9/17/2025 | Racecar Rant #1

Today is the agonizing side of owning a racecar.. nothing is seeming to go right.

Yesterday I reset the preload on the big block. That fixed the valvetrain noise, thought things were good. Today, ticking started again. Rockers were all loose. Reset the preload again and I think I ran it low on gas (one bowl of carb ran dry). Now the starter is too hot to crank the car.. So I just have to sit here a couple hours while it cools down before I can try to start it again and back it into the shop. Then I will put on my new starter and see what the hell is going on with the lifters. Hope it didn't eat a camshaft. If it did I'm buying a roller cam setup. I'll change the oil this afternoon and see if there is any metal flake in it. Optimistic that there won't be.

I'd really like to have this car driving again by this weekend. I want to make it to the track again by the end of the year to let this new motor rip. Should make 650hp without nitrous, 900hp with nitrous. But it needs to be consistent at the track for bracket racing.

Bracket racing is like black jack - you can "break out". For example, if you are in a 10 second bracket then the winner is whoever goes closest to 10 seconds in a quarter mile but doesn't go faster. If you go 9.99 you lose. I suspect this car will do about 12 seconds. I put a new throttle bracket on yesterday that lets me essentially limit how far down the gas pedal goes. We will go to the track and get a time (faster than 12 I hope) then start limiting the throttle until it goes 12.01 every time. Then next spring we can hopefully make some money racing 12 second brackets :)