List,
They say confession is good for the soul, so here is my story...As all
of you know, I was thrashing to get the car ready for Speedweek. It is
unfortunate that when pushed, minor, basic details sometimes are
ignored. But that was the case for me at Speedweek.
I will sent this in two parts since it is rather long.
I made my first pass at 225 MPH on a very rough course. In the process,
I folded the pan on the underside of the nose of the car like an
envelope. Barry worked for about two hours reforming the pan and making
needed repairs while I adjusted the front springs to give more height on
the nose. When I put the car back together, I had raised the rear about
one inch and installed a step lighter springs in the front. Both were
mistakes. I attributed the drop of about 20 MPH from last years speed
to the rough course and did not investigate further at the time. Jeff
made a pass on Monday morning and in the process hit a big hole in the
center of the course and damaged the nose again, but not as severe as
the first run, going a bit less than 200 MPH. We straightened it again
and I decided to give the nitrous a try.
We had installed a progressive controller for nitrous setup and I wanted
to see if it was working. I made a pass hitting the nitrous at about the
1 3/4 mile. It gave a healthy boost and then it didn't sound so good. An
inspection in the pits revealed ground electrodes gone from four spark
plugs and no compression in two of the cylinders. As I have said many
times, if the basic tune-up is too lean, then nitrous will put the
pistons in the pan. I now knew for sure that the engine was too lean,
but it still was not clear just how lean. On alcohol, extremely lean
often does not reveal its self by burning pistons. It just doesn't make
good power.
Tom, Redding CA - #216 D/FCC
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