Projects Austin Somerset Gasser Build (DragNasty)

Correct. But that has nothing to do with the bar itself...just how and where it is mounted. When used correctly (unlike my miscalculated attempt) it is just a bent panhard bar.

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Definitely... If you are here on a show weekend, this is Dragnasty's schedule for the rest of the year!
Otherwise just let me know when you are in the area!

September 10th Gear Head Ministries
September 10th Marshfield MO Cruise
Car Show and Fish Fry - Springfield, MO
September 24th Friday Night Cruising N. Glenstone, Street Machine Nationals - Springfield, MO
September -25th Street Machine Nationals – Fairgrounds - Springfield, MO
October 1 Steak N Shake Cruise – Springfield, MO
October 2 Spooky Moon Hot Rod Run and Car Show - Willard, MO
October 8 Apple Butter Makin Days Car Show – Mt Vernon, MO
October 14 Maple Leaf Festival Friday Night Cruise on the Square – Carthage, MO
October 15 Maple Leaf Festival Saturday Car Show – Carthage, MO
October 16 Fall Hot Rod Reunion – MOKAN Dragway
October 30 Calvary Baptist Church Car Show
December 3-4 Hot Rod Holiday Indoor Car Show – Springfield, MO

 

Quite the dance card there Randal.

 

Well scratch the first two events off that list as we didn't make it to either. When we fired it Monday (first time since the HAMB DRAGS) it didn't sound right. Dad said he didn't hear anything. Everybody at the show raved at how awesome it sounded but I still said it was not right. It sounded like it was running on seven cylinders.

Anyway, I figured it was a plug or a wire and it was on a very short list this morning to check before the car show. It was not actually on the list but one of the valve covers or the spacer has a small drip every once in a while and it drives me nuts so I decided to have a look see...but when I removed the cover, this is what I saw instead!



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That would ruin my day. Sorry to see that.

 

I will update after bit but we are all back together tonight and all is well.

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Well, that'll do it! Was it just loose or did it eat something and gain too much clearance?

 

Sorry for the delay. So I pop the valve cover this morning and from my perspective all I see is the number 5 intake push rod sticking up all by itself. I am like where the hell is the rocker arm?! Long story short, the polylock's lockdown screw had backed off, the polylock loosened and the rocker arm just popped off the push rod and rotated itself sideways out of site under the stud girdle.

My first thought when I saw it was holy crap we've got some serious valve train damage. But after loosening and removing the exhaust polylocks and the girdle, it became apparent, nothing serious had happened. The rocker arm didn't have a mark on it anywhere nor did the push rod. We double checked the push rod to make sure it wasn't bent etc. but it was perfect. So we loosened the rest of the polylocks and then re-ran all the intake valves, installed the girdle again and finished off the exhaust valves etc. Then just to be sure we did the other side too.

Over all we found four of the lock screws backed off and a couple of the girdle crimping bolts loose as well. After we got it all back together, we fired it and she sounds ferocious again. We were crazy lucky!

 

Nice save!

 

dodged a bullet there!

 

Crazy lucky is right. So are you going to be checking this frequently? Or are you thinking it was error during assembly? I know how much $ I have in my hemi and I'm sure you have a pretty penny In yours, that's gotta make you pucker up a bit. Been following a long and looking forward to seeing the suspension sorted out and what kind of progress ET wise you make.

 

No doubt! Well when I first saw what had happened I thought holy cow I must have missed that polylock. But then I found three more that were loose. Fortunately, the girdle is sort of a back up, holding the polylocks in place. However as I mentioned there were a couple of the girdle tension bolts that were loose as well. One of them corresponded with the rocker that let go. As I said we pulled it back down on both sides and redid all the rockers etc. The other 12 locknuts were crazy hard to get to release so I am not sure what happened. But they are all tight now and yes I will be make periodic checks on them!

