Woodburn photos

Yes, that is some nasty tire shake.

Just starting to break the tires free in the next shot.

It is in fact a very tight driver’s compartment, I guess I am just short. Visibility is great though.

And of course we must thank NAPA Sumas for their support. They set me up with some new tires for my car the other day, fantastic service, very personal, and they took great care with the installation.

Bill Edwards Racing

It is a huge honor to have the opportunity to drive for Bill Edwards. I met Bill last year when we were working on Hugh Ridley’s Top Alcohol dragster together and immediately liked him.

Bill is walking drag racing history. He drove his first dragster in 1958, seven years before I was even born, and has been racing ever since, over fifty years.

His experience and wisdom is immense.

His budget is very small, using mostly second hand parts, and a chassis built in 1978 he is still able to run 5.50 et’s and qualify at the Seattle National event in 2009. He takes his time in preparing the car, and is a stickler for details. He watches all the small things that add up to get the car down the track. It is a huge pleasure for me to be able to work closely with him and learn.

Woodburn May 15

Yes, I have been quiet lately. I am very sorry about that. One day leads to another always busy, then before I know it another week or month has passed and I still haven’t updated my blog. So now it is time for me to get back at it.

This season is still a little unknown for me at this point. In mid April I finally got Dennis Hicks’ car into my shop to update the driver’s compartment, install a new clutch and trans, and sort out the trouble I was having with the steering all last season. Unfortunately once I got it here I discovered that my steering problem was a result of the chassis being out of alignment by about 3 and a half inches. Most of the trouble appeared to be in the rear axle housing. Add to that the engine being way out of alignment with the pinion. (no wonder the rear trans seal was always leaking).  The good news is that the shop that built the car in the first place said they would make it right, so Dennis took the car back up to them to have it made right. Because the work I had to do was all based on and around the rear axle and bellhousing there was nothing I could effectively do with the car until the alignment issues were resolved. At this point I am not sure of the status of the car. I am a big believer in checking the car immediately after the race event, or race season, not immediately before the race event or race season, that way there is plenty of time and resources to make any required repairs properly.

I was sad to not be able to make it to the opening event in Ashcroft this last weekend, but very happy to hear that it all went well for everyone. I was in Woodburn Oregon with Bill Edwards racing. I will be helping Bill and his son BJ, (Bill Junior) with their Top Alcohol Dragster operation this year, and be doing a bit of driving for them as their schedule allows. We are hoping to have the car in Ashcroft with me driving for the AHRA Reunion tour event in August.

I made one attempt at a half track pass in the car on Saturday. It wasn’t very pretty. In hindsight I should have made more adjustments in the driver’s compartment, I didn’t have the clutch control I should have had, which resulted in no burnout. Add to that a little more horsepower in the motor than Bill was expecting and the car went straight into wheelspin on the launch, then into some pretty violent tire shake. I poked second gear hoping it might settle down, but it didn’t.

On Sunday BJ took over the controls as planned. Unfortunately he didn’t fare much better, with bad tire shake breaking the tires free on the first run and breaking a fuel line on the second run. We are certainly hoping for much better results in Mission in two weeks.

I have a few photos from the weekend which I will post up in a couple days. One great shot of what bad tire shake looks like.

While I was in Woodburn I was able to catch up with Darin Bay, whom I met at the BC Classic and Custom car show earlier this year. He was there with his two jet dragsters and was doing double duty driving Twig Ziggler’s Nostalgia funny car as well. There is a Jet funny car owner in this area who is still talking about getting me to pilot his car, so I catch up with the jet cars whenever I can. They really do put on a fantastic show. I was able to watch one of Darin’s runs from the top end on Sunday, it is absolutely amazing how fast those things are accelerating from about 800 feet onwards. They are just starting to really get going when they have to be shut down. . . I wonder how fast they could go on a half mile run? . . .

Questions

I see many people coming to my site from Google or other search engines. Theses people are asking questions. Questions like: Why does my ladder bar car turn left when I launch? What is the correct pinion angle for a dragster? How to pre-load a rear suspension? and similar.

I have tried to sit down and answer these questions in a blog post as they come in, but I have found that the articles become almost huge as there are so many variables that need to be addressed.

I have an idea.

I encourage you to ask  your question directly to me. You can email me through the contacts page at the back, and I will reply, most likely with more questions so I can answer your question as it pertains to your needs.

