84' LTD Station Wagon page 3
We vowed to return to Hot Rod Drag Week and finish on all 8 cylinders and we did it!
Last
year we broke two
rocker arm bolts but fixed them not long after getting home, with this
done I was ready to go out to a local track and actually have
time to test before the event. I had previously tested a couple of
months before and found that not only were the brakes not holding on
the line but the transmission controller was shifting way too
early, even shifting into overdrive during the burnout and the
pass!
[Video] Feel free to skip ahead to 1:30 to get right to it.
I
contacted US Shift and I tried a few things but in the end, unhooking
the rpm signal wire to the controller fixed it, this wire isn't
necessary but was an extra I had wanted originally. I had tried to wrap
the rpm wire with some shielding but to no avail. Once this was fixed
and I knew it wasn't anything I did wrong so I stepped up to their
newest controller as mine was a Gen1 version I am now using the remote display Gen3.
All is great on this issue now.
OK so we decided we were ready to test
again about a month before the event, this time I would be using
nitrous. I made 4 passes on the night learning that the brakes still
wont hold on the line so I can't really stall it up and give it a
good launch, I know this is hurting performance, however it was still
fun spraying the thing. I am using a Nitrous Outlet X series kit which
is a small 4AN line entry level system, on this night it was jetted for
100hp. There were not many street cars on this night but on my last
pass I raced a pretty good running 57 chevy. Here's the video. I got the win light but at a cost.
I
had yet another rocker arm bolt break but this time on the driver side,
I had vowed when this happened last year
on drag week 2023 that I would fix this once and for all
and by golly it's time. I got home and swiped the ol plastic and got
myself a set of AFR Enforcer aluminum heads with stud mounted rocker
arms, I went with the 1.90 intake valve to help with PTV clearance and
to not throw the tune off very much.
I
thrashed and got them installed (though I feel the explorer intake is
choking things down now a bit) after this I just added 5% fuel to the
fuel map above idle everywhere. I also saved some money for the time
being and borrowed the Zephyr's rocker arms (I plan to make it up to
the Zephyr) Video upon startup and you can tell I'm beat.
I
have acquired a small trailer to make things easier to haul stuff
around with instead of having to load and unload the wagon
everyday. I decided to give it the once over before leaving, good thing
I did!
Found the bearings were in bad shape and one was not turning on the outer race at all. A quick call to etrailer.com and I got new hub assemblies and even added bearing buddies.
The
time is here so I got everything loaded up and we took the long
trip to Ohio. Below you can see how the hotel
actually preferred we park so as not to take up so much
room. And the other pic is how the wagon looked while in the tech line.
OK
finally to the racing, day 1 National Trail Raceway Hebron, Ohio, we
arrive early and our class is the slowest so it runs last except on the
last day. My class finally gets the call and I'm up against a really
clean Foxbody Mustang GT, foolishly I had a full tank of gas in
the car but this would be the most fun race of the week. We leave
together my .206 rt to his .209 I jump out on him and the 4R70W is
shifting like it owes me money thus keeping the Mustang at bay
until we get too about the 1000 ft mark and he slowly overtakes me, my 14.04 to his 13.87.
Super
fun and I ended up catching up with the guy the next day about what a
good race it was. After this we pack up and hit the road to Indy...
Day
2 Lucas Oil Raceway Park, Indianapolis, Indiana we arrived uneventfully
and waited for our turn, this time I have 1/4 tank but I forgot to
remove the spare tire!! arrrgghh!! It still did ok though. Now it was hot on
this day so when you are in the car, windows up, A/C off with a race
jacket and helmet on you feel like a chicken dinner in the oven at
475° here is the clip of my run but
feel free to back up a few MINUTES before this and watch how long I'm
stuck sitting there waiting on cleanup in the other lane. When I
finally got to run I was sweating badly and pushed the car through the
lights thanks to the brake problems I'm having, but it went 13.98 so it
was one and done again today. Nothing to do now but head north to
Michigan (oh boy was that fun).
Drive to Michigan...
We were tooling down whatever
backroad highway they had us go on via the route map when I just
happened to look at the temp gauge, the car had always run perfectly
cool up to this point but it was showing 203°. I asked the wife to
see if there was an auto parts store nearby, sure enough about 3 miles
away off the highway a small town had an O'reilly auto parts. In
the past I had noticed the 30 amp fan fuse had gotten a little
distorted from being hot, I wrote it off as not being installed
very tightly in the fuse block so I added another and bent the
terminals opposite each other to hold it tight. Well that was
months ago and here we are again and it got more than a little
distorted this time.
