Messages

16

Spud Miller's Cave / Re: Braided Lines

« on: November 21, 2021, 11:30:51 AM »

I have tried many with mixed results, much of it comes down to right hose for what you using it on. Right now I am going with Fragola PTFE stuff on my new car. I recommend the PTFE for fuel and transmission lines. It will not dry and crack out with alcohol like many do and the transmission fluid will not make it soft and soggy. The only thing about the PTFE lined hose is it is not as flexible and you do not want to kink it.

17

Altereds / Re: chassis mods - length vs suspension?

« on: November 21, 2021, 11:21:59 AM »

On the 160" fed  we had bad bounce, even ran off the end of an outlaw track with short shut down area,  the remedy for us was to shift into neutral before braking.

Using the parachute helps with bouncing in the shut down. Still if you have suspension I would try to make it work.

18

Altereds / Re: chassis mods - length vs suspension?

« on: November 13, 2021, 02:37:28 PM »

I believe a hard tail is going to have a bouncing problem and longer more flexible the chassis the worse it will be. Adding front suspension may help a little but most of the problem is from the rear of the car. They typically have 65% or so of the weight on the rear and the rear tires are much larger which can act like a basketball. I would really want to know why it did not work well suspended. I would make sure it has a good anti-roll bar, take the shocks off and work it through entire range and make sure no binding or slack. Then I would want to put a GoPro camera on the rear suspension and see what it is doing at the hit.  If there is not a good stiff anti roll bar that is first thing I would add. If you have a good one then I would also try the tests for binding and slop with and with out the anti-roll bar.

Rear tire pressure. The higher the pressure the more it will bounce. Too low and it will wallow around and feel mushy down track. On my 225" Front Engine Dragster there is very little between the two. A suspended car has so much more room for error and a shorter stiffer chassis needs the suspension in my opinion. With that said many argue that once you get to a certain ET then a suspended car will not work. I am not sure I believe that. I was told faster than 4.70 in the 1/8 mile you need a hard tail.

19

Front Engine Dragsters / Re: Front Tires Popping out of the Beams.

« on: October 20, 2021, 12:24:51 PM »

Well my motor is set back pretty far so it needs some weight on the front. It works good now and has Won a lot of races. Thing is on these when you change one thing it may mess up something else........ Sometimes feel like a dog chasing his tail. Part of the challenge is making them work.

20

Front Engine Dragsters / Re: Front Tires Popping out of the Beams.

« on: October 16, 2021, 09:20:49 AM »

I did lower the wheelie bar and it helped a little. big improvement was moving more weight up on the nose. Much better. Does not pop out of the beams now and drives really good.

21

Front Engine Dragsters / Re: adding front suspenion

« on: October 01, 2021, 01:46:27 PM »

Three things.
1. The cars that are designed for front suspension have stiffer chassis and rely less on chassis flex to work. If you have both you may end up with a car that will not transfer weight good or ever settle in.
2. Front suspension would add weight to front of car. Which may or may not be a bad thing but it is part of the nature of the beast.
3. You would have to be very careful that as the suspension goes through the travel arc it does not bind or turn. Must be in same plane as the suspension or it could get ugly quick. If that thing turns left 1 inch as it goes up then when your car starts bouncing it will also start wanting to swap sides on you. Toe out any will be out of control but if it turns left a little in its travel you may crash hard.

22

Spud Miller's Cave / Re: How much nitro is too much to start

« on: September 11, 2021, 06:23:26 PM »

Thanks, I appreciate the info.

23

Spud Miller's Cave / Re: How much nitro is too much to start

« on: September 07, 2021, 07:52:33 PM »

Spud's nitro notes are for NA application not blown application. I run 47% NA and only fire on methanol until the pump picks up fuel, hot or cold. Takes about 15 seconds or less. Can't speak first hand to anything over that or blown application.

How much does 47% pick up your car? What ET you run?

24

Spud Miller's Cave / Re: compression with higher dosage of nitro

« on: July 13, 2021, 07:32:08 PM »

Are you sure they are running that much Nitro with 15 to 1?  From my experience it detonates bad with high compression. I would think with 50% or more they would be 11 or less to 1.

