Australian Belly Tank

[Dr Goggles]

To be dead honest I'm not in any hurry to drive the car the way it was this year at any speed much above what I was doing.....I'm a thrillseeker , but there are limits.



What was it doing?---was it doing its "own" walk-a-bout?

Ahhhh, my apologies Bill, I thought you were talking about the heads!!!!!!!....I notice you did an edit......including the first line, once again sorry...the attempt at humor probably came across as being snippy.....I was taking the P out of our postal service, I probably wasn't exaggerating much...now, down to the bizzo.

The car was "live" from third gear on. The track was rougher this year than last and there was a stronger prevailing wind but I think the reason was more than likely that I had given the car more toe in than last year and the actual alignment was probably less than satisfactory. It didn't seem to like it. Last year the car was incredibly straight, I'm not kidding , if there was room you could have put your hands behind your head....It was a case of steer it where you wanted it to be on the track, there was no troublesome feedback through the system. This year it was a handful , two , actually. On my first fast run it hit a bit of rough track, then got belted by the wind and then I spun the rears and each time it went full almost width, a complete contrast to the previous years behavior when I just tooled down the right hand side of the track with the markers whizzing by. In the 190's I didn't feel like I had time to do anything other than look as far as I could down the track and aim the car at that.....if I started to navigate via the markers on one side it upset the car, that's what makes me feel it was too much toe, it was making tiny darts from side to side. On the last run by the five mile I had my hands at 10 and four O'clock and was driving in long arcs.

It was fun, but it shows poor preparation to be perfectly honest with everyone here . When I said
 "I'm not in any hurry to drive the car the way it was this year at any speed much above what I was doing"

I meant that it is pointless to try and power or gear the car further if it's going to handle like that because it's more than likely going to spin, or hit a marker, or worse, a clock. That's a waste of everybody's time and effort and of the few available runs we get.Part of the problem is that the steering box is not indexed on the frame so anytime something in the pedal box or steering has to be moved it's not possible to set the steering up exactly how it was, that is just poor design on our part. The Colonel is keen to use a rack instead, that involves a pretty serious re-build in that area as it is a very busy part of the car, something I'm not in a real hurry to do.I WILL be setting the steering box up so it cannot move.

That was theory one. Theory two that I have involves increased engine vibration.....................

I'm going out there today to do some housework and have a bit of a stare at the car...... I'll let you all know how it goes....

got another mention in "Cruzin" magazine...I've tried to post it but it came up as a tif image, photobucket won't take it....any tips? 

[wobblywalrus]

Are you scanning your picture and saving it to a file?

[Rob]

got another mention in "Cruzin" magazine...I've tried to post it but it came up as a tif image, photobucket won't take it....any tips? 

Doc,

You should be able to change the destination file type when you scan the image.

If you grabbed the image off the net & saved it to your PC, open it there and then "Save As". When the window comes up, change the file type to jpeg and save.

If you don't get that option, right click the image icon, choose "Open with" then open it with Paint and do the above.

Cheers,
Rob

[Dr Goggles]

OK, it still looks crap but here it is ....maybe I'll get better at this caper....scanning mags that is...anyway here is a picture curiously captioned as me driving when I am in fact unmistakebly pushing the car off the line with the good Reverend driving.Next to me and looking like he's about to get a cake-hole full is our mate Nigel Beggs. Now for those wondering about the "soft" record, well there has only ever been one car running in E/GL out here before and we are doing our best to make it respectable, to be precise the Rev actually runs in E/FL ....we hope to "smash" the record again next year and are bleeding bucks at this very moment with that end in sight....



It was last week I put in a call to a certain "Bill" in Phoenix......there was a bit of hollerin' as Sparky realised it was me calling all the way from Melbourne Australia, Sparky has been -extremely helpful as advisor on the GM 10bolt diff we are going to use, the same that he has used in the Ratical. Beyond that he has been great in allowing us to use his place to marshall the various bits that are going to be freighted over to Australia after this years season at Bonneville.

Our favorite Pommy car nut in Milwaukee has been a great help too. Some vendors in the states won't ship O/S and Chris has been great with Milwaukee Freight Forwarders....I can buy some parts I need in the States for half the price retailers ask here, sorry did I say retailers?....I meant  thieves............

I'm still trying to find the right solid roller lifters for our motor, but have received an offer of some sponsorship for machine work and design on the valve train that we need....it's comin' along folks....

[Dr Goggles]

OK , so it's missing  down low, but it gets going and finally hauls...here's a new video of the car running at the 09 meet...Thanks to Scotty Taylor for putting this one up, yes the same Scott who we bought the bottom end from....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQtW-eMPnto

[wobblywalrus]

That's really nice.  A video can say what words and still pictures cannot.  2011 looks like it will be a good year. 