 

This afternoon we finally got back to the short list from Saturday which included removing the recently installed panhard bar. As I had figured, we immediately had rotation in the suspension again. However to me honest I was not happy with the stance nor the clearance. We had about an inch and 1/2 or so between the chassis and the ladder bars just under 2" between the ladder bar mounts and the original bump stops on the chassis. Don't get me wrong it was better than it was, as we had been sitting on the stupid stops while trying to make quarter mile blasts at the HAMB DRAGS.

So with it on the rack we tried to get enough release on the springs to adjust them a bit. Now if you remember I actually had to grind the adjustment screw bung off to get the holders to fit my application. However that does not stop me from sticking something between the springs and top of the bracket (acting like an adjuster). I chose a large grade 8 nut. It was about 9/16" thick. That small change at the back of the springs gave us nearly 3" of clearance and changed the over all stance of the car by a couple inches (which I am really happy with)!

 

If you have been following this thread, you know things didn't go as smoothly as those last couple of posts made it seem. Remember who you are talking about here, "Mr. Murphy's Law" himself! I don't know why I am always telling on myself, I could have just left it alone but someone once commented to me the thing they liked most about this thread was the honesty of the experience as it closely related to his normal afternoon in the shop etc.

So with that being said, Sunday afternoon we finally got back to the short list from Saturday which included removing the recently installed panhard bar. No issue there, a couple of bolts removed and "bing" we have suspension rotation again. But as I said earlier we were not going to have much travel before the chassis hit some unmovable object. We decided to adjust the springs and that is when all hell broke loose, right on cue.

We have been doing all this chassis work with the car on the lift. We simply take it to the top, stand two 4x4 post up to support the chassis in the rear and slowly lower the car onto them. This relaxes the suspension etc. I was hoping it would relax enough to stick a trial wedge of some kind between the top quarter elliptic spring and the bracket that mounts them to the chassis. However it did not as the shocks reached their max extension and we found ourselves with the car 5 feet in the air (the front still on the rack and the rear lifted completely off the rack and supported by a couple of wood posts)! That was a few seconds of shear terror as Dad responded to my panicked screaming UP! UP! UP! UP! and ran the lift back up to support the rear tires again.

So it was obvious we had to remove the shocks. Now I don't know what kind of idiot engineered this whole set up (names withheld to protect the innocent) but as I have said before, you have to unhook the shocks at the top which means removing the fuel cell AGAIN! But I have gotten pretty good at it over the past couple of weeks. ...Enter Mr. Murphy!

I had just put one jug a fuel in it before the car show last weekend so there is about 5 gallons in there. But no issue, as I have one of the those drag race fuel cells with the two AN fitting out back. I plumbed the return line through the top and changed one of the 8AN fittings to 12AN to feed the massive fuel pump. So that left the other fitting back there unused. So I just capped it off so if I ever needed to drain the fuel, I could.

So there we are with a 5 gallon fuel can sitting on four stacked up milk crates and a huge funnel in the can poised directly under the capped fitting. I start unscrewing the cap. I don't want to go too far, just enough to start letting fuel trickle out of the tank. I turned it a few times and still no fuel. I can't see the fitting as the huge funnel is in the way. I turned it one more turn or so and bang, it came completely off and fell through the funnel and into the can. I heard it hit the bottom of the jug.

Suddenly it was like a little miniature fire plug up there under the pressure of five gallons and it completely over shot the funnel to the back of the trunk area and then with no floor back there, it immediately started raining e-85. I gave one quick try (amid the fuel shower) to blindly angle the funnel up into the stream but I was immediately drenched. Dad and I both shot out of the shop and I started stripping in the driveway spraying myself with the hose. My under arms were burning so I ran in and took a quick shower, got dressed, came back out and fuel was still dripping off the car.