25

Front Engine Dragsters / Re: Rear Tire selection

« on: June 22, 2021, 05:24:24 PM »

I want to say something here about this. With our Front Engine Dragsters very few are the same. We have some with 1000 Hp and weighs 1350 with driver. We have others that flex like crazy and some that do not.  It would be very hard to say one tire works better than another on our cars with so many variables.

With the Rear Engine Four link Dragsters they are all very close in weight, suspension chassis stiffness most of them even paint them the same with tribal swirl paint jobs. It is not hard to get a good tire for one of those and you can adjust the chassis some if they do not work.

With our front engine dragsters each is a different animal and hard to say exactly what will work on it.

26

Front Engine Dragsters / Re: Novice needing some help from the veterans on a build and some rules

« on: June 22, 2021, 05:09:44 PM »

Here is my advice which some may not like it. If it will not CERTIFY the Chassis or they DO NOT HAVE A RUN LOG BOOK then walk away and do not look back.

A Front Engine Dragster is an absolute blast to drive nothing like it. But they can be hard to get to work right and dangerous if they do not. Tires, weight, horsepower, chassis flex, Track and more can be tough to make the car work. They all have to work together and it is not as easy as it sounds. Even when they are right they are still not the same as a suspended door car or even suspended Dragster.

Before I would buy one I would want to see a run log book with Rounds Won, Races Won and Championships Won. If there is aborted runs I would want to know exactly why. If they have a car they can not get down the track then you will have same problem. If they do not have run logs with few if any aborted runs then it is a Cackle car.

To get chassis certified is cheap usually about $200 or even less. I got my dragster done at the track our group made a deal to do most of our cars same time. I think it was $100. Seat belts and things like that are fairly cheap ripping out bars and replacing them to get car to Certify is not.

27

Front Engine Dragsters / Re: Front Tires Popping out of the Beams.

« on: June 19, 2021, 05:23:37 PM »

Okay so for the report on how it worked.

 I Won!

 Reaction times came back and it worked quite well. Won a few rounds on the tree. Even handled better on top end. Before it just did not want to steer on the top end, I would be cranking wheel over and it kept going where it wanted to. Never had to abort a run but I was having to work it. Now it works better. I believe what was happening was the front end was so light under full power the front tires were scrubbing and not working good.

28

Front Engine Dragsters / Re: Front Tires Popping out of the Beams.

« on: June 09, 2021, 07:31:05 PM »

I have lowered my front tire pressure to 32 which is fairly low on the little skinnies front tires. I am racing this weekend so should have some more info soon. I have moved some weight from middle to front then added some more weight up front to. Then lowered launch RPM 400 and will try that.

29

Front Engine Dragsters / Re: Front Tires Popping out of the Beams.

« on: June 07, 2021, 06:46:58 PM »

So I have lowered the two step from 4400 to 4000, moved my battery from the middle to the nose and added a weigh plate and about 35 Lbs additional weight.

If that does not work then I will try to set up a mechanical advance distributor to pull some timing out at lower RPM. I hate to do that because I think it may make the car less consistent.

30

Roo Man's Room / Re: chassis top rail has bowed outwards

« on: May 11, 2021, 07:33:08 PM »

So at the end of season last year I was experimenting with taking wheelie bars off and using weight to control wheelies. It sort of worked but created another problem, popping front tires out of beam. A little weight on the front makes a big difference but after trying it with out the wheelie bars I am going back to them. WHY? Well because it was popping front tires out of beams and wheelie bars seem to help that. It was popping out of the beams then it set them back down and after that it did a beautiful power wheelie.  But you can not win if it is popping out of the beams as it goes red and is not consistent. So I have moved the battery from the middle to the nose adding 17 Lbs up front and then putting another weight plate to add 35 Lbs up front and will be running the wheelie bar again.

What I think was happening from the video was the rear tire was wrapping up and front end coming up out of beams, then it goes right back down and slowly comes up. With the Wheelie bar it was hitting before the tire gets completely wrapped up and that helped stop it from popping out of the beams. Then as it get up on rear tire it was still allowing it to do a nice little wheelie about 8 inches high and carry it out about 60 foot. If that makes sense.

 One other issue I was having and the weight may help there to is the front tires simply were not doing much. I was cranking the wheel to the right and it was still going left a little. I believe under full throttle if you could scale my car I bet there was not 25 Lbs of weight under at the finish line.