Hooniverse Weekend Edition: Last Call
west horseshoe, DIS road course, 1/7/12
It’s never a good thing when your race car is on the hook with no impact damage while the HAZMAT team cleans up its bodily fluids. Before the season even begins.
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What I find amazing is that a race track does not have a tow truck designed to load race cars without the use of extra ramps.
I think someone could build a front wheel drive truck with very small wheels in the back or a flat bed that can be slid and removed from the truck completely. That truck would not need to be able to drive far or fast or even be street legal!
Marketing 101…DIS is NASCAR owned afterall…but hmm…Kind of like this one?
<img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7161/6698574215_05c3f848b3.jpg" width="500" height="332" alt="voyager">
thanks Grassroots Motorsports for the often seen image.
Dallas Smith does a front-drive low-floor conversion of the Ford Super Duty.
<img src="http://dallassmithcorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/z-frame-1.jpg"/>
NASCAR's ISC tracks don't own tow vehicles, they have a contract with Miller Industries.
I would love to see a feature on this stuff…
When I first read that, I missed the "its", and became morbidly curious as to how there would be bodily fluids on the track with no sign of impact to the apparent vehicular culprit. My subsequent relief of the lack of human casualty overshadows the despair of a race car cut down in its prime.
<img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7020/6698555895_8bef6815cd_b.jpg" width="500">
Last year, Team Sahlens showed up with three cars. One of them was a "start-and-parker" that netted them some extra cash, and allowed them an entire car to sit in the garage for spares.
Genius, but wiley.
It seems like there were four of them this year…
Oh, look at that, it's Last Call! That means it's time for your evening "JeepJeff doesn't know what the ©¡€☭€☠☢ he's doing, but he decided to swap his own cylinder head anyway" update.
Tonight ends in Near Victory™! That's right! My new cylinder head is on the Jeep! Of course, just the cylinder head is back in, and I haven't torqued the cylinder head bolts yet. After pulling the old one, scraping off all the gasket material and putting the new one in, I was dripping in sweat and about ready to drop. But it's in… So, the title of tomorrow's post will be "Installation is the Reverse of Removal."
I am not entirely sure how I got the old one out. Once I got everything removed and broke the seal on the old gasket, I more or less grabbed and lifted/yanked/rotated/pulled and it came out eventually. Getting the new one in was entertaining. Once I got the old gasket removed all the way, I put the new gasket on. It looked so pretty sitting there with the word "TOP" facing upward. That's when I realized I probably couldn't drop or set the new head on it anywhere for fear of gouging it…
After one bout of "just try and set the new one in there in the right spot in one go", I probably reinvented another shop trick. I put a bunch of shop towels over the gasket and then gently set the new head on them and walked it into position. Once it was mostly in the right spot, lift it here, lift it there and yank each of the shop towels out, and gently slide it onto the dowels.
That was the plan anyway. First step, cover block and gasket with shop towels. Second step, reach down, grab cylinder head, lock out my back, tighten my abs, drop into the deadlift, and tear the arse out of my pants on the pull. So, there I am standing in my shared garage with my bum hanging out of my pants and 80#s of cylinder head in my hands. I gave a mental shrug and went for it. I'm just glad no one walked in to see me bent over my jeep with my pants all but falling off. The rest of the plan worked as designed, just with extra ventilation…
Anyway, I'm feeling pretty good. No more taking parts out, just putting things back together. We'll see how long this takes me, since I know how to reach all the bolts now (and I carefully bagged and labelled everything).
I've set enough heads by now that I've learned that you don't have to be all that careful, but what you did didn't hurt one bit. Hell, next time, just set it there carefully. Drop it on there, hell, it's a chunk of cast iron. Line up the dowels, and set it there, maybe wiggle it around a little until the holes line up, then start torquing it. That's where you have to be careful, take your time and torque the head bolts in the cross pattern that the manual dictates. Then, wait a day and go back and check the torque on the bolts again, as the gasket will compress and the whole assembly will set up. Use plenty of lube as you install the lifters, pushrods and rockers. Put the distributor in, then before you put the spark plugs in, fill the crankcase full of oil, and run the starter for a few seconds and fill all of the internal galleries full of oil, then assemble the rest of the engine. Before the initial start up, leave the coil wire off, and run the starter again to be sure the engine is lubricated. Then, start the thing up. You'll be jumping up and down, yelling, "IT LIVES!" That's a great feeling.
Those 258 heads are no joke, too. Those suckers are heavy.
Whoa. And there was I thinking RX-8s were rock solid….
I don't know what the world's come to, if a guy can't dip a little chew in his car.