July 16, 2009 - The new power plant revealed!
Just a little Stude coupe with a flat head mill...
On the way back from Bonneville in 2006 we started checking the record books for classes with soft or open records.
Imagine our surprise when we discovered that there were opportunities for our car with a blown Ford flathead V-8!
You'd think that every possible record based on that motor would be completely out of reach, but you'd be wrong.
Normally you'd build a nice stout block and put a 671 or 871 on top of it, but that would be taking the easy way out.
We don't do that.
So after many conversations with Hayseed Dave, Greg decided that he wanted to do something completely different.
He designed a draw-thru manifold utilizing a ProCharger and mocked it up in cardboard.
Then with the help of Ky Michaelson he cut all the pieces out of aluminum and showed it to a few interested people.
Tom Fritz loved it and took it back to his shop in Elk River.
Tom decided that the original plan, which mounted the intake on top of a vintage manifold wasn't ambitious enough (and he was worried that the manifold was too rare to use for this) so he fabbed everything making the piece a complete manifold.
And he did beautiful work (which I promise to elaborate on in a separate post) but for the time being here are some detail shots:
What isn't shown here is where the carburator which will sit behind the ProCharger on the left (driver's) side.
And that's not the real block -- it's another of the same type we're using to fit the engine in the car until the real one is done.
To say Tom did a fantastic job is an understatement. If this car is successful he might just have to make a few more of these.
But it hasn't been all engine design and fancy aluminum welding. In fact it's been a lot of dirty, salty, drudgery. And driving around. Lots of driving around dropping stuff off and picking it back up.
We took a lot of stuff off the car and found plenty of salt still hiding in there.
In fact, all the front end sheet metal was still coated in it so we pulled it all apart.
I drove around with it in the back of my truck for a few days then ran it over to Perry's Truck Repair & Welding in Long Lake, MN where they sandblasted it and got it back to me in 24 hours!
That looked a whole lot better!
It's all primed and painted now and waiting to go back on the car after the engine is in there for good.
We also had some help from Sid, a friend of Greg's who was in town for a couple of days.
He helped reinstall the fuel pump array and get a t-handle on the shifter.
And we got the halon bottle recertified. We still need to blow out the lines and re-position the nozzles in the engine compartment to account for the V8.
And don't even get Greg started on what we had to go through to get an SFI scattershield.
It was a real PIA and an eye-opener. And a bit spendy, too. But we got it.
And it fits as do all the clutch bits.
But the big news is that the engine actually fits in the hole.
Tom and Greg slotted it in and while it required some creative engine mounts, it's in there and the transmission fits, too.
And that Holley Double Pumper is going to do the job if we can just put a big bubble in the hood.
