2011
The Mustang is torn down with the engine
in the lakester chassis, the transmission on it's way back
into the 34 Cabriolet, and boxes of wiring and plumbing on
the shelves. Our efforts this year are focussed on the, um,
Focus. It spent some time at Henderson Performance
Technologies in
New Braunfels, being fitted for EFI. A BigStuff3
controller, 70mm throttle body, and a Hogans intake are
part of the new configuration. We hoped that our mixture
problems of the past were over and done with.
Aaryn & I brought the car home on the Friday before we
left. Had to finish up some items, like installing new
seatbelts, installing a new lateral head restraint, etc.
The entire family was here as well, so some social time was
required. We pulled out for Bonneville on Wednesday
morning. Thursday afternoon, coming down Utah Highway 6
from Price into Provo, it became clear that the brakes on
our tow vehicle were on their last legs. Aaryn used his
laptop and Verizon mobile wifi hotspot gadget to find Dodge
dealers in the area and called around until he found one
that could take us in right away. We arrived, dumped the
trailer, and they fixed the brakes. New pads all around,
new rotors in front. Sigh ...
We arrived in Wendover that evening. Out to the salt Friday
morning to set up the pit area (thanks to Russ and Eric
Eyres for letting us share the SDRC tent city they setup
each year), and go through tech. As usual, the tech
inspectors gave us a list of things to check out a bit more
thoroughly; this year it was, thankfully, short. We spent
some time hooked up the the EFI magic box, trying to learn
how this thing works and how to download data. We thought
we'd figured it out so we went back to the hotel for the
evening.
Saturday morning, we drained the tank and went to the ERC
stand for a sealed tank of 110 octane race gas. Then to the
driver's meeting and then into line for the short course.
(This year, the BNI volunteers really out-did themselves.
They managed to prepare FOUR courses! There was the usual
long course and then a combo long/short course, both
starting from the usual place on the salt. Around the
corner of the dike, there was the usual short course and
then a 2-mile special course for vehicles that don't need 3
miles to reach speed. The lines were never all that long,
even on Saturday.)
Our first run was more-or-less as expected. Nothing went
right. The car was sputtering and not pulling well -- 131
mph in the last mile. We towed back to the pits, only to
discover that we had no datalog either! (We eventually
found out why this was.) Pulled the plugs to see if we
could discern something about the mixture. Discovered,
instead, that the ground electodes had been hitting the
pistons and several of the plugs were essentially shorted.
This year we had finally gotten the correct rods to use the
Arias pistons we bought two years ago. Seems they used a
different rod length from stock and we didn't know that
when we ordered rods from Crower. We ended up using some
off-the-shelf JE pistons that year. Compression ratio was
about 10.5:1. The Arias pistons give us 13.5:1 CR and, of
course, stick up into the combustion chamber a bit higher.
I didn't send any plugs along with the engine when it got
assembled so no one had checked for clearance here. Ooops.
We ran into town to find some shorter plugs. The CarQuest
in Wendover did have some shorter plugs -- way shorter. We
grabbed them and returned to the salt to install them. Made
another run and did, this time, manage to download a
datalog. The car ran poorly and Aaryn turned out before the
middle mile so we didn't get any speeds. Looking at the
datalog, we decided to try changing the AFR from 12.0 to
12.8 and run again. Did so, with essentially the same
results. Except I forgot to turn on the D/L and so we got
no data at all. Back to the pits to see what was what.
Pulled the plugs -- the electrodes were GONE! OMG! Ran a
quick compression check: 210 psi on all cylinders. Thank
heavens, we hadn't hurt the motor. The new plugs were
clearly way too short and probably we were having
pre-ignition on the exposed threads in the head.
