Amazing what new tires can do

bigblok2000ranger wrote:

richter69 wrote:I had a response typed out but I musta forgot to hit submit lol. Dave pretty much summed up what I was gonna say but with a lot more detail.

I dont consider mine high hp, but it has no arb, and the left rear wants about 30 more pounds than the right, driver in the seat race ready....... I do have a very stiff housing and ladderbars etc, not the mail order stuff.

That's where mine is on preload and down one hole from neutral setting, Dave did bring up good point I am used to working on trucks with ~104-108 wheelbase with ladderbars. Its pretty easy to point the lb at the cg on a truck. The harder/softer thing has me a little confused now though, I have had to go down one hole on all 3 of my lb set ups or it would just spin down one hole it dead hooks. Live and learn maybe it was shocking the tires too hard.

too much hit will bounce the tire.

I had the problem with tire bounce when the car had 4.88 gears on the 429 went to a 4.11 gear and it got much better. the car picked up a couple of hundreths and was alot easier to drive. The nascar gears came in today, 3.18's. This will be a fun experiment on the c-6. Its cheep and I needed a set of gears for my old 76 f100 anyway. I should be able to go test-n-tune about two weeks, shop is full of big jobs, no time to play now. I will take the suspension info given to me and I will set the car up as close to that as it gets and put in the tall gears and let it eat!

Did the gear swap today, checked rear end with centerline of chassis, rear is now square, pinion angle was way off. Ladder bars were set with the rear end hanging . Now I adjusted them the way dave suggested. With the car on the ground. That made a big difference on the adjustment. Pinnion angle was so far off that I had to swap to my shorter drive shaft. I have two for my two third members, they have different length yokes. I set both shock brakets the way they are in the blue print and checked ride height with the print and it now dead on with the 130lb springs. Ride height before was also way off. I now have hope that the car may do its job. Thanks for the detailed info I may go the track tomorow to tnt. Also sorted out the problem with the burnout rpm, Bad chip in the three step. Seven thousand that would go off at 3500, same rpm as the launch pill, go figure. Bumped the launch rpm to 4500 and we will see what she will do!

BUZZ BUZZARD wrote:...........Ladder bars were set with the rear end hanging...............

Interesting you bring that up. I have often wondered if the "hanging method" for setting static preload would work OK with ladder bars like it does for a 4-link. But I just never remembered to try it on a ladder bar car to see what would happen.

Most of the time for ladder bars I just use either the "on the ground" method I described above (used almost all the time), and the "wheel stand" method using a floor jack with a socket centered under the front crossmember (I hardly ever use it). The wheel stand method is OK I guess, but I just like the other method better for L/B's.

As for the 3.18 gears I just hope they aren't so shallow that the car falls on it's face at the launch, or the gear change fall-back. I guess it's also possible that a street gear that shallow might not live too long depending on how heavy the car is & how much power it has to work with.

Went to the track Sunday, great day. The chassis adjustments did the trick, thanks dave. The car drives straight even with 6lbs of air in the slicks. Gear swap made this a whole different car. The 60 ft suffered but the 1/8 mile is dead on with my Quickest passes with the 4.11 gears. The air was very bad and it threatened to rain most of the day but the car went its quickest pass by one hundreth. The next quickest passes were in 50* weather it was in the low 90* Sunday. Went 5.91 1/8 9.21 1/4. Still have to try different shift points, launch rpm, jetting and timming. But for now the car is ready for some bracket racing, now that it drives well and is consistant.

Good to hear!

Cool. Glad it worked out.

Sometimes you have to try the opposite of the normal to get results. No doubt that a glide may be a couple of tenths quicker but for now the c-6 will have to stay in. I think with a little tweeking of the gear ratio maybe 3.30 to 3.40 it could get the 60 ft back. When these nascar gears bite the dust I will try to find some pro gears in those ratios. I will keep my eyes peeled. For now it is time to put a dial-in on the window and try to go rounds. The old t-bird is still all ford for now! I have to thank Dave again for the no bullshit advise on the suspension, it kept a for sale sign out of the cars windows.

when we ran the maverick with a C4 trans the best et's and 60' came launching at idle in second gear foot braking it. of course it was a small block with 4.88's in a 2650lb car.

sometimes "non-traditional" works!

keep up the progress.

The nascar gears made it through the weekend. I got the ladder bars tweeked out, launches straight and smooth. Run 1.32 60 ft 5.85 1/8th, 9.14 1/4 at 151mph. Car ran flawlessly, went to fourth round on saturday then I forgot to switch the delay box to the slower cars tree and I left on his. Needless to say I went way red. We had great couple of days at the track, makes all the crappy ones fade away, especialy when this poor boy operation was putting some high dollar altereds and pipe racks back in their trailers!