Thread: Hello from an old member

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Good score on the studs! It's getting really close now.

Well its ready to roll folks

Had some issues with the new slot mags so I opted for some smoothies to tide me over. My Grand Daughter likes them for sure

I was going to hit the track today but when I got up at 5am it was raining hard. By 5.30am I had got texts from 3 other friends to say they were not going to bother due to the rain. This left me with a big decision to make. Head outside and load the car onto the trailer in hard rain and get everything loaded in the tow truck for a day out, or go back to bed for warm snuggles with my lovely wife ??? When I woke up again at 9am I went downstairs and got to spend the next two hours with my Grand Daughter while we played and then I got to do two more jobs around the house that have been on the list for weeks I did get the car on the trailer at 5pm and its ready for me to hit the track and invade a Ford Owners day at the track. Yes I know its an MG, but I have Ford axle parts in there now so thats good enough for me. If anyone wants to challenge me I'll just tell them I'm slowly converting the MG to Ford running gear

Here are some pics !!

Cute pic of the grand-daughter.. and you got the rear axle together. Wow, you had a good day!!




OH, now clean that work bench!

Yes!
I'm looking forward to putting a couple of miles on the axle tomorrow by driving around the track to make sure it feels and sounds good. Then I would like to hit the track and do some gentle test passes.

I had a great days testing today. I drove it around the pits for a while and then did some gentle test runs. Then did a quick check on the diff and all seemed ok. So nitrous turned off and I went for some harder launches on boost only with small burnouts and the timing advanced by 3 degree's. I ran three 10.8 second passes with 12 psi of boost. So I'm happy that the car will run in the 10's off gas. Then I turned the nos back on but dropped the launch settings to just a 50 shot with the other 125 shot coming in over 1.7 seconds so as not to add too much stress on the launch while bedding in the diff. (usual settings are 100 off the line with the other 75 shot coming in over 0.6 of a second)

The result was really good. Nice sedate launches with virtually no air under the front end. The best time was 9.7 seconds so a little off my PB of 9.6 seconds. But the MPH crept up from the usual 137's to 141.68 and 140.41. The added timing does make the engine want to rev better.

60 foot times off and on gas were all 1.5's which shows I've got it set to launch softer. I normally run 60 foots of 1.3 seconds. This week I will drain the diff and open it up for inspection. If all looks ok I can get ready for next weekend where we have two days of RWYB. Then I can add a little more power for the launch to see if I can get back in the 1.3 60 foot times with the new ign timing setup. I think that may just get me into the 9.5's if I'm lucky??

Picture shows not a lot of air on launch. Slo Mo vid give a bit more info.

Regards to all
Pel



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35k7...iZ--GyG4tfRrjw

Wow Pel pretty darn good already! Will be interesting to see what she does next week.

Shes on the trailer and ready to roll for two days of RWYB this weekend

Good Luck! We'll try to be patient waiting for some results... pics.. or better yet.. Video!!

Good luck at the track. You reach a plateau and its hard to advance.

Video with lots of noise please! now lets break the 9.5

Oh My goodness!! What a strange weekend ??

I got to the track at 7am yesterday and was in the pits by 8.30am with my friends and their cars. We had a get together over a coffee and then went back to our cars to get them prepped for racing. My usual pre flight checks paid off yet again. During the checks I warmed the engine on the trailer as usual to make sure all was ok. As the Rover V8 warms up I expect to see some vapours coming from the large vents on each rocker cover. This is quite normal for the engine. As the engine reaches 60C I then increase rpms to 4000. Then i let it idle up to 70C and give it some revs up and down. Then I go outside and operate the throttle by hand to observe the engine. As I blipped the throttle I could see the rocker vents doing their usual stuff. But I noticed another plume of vapour rising from the side of one cylinder head?? There were vapours rising from the driver side cylinder head on the vacant bolt hole by cylinder 4 ??

You dont need to be a rocket scientist to realise that the head gasket was leaking. So I decided to pull the head for inspection in the pits. I'm glad that the head gasket was leaking to be honest. Because when I removed the rocker cover I found the exhaust rocker for cylinder 8 had the adjuster nut missing. Long story short... I stripped the engine and fitted a replacement head gasket and did a temporary repair on the rocker adjuster stud. I found another problem with the head bolt torque as well. So i ended up pulling the top off the engine to do gaskets and to re torque the heads.

This was from 10am Saturday until 10pm Saturday night in the pit area. By Sunday 11am I was ready to run with the lashed up rocker adjuster.

I ran two 9.7's and then put the car on the trailer as i was happy that I had got away with bonding a broken rocker adjuster in with super glue. I did not want to stress anything in the engine as the rocker adjuster could have come loose at any time. Both of the 9.7 passes saw the blower belt coming loose at the 1/8th mile so I lost power. I found the source of this problem and fixed it before I went home this evening. So now I have to find some spares fro my Kenne Bell roller rocker gear before next weekend.

Pictures and vids to follow as I get them uploaded.

Perry

Well... that was quite the weekend! Glad those don't happen to often... Also glad to hear you got in a couple passes and back on the trailer and didn't hurt anything! That's always a bonus!

Wow Pel glad you were on it and didn't make a run with the missing bolt. Way to keep on top of things, and gives us more to look foward too as well!

Some pictures of my problems. The head gasket leaks were down to loose head nuts?? When I came to undo them it didnt take much effort. Maybe 50 ft/lbs? I wonder if the O rings on the heads had settled in the last few months. The other head nuts took some more torquing. I put the torque wrench on and found that it clicked at 58 ft/lbs when trying to re tighten. So these got pulled back down to 70 ft/lbs in sequence.

I was with some friends as you can see in the pics.

We all run different times, but we all help each other out in the pits and cheer each other on when we race. 50% of the work on my car was done by some of the boys while I was working on problems with the Slingshot ign system and fixing leaks on the cooling system of my friends Ford Capri as he was out for virgin shakedowns this weekend with his brand new 598ci motor setup.
Check out the paintwork on my mate Micks Minivan... All done with rattle cans by a graffiti artist he knows.

I should give you some info on the boys cars I guess.
In the back ground of the Capri picture you can see a tiny blue car. This is JT's kit car with a Honda motorcycle engine fitted running carbs only. high 12's on the strip. Micks Mini with Rover 4.6 engine runs 12.3's so far. The Slingshot ran its first 9's this weekend even with an ECU fault which pulled the rpm limiter on at 3000 rpm for some reason?. The Capri ran low 11's on shakedowns with my friend having trouble getting used to the tyres lighting up each time he pressed the pedal with the 1100hp on tap. The little MG midget runs low 16's with a 25 shot of gas, which upsets my friend Andy as his Camaro is slower at the moment. The MGF is just a stripped out junkyard dog with a 75 shot of gas and it ran 13.3's this weekend.
The track was almost empty all weekend and we were treated to see a top fuel car doing observed runs. Usual tuff, burnout and stage. Then launches, then launch and half pass with chutes and then a 1/8th pass under full power with chutes. And then finally a first full pass to 1000 feet with chutes. The driver had to run 4.7 seconds to qualify and needs to back this up again for her license ?? Yes HER !! The Driver was a Junior Drag champ in the last two years I think. She ran a 4.41 pass. Her 1/8th trap speed was 220mph. And she is just 17 years old !!! She was a pleasure to talk to during the weekend. She has a blog here Gabby McDonald: Gabrielle McDonald from Dublin Ireland