So, here's my nitrous 318 Drag Week adventure...
Hey All:
I know the car is a B-Body, but there are enough 318 threads on here that I thought it was relevant.
I recently obtained this car as part of a 2 car deal, so I'm guessing I have less than 1K in it. Its a 1972 Plymouth Satellite 4 door sedan in blah blah beige. A truly nothing special bone stock 318 904 car that ran really well. I wanted to enter it in the Roadkill Zip Tie Drags 3,000 Hooptie Challenge, which is Friday the 15th, but my hoodlum friends are all about drag week, so I decided I would do that instead, and if the car lived through the week, take it to the Zip Tie Drags. The goal was to create a combo that was simple and cheap, and to use as much as possible that was already on the car. I knew a 318 would be a snooze fest, especially in this heavy car, so I robbed the Nitrous Outlet stinger plate off of my race car.
I had heard tales of an old Hot Rod magazine story called Bottle Bomb about a nitrous junkyard 318, and though the stories had gotten exaggerated, I did source the article and it was interesting. They ran the nitrous like they were trying to hurt the thing and eventually did-projected nose plugs, no ignition box or rpm safeties, pump gas, etc.
I installed a Summit 6901 (218/228 .444 114*) cam and lifter kit and a set of entry level Comp valve springs. I also put on an old single plane Holley Street Dominator. I got the single plane because of the plan to use nitrous. I chose a Holley 550 Brawler (aka Quickfuel) die cast four barrel to replace the factory two barrel wheezer. Heads, short block, etc were left alone.
The mummified stock exhaust was cut off and replaced with a set of 1-3/4 Hooker Super Comp headers, and a muffler shop 2.5 non crossover exhaust. With the cam, it sounds frigging AMAZING, especially for a 318.
I did swap in an 8-3/4 rear. Couldn't find a sure grip center that worked, so I had the spider gears welded. 3.23(?) gear ratio. remember, Drag week is 1000 miles over the highway, so I figured making it live would mean more than a couple of tenths from low gears. I also serviced the brakes, replaced the u-joints and other maintenance tedium. I ran the stock 14 inch wheels on the front and a pair of dirt track wheels with 275/60 MT ET Pros on the back (yes, 28" is too much tire for this combo, but it goes down the road nice). The car still has the stock fixie mechanical fan and power steering.
I installed the nitrous with the plan of spraying up to 200, while following all of the N20 recommendations. Pulling timing, window switch to control activation, good spark and race gas. To make the race fuel practical on an over the road car, I left the stock fuel system in place for motor horsepower and installed a supplementary fuel system under the hood for nitrous enrichment. Holley red pump, regulator, and a 3/4 gallon fuel cell. I had most of this stuff lying around.
I chose an out of production Mallory box to control the window switch, nitrous retard, and rev limiter. Its too good, so MSD bought Mallory and doesn't make it anymore.
The car made a whopping 130 rwhp in bone stock 2 barrel trim. With the mods above it made 206 rwhp (about the same as a bolt on 5.0 Fox Body) at 5000 RPM. The 100 shot pills in the stinger plate took it up to 290 rwhp and 330 ft lbs. Still not amazing, but good enough, especially considering this work had me up till midnight to 2AM for the entire two weeks preceding drag week.
Some buddies and I left Saturday, and things immediately started to go wrong. Before even reaching the first track (Cordova), the ignition box and distributor flamed out. I happened upon some very cool people who loaned me a stock electric distributor and I put the car back on the stock ignition box and caught up with my buddies in Cordova. We spent all day in registration Sunday and hit the track Monday with 400 other masochistic gearheads. Bottle heater gave up right away and had to resort to improvised methods to warm the nitrous.
First pass in the car was a 13.30 @ 100 mph. This was on the 100 hp pills and very surprisingly good for a mild car, still shifted automatically with hardly any gear. I discovered the car would scarcely turn the big tires on motor, but it still went a 1.86 60' on the radials.
We hit the road to Gateway in St Louis for Tuesday. Car picked up a couple of odd noises on the way, but nothing major. Gateway was a bit of a cluster. It was cold, and I couldn't keep heat in the bottle, and I broke the welded diff. The car only managed a 13.50 on that track on the same 100 shot. We all loaded up and hit the road for Byron Illinois.
