Sweeeet!!! Nice set up bry, and thats at the wheels right? Ive got heads and cam coming from TSP, and i'm hoping for 550 at the crank.

Good luck out there tomorrow, i felt like a sheep amongst wolves lol, but had waay fun.

Cheers bud!!!!

Nice B,

Air cleaners aren't bad, you just have to compensate and usually have to lean it a tad over the chassis dyno tune. Which is what it seems he did. But rich=safe.

Nice numbers and power curves, Bryan! Have fun with the car. Who did the tunning?

Tow looked great out there today, I tried to catch you in the pits but had to head out early.

You have to be happy with all of your work to actually do what you had hoped. Congrats on a crazy thrash!

Thanx guys! I am really happy with the numbers and the feel of the car. That flat torque curve feels really good during acceleration!

One of the things I thought about this weekend during the USCA event is that I may consider a rear gear change. As crazy as this sounds, I end up going through 1st and 2nd gears so quickly during acceleration that I don't feel I get to use the full power. By that I mean, if I go full throttle, I have to shift quickly and it can be hard to keep traction. Not a bad problem to have, but I'm also thinking it might help me on some of the autocross courses to have a little more speed on the top of 1st gear. Something to consider...

Here are videos from most of my GG Autocross runs. I haven't had time to process the ones from the USCA event yet. I have been having some camera-coordination troubles and didn't capture everything I wanted to... :\

Nice Bryan, I felt like I was in the car with you. Thanks for posting.

Some more time wasters... The full collection is available at:

My USCA Videos







I didn't manage to capture either of my 'offs' with the Garmin, but I went off at the end of the long straight (too much speed into the first turn) and I spun coming out of the second 180* turn at the opposite end of the track. The course was 3rd and 4th gears for me, downshifting into each 180*, then carrying 4th shortly after exiting. I could have run mostly in third, but I was still being a little gentle on the new engine.

I also improved my line quite a bit in session 5 when I had an instructor, but the battery in the Garmin was dead by then. :( It's lucky for Steve also, or I would have had a great shot of him sitting in turn 1 starring at us coming at him since he went off. ;)

It was nice to meet you at the event Bryan. Too bad I didn't have enough time to get more pictures of your car in action.

Car looked great in person.

Tu,

Good to meet you as well. You need to plan to come up for the Fall GG autocross also. Lots of fun at those events also, although we don't get the cool garage spaces to relax in. ;)

Glad you made it home safely!

I wish someone had some video of me flying off so I can confirm what I think happened was reality. Unfortunately my camera quit too. I know the TV crew has some since I was wired up by them for that session but I doubt I'll be able to get it. I guess I have to see if I made the TV cut.

Somehow I have a feeling that we will both be on the highlight reel...

I haven't downloaded from my GoPro's yet, so I might have caught my session 1 spin with those. The Garmin videos took a long time to process!

I have to pass the fall GG one. I have signed up for Power Tour and Cruisin the Coast this year, so I maxed out my allowance for car related trips. :)

It's one of the down side of being married, and the wife is not into cars.

Tu

Bryan are you running a close ratio box? What is your current diff ratio?

Roger,

Yes I am running the close ratio box. And the diff ratio is 3.89:1. I'm contemplating something around 3.5:1 if I make a change now.

You could always change the trans ratios, there is a 2.29 first gear ratio available. I can get to 65 mph @ 7,500 rpm with a 3.89 rear gear in 1st, almost 70 if I wring her out to 8,000. :D

Thanks, I've also got close ratio with 3.7 going into 2nd gen, hp should be slightly under what you have. I'll be interested to see what you end up doing

The 68 has normal ratio with 4.11, 1st is near useless and 6th is not real nice till 70 mph (which is above any speed limit in my state :))

In my last car I had a standard ratio T56 (with the 0.50:1 6th gear) and I ran a 4.56:1 rear gear. Of course that engine was a solid roller 377 built to spin 8k rpm.

That would solve the auto-cross problem, but I'm running 2700 or so RPM down the highway on road trips right now. I think I'd like to drop that down a bit too, which is why I was thinking of changing the diff. I'm not in a big hurry to change anything after my latest thrash though. ;)

Gearing is always going to be an issue once you start hitting the "track"... what's just right for a GG peanut course - is going to be wrong for the road race track... toss in different tire diameters - torque curves - trans gearing.... car weight....

Bryan -- I think the BBQ pit rotisserie at The Salt Lick is wound up to about 5 rpm... but I think it's a torque monster.


I'm running 4:30's in the '32 and 3:50 something in the '33..... LOL

We are running 3.42's in KLRBRD. It cruises along at 70 mph at around 2000 rpm. Running the GG's auto cross at TMS I leave it in first gear and Amy runs it in 2nd gear. Driver preference.

Amy told me she was stuck choosing between 1st and 2nd on the auto cross and the speed stop at USCA. She ended up most comfortable staying in 1st gear during the speed stop and then 2nd gear on the autocross.

Out on the road is what she enjoys the most with the 3.42's just cruising along.

