Re: Not for Nuthin' But Close!
 

I don't know Billy, but can tell he definitely needs one of these shirts.

Re: Not for Nuthin' But Close!
 

You're lucky I'm staying in U/SA for the time being. As you very well know the nova is a much better runner against the V/SA index. But I'll keep things fair and leave my extra 280lbs of lead at home for now. ;)

Re: Not for Nuthin' But Close!
 

I only have time for a quick update (VERY busy).
The converter definitely helped pick the car up everywhere but mainly in the 60-330 ft. area but it looks like it picked up .10-.15 overall. The MPH seems down but it was pretty windy at Atco.

My biggest surprise of the week came at "The Beav" on Sunday! First of all. the car slowed down a half of a second ( .2 being weather and the rest being "The Beav"!).
Last year at Numidia, I mixed-and-matched camshafts and found the "re-ground" cams to be the overall fastest even though they did hurt the car in the first half of the run. When I installed the re-ground cams for the last time, I "flopped" (not my word but an apt description!) both cams into an advanced position and raced the car for the duration. At "The Beav" I took the time to "flop" the exhaust cam into a retarded position and was rewarded with runs that were .12 and .16 faster!
Good day!

Re: Not for Nuthin' But Close!
 

Cecil County Update!
I replaced the Driver with a Trained Monkey after consistent floggings didn't change the Drivers demeanor. The Monkey needs work.
It wasn't the usual C.C. weather by a long shot! More like Numidia in July.
The car still continues to surprise me with it's consistency. Once I (I mean the Monkey)"found" my starting-line RPM with the new converter, I was .022 on my last T&T run and .005, .007 and .020 on my two Q runs and 1ST RD.. The car runs whatever it is supposed to run give-or-take a couple of hundredths. It ran the fastest ETs it ever did at this weight and on a not-good weather day (15.023 15.60 index). With this combo in the car it should have gone 14.80s at Atco. We'll find out at M.G. this coming week.

Back to the Monkey, I put a 15.09 on the car pretty-much assuming that it would go an 09 or a 10 against a AA/SA dial of a 9.88. The Monkey had the tree and decided to dump said AA/SA car in the lights and gave up the win light by .0025 killing .02 and 3 MPH. .577 under in over 3000 ft. of air!
Good junk.
Bad Monkey!

Re: Not for Nuthin' But Close!
 

Yep..Sounds like me at the last Combo race. I was racing a 10.0 S/S car in the semi's and decided, from the looks of things, to give it up .Turns out I had 4 hun to work with, but then ended up way over the dial.
Last time I did this a 10.7 Stocker was rare. Now, 9 sec. cars are everywhere.
So now I've decided, if I can't tell who's getting there first....keep it welded to the floor and hope the car knows what to do.

Glad to hear it wasn't the car's fault LOL
I see the 60' s are coming around :-)

Re: Not for Nuthin' But Close!
 

I finally got my "tuner" to give me some time out of his busy schedule to go T&Ting Saturday.
We haven't done any tuning since the middle of last year and I've changed fuels and moved the cams since then. It was easy back in the old-days when I could just grab my timing light and carb box and have at it but my "tuner" won't let me near the laptop or even look over his shoulder while he's using it for that matter.
At any rate, it turned out to be a very good day and by changing fuel and timing (taking out both) and the "timing" of the 1-2 shift we managed to find a solid tenth! And .03 of it was in 60'! Not bad for a 95*/ 3400 ft. d.a. day at "The Beav".

Re: Not for Nuthin' But Close!
 

This thread makes me want to revive my 94 Grand Am that last ran in C/FS back in 2006. Bought the car new and drove it several years, then converted it into a race car. Built headers for the 3.1l V6, had a cam made and trans reworked, even researched and found the loosest OEM converter for it and rewired the 4T60E trans wiring to control shifting. The one problem I couldn't get past was it's an OBD1.5 car and there were no options to modify the PCM that I could figure out, so it was running OEM tune and 5500 fuel cutoff that held it back. It ran .050 under most of the time before I started racing something else and parked it. After 5 years sitting, put it back on the street for my daughter to drive when she was 16. Parked it again when she got done, and it's been sitting 3 years. Might be time to put it back on the track.

Re: Not for Nuthin' But Close!
 

OBD1 can be a problem. I played with some mid-80s Sunbirds some years ago. I could get them to go fast but not consistently.
I would be looking for an older aftermarket unit that some Racer has sitting on a shelf.

Re: Not for Nuthin' But Close!
 

Any updates on this project?

Re: Not for Nuthin' But Close!
 

Nothing new to report. I've just been locally bracket racing the car. Besides being a fine little Stocker, it's a very good bracket car. The driver still needs some work though.