass and the best nitrous pass from Noble, OK (much lower elevation and DA - the BBF would pick up 0.6 just from the better air). Really just looked at intervals and mph gains. Judd was about 1 sec slower on the front half but only 0.47 sec slower on the back half. This was not surprising since this was his first outing and was running on street tires and I was on slicks and was shifting like a madman in Noble. I don't expect it to be as quick on the front half simply because the nitrous hits so early. As for mph, in Noble on the spray it picked up 24 mph on the back half and in Amarillo the turbo was picking up 26 mph. Judd ran 105 here and in Noble it ran 112 on the spray. Can't wait for him to make a pass with the slicks on it, a decent launch and a 1-2 shift that does not cause him to back out (street tires would spin).
We did the passengers side gasket Sunday. It wasn't super bad, just time consuming.
We also changed the battery cut-off wiring so that the car would die when the switch was flipped. Oopsie.
The last thing we did was test the 2 step rev limiter. We only tested it to 2000 rpm but it seems to work good. I was just grounding it to a seat bolt so I don't know how we can wire it up just yet. 79-83 Mustangs do not have a clutch switch so that complicates things a bit.
I considered making one from a kickstand start interrupt switch I have, but we are down to less than a week until RMRW. So I don't know if I want to go through trying to mount one, figure out the latching relay circuit that is required etc.
As a quickie fix, I may just use the windshield washer switch to activate it. It is handy, unused, and already in the car. lol
Haha It's been a good project! Never staying the same for any considerable length of time!
2 Step stuff: Well, it seems the 2 step does not work as good as I thought. I thought it was set at 2000 but it was set at 3500, so I tried to change it and my changes did nothing. And it would only work for a few seconds at a time, then it would kick off and the engine would free rev. I think mainly it is not working right because I did not wire it up correctly. Loool. I was just grounding the wire to activate it and apparently you are supposed to build a small circuit with a resistor an a couple of diodes. Probably not going to mess with it before RMRW.
I'm sick of buying tires.
2 new tires and wheels for DW trailer, 4 new tires for big car trailer, 2 new tires for front of Mustang AND 2 new tires for my motorcycle trailer.
I hope I don't need tires on anything for a long time!! Sheesh.
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