Thread: Hello from an old member

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And here is a vid from behind which shows how hard the launch was

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg3avnsNKrc

Pel It would of left brown marks on my underwear to go up in the air like that. I think you did a great job recovering. The wheelie bars also sound like a good idea!

I'll agree that you lost a second of time.. wheelies eat horsepower and time even if you never lift the throttle. So when you pedaled it ( I did hear you lift) you gave up precious time in addition to hoisting the front.

Are the front shocks a drag shock like 90/10's? that is - it only takes 10 pounds to get them to begin to extend but it takes 90 pounds to begin to collapse.. so it slows the front end from coming back down, hence helping weight transfer. (and deflection of wheelies!)

We're all hoping the front suspension isn't to bad and then you can get another couple runs in for the season..

The front shocks are stock MGB lever arm dampers with stock MGB coil springs

Springs seem okay... shocks? I think I'd investigate a true drag race shock to help weight transfer.

I'll have to look into the front shocks thing ?? There really is not much around for this configuration though. I will talk to a guy I know. Doug Smith who owns MG motorsports. He prepares MGB for circuit racing. So if there is a funky shock out there he will know. Failing that it will be a £2000 conversion to fit a coil over conversion kit. I'm thinking wheelie bars first as I have almost all I need to make them in the shed for free as Mike took his single bar off the slingshot and gave it to me. So I have pipes a plenty and a good selection of rose joints to play with. The single wheelie bar on the slingshot was more trouble than it was worth. Mike is a very clever guy and he does all the math required for things to the N'th degree. However, my simple mechanical mind told him that the single wheel would surely need to be set up on a chassis table to make sure it was arrow straight and in line with the center of the chassis etc. Long story short... We tweaked and tweaked but each time the rail got up on the bar it was steering from behind. So Mike did some more sums and figured that 30lbs of weight at the nose of the chassis would give enough leverage to keep the nose down pretty well. So we had some steel cut to fit into the chassis and it seems to have worked Virtually no air under the wheels on the slingshot now ! The SBC puts out around 700hp and the rail weighs in around 1800 lbs. So 30lbs up front is not an issue and with this config she has run down to 8.7 now The next job on the rail is to run 20% nitro in the methanol now. We will be back out to try that on the 25th October at the track.

As for the MG. I have pulled the top off the engine to get the heads re worked as I have leaky exhaust valves. When i built this engine I bedded in the cam and then went racing. I normally do a few passes and then check the engine. But for some reason I just got stuck into the track days and had fun. My leak down tests found 7 of the 8 exhaust valves letting by quite badly. The engine still runs fine and picks up well and there is no smoke from the exhaust pipes. So I'm thinking that I may still be running with too much timing taken out which may have cooked the valve seats a little? This is where I sort of guessed at how to set the timing with the new engine build. But I made a mistake I think. The old engine ran a CR of 9.3:1 and I used to retard by 1 degree per psi of boost. So 13 degree's retarded for boost. And then another 6 degree's for the 150 shot of gas. So I was running around 15 degree's all in for testing. I eventually put the 6 degree's back in and found a sweet spot where the 9.6's came time and again with no problems. Then I dropped CR from 9.3 down to 7.0:1 and didnt give a thought to adding more timing to compensate for the lower compression ratio. So that may account for the leaky exhaust valves now.

I will drop the heads into a mates workshop this week to get the valves and seats re cut to make sure they are sealing properly. He can re cut the seats and then will use a vacuum leak tester to make sure they are ok. Then i will re built and test. I also discovered a problem with coolant leaking from the inlet manifold into the valley area which means I had glycol in the oil. So that will mean an oil flush etc. I'm beginning to think that the big wheelie has led me to do some basic tests which has found some other faults that I would not have discovered otherwise

I hope to be back out on the 25th for some shakedown runs with the launch settings knocked back a few notches ?

Regards to all

Pel

Sounds good Pel. Keep at it! Your dedication and determination will get you those low numbers!

The re worked heads are now back on. I pulled the dominator carb down to its component parts and thoroughly cleaned everything with 3 pints of carb cleaner spray and compressed air. I now have an engine that idles very nice with a totally different exhaust note and hard punches of exhaust gasses from each zoomie !! Its never felt like this before? And the carb now seems to work much better. I used to have the idle needles out 4 turns to get my 13 AFR at idle. Now its only 1 turn out on each mixture screw for the same idle AFR. I guess the carb was gummed up with fuel resins ? And when I open the throttle just a few mm it runs rich as hell and spits black smoke and flames from the zoomies So I guess its time to jet back down now. The carb is a Dominator 850 street special. I'll be on track next Saturday to re jet until I can get the engine performing off load as usual. Then it will be 1 or 2 non nitrous runs for data logging. When I'm happy that I have 12.5 AFR at full pedal I will turn the nitrous back on and see how she performs on the logger with gas !! So far so good. But it seems my old dominator was choked up when I got it.
Regards
Pel

Sounds like she's getting fuel with no restrictions now. Love to see it running and hear those Zoomies roar!

Dagnabbit!!!