The car had started to consume some oil. Partially through the rear man, and partially because the rings in #2 werent doing so hot. It would foul out the plug every 100 miles or so. Id dump a quart of valvoline VR1 in at gas stops to quiet the tapping. Otherwise, everything seemed fine....I through the 150 shot jets in it figuring I better try it while the car was still mobile, put 110 octane race fuel in the cell and installed a set of NGK R56781-9 plugs. Hit the track at Byron after loads of delays and was rewarded with a 12.7x @ 103 mph. Was very pleased with that. Got in touch with a guy on Craigslist on the way to the next track (Great Lakes Dragaway) who had a clutch posi center section with a 3.3x gear in it. All seemed right with the world.
We swapped the gears that night in the hotel parking lot and did a quickie rebuild on the TH400 in my buddy's Monte Carlo and hit the track in Wisconsin Thursday morning. The place was a zoo! Those Wisonsinites love their drag racing. First pass, the bottle pressure was too high and the nitrous solenoid wouldn't open. Second pass I got that sorted and the car ran an even better 12.70, this time at 104 mph. The car left hard and went straight, I knew it was a pretty decent pass. This is where everything went bad....
As soon as I let off at the top of the track, everything started shaking and it felt like my teeth would come flying out of my head. I had busted a rear u joint, and when I pulled over discovered that the trans was puking massive amounts of fluid out of the dipstick hole. The pinion seal was also leaking alarmingly fast. Not good. I changed the U joint as it was getting dark, and tried to hit the road back to Cordova for the final track. As soon as the car got to 30 mph the driveline vibes let me know this was a sicker puppy than I had figured. It turned out the trans case is massively cracked. With regret, I called home for a tow and just got back home today. Sadly, I will miss the 3K hooptie challenge this weekend.
Even though I didn't complete the event, it was a blast. You meet a lot of great people on the road, and the sites they route you to on the tour are interesting. Mostly, you spend the time driving, wrenching and enjoying with buddies with a common goal and you find out just how much you can get done when it just has to be done with what you've got lying around. An amazing experience, I highly recommend it to anyone - just probably try to get your car done with a little more time to spare than I did.
The next trick was going to be to load the 200 pills in the kit and dump about 5 gallons of race fuel in the main fuel system and try for low low 12s or high 11s on a hail mary. Perhaps I'll repair the damage and try it yet this year. Thanks for listening!
Hey All:
I know the car is a B-Body, but there are enough 318 threads on here that I thought it was relevant.
I recently obtained this car as part of a 2 car deal, so I'm guessing I have less than 1K in it. Its a 1972 Plymouth Satellite 4 door sedan in blah blah beige. A truly nothing special bone stock 318 904 car that ran really well. I wanted to enter it in the Roadkill Zip Tie Drags 3,000 Hooptie Challenge, which is Friday the 15th, but my hoodlum friends are all about drag week, so I decided I would do that instead, and if the car lived through the week, take it to the Zip Tie Drags. The goal was to create a combo that was simple and cheap, and to use as much as possible that was already on the car. I knew a 318 would be a snooze fest, especially in this heavy car, so I robbed the Nitrous Outlet stinger plate off of my race car.
I had heard tales of an old Hot Rod magazine story called Bottle Bomb about a nitrous junkyard 318, and though the stories had gotten exaggerated, I did source the article and it was interesting. They ran the nitrous like they were trying to hurt the thing and eventually did-projected nose plugs, no ignition box or rpm safeties, pump gas, etc.
I installed a Summit 6901 (218/228 .444 114*) cam and lifter kit and a set of entry level Comp valve springs. I also put on an old single plane Holley Street Dominator. I got the single plane because of the plan to use nitrous. I chose a Holley 550 Brawler (aka Quickfuel) die cast four barrel to replace the factory two barrel wheezer. Heads, short block, etc were left alone.
The mummified stock exhaust was cut off and replaced with a set of 1-3/4 Hooker Super Comp headers, and a muffler shop 2.5 non crossover exhaust. With the cam, it sounds frigging AMAZING, especially for a 318.
I did swap in an 8-3/4 rear. Couldn't find a sure grip center that worked, so I had the spider gears welded. 3.23(?) gear ratio. remember, Drag week is 1000 miles over the highway, so I figured making it live would mean more than a couple of tenths from low gears. I also serviced the brakes, replaced the u-joints and other maintenance tedium. I ran the stock 14 inch wheels on the front and a pair of dirt track wheels with 275/60 MT ET Pros on the back (yes, 28" is too much tire for this combo, but it goes down the road nice). The car still has the stock fixie mechanical fan and power steering.