I have many customers who email me with all sorts of questions, they send me photos and specs and I guide them through the process they are trying to accomplish. The cool thing about this sport is it is hands on, most of you guys and girls build the car, and set it up yourself. That is fantastic, and if I can help I am more than happy to.

So, don’t be shy or embarrassed, ask away, and I will respond in a timely manner, (you won’t be waiting a week for a reply). You can ask anything to do with Drag racing, from chassis design and setup, engine building and tuning, gas, alcohol, and nitro, gear ratios, tires, driving techniques, sponsorship, or rules, or any thing else.

Calendars

Speedzone Magazine’s Dean Murdoch dropped by yesterday with some of his great Calenders for me to give away. I only have five left, (ok, I had to keep a couple for myself), and I will give them to the first five email requests I get. Go to my contacts page, and be sure to include your mailing address. These are a very high quality calender with awesome photos, you can see samples here. A big thank you Dean, and if this is popular, I may hit you up for some more giveaways.

I’ve moved.

I have re-located to unit 18 Raceway Park, 32929 Mission Way Mission BC. My new phone number is: 604 814 1320

It has been a very big move from the Sunshine Coast, but I am mostly settled now, and Telus finally got my phone connected today, 18 days after it was supposed to be connected, how is that for service?

I invite everyone to drop by and say hi. For the next little while I will be busy getting caught up on work and getting more organized, so I will be here pretty much seven days a week, so stop in on the weekend, or over the holidays.

Ladder Bar Setup. Part one, center and square.

Ok, everyone seems to want to know how to setup their ladder bars, so I will see if I can shed some light on the subject. For those of you with four links. . . work it out yourself. No, no, I promise, I will do four links too, but they are a little more involved, and in effect build on the ladder bar principles, so I will start with ladder bars, and do four links at a later date.

I have given a lot of thought to how to approach this. I have decided that I will try to keep away from the engineering and physics as much as possible, and try to make this a “practical” guide. This is aimed at what I would consider the average bracket racer, with basic understanding, and tools.

First, you need a mostly level surface. Ok, here it comes already, the ‘experts’ out there are going to tell me it has to be perfectly level. Yes, perfectly level would be nice, but tell me this; how level is the startline at your dragstrip? Do you even know?  If you want ideal, you will set your car up on the startline, and the lane, of the track you are about to race on. That is most likely not possible, so we will settle with mostly level. Dragstrip startlines are generally pretty good, some much better than others. They usually have a very slight amount of camber to the outside for drainage, which is why you always start your burnout a little to the inside right? I will assume you are using your garage or workshop floor to work on here. To get mostly level, put the car in nose first, and centered in the doorway. The floor will usually have some drainage built into the floor so liquid will drain out. By nosing the car in, it puts the front end on the high side, more like a wheels up launch, and centering the car should have it pretty close left and right. What you want to do now, is make some marks on the floor, or take some measurements, so you can park the car in the same spot in the future to get the same results. You will want a reference of some sort.

Next, you do want some weight on the driver’s seat to simulate the driver. It does make a difference. You know how much you weigh, add that amount. Within twenty pounds is fine. Set your tire pressures to where you would normally run the car.  Now you get to get dirty.

The very first step is to square the axle in the car. And see, it is already getting tricky. What will you square it to? Is the chassis square? No sense squaring the axle to the rear cross-member  if the cross-member was installed out of square, how will you ever know? Let’s triangulate. No, it is not physics, it’s geometry.

Head up to the front end, at the front cross-member, between the front wheels, measure the distance between the front wheels, this can be inside to inside, or to straightedges held on the outside by your assistant, whatever is easiest, but be accurate, a sixteenth of an inch accurate. If you are measuring from the wheel or the tire spin the wheel an measure from a couple different points to make sure you are getting consistent measurements. Take that measurement, find the middle, the exact middle, and make a lark on your front cross-member at this distance. Sometimes I will use a plumb bob and drop points to the floor, or use a carpenter’s square. Once I have a mark in the centre of the front cross-member I am confident is in the exact centre of my front wheel track, I will make a permanent mark, usually a centre punch mark, then it is always there. When I am building a car I mark it while it is still on the jig. Now you have the centre of the front. Perfect.