Dad had taken the hose in the shop and had been totally saturating the fuel spill with water and flowing it out into the driveway. He had also apparently gotten the hose tangle around the milk crates as they were strung about and the jug was on the floor spilling most of the fuel that the funnel HAD managed to catch. It took about an hour to clean up all the fuel and dry the floor again. Afterwards, we finished removing the cell and the top shock mounts. Then it was back up on the lift and our handy dandy suspension relaxer worked just fine.

I decided to slide a couple of large grade 8 nuts between the springs and mounts and they were about 9/16" thick. Then we lowered the chassis back down off the posts, bounced it pretty hard from underneath and then stepped back to see where she sat. The width of the nut up front gave us right at 2" of extra clearance etc. So we decided to experiment no further.


Of course the new ride height meant my shocks were too short but as this post has easily attested to, there needed to be a mount style change there anyway. As you can see, I cut and drilled a new bracket that raised the mount 2" or so. We threaded a grade 8 wheel stud into the original mounting point (that is now the lower bolt with a nut on it) to hold new the .25" steel mounting plate. Then we mounted the shock right above it.


I also decided, since we had the shocks off anyway to take the overload springs off of them as with our new springs, we do not need their assistance. And to be honest, they may have been responsible for some of the bounce anyway. So there she is all back together and finally ready for a text hit.

 

Sounds like you need a ball valve before the cap that way you can control the drain a bit better keep up the improvements Can't wait to see this thing actually run properly


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Once again Jackson you come up with a very good idea but a day late! You really need to try and work on your ESP skills where this build is concerned! It would save me lots of time not to mention hazards! LOL!
Thanks man we are getting close...we are definitely getting close!

 

Maybe you should just run all your ideas by me and get approval before you touch it lmao


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Perfect! So I have been contemplating hot pink flames. Thoughts?

 

And this has not been done yet ? It would match your pink sweat pants and husband beater shirt lmfao


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LMAO...and if I just had a mini skirt it could really change the whole meaning of Dragnasty!

 

Are you guys off your med's now?

 

ooops sorry, it felt like the old Meltdown Drags thread for a minute....you are right. Back to the build!

 

Dang man, the fuel fiasco sounds exactly like the way I do things! LoL!

 

Check this out. You know I do lots of graphic design and vinyl wraps etc. where I work. And occasionally we are asked to design and print some off-set items (printed on paper) like business cards and flyers etc. to match the branding work we did on a given company's vehicle. For that we have an affiliate printer that specializes in this stuff.

So last month we are wrapping up the design on a pretty cool drag car and the owner asks if we can design him hero cards to give out at the track. No problem. They turned out really cool but when I got the bill from the printer I about fell over. Since we did all the design work and the art was print ready, it was just $100. That was for 1000, 6" tall by 11" wide double sided, full color printed glossy hero cards on 16 point card stock.

Now I have spent about 90 percent of every event the car has gone to thus far simply telling people what the car is. Not that I don't enjoy it, hanging and talking with folks is the only reason we really go. But I am thinking why not do a cool hero card for it that has all the information on it too. Plus it will be cool to give out to the kids. Take a look.

Front:

Back:

 

Nice that you have the HAMB logo on there too. Spread the word!!

 

I will have to send it to Ryan for approval but he stamped his approval on our race team shirts so....

 

Awesome! Hero card should be a slam dunk for Ryan approval

 

We hit a nice little car show today in Nixa, MO. It was an absolute beautiful day for it here in the Ozarks. They even had a Pro-Street/Racing class for the Austin.




The Austin was a big hit and we got to chat with a ton of great folks. In the end DRAGNASTY took first place. You know it's hard to be humble with a killer machine like this... I mean there were some great looking cars there today but to be honest, there was simply nothing in the same class with the Austin!


Of course when I say that, I mean Dragnasty was the only car in the Pro-Street Racing Class....LMAO!!!

 

I love this car. I remember as a kid the junkyards still having a few of these in them. Austin did do a two door but it was a convertible.
Ed

 

Let me help you out here. Howards, Weiand, McLeod, Roush, Moser and Cragar.