Projects Dodge This - 1939 Dodge Southeast Gasser Build

Man with the pool of talent you guys have in your club surely one of you has the ability to do a cage.

 

Problem on that for me enloe, is that the bender and a lot of the knack for getting the bends right belonged to my friend, Roscoe Smith, who this year was inducted into the GA Racing Hall of fame. Me? I did the grunt work while he did most of the figgering. Now, @ 77 I'm to old to do grunt work, I just groan!
But in all sincerity, there's no reason that it should take even a week to knock out a roll cage for a gasser, especially if that is the business you're in and have all the proper equipment. This guy is doing something else with his time, not working on the roll cage.
Who recommended this guy?

 

Damn 60 days is nuts. Does he have other work in front of your car?? If not that better be the nicest cage ever built.

 

That is strange on the lead time . . . the busiest guys I know of around here (Joey Bell and Jim Geese) can knock out full blown tube chassis pro mod/outlaw 10.5 cars in that time frame.

Sucks waiting on other people when you want it done NOW

 

Yep your deadlines getting closer !
Time to take some action?

 

Talked to him this morning. Probably one more week. Tomorrow I'm bringing the trans and bell housing to make sure the clutch mount fits. He knows its high priority. The tubes he has done so far are nice looking work - too nice for the girls I go with . Let's bang this out

 

Now take it easy on him. You know he doesn't have a heater in his shop

 

Coulda brought it up here n back by now.....tighten the screws brother n hold him to the week!

 

Go get him Tony. Looks like some late nighters for sure at the shop to be ready for SIM.

 

Now that's funny!

 

If he'd get welding he wouldn't need one

 

It took me around 9 hours to build the one in the sedan

 

Still no cage but lots of stuff getting done everywhere else. Today was nice so I jumped in the sedan delivery and rode the 2 hours over to Tim's ( 3dnsouth ). He bought an ignition tester off Joe Varbles sometime back and we came up with this crazy idea to test the magneto with my rev limiters and mechanical tachs. My experience with mags and electronics has been that they mess up everything! So making a rev limiter for these things is not a walk in the park.

The cast of characters :

3dnsouth - he said he watched the hornets build a nest over the main door to the shop all summer He said it was fascinating So now that it was 24 degrees last night he was going to knock it down. Ha ! Not today man! Wait till I'm gone!



First solution - NO ELECTRONICS! Stahl rev limter - runs on a cable:



2nd solution ETC :


3rd solution Auto Meter Pro Control :


The Tachometers :



And the star of the show - the Mag :

 

Cast of characters is great, when does the feature start?

 

What the heck is inside this mechanical unit? My brain was picturing a couple of ball bearings and springs or something. Not too far off.








The whole thing works on a basic switch that is pushed in by the lever action of the weights and the springs. Pretty simple. The switch was melted from the limiter post being in contact for too long. How can that happen ? The engine should have shut down ? Puzzling.

We fixed the switch and put it back together. It was odd how strong the springs were.

 

The test of this mechanical unit rated - F as in FAILED.

We spin that sucker to the moon and it would not pull the springs. My best guess is that it was made for a 1:1 drive not a distributor which is 1/2 the engine speed. Now maybe this was used in a plant to monitor something industrial ?

 

The suspense is building!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Next up - the ETC rev limiter. I got this 5 or more years back when running the mag on my 31 coupe. It never seemed to work because the coupe only revved to 6000 and laid over anyway so I always shut it off.

This unit got an A+ it was dead nuts on and never missed coming up or down in RPM.

 

Que the Pro Control unit :



So this thing has a button that reduced the limiter by 50% so you can test it before blowing rods out on the track.

 

Gotta give this a rating of C+ It does limit, but it has a relay in the box that you can hear start to chatter as it gets close to the target RPM. It chatters faster as the RPM goes up and finally cuts the mag off completely.

Did it work? Yes. But it was starting to cut some sparks out about 1000 RPM before the set point. That might be what you want. To me it seems like you would get sputtering before it hit the set point - a long way before - so you might think it was lean or rich or something instead of limited. I don't know. Might be fine in real world use. It might be doing this on purpose so you don't flood the cylinders with gas ?

 

Cool, go get em' please keep us posted

 

The tachs were about 200 to 300 RPM off from the tester but pretty close all in all. The tach with the tattle tale worked with the key to reset. Kinda cool if you let your buddy drive your car

 

Thanks a bunch Tim !! Good time!! Now feel free to knock down the hornet nest.

 

Good show there guys. Cant wait to see it on the track. Kool Man!!

The sparks were like some Frank-en Stine flick!

 

Thanks Carl! It would have been a good day to drive out through the back woods but I know you got work to do on the Econoline. Its looking good! Spring is coming!

 

Yeah, Back woods ride would have been a blast up to Tim's. Maybe I can make some time tomorrow for a run. 65 tomorrow, Hell Yeah,

The Econoline s looking good. On one side anyway. I'm still in the shop. Only 8 weeks to go till SIM so we better stay busy.

 

I hope its more than 8 weeks my cage will take another 8

 

Cool beans on the ETC unit, looks to work well.
We need to figger out just what sort of revenge to take on this roll cage feller AFTER you get the Dodge outta there.

 

Like the video with the spark plugs . . . I did that when I got mine in. Threw the mag in the lathe and started low

 

This is great info thanks. I was going to get the auto meter unit but I think this just made me change my mind.