Projects Dodge This - 1939 Dodge Southeast Gasser Build

Don't be hating Tony! But I guess I will own up to it, my 289 is really 351ci

 

Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.

 

It got pretty quiet in here once everyone started coming clean!!!!

 

The coupe is really coming together well. Thanks for the motivation.

 

They all lie I'm the only one you can trust. Water Gate ? Hemi Gate? --- need to trademark that

Rolling out to test and tune at commerce Saturday. They have an event scheduled called Street Car Takeover so we hoped Test and Tune would still be open.

Does this Dodge make my butt look big?



Shawn is going to The HAMB Drags next week so he wanted to work out some bugs on his 56 Ford. He is a real good dude if you see him say hi.



We went to pick up Jimmy and take back roads - Jimmy is bigger than life but, what the hell is he putting in his GPS ? Its an NHRA track is he hiding from a drone or what?


The street car event was interesting. The cars had to drive outside the track for 30 miles and then come back and run 3 passes. Some of them were doing 140 MPH and in the 9's - they were told repeatedly to turn off their AC on the track

Jimmy wouldn't stop the golf cart so this pic is blurry.


Anyway we made some passes and Shawn wowed the crowd with wheel stands. My 5.43 gear helped with the RPM in the lights, but it didn't help lift my front wheels. Sooooo falling back on showmanship I did a John Force burnout since the street cars couldn't smoke em

Fun day. We might go back Friday night and my plan is turn turn down the base pressure on the clutch.

 

Next time he don't stop so you can take a great pic like that backhand him.

 

The fun never stops in the South! Today my wife says we are going to see the twins our friends had a few months back. Yaaaaaayyyy the smell of diapers and baby powder . So we get there and hang out for a while catching up and of course drag racing enters the conversation .... Jeremy says, there's a strip right behind my house. He's not a car guy so I'm not impressed. But we start walking through the stickers and spider webs. HOLY SHEEEEeeeeeet !!!




Google mapped it and sure enough there it is. Jeremy didn't know what it was so we smart phoned it from the track and found out is Southeastern International Dragway. Too cool! I got home and ran inside to find Tommy Lee Byrd's book and there it was. Page 163. Made my day. AND the land is for sale - 110 acres. One can dream .....

 

Is that near Dallas, GA?

 

Hey DOM - yes near Dallas Ga. I didn't know where we were going so it was a cool surprise

 

I never went there, as I was into oval track in those days, but I do remember that there was a strip there that was referred to simply as "Dallas".

 

What did your gear change do for the ET?

 

Now. How. Cool is that. I wish. I had one in my back yard!!!

 

The neighbors would love that strip to re-open!

 

I see test and tune for free....at least 2 hits before the cops even find it......

 

I grow up on that track in dallas. Richard petty raced there and ran over a boy and killed him

 

To be honest I think the ET got worse. The RPMs at the stripe are good now for 1/8th mile but the ET was slower than Byron. Could be the track or me or the Georgia air. The MPH was down a couple also.

So this is the track where that happened. Finally put a place with the stories.

 

Wonder if we could rent it for just one weekend. We have been hunting somewhere to move our October 3rd event, LOL. I love this kind of stuff I'll bet you got cold chills when you walked up on it.

 

That track has a lot of history and ran up into the 2000s I think. Shame it's closed. Cool find unexpectedly. Maybe SFCC needs to buy it for a club track!

 

When I visited that track o take pictures for the Lost Drag Strips book, there were no gates, no signs or anything, so we simply drove onto the property. We drove up and down the track a few times for good measure. Maybe we got lucky, but we spent an hour or so there, and no one told us to leave.

Quain, I'll bring a weed eater and a broom (and a camera) if you'll make a pass down the old Dallas track in your Willys.

 

Way too cool

 

Oh I didn't realize that is Dallas I had the track record there for a while. Used to do pro mod quick 8's there all of the time. That's where Richard Petty had his bad accident.

 

That track is in Paulding Cty, I believe. That area has gone from a basically rural area to a bedroom community for Atlanta in the years since the heyday of SID. Try to reopen that track and you'll see a firestorm of opposition you won't ever forget.
South of Douglasville, also in Paulding Cty. is what was one of the best 3/8 mile dirt tracks in GA, I raced there in the late 60s/early 70s, in fact my last race was there.
Due to mismanagement after the original builder/owner/promoter Bud Lunsford sold out and started a new track now called Lanier Raceway, and economic recessions, etc. the track closed up.
When a new guy came along and wanted to reopen the track, the opposition and hell raising by people around the area stopped him and the track was never reopened.
New racetracks and also new shooting ranges are almost impossible to get open in anyplace in GA that has enough population and economic base to draw a decent crowd of participants and spectators, which after all do pay the bills.

 

I gotta admit - I didn't want to go see babies. I was dragging my feet but being a good hubby and settled in for a boring time. Jeremy said he thought it was a track but he wasn't sure. I wanted to get out before a diaper came off, so we bailed. I was just picking through the brush and we saw an opening - BAM! Yeah goose bumps! I'm glad I didn't google map it until we were standing on it. Then it was like Christmas all the sudden

Yes you could drive onto it from the blacktop. The main gate is closed but you can see where the locals are driving in with trucks to fool around I guess. There is no indication what is there. Just a big sign "for sale 110 acres".

 

How are you doing with the gear shifts?
Looking at the video the throw on the clutch looks big .small amount as possible will help.
Watch the rally boys they bearly touch the clutch.
If you play your cards right you could have your own test track. Ask the owners you never know!

 

Thinking about the fuel injection
The fuel return will have hotter fuel and increase in temperature each time it cycles back to the tank it will also get hotter as the fuel is reduced in the tank.
Fuel expands when hot which will reduce the effectiveness of the burn .
Keeping the fuel cold will increase the power.
Any thoughts on this?

 

Those rally guys aren't releasing a clutch strong enough to hold an engine that just dynoed the numbers that hemi pulled last Sat! But I'll let Tony tell that story, only if he so desires. The heavier the clutch springs the more leverage required to release it and more leverage means more pedal movement required.

 

I believe it was Dick Landy who advised to just kick the clutch pedal, all you need is enough to disengage it. Of course he had a slick-shifted transmission and other people paying for any parts he broke, so his advice might not be the best answer.

 

Tommy - Old School Outlaw - had a long talk on the phone a week or so back and I was supposed to make a clutch stop and do some parking lot testing. Got side tracked on some stuff involving some 4 window kidney beans . I need to make the clutch travel limiter this week. The clutch only engages at about the top 2 inches, so there is a bunch of wasted travel for sure. Just need to make sure at 6 grand the counter weights won't engage the disc on the starting line.

b-bpdy-bob - I'm not making this up - that Hightower trans will go into any gear at anytime if you yank it. (Its against SEG rules anyway - but impressive none the less) At Commerce on the way to the staging lanes I went by some guys and yanked 1st to 2nd at about 4500 rpm it went BANG! ( went in 2nd like butter ) They stopped what they were doing

One fix I did was to take a ferrite core from an old USB cable and routed the rev limiter and shift light power through it. It cleaned up the rev limiter - the shift light is still all over the place. Running a magneto has its headaches - just part of the fun.

 

Hey Tony...what's this HEMI dyno deal?

 

Tony a clutch stop is a must to keep from bending the fingers on the clutch (I didn't know you didn't have one or I would have already bitched at you). If your clutch linkage is not flexing you should only have .70 air gap (between the disk and flywheel) when the clutch is released. Your not running enough counter weight too pull through unless the linkage is flexing.