McD Family Racing Winter 2014-2015 Thread

Magnethead

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I suppose I will go ahead and get this thread started since our season ended yesterday.

Today we got the fuel drained out of the tank, and ran a leakdown on the motor. 428 passes on the short block and the highest leak was #7 at 5%, all out the intake valve. The rest were tight or 1% past the rings.


We have quite the to-do list going for winter:

New 30 x 41 race shop going in (the extra 1 foot to clear the trailer tongue with walking room, trailer is 37.5 feet tip to tail)
- Run TV and Network cables as well as 50A 240V power conduit
- Wiring it ourselves

Cylinder Heads are coming off and going to local "retired" NASCAR cylinder head guy (still does heads for ARCA and truck teams, retired from Joe Gibbs and Hendrick)

Pull bottom end out, new bearings and rod bolts, get crank magnafluxed (approaching 1,000 runs on it)

We were going to put new tires on it, but Friday's events changed that

Re-do some wiring and hoses

Change rear pumpkins back to the 4.10 gearset

Add fan for transmission cooler

Add air lines on trailer as well as extra back-up lights

New fuel injectors in the tow rig

Cut in back door from yard to garage

And I'm sure there is stuff I am missing.
 
Background for new members. Some of the pictures may or may not work, some albums have been lost for some reason or another.

2010- http://racing-forums.com/threads/mags-racing-updates.34644/
2011- http://racing-forums.com/threads/new-shinies.37741/
2011- http://racing-forums.com/threads/racing-update.39956/
2012- http://racing-forums.com/threads/magnetheads-racing-updates-2012.40498/
2012- http://racing-forums.com/threads/i-think-i-found-diggers-cousin.41134/
2012- http://racing-forums.com/threads/eye-candy.42020/
2012- http://racing-forums.com/threads/more-win-lights.42822/
2013- http://racing-forums.com/threads/here-have-more-videos.44463/
2013- http://racing-forums.com/threads/2013-racing-update.44891/
2013- http://racing-forums.com/threads/anybody-have-motion-sickness.45115/
2013- http://racing-forums.com/threads/well-that-hurt.45673/
2013- http://racing-forums.com/threads/we-finally-made-a-1-4-mile-pass.46242/
2013 (new car, long thread)- http://racing-forums.com/threads/mfr-shop-new-car.46669/
2013- http://racing-forums.com/threads/we-have-a-winner.47493/
2014- http://racing-forums.com/threads/ive-been-missing.50403/

Culminating in this:

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Funny how that works in this crazy sport.
We used to be in a house with a 3 car garage. Family issues and the dragster and dog not fitting well sent us looking for new land. Got this house with a chunk of land next to it so we could fence it in and build the shop and be able to run the car without pissing off a bunch of neighbors. Our old neighbor said anytime we started the camaro, about a dozen spiders would show up in the house.
 
plan for this weekend is to fix the ceiling in the attached garage and hang three 8 foot lights in there. Right now there's just one 80W CFL lighting the whole thing. Depending on time, might also get started on putting up the attic foil heat barrier.
 
Got the rear panels, headers, bellypan, and diaper pulled off so far today since I got home at 3:30. Next task is to drain the water out and pull the scoop and air throttle system off.

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Got more work done before dinner. Drained water, pulled fuel pump, vacuum pump, coil, and everything from throttle body up. Gonna head back out after dinner to put tools away and organize the take-offs pile, and maybe pull the intake off before it gets too cold.

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Furthest anything has traveled is the throttle body assembly to the garage to be dunked and rebuilt.
 
125 pounds or so. Roughly same as the generator, but that's alot harder to get into the truck bed. I've done it solo but usually we team lift it. It makes the trans seem like a cakewalk.
 
Scraped the ceiling in the garage tonight and re-hung the falling drywall. Also went and got some lights. Will hang those tommorow.

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Scraped the ceiling in the garage tonight and re-hung the falling drywall. Also went and got some lights. Will hang those tommorow.

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Looking at that mess I thought it was a picture of mine.

I would replace that extension cord though, bloody fire hazard.
 
There's only 2 120V duplex outlets in the garage. So we have power strips on the benches and a 10ft 2 wire extension cord for the electric drill, shop vac, ect.
 
There's only 2 120V duplex outlets in the garage. So we have power strips on the benches and a 10ft 2 wire extension cord for the electric drill, shop vac, ect.
Good on you for using power strips. :booya:
 
Mother Nature permitting, going to TRY and get the motor out of the car and into the garage this weekend. Still a long way from that goal...
 
got the crank and cam knocked out. Bores don't look as good as they could, going to get it honed over at RM while they magnaflux the crank. Bearings look new for having 1000 passes on them, going to replace them after 3 seasons anyways.
 