Next. To use this procedure to square the rear axle, you need the rear axle to be centered in the car. The best bet is to center to the chassis, as the body may be a little offset. From under the car, measure from the inside of the tire or wheel, to the chassis rail where it goes up and over the rear axle. Sometimes it is way too tight  to get in there, in that case you will have to pull the wheels off  to get this measurement.  So now you find your rear axle is half an inch offset one way or the other, not at all unusual. Sometimes it is less, sometimes more, but we can fix it. You will most likely have a panhard bar, or a wishbone setup to center the housing. Loosen the jam nuts and adjust the housing from side to side. A wishbone is a little more involved as you will have to remove the bar from the brackets to make the adjustments. Another note on the wishbone, if you wind one rod end in, wind the other one out the same number of turns to keep the width the same so you can get the bolts back in. (a little pet peeve of mine, the rod ends should be parallel). If any of your rod ends are difficult to turn, remove them from the car, clean the threads, inside and out, spray some good oil up inside the tube, (I use engine store fogging oil) to prevent corrosion, and grease the threads. I don’t use never seize, it is dirty and abrasive, I use good quality grease. Now next time you need to make an adjustment, there will be less cursing.

Back to squaring the axle in the car. Ok, now you have the rear axle centered between the rear chassis rails, and a center mark on the front cross-member. The next step is to choose a point on the ends of the rear axle to measure forward to the front cross-member center mark. You can use the front edge of the brake drum, or disc, the backing plate, or the backing plate flange. The important thing is to use the same spot on both sides. measure from your chosen point to the center mark on your front cross-member, (again you can use a plumb bob, or carpenter’s square to drop marks onto the floor if it makes things easier). The objective here is to have the dimension the same on both sides, right rear brake drum to front cross-member center the same distance as the left rear brake drum to front cross-member centre. Again, be as accurate as possible, a sixteenth of an inch or better.

They’re not the same are they. That means one rear wheel is further forward than the other. Now it is time to look at your ladder bars and see if one is adjusted longer or shorter than the other. What we are concerned about here is the bottom of the bar, we will use the top to adjust pinion angle later, but for now we want the axle square. I generally start by removing the ladder bars, remove and inspect all the rod ends, and the bars themselves for any damage, rust, cracks etc. Lubricate everything, and assemble the bars with all adjustments in the middle of their range, (which is about six threads showing on the rod end). Before re-installing the bars I will adjust the bottoms to the same length, if the chassis is all square and true, the housing will be square. Back to your car, if you have adjustable ladder bars, set the adjusters, (which are normally on the bottom and rear of the bar) in the middle of their adjustment range, and adjust the front of the bar, the front rod end, to square the housing in the chassis, to make both dimensions from the rear brake drum to the front cross-member center mark equal. Ideally you want both front rod ends in or out of the tube the same amount, and preferably with about six threads showing, (that is above the jam nut). A couple threads either way is not too bad. If you are finding that you have to have much more difference than that, either your housing or chassis brackets are on crooked, or your chassis is crooked. I am going to assume that everything is pretty close.

Now you have a rear axle that is centered, and square in your car.

A brief overview:

Car mostly level.

Find the center of the car at the front.

Center the rear housing in the chassis.

Measure from either end of the rear housing to the front center mark to square the housing in the car.

See, this is easy.

Next we get to talk about pinion angle.

Writing

Well thank you to all of you. I am really enjoying this blog, learning how to watch it, and track it and such. I am sincerely flattered by the huge number of people who are out there looking for me specifically on Google or other search engines. And what is really cool as that when you find me, you read through my whole site, and then, even better, you keep on coming back. Thank you.

I will continue writing for you. I enjoy it. Sometimes I simply ramble on, like this morning, and of course other times I have something more specific to say. I have many ideas for articles that will be coming. I still intend to break the blog into three sections: a technical section, for the racers and fans who really want to get into the nuts and bolts of race cars. There will be what I like to call the personal growth section, in which I will discuss things mostly about my training and motivation. Things like meditation techniques I use, diet, exercise, and other things I use, or have tried or heard of, in that area. The third section will be about my own racing program. At this point I have two different cars lined up to drive next season, Dennis Hicks’ Mountain Brew dragster of course, and a jet funny car. I am also discussing options with two different top fuel teams, one running in IHRA out of Florida, and a local nostalgia top fuel car. So although the season is winding down for me, there will be plenty to watch out for.