I installed the nitrous with the plan of spraying up to 200, while following all of the N20 recommendations. Pulling timing, window switch to control activation, good spark and race gas. To make the race fuel practical on an over the road car, I left the stock fuel system in place for motor horsepower and installed a supplementary fuel system under the hood for nitrous enrichment. Holley red pump, regulator, and a 3/4 gallon fuel cell. I had most of this stuff lying around.
I chose an out of production Mallory box to control the window switch, nitrous retard, and rev limiter. Its too good, so MSD bought Mallory and doesn't make it anymore.
The car made a whopping 130 rwhp in bone stock 2 barrel trim. With the mods above it made 206 rwhp (about the same as a bolt on 5.0 Fox Body) at 5000 RPM. The 100 shot pills in the stinger plate took it up to 290 rwhp and 330 ft lbs. Still not amazing, but good enough, especially considering this work had me up till midnight to 2AM for the entire two weeks preceding drag week.
Some buddies and I left Saturday, and things immediately started to go wrong. Before even reaching the first track (Cordova), the ignition box and distributor flamed out. I happened upon some very cool people who loaned me a stock electric distributor and I put the car back on the stock ignition box and caught up with my buddies in Cordova. We spent all day in registration Sunday and hit the track Monday with 400 other masochistic gearheads. Bottle heater gave up right away and had to resort to improvised methods to warm the nitrous.
First pass in the car was a 13.30 @ 100 mph. This was on the 100 hp pills and very surprisingly good for a mild car, still shifted automatically with hardly any gear. I discovered the car would scarcely turn the big tires on motor, but it still went a 1.86 60' on the radials.
We hit the road to Gateway in St Louis for Tuesday. Car picked up a couple of odd noises on the way, but nothing major. Gateway was a bit of a cluster. It was cold, and I couldn't keep heat in the bottle, and I broke the welded diff. The car only managed a 13.50 on that track on the same 100 shot. We all loaded up and hit the road for Byron Illinois.
The car had started to consume some oil. Partially through the rear man, and partially because the rings in #2 werent doing so hot. It would foul out the plug every 100 miles or so. Id dump a quart of valvoline VR1 in at gas stops to quiet the tapping. Otherwise, everything seemed fine....I through the 150 shot jets in it figuring I better try it while the car was still mobile, put 110 octane race fuel in the cell and installed a set of NGK R56781-9 plugs. Hit the track at Byron after loads of delays and was rewarded with a 12.7x @ 103 mph. Was very pleased with that. Got in touch with a guy on Craigslist on the way to the next track (Great Lakes Dragaway) who had a clutch posi center section with a 3.3x gear in it. All seemed right with the world.
We swapped the gears that night in the hotel parking lot and did a quickie rebuild on the TH400 in my buddy's Monte Carlo and hit the track in Wisconsin Thursday morning. The place was a zoo! Those Wisonsinites love their drag racing. First pass, the bottle pressure was too high and the nitrous solenoid wouldn't open. Second pass I got that sorted and the car ran an even better 12.70, this time at 104 mph. The car left hard and went straight, I knew it was a pretty decent pass. This is where everything went bad....
As soon as I let off at the top of the track, everything started shaking and it felt like my teeth would come flying out of my head. I had busted a rear u joint, and when I pulled over discovered that the trans was puking massive amounts of fluid out of the dipstick hole. The pinion seal was also leaking alarmingly fast. Not good. I changed the U joint as it was getting dark, and tried to hit the road back to Cordova for the final track. As soon as the car got to 30 mph the driveline vibes let me know this was a sicker puppy than I had figured. It turned out the trans case is massively cracked. With regret, I called home for a tow and just got back home today. Sadly, I will miss the 3K hooptie challenge this weekend.
Even though I didn't complete the event, it was a blast. You meet a lot of great people on the road, and the sites they route you to on the tour are interesting. Mostly, you spend the time driving, wrenching and enjoying with buddies with a common goal and you find out just how much you can get done when it just has to be done with what you've got lying around. An amazing experience, I highly recommend it to anyone - just probably try to get your car done with a little more time to spare than I did.
The next trick was going to be to load the 200 pills in the kit and dump about 5 gallons of race fuel in the main fuel system and try for low low 12s or high 11s on a hail mary. Perhaps I'll repair the damage and try it yet this year. Thanks for listening!
