zhandfull
Well-Known Member
Bitchen car weather this past weekend.
I had a busy weekend, I hadn’t worked on any car projects for the last three months. Like most of us here the wheels were still turning in my head on various things I wanted to do during that time. There was a couple events coming up fast that I wanted to attend, one being Mopars at the Strip in Vegas in a couple weeks. The other was I wanted to run the Summit Racing series out at the local Irwindale 1/8 mile track. That first Summit race was yesterday.
I have been having a vibration issue with the Dart. I have narrowed it down to the engine and possible a balancing problem. It’s not super bad but just drives me nuts. So Saturday morning it was on! I had to swap out motors before the Summit series race on Sunday. I started at 6am Saturday morning. Went out to the garage to button up the top end of the 360 magnum crate motor that I was going to install. Just a matter of installing the heads valve gear and intake. I had that done in a couple of hours. So by 8am I was working on removing the engine that was in the Dart. That went pretty smooth, I think I had it out by 11am. Then the wife brought home some much needed lunch. By 1 pm I was lowering the new engine in place and started bolting up accessories.
By 3pm I figured out that my existing Hooker header were not going to work with the newer magnum block that I was installing. Big problem was that the driver side header was hitting the center cast mount on the magnum block. Luckily I did have some TTI headers laying around that I had planned to install in the future. Those headers saved my butt on getting the car ready for Sunday but that little problem set me back 3 to 4 hours. By 7 pm the TTI’s were bolted up. Then the wife saved me again by calling me in for a much needed dinner. After dinner I finished the bottom of the car by 10 pm and called it quits for the night.
Sunday morning came early as it was daylight savings time and I lost an hour of sleep. I was still back at it 6am hooking up the water hoses, carb and spark plug wires. By 8 am I had it started, did a quick timing job and test drove it around the block. No cam break in required the magnum has a hydraulic roller cam. My neighbor help me put the hood back on and by 9am I was off to take a shower.
Now it was time to go racing! I drove the Dart 30 miles to the track went strait to tech and jumped in line to get a dial in time. Dart ran a 8.36 first and only pass before the eliminations started. So I dialed in a 8.30 and ran the Dart like that. I wasn’t feeling to confident with the new motor but things started coming around and I won the first and second round of eliminations. By the third round I was starting to get the hang of things and my lights were even getting pretty respectable. In the forth round there was just 9 of us left and I started thinking I might have a chance of winning this deal. I totally blasted off the line with a great reaction time and had the race in the bag till that damn column shifter went from first to third gear and before I knew it my dreams of winning slipped away right there in the fourth round of eliminations.
I just had to share all the fun I had this weekend. It’s been awhile since I really pushed myself at least on a car project. It really felt great to get the motor swap done despite the header set back and go racing the following day.
So what did you do over the weekend?
I had a busy weekend, I hadn’t worked on any car projects for the last three months. Like most of us here the wheels were still turning in my head on various things I wanted to do during that time. There was a couple events coming up fast that I wanted to attend, one being Mopars at the Strip in Vegas in a couple weeks. The other was I wanted to run the Summit Racing series out at the local Irwindale 1/8 mile track. That first Summit race was yesterday.
I have been having a vibration issue with the Dart. I have narrowed it down to the engine and possible a balancing problem. It’s not super bad but just drives me nuts. So Saturday morning it was on! I had to swap out motors before the Summit series race on Sunday. I started at 6am Saturday morning. Went out to the garage to button up the top end of the 360 magnum crate motor that I was going to install. Just a matter of installing the heads valve gear and intake. I had that done in a couple of hours. So by 8am I was working on removing the engine that was in the Dart. That went pretty smooth, I think I had it out by 11am. Then the wife brought home some much needed lunch. By 1 pm I was lowering the new engine in place and started bolting up accessories.
By 3pm I figured out that my existing Hooker header were not going to work with the newer magnum block that I was installing. Big problem was that the driver side header was hitting the center cast mount on the magnum block. Luckily I did have some TTI headers laying around that I had planned to install in the future. Those headers saved my butt on getting the car ready for Sunday but that little problem set me back 3 to 4 hours. By 7 pm the TTI’s were bolted up. Then the wife saved me again by calling me in for a much needed dinner. After dinner I finished the bottom of the car by 10 pm and called it quits for the night.
Sunday morning came early as it was daylight savings time and I lost an hour of sleep. I was still back at it 6am hooking up the water hoses, carb and spark plug wires. By 8 am I had it started, did a quick timing job and test drove it around the block. No cam break in required the magnum has a hydraulic roller cam. My neighbor help me put the hood back on and by 9am I was off to take a shower.
Now it was time to go racing! I drove the Dart 30 miles to the track went strait to tech and jumped in line to get a dial in time. Dart ran a 8.36 first and only pass before the eliminations started. So I dialed in a 8.30 and ran the Dart like that. I wasn’t feeling to confident with the new motor but things started coming around and I won the first and second round of eliminations. By the third round I was starting to get the hang of things and my lights were even getting pretty respectable. In the forth round there was just 9 of us left and I started thinking I might have a chance of winning this deal. I totally blasted off the line with a great reaction time and had the race in the bag till that damn column shifter went from first to third gear and before I knew it my dreams of winning slipped away right there in the fourth round of eliminations.
I just had to share all the fun I had this weekend. It’s been awhile since I really pushed myself at least on a car project. It really felt great to get the motor swap done despite the header set back and go racing the following day.
So what did you do over the weekend?