This last week has been very busy on the phone and in meetings with team owners and sponsors, I apologize for not updating my blog as promptly as I would have liked.

By far the most popular articles I have written are the technical articles. I promise many more, starting with an in-depth how to on ladder bars and four links. The technical articles are much more involved to write. My objective is to make them as easy to read and understand as possible. I have yet to work out how to add decent drawings to my blog, so I may simply draw them then take a photo, probably much faster. It is also important to me that you are getting the correct information, in the correct order. So I will often do some research into specific details, which in turn leads me to a distraction, and hence it takes much longer to write a technical article. But they are coming, I promise. Of course if there are other technical subjects you would like to hear about, please, let me know. I will continue with the rear suspension theme for now. But there is very few aspects of the drag race car I cannot enlighten you on, from blown alcohol or nitro motor setup, clutch, carburetors too. Also things that one might consider simple, yet I often see them done incorrectly.

One thing in particular which was brought to my attention this weekend after a nasty incident, is the need for correct throttle linkage setups, with good strong toe hooks so the driver can pull the throttle back if he needs to. And in reality he should be pulling the throttle back whenever he closes it, not simply lifting his foot, but pulling back on it. As a driver, throttle control is very important to me. Having a correctly designed throttle linkage is mandatory if you want me to do a good job driving.

The unfortunate thing is that the small details do not get noticed until they are needed. And when they are needed is when it is a bad situation. When these cars are running right, when the tuneup is spot on, traction is ideal, they are almost easy to drive. It is when things are not right that you need all your ducks in a row, that toe hook on the throttle pedal only needs to work properly when the throttle is stuck open, until then you will never notice if it is strong enough or not. . . or will you. I hope you are off to the car right now to check on it.

Internet Explorer

Sorry all. I have just discovered that the slide-show on my homepage does not work with internet explorer. I would have thought that the people who made the website would have checked that, but obviously they missed that too. Anyway, I have someone working on it now, and it should be fixed soon. In the meantime, try using Mozilla Firefox as a browser, my website works great there, and far fewer security issues too.

Weekend update,

Sorry for the delay in getting this update posted.

The weekend was sweet and sour. The bad news is we only got two hits at the track and hurt our engine pretty bad on the second hit.

We are still searching for the correct combination of launch RPM, tire pressure, wheelie bar height, and torque converter to get a good launch with all the new horsepower we have with this new engine. The first run on Saturday morning was tough. With a low launch rpm we weren’t as close to the converter as we wanted to be, about three feet out from the line the engine and converter came on yanking the front wheels up hard, as a result hitting the wheelie bar hard. This sent the car into really good tire shake, eventually breaking the tires loose as the car skated over toward the wall. I pedalled it a little, settled the car, and drove it out the back door. Hit the chute lever, and it wasn’t there. Thought I might have missed it so tried again, no, it definitely isn’t there. Hard on the brakes, the car went into some serious bouncing. Neil, who was in the other lane tells me it was a good 18 inches, two feet in the air at times, bouncing from tire to tire. Have I told you how much fun these cars are to drive? I kept it off the walls, had one moment where I thought I might crash, but in the end I got it stopped. Neil said he could smell the brakes while he was still doing a hundred miles an hour behind me. Tire shake is a pretty violent thing, I guess when it shook early in the run it knocked the bolt out of the parachute lever. Back to the pits.

Rain interrupted the rest of the day, but we got another hit in the evening. We stepped up the launch RPM and added some more tire pressure. The car yarded the front tires right off the start line, shook into spin again and slid toward the centrline, same again, pedaled settled the car and hit it again. Had a parachute this time, but the car vibrated really bad in the shutdown and I knew something was seriously wrong.

We broke a tie bar between the roller lifters, the lifter turned in the bore so when the cam came around it broke the wheel off the bottom of the lifter, the wheel went down between the connecting rods and did some serious damage, not sure just how bad yet but there is a hole in the side of the block. When we get it further apart we will see just how bad it is. Nice thing with an aluminum block is that it can be welded up. We will be back.

Ok, that’s enough of the doom and gloom.

Uniforms! Tom and Debbie from CV Transport supplied us with some fantastic new crew shirts. The artwork is incredibly clear, and they look great next to the car. We were all strutting about very proud this weekend. Thank you Tom and Debbie.

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