84' LTD Station Wagon page 2
Here's a shot of the engine on the GoPro prior to converting it to Holley EFI.
New fuel system going together for the wagon, I used a Pro-m fuel pump
hanger with 6AN fittings and I had to make a larger disc to weld it to in
order to fit the early fox body tank. This forced me to run a separate
sending unit as well. I added some insulation to quiet things down and
provide some cushion for the tank.
The mighty B cam! I've also acquired a set of 1.7:1 roller rockers and
new lifters to boot. This is intentionally an "old school build", I
know there are better cams out there etc. but the Chuckwagon is my
cushy ride, not the all out effort.
Update November 2023!
Took the Chuckwagon to Hot Rod drag week 2023!!
First off I'll go ahead and say this was one of my best vacations ever and we can't wait to go back next year!
Before leaving...
The Zephyr
is still being pulled out of mothballs so there was no way it was going
to be ready in time for the event and since the wagon was running and
driving and had a cold A/C it was an easy choice to take the wagon. (we
never turned the A/C on)
Prior to
leaving home I had attached a trailer hitch to the car and found a deal
on a cargo basket to haul the race tires and 5 gallons of extra fuel
around in. I loaded the car up as if I'd be making the drive for
the week with all of the gear inside and I'm glad I did, the car was
squatting bigtime and dangerously close to the tires! I made a last
minute trip to Summit to pick up some air shocks (remember those) which
got things squared away there. I thought I only had a few things to do
to get the wagon ready but it was still too close and I didnt get to do
any track testing (and that will get me later). Also you may or may not
remember the wagon has nitrous on it controlled by the Holley EFI, I
haven't used it much and wanted to top off the bottle at Summit and
come to find out my bottle was expired and I didn't have time to get it
inspected so I had to buy another bottle and have it filled. (Holley
tops off nitrous bottles for free at the event but the supply is
limited).
So it turned
out to be exactly what I didn't want it to be, a mad dash to get
everything ready. A couple of other things that added to the anxiety
was I had picked up a 31 spline carrier for the 8.8 from the salvage
yard out of an Explorer and had previously bought axles to go with it,
well the carrier needed different shims than the one that came out and
one of the axles had to be machined down about 3/4" further down the
shaft (lengthwise not thickness wise) in order to let it slide in
enough to get the C-clip in. And last and certainly not least I finally
broke down and treated myself to a Holley Pro dash, I'd been talking
myself out of it for a longtime but this week would kind of be a good
excuse since it would give me an accurate speedometer, built in tach,
and a good working adjustable fuel level gauge. The dash did work for
the most part but I've not been able to update it to a newer version
and there are quite a few things that don't work due to the updates it
needs, I'm on my second one now because the first time Holley asked me
to send it in and they lost it! Not a huge deal though as I had a
tracking # that proved they received it, they just gave me another one
with the same problems. lol
Tech Inspection...
We
started off trailering it to Hartsville,South Carolina where things
would kick off at Darlington Dragway. I had read the rules for the
event which stated that NHRA rules would be observed so I thought
there'd be no way I need a race jacket or helmet since the wagon isn't
very fast.
Well when I was
being teched in for the event they asked if I had these items and I
said "there's no way this car is fast enough to need anything like
that" and the tech official said "well what about the car in the other
lane next to you?" And I was like uh-oh. Luckily Summit Racing is an
event sponsor so I walked over to their booth and bought a helmet, I
was also fortunate enough to have made some friends while waiting in
the tech line and one of them had an extra jacket and loaned it to me
for the week.
After tech-in
was done and the event stickers were applied to the car it began to
rain pretty good so we were now bound to the car and the tow rig was
totally off limits. We drove the wagon back to the hotel with no
trouble and when I got to the parking space I felt the brake pedal sink
a bit. I got concerned but waited for the rain to let up then I went
and checked it and sure enough the drum reservoir was low in the master
cylinder. The girlfriend and I proceeded to bleed the brakes and things
seemed better.
This photo courtesy of Motortrend group.