I kept the drivetrain stock in my 96 Formula and really liked it for autocross around here. I'd leave it in 2nd for most of the courses.

I'm trying 3.90s with the TA now. Trans and engine are the same ones from the Formula for now. I don't plan to modify the trans gearing at all. The engine will be a 383. I just wanted to try something different.

I've driven cars that make as much power as your car and had 3.90 gears. They were no fun on the street for the reason you described. You blow through 1st and 2nd so fast.

Agreed. I'm not trying to be perfect for every scenario, but I think for most of the events I run, the higher gear may be the better choice. I have enough torque that even a slow autocross course in first gear shouldn't be a problem. :)


Nothing like the 1000HP steam engines on a steamboat which appeared to be moving at about 50rpm that I saw yesterday. Now THAT'S some torque!

One for you, one for Gwen. ;)

That sounds about right at 70MPH. I don't actually want to have my RPM too low or I'll end up with a lot of exhaust noise at cruise speed.

Same here. I finally stuck with the 1st gear after I figured out the shift was hurting me. I was running the USCA autocross in 2nd after the initial shift. Steve was actually launching in 2nd on some runs as an experiment.

I really like that Magnum with the 2.29 1st gear like Tim has. I would call that about perfect if you have a respectable level of low/mid range torque... which you seem to have. :)

Teaser shots for upcoming updates. :)

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...psjhu4khyt.jpg

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...psm3vtesrj.jpg

Dang look at you with the heart of beast out!!!

Keep um comin!!

btw, my beast's hearts coming out this weekend as i have boxes from TSP coming :thumbsup:

Didn't you just scramble to get that engine in there and now you've gone and torn it down again? You're crazy man! Good luck :thumbsup: :D

It's true, I did just rebuild it earlier this year. I thrashed away for 2 months to get it back together for the GG and USCA events in March. After I made my selections and had parts rolling in, I discovered a few things which I wish I had done differently. I just didn't have the time to make the changes and still have time to make the events.

Fast forward to July. Eric and I have been trying to fix a vibration in the driveline at speed on the highway. We determined that we were going to have to make some changes to the torque arm to address it (we had no adjustability the way it was). So TOW went back to Eric's, and we developed a plan.

As these things tend to go, the scope of the project grew. Ron Sutton and I have been talking for a while about ideas on how to install a sway bar on the rear of TOW. With everything I have going on under the car (torque arm, Watt's link, exhaust over the axle), there was just no good place to mount one. But after seeing a couple of other people run bars through the trunk (typically more race or hardcore applications), I started thinking about ways to do that with TOW. And Eric and I came up with a plan.

I'll give more details on all of that work later, as it's still a work in progress. But the point of that background was that TOW was going to be down for a few weeks. One thing led to another, and I decided to take the opportunity to address the things I didn't get to do in the engine originally. I knew I would have the time, and so I dove in.

The list of changes I'm making to the engine:

• Low-Lash solid roller cam (slightly bigger and a bit more overlap, targeting mid-range torque)
• Crower Solid Roller lifters
• Crower Stainless Steel Adjustable shaft rocker system
• PAC 0.700" lift double springs (just a small step up from what I had)
• Holley billet fuel rails
• FIC 62# Fuel Injectors
• 1/2" carb spacer under the throttle body (more plenum volume)

I debated heavily whether or not to do this, but it turns out that I'm glad I did. When I started the disassembly, I found some oil in the intake runners and plenum. With just 2k miles on the clock since the rebuild, this was concerning, especially since I wasn't yet running my PCV setup. Turns out that I didn't seal the threads on the rocker studs, not realizing that they opened up into the runners. I found some pretty caked on burned mess on the top of the pistons which I proceeded to scrub off. Lesson learned.

I carried the heads back up to Frankenstein who ported and assembled them originally and had him clean them up and set up the new springs. Oil issue aside, he really liked what he saw from the burn pattern on the heads. We didn't see any signs of reversion in the ports either, but we could tell that a couple of cylinders were running rich from the exhaust ports. I recalled that I purchased and installed a set of fuel injectors used, without any data on them, so I decided that I would replace them with a new set that are flow matched.

I ordered the new cam from Kip at Cam Motion after a couple of conversations with he and a few others in the LS community. Kip has been building these low-lash solid roller setups for a while, and several people seem to be running them on the street with good success. For me, I'm looking for an increase in my midrange torque production for the events that I do, but I'll also get some more RPM out of the motor with the solid valvetrain which will help with the 1st gear autocrosses. I'm looking forward to the change!

So this past weekend was reassembly time. I spent 2 full days at Eric's getting the cam in, degreed, installing the heads and reassembling the core support items (oil cooler, condenser, radiator, PS cooler). Took longer than I expected, and I'm not done, but I'm held up needing to get a new set of pushrods now). I'm ordering those today, should be able to put it back together next week. I still have time as Eric will finish up the suspension work this week and get parts out for powder coating next week...