Initially
I thought that the fuse was just too hot and melted so I
purchased a new fuse block and this time attached the fan wire to a
30amp circuit breaker, this way if it acted up again I could pull over,
let things cool down then get on our way. This did work but it would
act up whenever we were in stop and go traffic which was only twice I
think. After these impromptu repairs we made it to the next checkpoint
stop and got our picture to prove we were there but noticed the air
shocks were deflated. I pulled off to the side and found that the air
line pulled out of the shock when the suspension travelled a
little further than it had been doing so I repaired the line then tried
to get at least some air in the shocks with a small dinky air
compressor I had that plugs into the cigarette lighter. This didn't
work but since I left the car running and sitting still the relay
tripped and the car got to 223° this was the worst it would get. So
for the next 3-4 hours we were investigating and driving to and
from every auto parts store in a 10 mile radius. I had discovered the
real culprit during this time, 4ish years ago when I wired the fan up
it used 8 gauge wires on the factory connector and all I had was 10
gauge I should have doubled up the 10 gauge but I wasn't even sure
this fan would work so I wired it up as quickly as possible then was
happy when I saw it did indeed work very well. Then like a darn fool I
covered up all of the wires with a cheap plastic wire loom which kept
me from seeing the high resistance that was causing the problem,
(my 8 gauge to 10 gauge wire splices). Only one auto parts store had 8
gauge wire, Advance auto. After I acquired what I needed we found a
truck stop (best air compressors for the air shocks) and filled the
shocks up and then in a dark truck stop parking lot I rewired my fan.
Let me tell you there are some real strange folk hanging out at truck
stops at night lol.
ok
so here's how this ended I got things patched up pretty good, left the
circuit breaker but had the new 8 gauge wiring we still had to watch
the temp like a hawk but this only bothered us in the form of anxiety
from here on out. I am currently acquiring parts to fix this properly
and take advantage of the pulse width modulation option to keep strain
off of the wiring. With this done we were still 100 miles from the
second checkpoint at Lane Automotive and another 40 miles from our
hotel, we left the truck stop at 11 pm but luck was on our side as the
nighttime air was very cool and we motored all the way to Lane
automotive and the temp didn't even get hot enough to
turn the fan on, it ran anywhere from 176 to as low as 170 while doing
70-75mph down the highway! We arrived at our hotel at roughly 1:30am.
This was the worst trouble we would have.
Day3
US 131 Martin Michigan - Got out there early and due to a fog delay we
started later than normal but that's ok, got to see friends Eric and
Tracy who are about 30 minutes from the track. I would've been so
bummed had things gone worse the night before and we hadn't made it.
But the ol Chuckwagon may have a future as a good bracket car as you can see here.
One and done and now a bit more worrisome about the fan situation but
we had the good fortune of the shortest drive of the week to Milan dragway the next day. On the way Ididit was
one of the checkpoints and I got to see another friend Trever who works
there and I met his wife as well. I didn't really know if he would be
there around 8:30-9:00pm when we got there but he was, our hellos were
brief as the place was packed with other racers getting their photos
and getting to hotels for the night.
Day
4 Milan dragway - Got a much needed good night's sleep and arrived to
another fog delay. Trever showed up and this time we had more time to
visit. The bummer thing about this day was the
official Hot Rod Drag Week live feed cutoff 2
hours of runtime and that was when I ran but luckily my wife got
video! Here it is. 13.99 If only it were a bracket race! Now it's time to get back to National Trail Raceway for the last day!
Day
5 Hebron, Ohio the final day all we have to do is stage, break the
beams and we've done it. Is that what I did? Heck no! The truck and
trailer are here let's fire up the nitrous! I had stepped down from a
100hp shot to a 75hp shot just to be safe. I plan to get back on the
Zephyr if this car makes it home hitting on all 8 (and it did). Here's the nitrous pass and the conclusion of Drag Week 2024 for us. 13.57@103.9
All in all we had a great time and can't wait for next year, I would
really like to get the Zephyr to this event or one like it. It would be
fun to have a faster car even if it isn't as comfy.
