AlkyIROC

I took a few more static shots of my car and a professional photographer was taking pictures yesterday and has them up on his web site already. His was watermarks but it's better than nothing.



What the current engine looks like



Sitting in the pits ready to go



Going down track. You can see the starting line timers behind the back tire so I'm probably close to the 60' mark in this picture. The front end is still high and the front shocks are fully extended. I can still see some body roll in this picture. I should have a rear anti roll bar installed before the next race. I think that's why the car wants to pull to the right on launches. I'm twisting the body too much.

Demon355

iTrader: (1)

Niiiice!

greezemonkey

iTrader: (14)

car is looking good with the big tires, I don`t know, maybe it`s me.... I don`t see any body roll that would hurt performance, at least from that shot. Maybe a launch photo or video ...

AlkyIROC

Trust me, I can feel it when I launch. Looking at the picture, I can still see the left front higher than the right. It's not much at that point but it's still there.

I'd love to see a new launch picture right off the line or some video. The picture in my sig is right off the line but it was also with a slipping transmission/torque converter so it wasn't hitting as hard as it is now.

AlkyIROC

The photographer posted some more pics. Here's another shot doing down the track. I think I'm roughly at the 330 mark or slightly before it. The front end stays high all the way down the track I should get another wheel alignment with the front end lifted like that.

I have my domain name across the bottom of the back window. After looking at these shots, I think I should put it on the sides of the scoop.

car_fixer

some good pics, do you have a mid plate too? cant see in the first pic. yeah a anti rool bar would help, have you tried shortening the upper right bar on the 4 link? might help, anti roll bar is a better fix though, less bind with that. how were the 60 foots?

AlkyIROC

No mid plate. Wish I had the room to put one in. maybe this winter when I cut out the tranny tunnel, I'll work on installing one.

I've already added preload to the upper right bar. It helped a lot compared to my first time out this year with zero preload but it's still not enough.

60' times earlier were poor. Barely got 1.48's. Most were in the low 1.5x range. Put in a new torque converter and fixed the tranny and got 1.46's. Raised the top bars on the chassis mounts one hole to move the IC forward and managed a 1.40 and a bunch of 1.42's. 60' times should be 1.38 or 1.39. Still need more tuning time and the season is quickly coming to and end.

car_fixer

the mid plates are a pain, i got one in mine, what a pain, i made the brackets so it can piviot down to get trans out. it took quite a bit of twist out of the front of the car, on your with the front plate it might even be worse since it is farther out then the engine mounts, i see you have a bar to the strut tower, that might help. i also added a csr trans shield, since i knew i couldent get a bellhousing shield in and that makes trans work hard, but still liveable (i like having a shield between me and that turbo 350 that will be spinning at 7000 rpm soon) i used the tci mid plate that has a flywheel-flexplate shield built in
and with alot of cutting (jigsaw worked best) and some creative brackets its in there, i might be able to get a pic of it if you would like, i think the same idea would work with a bbc, its cut way above the exhaust...want pics (will take a couple of days)

car_fixer

hey wait a minute i know this wont help down low but block off the front opening and the headlights better aero will go faster gas tank doesnt need air anyway, and yeah if you can get the hight of the car going down the track setting the toe there might pick you up some just gotta watch the bump steer

AlkyIROC

I don't need to go faster. I had the headlight covers years ago and they suck.

I also use a CSR flexplate shield. There's no way to get the inexpensive TCI style in there. What I really need is an SFI tranny case to eliminate the need for shields but that costs even more.

I installed a bump steer kit which really helped especially since I flipped my center link over to drop the engine lower.

car_fixer

I made my own headlight covers, cuse the ones they sell suck lol, yeah dedenbear case is big bucks (i dont know any other case thats sfi approved but there might be)

AlkyIROC

TCI sells a case. A JW Ultracase with an Ultrabell would also be nice. Even just an Ultrabell for the bellhousing and a stock case with a shield would be better.

For the extra cost of these SFI cases, I'll suffer with the tight room. Even these SFI cases still have a 5 year expiry date. Every 5 years you'll have to strip the tranny down to send the case away for recertification or buy a new case. It's easier and cheaper to just buy a new shield.

IHI

iTrader: (1)

BTE has their new case out, actually it's been out for awhile.

these cars are just plain miserable to work on period, only 3rd gens i've seen that look like they'd be up there for ease of access to the old f bodies, g bodies, is a tube chasis f body LOL. frind of mine finally got his tubed 85 camaro out this summer, makes me wonder why i still try with a small tired car...oh well, keeps it interesting.