Drag day 1 Darlington Dragway
OK now
that we know how things started let's get to it. First race day arrived
and the rain was gone, I'm not in any hurry as the big cars run first
anyway, I went ahead and found a place to pit and proceeded to put in
new spark plugs in the down time, swapped out the tires and waited my
turn. I get in line and wait for quite a while but it's finally my turn
to get to race. I do a small burnout, arm the nitrous, grab the 2 step
button and up to the line I go. We both get staged and I attempt to get
on the 2 step and the car lunges forward,the brakes aren't holding! I
backed up and restaged and only left off of idle, I took off and cut a
2.04 60ft, an 8.63@82 in the 1/8, and a 13.41@103.
Now I have to
say I had very low expectations for the car but it ran a better time
than I thought it would but it ran terribly! I took a datalog of this
run and it pulled to 5600 rpm on the 1-2 shift but after that it fell
on its face and seemed to just hang at 3800 rpm. I have a 2 second
delay on the nitrous and I feel pretty confident that when the nitrous
hits this is where the problem lies. It was difficult to listen to it
with a helmet on, I wasn't certain at the time what had happened.
Drive day 1 Darlington to Rockingham,NC
After the
racing we still had to load the car back up and get to a couple of
checkpoints and get to the next town via the route we had to take.
These drives on drag and drive events are no joke either, one was 4.5
hours long, and I think the shortest was 3 hours. While on this first
drive we had stopped at the first checkpoint earlier with no trouble
but right before we made it to the last one we got a flat tire. This
was on a backwoods country road in the South Carolina boonies and I was
keeping my ears peeled for dueling banjos! I had to toss a drag special
front runner on the car for the time being and we were off again and
made the checkpoint and made it to the next hotel. Brakes were doing ok
but it was because I was monitoring them constantly not letting the
fluid get too low.
Drag day 2 Rockingham, NC
Arrived at
the track feeling ok with the wagon getting us through but I wanted to
get a new tire so I didn't have to run the drag tire front runner, I
dont know if you guys know this but you can't find 15 inch tires hardly
at all anymore, I must've called 10 tire shops and anyone else that
sold tires that morning and no one had any. Anyway, we got to the track
and our class was called and I got through the lanes and rolled up into
the left lane and staged against a 3rd gen camaro, it must've been a 6
cylinder because I expected to get beat but the ol wagon put it on him
pretty bad, it cut a 2.01 60ft, 8.58@82.5 in the 1/8 and ran a 13.43@95
with me letting off the throttle before the finish line. I was trying
to pay closer attention this time and I noticed the car again ran
ok until when I think the nitrous was activated, it was just "stuck"
around 3800rpm again and was shaking pretty good so this prompted me to
ease off the gas. Went back and tried to look at the datalog but it
didn't record, I decided that at the next track I would make a motor
only pass and see how it did that way. Also I paid another visit to the
Summit booth and had them order and overnight a tire to the next track
for me.
Drive day 2 Rockingham to Bristol,TN
Off again
for another drive on the front runner, I did use the other one this
time so they would have an even number of street miles on them!
Loaded up the
gear and took off for Bristol, TN, the car was doing great. We stopped
off and filled up with gas then got back on the route and was tooling
down the highway when it happened. It sounded like another flat, like a
slapping of the tire on pavement and this was on a 4 lane major
highway. I managed to pull over and there were some roadside workers
that had heard it too and they came over to help. When I got out and
got to where I could hear over the traffic I realized this noise was
coming from the engine! It was backfiring through the intake. I knew
this wasn't good at all.
The roadside
workers had a couple of trucks and escorted us off the highway and into
a big parking lot so I could check things out. I was able to identify
cyl. 3 was the culprit and figured it was gonna be a burned/bent/stuck
valve or a broken valve spring that hadn't dropped the valve yet. Since
the combination in this car was so mild I hadn't brought any valve
springs with me as I never expected to need them. I was majorly bummed
and seriously thought about calling it and getting towed back to
Darlington but then I thought no way am I gonna come this far and not
at least finish! So I made the decision to unplug the injector on #3 so
it wouldn't wash the cylinder and waste fuel and we went the rest of
the week on 7 cylinders!
