Yea ultimate oxymoron. Figure make fun conversation and maybe educational.After all a day w/o learning something new is a day wasted.

My list of to get or do after trailer.

As always weight removal. New gears with lightening.75 buck for 3 to 5 lbs is cheap,pus rotating weight. 25 bucks per pound about 1/4 norm.
Front wheels.can shave 14 lbs with wire wheel and tire. Cost 1100 and if adding weight to front anyway its waste.If not its so,so.
New trans case and bell is 18 lbs off but also 1250 cost.Good but not great.
New cam should be worth 40 to 50 hp,because one I have 296@.050 is bit big.Again if have more bpottend than can use it somewhat minor.
New pistons. go 4.40(4.250 now) 35 cube,1.5 more compression with .030 gasket and allow 12.5 with .08 or .09 gasket. But at cost of about 1400 for pistons.rings and boring.Then again about 70 hp gain so not bad.

Driver loosing the 10 lbs he has gained in past 6 months is cheapest zero cost and .01 in 1/4 and guessing .007 in 1/8.

Yea I know get to track first(hence trailer on top of list) and its bracket fast don't count.Fast always counts. If not for finding little more thru work then why have race car?

Ideas?

Depends on where you are at with your ET level and combination also. The faster/quicker you are the more $ it takes to make less HP if you don't consider a power adder like nitrous. But i have seen a mid 12 sec car become a low 11 sec car with a 800$ convertor. I have also seen a complete re wire pick a car up 1 second by just eliminating 10 butt splices in some runs.

quote:

My list of to get or do after trailer.

go to track

LMAO at Rusty!

i apologize to all ,just couldn't stop myself

quote:

Originally posted by Slick Vic:
But i have seen a mid 12 sec car become a low 11 sec car with a 800$ convertor. .

My new $850 converter didn't do anything but lighten my wallet.

quote:

Originally posted by Slick Vic:
Depends on where you are at with your ET level and combination also. The faster/quicker you are the more $ it takes to make less HP if you don't consider a power adder like nitrous. But i have seen a mid 12 sec car become a low 11 sec car with a 800$ convertor. I have also seen a complete re wire pick a car up 1 second by just eliminating 10 butt splices in some runs.

got to aske what failure was cured that made for 1 second.Thinking almost had to be ignition. Hey I am all for simplifying wiring,but damn must have been some heavy wire and splices.

quote:

Originally posted by rusty:
i apologize to all ,just couldn't stop myself

Same thing we have all been saying. Get it out to the track and then see what it needs. Time to stop the bench racing and get some track time. If it is anything like my new front engine dragster it will have issues and you need to identify them and resolve them as quickly as possible.

We all want to be supportive and his car does look better than I was expecting but come on get it out there and run it.

Bolts.
Make them only long enough to grab the nut.
Use aluminium screws/bolts/nuts in non critical areas, wind shield, delay box bolts,bolting the chute packs on, 1/2 nuts on any non critical area

If you weigh all the hardware in your race car the results will absolutely amaze you. The total will be more than the cylinder block. When it comes to weight reduction titanium and carbon fiber are your (expensive) friends.

I subscribe to the “Pete Robinson school of Engineering”. Anything that falls toward the ground is too heavy.

Bob

Cheap and power in the same sentence..

Titanium bolts are on the to get after some other items. If you buy for one item at time like the transmission pan and maybe another with same size,you don't really know you are spending much. Think about it like this.If you skip a soda at lunch and drink water it adds up to about 12 bucks a week. For a months worth of unhealthy soda's you can buy 50 bucks worth of lite weight bolts or the trans pan mentioned.

Anything over t thread pass bolt gets trimmed around here.Plus I make one bolt do two jobs if possible. I will admit that adding all of the stuff required to be competitive in brackets is killing my weight hating crew chief heart.

Hose's and fittings is another plus weight can be saved and most the time at a cost savings. Right now I know of cpl things that need refining on car,but used what I had to do job.

If you want to cut weight and forget the cheap part of this thread checkout Neil and Parks web site. If it can be made out of titanium or magnesium they have it. Hell how else do you build 225" FED with 180 lb driver iron headed SBC,dry sump,vacuum pump,fire bottle and under 1400 race ready .

Back to cheap part RPROGAS is right about bolts and nuts surprising you. Weight reduction can be cheap gain,but can also be highest there is. About 1/4 the reason I bought the FFI aluminum valve body last week while on sale.The .02 quicker react to help old guy look better was more of it and was going to anyway just sooner than planned.

quote:

Originally posted by Curly1:

quote:

Originally posted by rusty:
i apologize to all ,just couldn't stop myself

Same thing we have all been saying. Get it out to the track and then see what it needs. Time to stop the bench racing and get some track time. If it is anything like my new front engine dragster it will have issues and you need to identify them and resolve them as quickly as possible.

We all want to be supportive and his car does look better than I was expecting but come on get it out there and run it.

60 degrees today,but rain.50's maybe next week and snow next weekend. Although going trailer shopping tomorrow if it was sitting here it will still probably be March before local tracks are woth shyt for testing new car old driver.

As stated its a fun thread,not going to buy and hold up anything deal.About only big change before testing maybe new cam and thats because I know what I have is too big and changing later will probably cause need for whole new setup on tires and starting line setup,just backing up.Still after trailer is sitting here. Bigger pistons(=.150 with added compression) will be end of next year because cost would be hold up at moment.

Thanks Curly I think. What did you expect car to look like? Hell not like time to do work was issue. Now everyone LYAO Plus I did trash few things because not good enough IMO. While I might be broke dyck, but I try to only go out with nice piece capable of running strong and being competitive at anything I do.

I am sure there will be issue or two,but that half reason I built something other than suspended RED.The work to make it right or bust but trying and then figure what to do different on next one. At same time no sense going out halfa$$ just to make laps.Only thing learned would be halfa$$ attempt means halfa$$ result.

The FED is a cool deal Chis. Stay after it and have some fun.

pull an extra quart of oil out of the motor

yea quart weighs roughly 2 lb and maybe some drag on crank.Not sure about how cheap that could be in long run. Hell thinking about adding accumulator to my deal and that 3 quarts plus system weight wise,but cheap insurance.

Probably wait and see if I see any fluctuation in pressure during shutdown or end of burnout.Hate spending money to add weight,that just not right.

Good oil pan design can be cheap power while saving parts,which is better than cheap.

Add nitro

Already have 15 gallons of that waiting. That will probably happen sooner than should.LOL Already lit it off with 25% load just for hell of it.

Yes it actually cheap power gain. A 20% mixture works out to about 10 bucks a gallon.20% should net 15 to 18% TQ increase.To my understanding cheaper than some grades of race gas.

quote:

Bolts.
Make them only long enough to grab the nut.

Smokey Yunick wouldn't allow washers on a race car.

Chris how much does a gallon of nitro cost? Just asking for a friend