The 83GT

Went back today, loaded it up and brought it home.

This is the second belt it has screwed up. I thought the first was just a fluke because just one rib came off it. Looks like the pulleys are out of alignment just enough to cause the belt to ride up on the edge of the crank pulley and then that starts shredding it.

I wonder if the 6.96 on your Time Slip was right? But it looks like the 60 ft and 330 ft times are not right?

BigBlockRanger wrote:Went back today, loaded it up and brought it home.

This is the second belt it has screwed up.  I thought the first was just a fluke because just one rib came off it.  Looks like the pulleys are out of alignment just enough to cause the belt to ride up on the edge of the crank pulley and then that starts shredding it.

That sucks but the Dually Looks Good Towing The Mustang!!

Mark Miller wrote:I wonder if the 6.96 on your Time Slip was right? But it looks like the 60 ft and 330 ft times are not right?

 Yeah it's wonky.  The reaction times are gigantic.  I am not good on the tree, but I sure don't cut 0.5 sec lights!  

The only way this thing would do a 1.17 60 foot is if you rearended it with a Kenworth.  Sucks that I didn't have the Dragy turned on!

BigBlockRanger wrote:Finally got it out to the track!

But first, if you want 77 jets in it, don't put 71's in by mistake! I left the shop and the car was acting lean. Drove a little way and decided to turn around and rejet. Got back to the shop, pulled the front bowl off and in the sunlight with my readers on, it was obvious they were 71's. Haha.

I only had one 77 so I put some 78's in. That made it run much much better on the way to the track. Car ran 185° on the highway, and would cool down when stopped.

Got out there but thunderstorms were threatening so there were not many people there. I got 3 passes in. First was a bust, trying to figure out what this car wanted. I spazzed and didn't look at a single thing I meant to during the run. 1.57 60' 12.09 @ something. I think I was over revving it and I don't think the shift light is shift lighting.

Second pass.... Second pass is a little suspicious. I made a couple of tweaks in the pits and went back up. Car launches nice, I shift earlier and the slip shows. 11.19 @ 114.65. MPH seems slow. 60 foot shows 1.17. That ain't right. Weird part is I ran next to a turbo square body that ran 11.20. I got the win light so maybe the 11.19 was legit. Idk. Car did feel good.

Weather was closing in so I decided to go make one more run before packing it in.

Car seemed a bit warmer at the line than normal but I made a pass anyway. 1.56 60 foot, 11.52 @ 114.4. By the end of the run she was plenty hot and getting hotter. I rolled it down the return road, shut it off and coasted as far as I could. Stopped right by a buddy's race trailer. I popped the hood and immediately saw that the alternator belt had left the chat, taking the electric fan wiring with it.

11.52 is about what I thought it might run. Gotta remember that our track is at 3600' and the DA was about 6500'. It will probably run 10.90's at the lower elevation tracks on Raceweek.

Great. I was all set to just make a pass, go back, swap tires and go home. Nope. I got the track guys to tow me back to my Raceweek trailer just as it started to rain. I secured the car and trailer, left it there and my buddy Jonathan came out and gave me a ride home.

I will go back tomorrow and retrieve it during their bracket race.

Better to figure this stuff out now and not on Raceweek!

Are you sure you'all both didn't deep stage on the back tires, on that pass?

With those reaction times, you'd think we staged in the burnout box. Haha.

I hope that 552SCJ doesn't suck the boosters out of that 850.

Tell the Wife you need a Dominator for Father's Day

Haha she wouldn't know a Holley 4bbl from a Mikuni motorcycle carb.

Alternator pulley alignment & belt -> I feex.
Fan wiring -> I feex.
Shift light -> I feex.

Front exhaust benefit: It will drive right up onto the big trailer without the need for any jack shenanigans or hanging up.

Yesterday I submitted my tech video to RMRW and passed that portion of it. Raceweek offers you the option of submitting a video showing your lights, horn, blinkers, tags, insurance, neutral switch, battery shut off, seat belt and helmet dates. When we get there on registration day, we will go to the express tech lane where all they will need to do is tech the car for the rest of the drag strip stuff, which for us won't be much.

Just for peace of mind, I went ahead and changed the oil. I also zip-tied a diaper to the bottom of the trans bellhousing (a-la Drag Week 2012) to catch the persistent rear main drip this engine (and nearly every BBF I've owned) has. It doesn't leak much, but at least the diaper will keep the dips from getting on the bottom of the car.

Fired it up, double checked the timing, let it idle for a long time to see if it would heat up. Nope. Swapped the air filter to a slightly taller one, really because I like the way it looks more than anything. Haha.