I played hookey from work on Saturday as my lads covered for me. I got to the track at 7am and we prepped the slingshot first and warmed her through.
Then I jetted the Dominator on the MGB down 10 jets sizes all round and fired her up. It was a pretty good guess I reckon. She idled ok at 12.9 afr and when i blipped the pedal she responded well with hardly any black smoke from the zoomies. I let her warm through and at around 60C engine temp a strange noise developed? It was a scratchy / screechy noise. Imagine a white metal bearing with no oil? Thats what it sounded like. I got underneath and it appeared to be coming from the flex plate / rear of sump area. So I shut it off quickly and stood there wondering what it could be. Then all the thoughts started flowing into my mind !! Should I just run it and see what happens ? Should I stick a rag in the fuel tank and light it then walk away? What if I did run and it let go on track in front of 2000 watchers ? In the end I decided to hit the battery kill switch and lock the doors and forget about it. I was not about to grenade an engine that I have put so much effort into over the years. Its a total one of build now and if I wrecked the thing it would break my heart. So I'm hoping that the problem is not terminal and can be fixed without too much hassle. So I decided to go back to the guys and crew for whoever wanted me for a few hours until my Grand Daughter Faith arrived to see me We ran the digger back in the 8's, we ran my mates big block Capri back in the 8's, we got my mate with his Escort Cosworth well into the 10's and I helped a lot of other guys to get down the strip. Then i spent some time with Faith. We were pitted right next to the Monster truck arena where they were running the passenger truck. Its a monster truck with 10 seats in the rear bed so folk can experience gentle runs over cars as they get crushed ! And Faith loved it
I'm going to take a few weeks away from the MG now while I get my head together while it sits on the drive under its covers. I dont like to do work on the car if I feel pressured. But one day soon I will come home and think "its time to find out whats gone wrong" and then I will enjoy tearing the old girl down ready for 2015's Drag Racing. I'm in no rush. The wheelie run has shown me that the sub 9.5 will come easy when its back and working again. And the 8 second run will then be less than half a second away ??
Heres some pics of Faith at the track and in her costume for Halloween
Looking at Faith in her costume has made me realise that since this little girl came into my life, my lounge has turned into Toys R us

Peace and love to all
Pel

Sorry t o hear the engine noise problem, but taking a break has always helped me in the long run, meanwhile enjoying Faith's company is a win all by itself. Cheers Mate!

X's 2.....

the MG will be there when you're ready for it..

'course it'll be killin' me to be waitin' to see what could've happened!

Thanks for the support as usual guys!

My mate is trying to tempt me with a SBC for next year?? He has a spare big block that he is building for the digger. So the small block will be spare. Its nice to know that there may be an option open to me for late 2015 But I have to stick with the Rover V8 as long as I can. As long as the problem (whatever it is) is not terminal I shall be running Rover next year. But I think its time to get serious with wheelie bars now, and maybe an ignition upgrade. I have a Mallory AL6 system which is great, but it lacks some features that I think I may now need for fine tuning. We do have a spare MSD Digital 7 in the trailer for the slingshot. The new one we fitted works very well, but after a few weeks it lost comms with the laptop so we could not adjust anything. Another friend had a digital 7 that he used for dyno testing and now does not need it. So we paid him £180 for a brand new system with only a dozen dyno pulls on it. We now have that in the digger while MSD replace the faulty unit. Long story short, I will be able to fit the spare MSD Digital 7 and put my Mallory unit in the spares bin for nothing. The MSD is very sweet, the menu is simple as well. Its just asks what you want and you type it in. How many cylinders= 8 Do you want launch rpm? Yes 4000 please when transbrake button is pushed, what max rpm, er 6000 please, Do you want ign map ramping = yes, X degree's on the launch and bring it up to Y degree's at 6000 rpm. It really is plug and play. So this could help in a big way as I can use a launch rev limit on the T brake with timing held down as well as holding nitrous off. So I could do full pedal launches And still keep the hit off the line quite soft. And when I let the T brake off the signal to the nitrous controller will kick off what ever power ramp table I set in the controller. And if I hav to back off for some reason, the nitrous controller can either come back in at full power when I go back on the pedal or it can just restart the soft ramp again. I'm pretty sure that all these fine tuning capabilities will help me to find the 8

The car is outside and snug under its covers. So now I can concentrate on Halloween The kids are downstairs now carving pumpkins for Friday

I'm hoping to get the car on a mates 4 poster in the next couple of weeks to pull the sump and see what I find ? I'll be back with a report and pictures when I have looked inside the engine ?? Wish me luck

Pel

GOOD LUCK! Enjoy your time with Faith and Halloween. That is bad to hear about the noise, but you were probably better off walking away. I know the anticipation is there to go make a pass, but the cost after wards can sure have the car down for a while. Hopefully it isn't anything major.

Hi Folks!!
We had a great Halloween evening with lots of families stopping by with their children to join in the fun

The folk around here do make the effort to bring the young ones by to join in the games. We changed bobbing for apples into "limbo for Donuts" which went down well. We had the old favourite of bobbing for chocolate which is chunks of choc laying in icing sugar on a big tray. We had the mystery box challenge which is 3 boxes with holes in the top. One box contains Candy. The other 2 boxes have mushed up jelly and slimy pasta spaghetti inside. The kids that pick the non candy box get a lollipop for taking part anyway. We also do "splat the Skull" which I made a long time ago and is one of the ids faves. Just a long board with a small section of tube taped on. I give the kids 3 attempts to splat the skull as it drops out of the tube. I count 1, 2, 3 and then let the glowing skull drop into the tube, and when it drops out of the end the kids try to hit it before it lands in the bucket. All the kids get a treat for taking part anyway. But if any of the kids hit 3 out of 3 they also get present which is a small toy from a bag full of assorted toys like Yo Yo's or pocket puzzles. My wife is a Primary School teacher so she likes to give away puzzles to the children
I wont go on any more as I'm probably getting bit boring by now. Suffice it to say that we enjoy Halloween as we think it brings joy to all of our visitors. And this years Halloween evening was the best ever because it was warm and dry. We got through $180 worth of candy and toys for the children this year. We were lucky that folk stopped turning up by 9pm because we were almost out of treats and toys !!
A lot of Brits say Bah! Humbug to Halloween. But we love it because it allows us to have a fun evening in front of the house and have some banter with local folk.

Here are a few of the 140 pictures I took on the night !