I did this as much to satisfy my curiousity about this SR setup as anything, and frankly I needed something to tinker with. Hopefully I see some nice gains from it without giving up too much drivability. I'm not too worried given my research. And TOW needed a little more 'growl'. ;)

I'll update more soon with pictures of the rear suspension work once it's closer to wrapped up. Softening up the rear springs is going to make those Fort Worth drives a little more pleasant. It should also help plant the rear a little better coming off the turns. At the Optima USCA event, things were squirrely (as proven by one of my jaunts off course), so this should definitely help!

Ok man...we all have been patient enough. It's been 2 days and no pics? C'mon. BYB!

Sounds like a lot of exciting stuff going on with TOW. I am looking forward to the suspension pics. :popcorn2:

Unfortunately we are at a standstill at the moment. Eric had to travel to attend to some family business on short notice, so fab won't be done this week. I can share a few pictures of the progress though.

Here are some of the early shots of the sway bar arm mock up.

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...psadbpjgea.jpg

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...psurlw3szg.jpg

Apparently it took a lot of heat to get this shape:

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...psnvcmpigk.jpg

This is how the bar itself is mounted: through the trunk. Delrin bushings go in the ends of the tube to center the bar and allow rotation:

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...psthuyj87o.jpg

Shot before the frame rail cuts:

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...psxjagzvlv.jpg

These arm mount holes were too long, so after talking to Ron, we determined that using shorter holes on the arm was actually going to be better. Now we can get a more vertical angle for the links:

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...psakhttjjz.jpg

Some of Eric's handywork. :)

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...psm3vtesrj.jpg

I don't have any more pictures of the torque arm since he started cutting it, but here you can see what we are after. Shortening the arm and making mounts to attach it to the bottom of the housing to allow rotation. We will get rid of the pinion mount plate and the 2 bars you see will control the pinion angle. We believe this should work well for us.

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...psrveneufn.jpg

As part of this, Eric built new crossmembers for both the transmission and the torque arm mount. I don't have pictures, but I'll get some next week once we are back on it again.

Here are a couple of pictures which you can mock me for. :)

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...psmoutoihv.jpg

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...psmv9l9kpq.jpg

A few more shots of the reassembly:

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...psuy00ya59.jpg

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...pspozvrzpj.jpg

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...pslft9g9il.jpg

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...pspyyipyky.jpg

A good bit of elbow grease required to clean up those pistons:

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...psyk49ynom.jpg

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...psqlcktfyn.jpg

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...psevvi0m1m.jpg

Working to get the wipe pattern correct. It was too high here, but came out about perfect after the addition of some shims.

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...psy6qcwhyf.jpg

71 Firebird
 

Byan,
you guys are doing some fabbing here
Cool stuff

Bob

Awesome work by Eric! Sounds like it's going to be a fun ride with the changes. Good luck, Bryan.

Thanx guys! I'm really looking forward to the next step in the evolution. I'll definitely get some more pics when we have her back up on the lift. Hopefully next week when we are both back from traveling.

Looking great Bryan. I am really intrigued with the rear sway bar. Will you enclose it through the trunk or is it my imagination it is still under the trunk floor out of sight. :hairpullout:

Also, will any of these changes with the sway bar and revised torque arm setup effect spring rate?


When will the Frankenstein be back to life? I am curious if the cam and head change effect the sweet exhaust sound of TOW. Still one of my favorites from the USCA videos I have from this past March.

Man dude, your short block is in waaaay clean shape!! Is it new? Mine looks nothing like that ( a lil used and abused)

Fun stuff!! But funner driving...

Thanx Jay. I will try to get a picture of the sway bar mount this week, but I may not get there until Friday. To give you an idea, Eric ran a 40+" piece of 1 3/4" chrome moly tube all the way through the trunk. So yes, it does go through the trunk, but the trunk will not be exposed to the outside. Eric will weld the tube to the trunk floor and new brackets once everything is finalized.

And yes, we are definitely changing the rear springs. We are softening things up significantly, which will help both the ride quality as well as the loose-on-exit problem I was having during the USCA event (leading to one of my offs).

The engine should be back together this week. We are not sure yet if we are going to have to cut and re-route any of the exhaust or not though. We are going to try and keep the over-the-axle pipes we have now, even if we have to clearance them a bit. To me, the engine note changed very little with the engine changes earlier this year, and like you, I'm curious as to what this round will do. I would expect that the higher cam overlap will be the biggest change, but I expect that when on the throttle it will sound pretty similar.

This is the engine which went into the car back in March, build by TSP. When I pulled the heads, it wasn't so clean:

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...psgrtielvx.jpg

It took a lot of careful scrubbing to clean that all off...

Not the best photo, but the engine is back together. I have some plumbing and electrical work to do, which I hope to finish tomorrow. We won't be able to fire it up for a few days though as Eric is still working on the suspension.

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...ps5uw56ozc.jpg

New fuel rails. Holley rails on the Edelbrock intake. :) The Holley rails are 5/8" inside and use -8 fittings, which supposedly allows for better balance across the 2 sides. I like the nicer black finish. :)

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...psapmfufwl.jpg

Back at it tomorrow...