Vehicles

20th Oct 2018

That’s it for this year, a load of tedious work needs doing on the trailer, but the car has worked quite well, and we’re looking forward to going out with the Wild Bunch next season.

The car is now in hibernation until the beginning of the 2019 season, at which point, Dan Boone will be taking over the driving duties for a while. Dan’s safety gear has now turned up from Simpson.

I have been working on the Plymouth V8, this time fitting a new cam driven Enderle 15gpm fuel pump to the 60s Weiand front timing cover.
 
We recently tried out the car over an overcast but dry weekend at Santa Pod Raceway, and the bigger pump has really helped.  Even with a first wild guess at the adjustments, the car finally managed to break into the eight second bracket for the first time.

The first of two decent passes, and a rare glimpse of sunlight. I’m squinting a bit in this pic as I concentrate on the pre launch burnout. The credit for this success must go to my super dedicated crewmen, Mark England and Dan Boone who can be seen running about in the two movie clips (from different camera positions) attached below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=227ezzV9k6g  Crew view

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-TA-621YCc    My view

Here we are in the staging lanes ready to run against ‘The Villain’. They won easily with their 1400HP supercharged dragster against our injected entry. Dan Boone.

A good race with the restored ‘Oblivion’ altered with it’s 430 HP Chevrolet small block.

Here’s a picture in the return road taken by the Wrathchild slingshot dragster crew who we raced a few weekends ago. They use a Chevrolet small block (foreground) and that’s me after our run on the other side, waiting for a tow back to our pit. It’s always a good idea to cover the intake for the tow back because the soft slicks throw hundreds of tiny stones upwards, and you don’t want them in your engine. We cover the side exhausts as well which are known as Zoomies in drag racing parlance.

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American Pie.. out of the garage on a dry day. I can sweep up the leaves that have blown under the door, and have a bit of a tidy up.

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The parachute has been upgraded to a bigger 175mph one that packs a bit easier as well.

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The Hilborn injected Chrysler V8 only has a very mild tune, so there’s plenty of room for future improvements. It’ll do for now.


9th May 2016

After some finishing work at Dave Billadeau’s speed shop at Thorne,  a following series of Dynamometer sessions resulted in a successful final pull, sounding good and generating 725 hp.

t&d rocker gear low res

The motor is now in the car to sort out all the hook ups. Fuel and oil hoses need routing, the linkages, cables, breathers and wiring all still need doing and the covers are away, having their oil breather bayonet stubs welded in. You can see the T&D Machine roller valve gear torqued onto the Edelbrock heads. unlike the conventional common shaft hemi set-up, these have individual ones for each rocker.

Chevy Small Black

These pictures were taken at the top end of Shakespeare County Raceway, the car still had it’s 302 small block at the time.

I can’t seem to stop myself from messing about with dragsters & race cars, and so after many attempts to kick the habit, I suppose this affliction will always remain with me. This pointless pursuit also ensures a constant state of poverty. The American Pie dragster is my own, presently dismantled in readiness for a new Chrysler Hemi V8 from Pennsylvania, yet another colossal waste of unrecoverable funds.

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The Hillborn injected 528 Hemi, positioned & aligned correctly, with new motor tabs & chassis saddles at the front, has a new mid plate a the block rear face. 

The ‘dump’ angle is 5 degrees down on this installation, earlier 392 cars had as much as 9 degrees with practically no oilpan depth at the front at all. The motor is built around a new iron block with ally heads, a Sonny Bryant stroker crank and 12:1 Diamond pistons. Trans will be a new JW glide with a TCI valve body, a rebuild kit, a TH400 input shaft and a billet gearset with a new band & moly adjuster which has just arrived from TSR in New Hampshire. The 35 spline Williams rearend is finished & ready to go. Plumbing all the external oil lines is next, and then blow the car apart for transmission & short block build. There are lots of new parts going on, a bigger chute, a Canton oil accumulator, an MSD, an Ultra Bell housing. The custom alloy Funnycar oilpan is now done too, and all the oil hose fittings have arrived.

750HP on alcohol should give me low eights & that’s good enough, but the car won’t 60ft hard, the combination should haze the slicks off the line & hopefully settle into a good straight pass, we’ll see how the Hoosiers behave.

Pie1

Valve covers are Keith Black style but polished up, still got the breathers to do yet.

A set of modern T&D Roller rockers work the valves & I don’t know whether they will clear the covers at full lift, so might have to make a pair of spacers, we’ll see.

Pie3

A restored Weland front cover holds the Hilborn PG150 fuel pump and below this an SFI damper has an ugly crank trigger system fitted to it (mostly out of sight). Still need plug wires, fuel hoses, and probably loads of parts I don’t even know about.  

…………………..will it ever end?……………………No!


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I did the original version of this body, designed for the top class of doorslammer cars, Pro Modified.


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A photoshopped image of how a car might appear at Bonneville from a scaled model.