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ResidentSadist -> RE: fastest you've ever driven? (11/17/2008 1:07:54 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: OneMoreWaste
quote:
ORIGINAL: ResidentSadist
396 rear end, 9 inch Ford gear custom fit and mounted inside 8 inch Pontiac housing
(snip)
L60 & L50 tires, fronts and back different sizes
104 octane racing fuel (or better)
575 hp Dyno tested to the rear tires
I built the car for road racing not drag racing.
Odd choice of rear end setup for road racing, solid axle and tall sidewall tires.
Hope you replaced the rods, too... at that CR and displacement you'd need to be turning more than 8 grand to get 575 hp at the wheels, that's a lot of strain.
- Odd choice of rear end setup . . . -
Well, those are all good observations. Road racing wasn’t really it’s true design. It was the closest thing I could think of that resembled what I was really doing.
I had to go substantially faster than the 170-180 mph pursuit helicopters
I had be able to accelerate very quickly in short distance city environments
I had to be able to drive through low scrub and on beach sand
I had to have plenty of room to hide the police, aviation and marine band radios
I needed room to hide a police band amp/broadcaster (jammer)
I needed a remote operated plate mask built into the rear bumper (MI only required rear plates)
I needed large drop boxes equal to 2 x paper grocery bags full
Hence the high ground clearance, fast accelerating car with a top end over 200 mph. Had I mentioned the sets of off road and highway tires, that there was no spare tire or tire well as well as the twin drop boxes with remote cable releases that mounted in the under carriage, it would have made more sense to you. I no longer handle contraband and should not have tried to avoid the issue in the first place, It would have made more sense.
-Gear Ratio
Good catch on the gear ratio, It must have been 391 not 396. I remeber that 355 was the highway gear and 411 was the dragster's gear. Because it was a very special purpose car, I needed to accelerate and have a top end. 391 was the lowest gear in the acceleration range. The Volvo overdrive allowed the high end speed, I just had to flip the switch. 200 mph top end yet enough raw accelleration to pull the front off the ground from a dead start or squawk the tires while rolling at 55 mph. It was a monster set up.
-8,000+ rpm motor
The motor was loosely based on the LH1 designs. Yes, rods were replaced, everything was blue printed, balanced, polished, ported or milled. I just don’t recall every single thing we did. The designer guaranteed I could touch 9,000 rpm and do 8,000 rpm steady when he was done. He was right and it was an outstanding short block V8… I had hired the guy who owned and built the NHRA title holding Orange Thunder fuel dragster (late 70s, maybe early 80s) to consult on the motor and frame designs. He referred me to “Corky”, a fellow Detroiter, who was also an industry famous motor designer/builder and he did the heads and other motor work.
Eventually I stopped handling contraband and took the car back to the Orange Thunder guy (Corky was in prison) where he drilled and tapped the motor to install a Fogger commercial dragster NO2 system and added a B&M bent intake blower (under the hood style blower) so we could lower the compression ratio. Yes, I once again had to have custom motor mounts and shim the tranny mounts to lower the engine because the blower just missed clearing the hood by a ½ inch. Just for grins, they did the math on the blower & nitrous, it was 4 digit horse power.
At the old high compression ratio, the damned pistons, especially the #1 piston, would burn through in a few thousand miles. Durability was one thing we did not discuss at the design table (my bad). Everyone was a racer so if the car made it through a ¼ mile drag race or a 500 mile road race, it was sound design by their history, exposure and experience. I should have told them that not only did it need to pull wheelies (it did BTW) and cruise constantly at 200 mph, it also had to go several thousand miles without breaking. . . LOL
After the first breakdown on a trip to Florida, they installed an internal timing advance for the MSD system. That way I could advance the timing for acceleration (that burnt up the pistons) only when I wanted it. That doubled the life of the pistons and I would get 5,000 miles or so out of them. My trips to FL were bimonthly and racked up about 2,400 miles round trip. I basically had to get pistons replaced as preventative monthly maintenance. I couldn’t afford a breakdown on the road. One day I should write about my adventures in the underground.
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