Stephen, the roll was the first thing i noticed before anything else anxious to see "after pics" once you get that in there, i know mine helped immensely, esspecially coming out straight, gets a little hairey with a passenget though, she goes hard right everytime. look'n good

AlkyIROC

I need to pay attention to my Email. Someone sent me this back at the end of July. I had to crop it down quite a bit. The car was really dirty that weekend. Black cars are so hard to photograph.

tommyboy

Have any pics of the tub job? What length ladder bars are you running 30 / 32 inch? I am looking to tub my bird this winter.

AlkyIROC

I don't run ladder bars any more. When I did use ladder bars, they were the standard 32-33" versions.

Last winter I back halved the car and installed a 4-link suspension. If you go to my web page, under the Gallery section is a complete story on the back half project. On TGO in the fabrication forum is a thread called "back half project" I created while doing the back half which shows basically the same thing with smaller pictures and different comments.

Doing a back half isn't for the faint at heart. It's not a hard job but knowledge of what needs to be done is required to do a proper job. Taking it in to a chassis shop to have it done can cost around $10,000. Not counting the time it took me to narrow a diff, the back half job only took a few weeks from start to finish.

Trevor86TA

How come you have the word Black below the word Peal on the passenger side? Is it to try and achieve symetry? I think it would be better if the wird Black was positioned up and to the left of the word Pearl.


BTW - the sheet metal valve covers and the rest of the engine look mean in that picture.

AlkyIROC

Lettering wouldn't fit properly on the doors the other way around. The door handle would be in the way. Put Black in front of the handle and Pearl would go off the door onto the fender. Your the first person to notice or say anything about that. If you'll notice between the 2 different passenger side shots, some of the decals change too.

The original fabricated valve covers I had were from Moroso. They are garbage. This set has a thick base which resists bending and leaks. The welds are absolutely beautiful. It comes with allen head hold down bolts which fit into recessed holes in the top of the cover. Picked them up new off of Ebay for $122 including shipping. The only thing I had to do was drill the holes for the breathers. If you look around the pits, they'll see a lot of the racers using this style now.

tommyboy

I am going to do the work. I helped my brother tub his 68 chevelle and yes you are right, if it aint straight you will end up with a non straight car that will require some serious adjustments that may bind the suspesion and make the car unsafe and possibly break parts. I talked to a tech at Morrison and they sent me cad drawing. They recommended a 30'' ladder bar and that is what I will probably go with. I will check out your site....
Thanks... Also your car looks good......

IHI

iTrader: (1)

The actual labor to back half yourself is'nt bad at all, but it is spendy. I've helped do 4 cars and the "common average" for pricing is in the $5000 range for hard parts...then factor in all the dumb stuff-welding wire, grinding wheels, rivets, misc fastners, paint, etc.....you'll have roughly $6K in one doing it yourself unless you have connections to get parts cheaper or buy the base model versions of all the parts like shocks, rear diff stuff.

cp87GTA

My son and me are doing it to his 96 Firebird. He told me the other day , he has spent 4700.00 so far. That includes the price of the car, 400.00, and a new ford 9" with a Strange pro case and Moser 35 spline axles and full spool. But we have done ALL of the work ourselves. We had to do a lot of front end work too as we are running a 400 ci Pontiac engine and a th350 with a JW bell. We started this project in January, and we hope to have it to the track the first week end in Oct. We have a 3 day event then. We did lose about 6 weeks of working on it in the hot summer. Had other things going on. Then on the last week end of July we broke my 9" real bad. Broke the whole side out of the case, lucky my axles were ok. Now have an imprint of the ring gear in the housing, but didn't break the skin.

IHI

iTrader: (1)

hope that casing broke on the line and not down track....seen more carniage as far as diffs and trannies shucking on the hit at the tree vs down track which is generally just engines going bye bye.

sounds like a unique project you boyz have going there!!! you'll have to be sure to post pics and details after you've gotten'er all fixed up and road worthey

AlkyIROC

Coming out of the waterbox a little sideways after a burnout.

car_fixer

when i was at atlanta motor speedway at the friday night drags the track is weird all the cars turn in the right lane water box so i was way out gunned in the class i was in so i decided to have some fun i had it full lock when i came out of the box lookin straight at the stands (guy i work with said i wasnt getting the tires hot enough) had the tires real hot lol wish i had a pic of that maybe next year....going to the georgia f body race on sunday, just started fresh engine on tuesday then pulled it half down to re torque heads so now i hope i can get a few dyno runs in to set mixture and see if ignition has any problems in um 2 days lol