Track Tech Monkey. Checking venturi diameter with his "go-no go" gauge. He gets really ticked off when people don't see him doing his job and close the hood on him! Lynn
My buddy and I had a good time Thursday. Since then I've been thinking about what I would build and where I would like it to land on the speed vs. maintenance equilibrium. Wish I would have studied the fuel system on the rusty, blown Chevy II a little better.
That one is using EFI and running E85 fuel. He has it set up pretty well. The injectors are hidden inside the bug catcher. 555 ci aftermarket engine, that looks mostly like a big block chevy. He spends a lot of time playing the tuning video game on his laptop. I haven't changed the jets or metering rods in my carbs since 2014, but I do bump the timing up or down occasionally. And adjust the idle speed 1/8 turn when I go from home at 4500 ft, to the lower elevations where we race.
The rusty Chev II is the only drag car I've seen running a bug catcher on the blower, WITH an air filter.
I like it, K.I.S.S. comes to mind and better chance of a repair on the side of the road or the track.
Yuppers, When you study it, Jim's Nova is actually pretty simple. The engine and blower have proven to be as bullet proof as you can want for a car that is called to do what one is at drag week. Correctly built Turbo 400 trans usually don't give a lot of trouble, 9 inch rears set up right don't give many problems. Blow one and you can probably scrounge a usable replacement fairly easily. The hard part of axle bearings is finding a shop to press them these days. There are no (that I know of) trick and hard to find pieces on the car that might fail. If I were to to it I doubt I would run a blower as my buddy who can set up a blower to last for years on a street driven car may not be healthy enough to do one but a simple car with a simple to deal with drive train that you can walk in to any O'Reilly's, Napa or Autozone and expect to get gaskets and seals for without a lot of issue seems the way to go.
I intentionally used a lot of production parts for that reason...it's fixable. I've been carrying a 4bbl intake the past few years just in case the blower goes wonky again, I need to get it done or go through it myself some time. So far it's been ok since Steve redid it in 2015 on drag week. I had to get an axle bearing done on the Rambler recently, I thought about it and went to a "real" parts store and asked if they knew a shop, and the place he recommended was able to take care of the job quickly.
The Jalopy Journal