Between now and Saturday, I will just going back over stuff to make sure bolts are tight and everything is in order.

BigBlockRanger wrote:Front exhaust benefit: It will drive right up onto the big trailer without the need for any jack shenanigans or hanging up.

Yesterday I submitted my tech video to RMRW and passed that portion of it. Raceweek offers you the option of submitting a video showing your lights, horn, blinkers, tags, insurance, neutral switch, battery shut off, seat belt and helmet dates. When we get there on registration day, we will go to the express tech lane where all they will need to do is tech the car for the rest of the drag strip stuff, which for us won't be much.

Just for peace of mind, I went ahead and changed the oil. I also zip-tied a diaper to the bottom of the trans bellhousing (a-la Drag Week 2012) to catch the persistent rear main drip this engine (and nearly every BBF I've owned) has. It doesn't leak much, but at least the diaper will keep the dips from getting on the bottom of the car.

Fired it up, double checked the timing, let it idle for a long time to see if it would heat up. Nope. Swapped the air filter to a slightly taller one, really because I like the way it looks more than anything. Haha.

Between now and Saturday, I will just going back over stuff to make sure bolts are tight and everything is in order.

I sent you a little something in the mail let me know when you get it,maybe it will make it before your trip!!!

Awww heck. I'll keep my eyes peeled for it.

The Feex is in!

Mark Miller wrote:
I sent you a little something in the mail let me know when you get it,maybe it will make it before your trip!!!

Got it this morning! Thanks Mark!

BigBlockRanger wrote:

Mark Miller wrote:
I sent you a little something in the mail let me know when you get it,maybe it will make it before your trip!!!

Got it this morning!  Thanks Mark!

No problem i would have felt bad not giving you anything for the adapter,it's not much but you can use it for spending money on Raceweek!!

Rolled out of town at 8:30 am.

Got here about 3. It's hot in Tulsa!

BigBlockRanger wrote:Rolled out of town at 8:30 am.  

Got here about 3.  It's hot in Tulsa!

It's also hot here in Northeast,Ohio been in the 90's all week with dew points in the high 60's and low 70's!!

Mark Miller wrote:

BigBlockRanger wrote:Rolled out of town at 8:30 am.  

Got here about 3.  It's hot in Tulsa!

It's also hot here in Northeast,Ohio been in the 90's all week with dew points in the high 60's and low 70's!!

Here in South Georgia it been in the high 90s couple of days it was 98 Hot and sticky

Annnnd we're done. And home again.

About 10 miles into the drive we stop for gas. Shut the car off, fill up, hit the key, warump warump warump... Ok. Great.

Get out jump box. Warump warump warump. Connect different jump boxes several different ways. Warump warump warump.

One time there was a grinding noise. It made me think of flexplate teeth on the bellhousing. Idk if it was or not but that is what my brain immediately thought of.

By now, you can smell the starter and the cables are hot.

We decided to throw a starter in it so a nice Roadweeker gave me a ride to the store and back. The old starter was still hot. Put new one it and confidently hit the key....

Warump warump warump.

Back to square 1. It had started fine every time up until now so we are bewildered. Bypass the battery shutoff. Same thing.

We decide that even if it did start, we don't want to deal with the possibility of it occurring all week. We were in a good position to call it quits, so I texted a rookie kid that hung out in our pit all day and he gave a ride back to the track.

We winched the car up and made tracks for home.

Yep it sucks, yep it was unbearably hot, yep my ears are glad they didn't have to listen to that exhaust all week, but hey, in order to fail, you must first do. And doo'd we did.

I forgot the beginning of the story.
We get to Tulsa and then go to the track and drop off the car and trailer. They were having a Shelby Mid-America meet that night. They made us pay 20 bucks each to get in the gate to go drop our trailer off which was okay. We went to the hotel checked in, and then went and ate some dinner. We decide to go back to the track, since we had wristbands, and watch their bracket race. There are plenty of cars, but nothing just impressively fast. A lot of cars with street tires just spinning off the line.... forever.

The next morning is tech so we get up and get to the track a little after 8:00. We found us a pit area and get things set up and then go get in the tech line. On the way to the tech line I noticed that the water temperature was rising rapidly. We breeze through tech in just a few minutes and go back to our pit. Of all the drag and drive events, Raceweek has the tech situation handled the best by far.

We immediately dive into why the car was getting hot and discovered that the fuse for the electric fan had blown. Judd hands me another fuse, I stick it in and kapow! It immediately blows. I start looking around and find a ground wire that had melted to the fan connector on the fuse holder. We correct that and the electric fan works again. Whoo hoo.