"Drag day 3" Thunder Valley Bristol, TN
Limped
into Bristol and actually felt pretty good now that the heat was off
that I had been putting on myself, I knew I had nothing more to worry
about since I wasn't going to be pushing the car hard. In Drag Week you
can stay in competition by just breaking the beam and making the drive
to the next track and they give you a 20 second timeslip, which is what
I did. I wrote on the back window "cyl 3 d.o.a. ONWARD. Brian Lohnes
actually mentions it on the youtube live stream that you can watch on
youtube now. My new tire arrived after being overnighted by Summit and
Mickey Thompson tires another event sponsor mounted and balanced it for
me so now we've got 4 good shoes again.
Drive day 3 Bristol to Aiken,SC
Ok now
things get a little hairy here, coming down out of the mountains after
leaving Bristol we stop for a bite to eat then get ready to get back on
route but first I wanted to bleed those brakes again as they started
feeling soft once again. I had the girlfriend pump the brakes as we did
before and immediately I heard then saw a big amount of brake fluid
pouring out from under the car. It also confirmed my suspicions about
where the leak was, the flexible hose that attached to the axle vent
had been seeping and now it's a major leak. I had already ordered this
hose on Amazon and was having it delivered to our next hotel as long as
we didn't die before we got there! Since bleeding was pointless we just
took off making sure to keep a lot of distance between us and anything
in front of us. The pedal would sink to the bottom but it would stop
with the front disc brakes once it got there but still it wasn't fun.
After a long drive we finally rolled into the next hotel and the brake
hose was waiting for me, I decided to worry about that the next morning.
"Drag day 4" Carolina Dragway Aiken,SC
Next
morning I unload the car, get it on jack stands and install the brake
hose, girlfriend is a pro by now at bleeding brakes and we've got a
brake pedal again! Feeling pretty good about the brake repair and my
new tire we went into Carolina dragway laid back and almost wearing the
7 cylinder wagon like a badge of honor. I didn't even bother unloading
the thing, just staged it fully loaded with gear and got my 20 second
time slip.
Drive day 4 Aiken to Darlington
This was
the shortest drive, like 3 hours or so. There was some pretty bad
traffic during some of these drives and there was a lot of drag week
cars on the side of the road having to let the cars cool off due to
overheating, I guess that's one thing I could hang my hat on, the wagon
has a good cooling system in it and never got any warmer than it was
programmed to. It's got a 4 row radiator and an electric fan out of a
2021 Lexus RX350 that I "found" at work. 😁 The fan is controlled by
the Holley EFI and comes on at 195° and turns off at 177° just
like clockwork.
"Drag day 5"
We made it
to the last day, while it would have been fun to make more passes under
power at least we finished and learned a lot about how things work and
what to expect next year, hopefully with the Zephyr. I staged the car
and broke the beam making it official, after that we were allowed back
to the tow rigs and I loaded the car up and enjoyed the races the rest
of the day. The awards ceremony was that night at the track and of
course I didn't win anything but it was fun for everyone to get a
chance to kick back and visit, while being treated to an onsite dinner.
After getting home
After
driving straight through and getting home once I was recovered enough
to unload everything and get the wagon in the shop here's what I
found...
Apparently the exhaust lifter on
#3 had come apart and shot its guts all over the underside of the
intake manifold, this allowed the pedestal mounted rocker to break off
its bolt in the head. This is why it was backfiring through the intake
because the exhaust valve couldn't open so the intake valve was pulling
double duty. And since I elected to keep driving it the rocker;s bolt
pieces got into the intake rocker and broke that one off too. I've
already gotten one drilled out and the other is proving difficult but
I'm not done working on it. I did a leakdown test and it passed and I
also hooked compressed air to the cylinder and couldn't hear anything
out of the intake or exhaust port. Hopefully I'll get it fixed quickly
so I can get back on the Zephyr now that I have a place to work.
All in all it was great and
it really makes me wonder what the wagon would run if it were to make a
full pass on nitrous or on motor? I wonder if it could manage low 13s
on the motor? I would never have thought so, it has power steering,
A/C, power brakes, and I wouldn't really consider it a lightweight with
its 4R70W transmission, oh well, maybe I can test it again sometime
soon.