Sunday morning, Aaryn went on-line to find a source of
indexing washers for these 14mm, tapered seat plugs. Off to
Salt Lake City to buy them then back to the salt to install
them. We cut the gap way down (0.025") to pull the ground
electrode in a bit, as well as installing the thickest
indexing washers. Took the car to the Special course to
make a short run and get some data. Aaryn ran 132 in mile 2
-- faster than any previous run. We pulled back to the pits
to download the D/L and look at the plugs. No data in the
logger! WTF? Turns out that the BigStuff3 datalogger has a
"feature" imbedded in it; the data remains in the memory
for only 30 minutes, after which time it is erased! I
wonder who thought up that nifty feature? And who buried
this tidbit of info way down in the manual? We saw that two
of the plugs still kissed the pistons so we setup a new set
of plugs with indexing washers and smaller (0.021") gaps
and, for good measure, filed the ground electodes down a
bit. Just to be safe, we richened the mixture some more by
adding 15% to the VE table. FIgured it would be preferable
to foul some plugs rather than burn something like a
piston. We had more plugs.
Monday morning, we were in-line on course 3 right behind
the record return-run vehicles, ready to run. Aaryn suited
up, got in the car, and made it maybe 200 feet before the
right side CV joint broke. Drat! We pushed him off the
course and tried to tow back to the pits. Got a short ways
before it became clear that I needed to go get the trailer.
We got the car back to the pits, jacked it up. and pulled
the axle. Yep, broken. Back on the laptop to start finding
another axle. Aaryn found one at an O'Reilly's in SLC so
off we went, again. Turned out this axle had the wrong
spline count for our SVT transaxle. Off to Starbucks to
regroup and continue the search. Aaryn was calling auto
parts stores and Ford dealers while I was calling junk
yards. The folks I spoke with kept asking why we didn't
take it to CV Express and get it rebuilt. When Aaryn struck
out, we looked up their address and drove over. The fellow
there was unimpressed with our anxiety and told us they'd
look at it in the morning and see if they had a joint that
would work. They would "call us in the morning."
Tuesday morning, they did finally call to say the axle
would be done in about two hours. So, off to SLC once more
to pick it up. Lunch in SLC then back to the pits where we
installed it. Aaryn was under the car, fastening the clamp
that holds it in the transaxle when he noticed that the
flailing end of the broken axle had punctured the oil
filter. Crap! He called CarQuest in Wendover ... and they
didn't have this oil filter! But they could get one
overnight.
We had been in line with a pretty yellow roadster that was
running a Zetec 4-cylinder engine too. So we thought we'd
cruise the pits to see if they might have a spare filter.
Didn't find them in the pits but they were in line on the
short course. Ready to run, in fact. So we followed their
pushtruck out the return road to see if they could maybe
help us. No dice -- they didn't have one either. Nice guys
from Colorado, first time with this car and they were
having their own problems. We talked for a time and
exchanged war stories about the Zetec, took some pictures.
But ... we still didn't have a filter so we finally gave up
and went back to the hotel. A gin-and-tonic and a soak in
the hot-tub and pool, then dinner and bed.
Wednesday was the last day we had planned to be on the salt
anyway (Aaryn had a business trip planned), so we checked
out, stopped by CarQuest one last time, and hustled out to
the salt. Pulled the car to the ERC trailer to buy oil,
then into line on the short course. This time, Aaryn made
it maybe 3 feet before the CV joint apparently broke again.
Clearly, there is something wrong in the transaxle.
We had thought we had a fighting chance to work on Frank
Sloan's record in G/PRO of 156.8 mph. And the engine seemed
willing. As it happened, however, this would not have been
enough anyway -- some folks from New Zealand brought up a
beautiful Nissan with a very strong rally engine and
clobbered the old record. The new record is now 173 mph!
We're back, unpacked, and mostly salt-free. Not very
inspired to do much -- daytime temps of 105F are hard to
take -- but we haven't given up hope. The computer says we
could run 170's with 250-260 hp (we think we have 220-230
now, with the right tune). Pull the transaxle and see what
is broken, maybe try the Texas Mile in March next year.
Maybe ...
Later ... I found out what happened to the CV joint! I was
looking on-line about solid motor mounts when I found a
reference to something called a torque strut. Crawled
underneath and, voila' -- a broken torque strut!
This explains why the engine could torque far enough to
pull the CV joint apart. Took the car to Corey and he
worked his magic once more. The revised and reinforced
torque strut won't break now!