Track goes live at 3:00 and they finally call our class to the lanes. It is ridiculously hot outside. On the way to the lanes I noticed that the wide band is showing almost full rich on the gauge, but the car doesn't seem to be running any differently. I go make a pass and it's a weird one. Car leaves nice but the wide band shows that it's crazy rich going down the track and it just wasn't revving smoothly at high RPM.

We look back at the videos of the run and the car doesn't seem to be blowing black smoke or anything like you would expect so we think that maybe it was misfiring and giving a false rich reading. I look up what my jetting was in my old 950hp in Tulsa back in 2012 and we raise the jetting in this carb the same amount from my Amarillo jetting. We also noticed that the rear bowl float level seem to be higher than it should so we adjusted that back to the middle of the sight window.

They finally (Tulsa seemed really slow about getting cars down the track) call my class back to the lanes. Wideband seems to be acting normal now. It was immediately apparent in the burnout box that it was way way way too rich now. I go ahead and make a horrible pass, slower than the first, and head back to the pits.

We scratch our heads for a while and then return the jetting back to what it had been previously. We figure that maybe the rear float got stuck or something and was over fueling on the first run. We waited and waited and waited to make another pass and finally at 10pm we gave up and turned in our first timeslip. 11.87. Oooooooffff.

We call it a night, go eat dinner and cool off with a cold shower. Car runs fine, but she's a noisy sucker.

So about the front exit exhaust.

It's loud at 3000 rpm. Like "please make it stop" loud.

Car will easily load on the trailer without any extra shenanigans.

You can access the starter SUPER easy.

That sucks you had problems and it looks like you changed the starter at the gas station!!I guess the good thing about those headers are the starter is easy to change i can't say that with my headers!!And it being that hot no thanks i don't like going outside when it's that hot not to mention driving the Mustang in the Heat!!

took a day off from it and went up to the shop this morning and dropped the trans out of it.

Fluid is a little stinky so it has been hot at some point but otherwise looked great. I poked the input shaft into the converter and it spun what seems normally. (Comparted to the other converter I was putting back in).

Then I put a wrench on the flexplate bolts and tried turning the engine over by hand. It would turn, but had a very noticeable tight spot in the rotation. So something in there is not happy. To me it feels like a rod bearing just beginning to spin. So maybe we caught it before it really made a mess.

Anyway, I took advantage of the time I had and went ahead and pulled the engine out and put it on a stand. I probably won't dive into it for a while as I am kinda done with this car for now.

I have other stuff I want to play with.

Well that sucks that you could have a rod bearing problem!!

Ok I couldn't stand it.

I popped the pan off and surprise, surprise, all the rod bearings and mains look just like they should look.

Today I'll bolt the pan back on and start looking at stuff on the top side of the engine.

The very tip (pump side) of the oil pump shaft looks a little strange. Like it was getting forced down in there. Inside of the pump looks somewhat normal for it's age. (2007 ish)

Pan is clean, oil pump is clean, so I didn't bother cutting the filter open.

Good to hear the bearings look good as well as the oil pan and oil pump!!

Heads, intake and valvetrain all off. No smoking gun.

Engine turns over like butter. Lifters look great.

I took a closer look at the oil pump. There are signs that it was galling on the bottom plate. I banged it on the bench and pieces of metal came out of the hex drive hole. IDK if that was the cause, but it certainly isn't normal. I am going to measure the pump/shaft/distributor stackup and see if something is wonky and binding up.

I guess I'll order bearings and rings and go ahead and freshen it up.​

BigBlockRanger wrote:took a day off from it and went up to the shop this morning and dropped the trans out of it.

Fluid is a little stinky so it has been hot at some point but otherwise looked great. I poked the input shaft into the converter and it spun what seems normally. (Comparted to the other converter I was putting back in).

Then I put a wrench on the flexplate bolts and tried turning the engine over by hand. It would turn, but had a very noticeable tight spot in the rotation. So something in there is not happy. To me it feels like a rod bearing just beginning to spin. So maybe we caught it before it really made a mess.

Anyway, I took advantage of the time I had and went ahead and pulled the engine out and put it on a stand. I probably won't dive into it for a while as I am kinda done with this car for now.

I have other stuff I want to play with.

12,000th View

"tight spot in the rotation" does not seem like an oil pump but, I guess if it could be could be if the pump has a bind in one spot.

Are these the same rings you had with the D3 heads that fouled a plug?

If the bearings look good, I would keep on running them. Same with the rings if they had good compression and not alot of miles on them. Saves money and possible future problems on run tested good parts and reduces the chance of something else going wrong.