Next on the to-do list:

Dirt Work on the shop begins this week. Going to have a 12x12 for the trailer, 8x10 for the dragster, and a walkthrough door, all on the front. Basically 26 of the 30 foot front will be door. But they have to move alot of dirt first. They think they can pour concrete next Monday but we expect it to probably happen in January. Then they wait 3 weeks before the structure goes up.

All the racing companies were at PRI this week, we should hear back on the cylinder heads around Thursday. Going to talk to our Trans guy about moving the trans cooler and adding a fan on Tuesday.

Going to order a 50 foot spool of 1/4 inch thick wall air line to add air to the trailer. The quick-connect air fittings will likely be the most expensive part. Should be an easy and quick project.

Also need to get some Cat 5 cable to run from the technology closet out to the garage then to the shop.


That should keep my busy up to mid-january, which is when we will start our part of the shop build and get the motor together.
 
Bought a new torque convertor today. Used from another racer that is selling out. One we have now is a 6400 stall, our old spare was a 6800 stall, new spare should be around 6000 stall.
 
Torque convertor came in, and hauled the block over to Reher-Morrison's shop.

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Picked the crank up from Reher. They said it's twisted like a pretzel, and it's not exactly common for them to do that. Most bend like a bow. One of the builders thinks it's because we're on injection and it's hydraulicing every now and then from the amount of fuel we put in it, particularly when starting.
 
Scored a 100 amp breaker box from Lowes for $55 and the PVC to put in the building's foundation for the underground power feed. Block should be ready on Tuesday, and that's when the construction crew is supposed to show up, pushed back from the rains last week.

We're going to run the digital lines in a separate PVC through the wall. The power and digital lines have to be 12" apart, the power at 18" and digital at 6". So we're going to trench the power then put the digital down when we backfill the trench. Going to run two lines of coax and 4 or 5 lines of cat5E- one for internet, one for the UVerse receiver, 2 for spare, and if I have enough cable left, I'll run a 5th cable for audio (Low Level Audio over Cat5 is getting popular for cost reasons).

 
Reher-Morrison is done with the block, dad is picking it up along with the piston rings and some other things tomorrow. Filing 7 rings per piston isn't fun, but is needed. 2 compression rings, one middle ring, and 4 oil rings.
 
Reher-Morrison is done with the block, dad is picking it up along with the piston rings and some other things tomorrow. Filing 7 rings per piston isn't fun, but is needed. 2 compression rings, one middle ring, and 4 oil rings.

Question: If you wanted to lower the HP of an engine, would you have gone with a tapered spacer or is it possible to sleeve the cylinder and
go with smaller pistons. Or could they have used smaller valves. I'm not up on this stuff is why I am asking.
 
Question: If you wanted to lower the HP of an engine, would you have gone with a tapered spacer or is it possible to sleeve the cylinder and
go with smaller pistons. Or could they have used smaller valves. I'm not up on this stuff is why I am asking.
The index guys run NASCAR style restrictor plates.

http://www.restrictorplate.com/howitworks.html

Rained heavy overnight, so no construction today. Maybe we'll have some dirt moved around on Friday. Did manage to finish up the antenna. Dad got home late last night and didn't say anything if he even noticed it while BBQing. He'll see it today though. Last night I was able to make confirmed contact to a station in Corsicana that is 500 feet AGL. Next time we do a SET exercise, I'll see what I do with urban (sub-100 foot AGL) antennas.

I budgetted $200 for the project, $50 for the new antenna and $150 for the mast. Actual cost comes out to $195 for the mast and $53 for the antenna. A little higher than I wanted, but I'll know if it's worth it tomorrow.

Also got some interesting news last night. My mom's neighbor out in the San Bernadino Mountains (Crestline) is NN6BK. There's no cell service, HAM and landline (which is VOIP) are the only methods of communications. Internet service is come and go out there, so I was hoping there'd be one close by.

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new antenna is up. Still need to tune it and it's location isn't ideal, needs to be moved further out. But it's up.

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Never seen one like that. Mine is three poles forming a triangle and I can climb up to the top. From there the single whip goes up
the center. It was used for TV antenna.
 
It's what I have to work with. are you CB or HAM?


No just a country boy and that was the only way we could get TV. I had Cb hook ups in my home back in the mid 80's and when I found Nascar cup racing I went with the 10 foot dish and that's all she wrote.
 
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