Nostalgia Dragster Rebuild

[GoLfMan]

Wooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[Jarred]

woooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!

Big congrats to your dad, uncle and yourself man! that's cool as! well done.


i got to sit in that!

[Preen59]

YEEHAH!!! Preeny ... that's what I wanted to hear. I mean ... it's OK to go off and listen to dragsters built by pple you don't even know ... but it's been great to keep up with the build thread and finally hear it sparkle into life. Congrats to you & your Dad.

Dave

Thanks Dave.

Thanks to the rest of you guys for the kind words too.

It was great to finally hear it roar to life. The minute the engine fired, the car finally stopped feeling like an ornament and turned into a real machine.


We went to the nostalgia drags today. When people asked Dad how the build was going, he was able to say (with a BIG grin on his face) "Pretty close, we fired it up for the first time yesterday!"

[Mrk_Mickey]

Wow dude, I'm speechless. I can only imagine (which is what I did) being you, sitting there in the chair of this machine you CREATED from nothing...I bet you were stoaked!

I'm glad the first start went well mate, kudos to you and your old man (and others who might have helped)!

[Treza360]

Wicked mate. Thread delivers awesome. Result.
Now we just need the WOT videos.
Cheers,
Trent

[Preen59]

Wicked mate. Thread delivers awesome. Result.
Now we just need the WOT videos.
Cheers,
Trent

hahaha. Nothing's ever good enough, is it?

After Dad talks to Rick, we'll fire it up again next weekend.

[Treza360]

hahaha. Nothing's ever goon enough, is it?
After Dad talks to Rick, we'll fire it up again next weekend.

Of course not. Once we get those videos, I'll be after a few full quarter passes. 6 or 7 seconds should keep me happy.
Cheers,
Trent

[Preen59]

The second time we started the engine last weekend, it kicked back as it fired and twisted the crap out of the starter bracket stands.. So i made a support brace to fix that problem.



It's 16mm stainless tube with a stainless brace in the centre. I turned the stands down to be a neat sliding fit in the tube and bolted it to another blower case we "just happened to have lying around". This way when i got my mate to TIG it up, it would be all in the correct position etc etc.

Worked in theory, but..

I didn't put enough clearance on the stands. When the brace was welded (assembled) it distorted slightly and the penetration in the tube pinched the stands. I had to destroy them to get them out. Dad and I ended up having to cut them off and press them out, and it was a bastard of a job. So.. after that i made two new STEEL stands this afternoon and fitted it all back up.

Lesson learned.

[Preen59]

We started the car again today, after some revision on the tune up and a chat to Rick during the week..



Check out condensation on the hat and the ice on the butterflies!


We had some trouble yesterday when we tried to start the engine. The starter motor kept kicking back and disengaging. This bent the brackets.. Again! We couldn't find the problem. We checked ignition, cam timing, everything. Tried it again, same problem.

We packed up and left the workshop upset and disheartened. We were of the opinion that maybe the starter wasn't spinning the engine fast enough or something similar, but we were unsure.

At about 5:00am this morning it dawned on Dad. I pointed out that the blower belt was a bit loose, but at the time we were looking at other things. The blower belt was the issue all along. It was jumping teeth when the engine was trying to fire. That was the problem all along!


This arvo i persisted on nagging Dad until he decided we'd tighten the belt up and give it another shot.



Braap! It fired to life straight away. No problems. I even managed to lean it off on the warmup bottle by squeezing the fuel line (old go karting warmup lap trick to lean the engine off and stop it from fouling a plug). This enabled us to bring the idle up and down etc. We even opened it up a touch on methanol. Beautiful.

Once it warmed up a bit we flicked the fuel shut off and it was on to Nitro. It was still a bit rich and we unfortunately did not have enough scope to lean it off enough to get it right (the barrel valve linkage is too long, so we ran out of thread and will need to shorten it so we can wind it in further), so we shut it off after about 30 secs. We did however get a couple of header flames, so we're close.

After that, we pushed the car back in to the workshop (filled with nitro fumes! haha), drained the fuel tank and cleaned out the fuel system.

We should have the tune sorted next weekend. I'm very happy to end the weekend on a high note.

[Jarred]

Wikid styx P-dogg.

Geuss you'll be fixing the bracket up again then huh?
lol

[Preen59]

Wikid styx P-dogg.

Geuss you'll be fixing the bracket up again then huh?
lol

Yeah i'll have to make some new steel stands and get them chromed.

[GoLfMan]

awesome Preeny, bring on Nats, cant wait to see the bugger runnin

[DubSteve]

Nice work mate!!!

[rayray086]

Great stuff Preen!

[Preen59]

Started the trailer modification today.

We're modifying the old Go Kart trailer and converting it into a dragster trailer. Easy as.


Basic outer frame tacked on..



A few braces tacked in..



Fully welded..



Because i had to do all the welds in place, i had to crawl around on the ground with the floor creeper and weld all the joints underneath overhead. Needless to say, i'll be digging spatter out of my scalp for a couple of days.. Haha.

A few people came round this arvo to see what was happening, and they all commented on how good my welds were, so i must have done alright.. Haha.

Dad's going to be doing all the work tomorrow, because i'm off to bathurst for the day. So i'll take some more pictures tomorrow afternoon.