[grumm441]

What it said to me was
It's running on five and as it's not an Audi or a VW I need to lift my game
G

[Dr Goggles]

What it said to me was
It's running on five and as it's not an Audi or a VW I need to lift my game
G

At least I got the shifts relatively cleanly, the other video where the elusive sixth cylinder has come to the party and the motor sounds good has the Rev playing a fresh air shot on both shifts....

I hoisted the motor this morning. I had noticed last w/e that one of the gearbox tags seemed a bit sloppy. When I took the gearbox off I undid it to find that no , it hadn't stripped the thread ( yes that bizarre 9/32 UNF that is found on them and NOWHERE else) rather it hadn't had a washer on it and thus even though the nut was tight it couldn't tighten against the tag.....It's much better now, it probably had a few degrees of movement in it and in a shift linkage that's not insignificant.

So, I did that and went to the Post Office....when I got back there was oil all over the floor ....the breather had been pointed down when I flipped the box over and so it's a fresh batch of oil for next year....for the record it looked like new.

The other worrying thing that I found was that the flywheel was, once again , loose. Although we had used stud lock the cap heads that secure the flywheel adapter had a turn on them....this may have contributed to the poor vision that I earlier mentioned may have been due to fine vibration.There was no apparent damage,but those cap heads are going in the bin.

[pookie]

   Hi Dr. G, Why don't you saftey wire those flywheel bolts along with the use of "loctite"? Bet that will solve the problem..... Mike R.

[grumm441]

Hey Goggs
Now you have it out, I guess I should come and get it
Can you measure how far the tags on the gearbox move
I have somethink in mind
g

[Dr Goggles]

  Hi Dr. G, Why don't you safety wire those flywheel bolts along with the use of "loctite"? Bet that will solve the problem..... Mike R.

there is no way to do that. The cap heads are recessed in the adapter so that they don't foul the inner edge of the flywheel.... It's a mongrel arrangement that I think we have been lucky to get away with ,

I have just put a fixed search on fleabay for a "manual" crank. The version of the motor we have came, strangely, with crankshafts that differed , at the flywheel end. See here.....

http://forums.justcommodores.com.au/v6-development-modification/63206-v6-crankshaft-info.html

The auto version ends flush with the block whereas the manual has a large boss . We have an auto version and so we have an adapter pictured a few pages back..Since we started this has given me heartburn for a number of reasons, the obvious one is that there is another connection that can( and does ) come loose and secondly we are flicked if we know if we have the balance absolutely right. There isn't enough room on the adapter to fit dowels in and after having another look at it just then I noticed that it has galled against the crank...............

If we get a manual crank we can have it balanced WITH the flywheel attached ....that would mean we knew it was properly balanced AND it wasn't going to get loose and possibly let go, which would give us a whole lot more problems than we have now....

Hey Goggs
Now you have it out, I guess I should come and get it
Can you measure how far the tags on the gearbox move
I have somethink in mind
g

The gearbox tags move the same distance as standard, or possibly less, definitely not more. Make sure you call me before you drop over...so I can make sure I'm out

Something else I noticed in my travels . I looked down the header where I had put the vac-u-pan line in the collector and noticed that the chamfered off side is pointing up-stream......I thoughtit was supposed to go the other way, now , I do know after putting my finger on the line once when it was running that it makes SERIOUS vacuum even at low revs , but can someone confirm which way is better for it to face?

[Dr Goggles]

Well, no sooner said than done....I found a completed sale of a manual motor, sent the guy a query as to whether the sale had gone through and he replied that yes  it had but he had another disassembled manual bottom end, and despite this huge country of ours he lives 20 mins away.....

Someone is smiling on me oh great God of Speed!

I then had a quick chat to Scotty( he put the video up and sold us the motor ) he's in town as his little boy has been in and out of hospital......he used to drag race and it was his journalism that took him out to the lake .....he just confessed that he has the bug, and he has it bad...........he's building a salt car and it'll be a turboed V6.......

[Nexxussian]

Hooray for the new crank, I hope it's everything you want it to be.

[Milwaukee Midget]

The stars are in alignment down under!

Doc, I know you have a lot of time, effort and sweat tied up in that adapter, and you did a great job on it, but I'm resting a lot easier knowing that it's out of the mix.

[grumm441]

If we get a manual crank we can have it balanced WITH the flywheel attached ....that would mean we knew it was properly balanced AND it wasn't going to get loose and possibly let go, which would give us a whole lot more problems than we have now....

So, the same as the crank in the motor that's lying in your back yard then

The gearbox tags move the same distance as standard, or possibly less, definitely not more. Make sure you call me before you drop over...so I can make sure I'm out

Good, so you will be dropping it over here then

Something else I noticed in my travels . I looked down the header where I had put the vac-u-pan line in the collector and noticed that the chamfered off side is pointing up-stream......I thoughtit was supposed to go the other way, now , I do know after putting my finger on the line once when it was running that it makes SERIOUS vacuum even at low revs , but can someone confirm which way is better for it to face?

A reverse venturi?
Or to quote blackboard
Upside down miss Jane
G