Murphy and the Devil and new ways to screw up a race car

I have had trouble for the last two years with my S/P 1970 Cuda with a Mikes Monster glide shifted by a Biondo 400 Mega box and a RPM actuated Shiftnoid air shifter, Contintental 9 inch converter and so on.
The problem was intermittent at first and I ASSUMED it was something other than trans and shifter related, I ended up burning the fluid up accidently at the bracket final two years ago at Biose for the Division bracket 6 finals
I had the trans. over hauled that winter by a local guy that came highly recommended by several local racers, I sent the converter back to Chris at Contentintal and he replaced everything in it except the front half.
It work fine for 9 runs last year and started acting up again so I pulled the plug on racing and parked the car in the trailer and left it until earlier this spring.
I took it to A-1 Trans and converter in Vancouver, they put the tranny on their tranny dyno and opened up the converter. they found minor problems with both, big surprise,
I put them back in the car and took it out two weekends ago to Portland, on a Saturday night, after testing it on the jack stands at home. iI wouldn't go into first gear and the trans brake wouldn't work at the race track
I had adjusted the shifter cable so it went into neutral, high gear and first gear easily, the shifter did act up a little going from park to reverse and from neutral into low gear on the jack stands
I brought it home after eating my piece of humble pie and called A-1, they said it had to be the shifter adjustment as they had tested the tranny on their dyno before me picking it up
I put back on jack stands and removed the tranny tunnel and looked at the cable adjustment, he was correct :up It was fine in park, reverse and neutral but not in low or drive
I readjusted it and went to reinstall the tunnel when I found the small round plastic tip that goes onto the end of the air shifter, it had fell off
My message is DO NOT ASSUME the worst when it comes to trouble shooting, cover the basics first
That stupid plastic tip costs me a lot of money and frustrations and races
It is on there now with blue Loctite and I will check it now and then to make sure it is not loose again
IHTH someone else

Good you fund the problem cab., now go kick some butt.

Dagnabit

Tex

That's a LOT of work Cab but who hasn't chased their tail at least 100 times...........good find........

I can relate,,,,, last year I went home before racing twice. Both times, broken low gear band strut. Now I know it is important to disassemble the transbrake and clean it once in a while

LOL, I hear ya Cab. Glad you found the issue though.

Several years ago I thought my motor was making a bottom end noise. I was over half way into taking it out the car when I finally got under it to remove the converter bolts only to find they were loose. Tightened em back up, no more noise.

I freshened up my hemi 4 years ago and when I fired it back up, it had a knock. I checked everything, or so I thought, and didn't find a problem, so I took it out the car assuming I'd screwed up something. Dropped the pan, checked every bearing, etc. All looked good. Back together and back in the car, still made the same noise. Took the belts off, same noise. Really scratching my head now...finally, I removed the drive mandrel...no more noise. The shaft on the drive was tweaked and causing the big pulley to contact the flange 1/2 way around and made a distinctive knock at anything below about 1600 rpm.

the dart would not idle so i started to drill the throttle plates after several times taking the carb off , it back fired then i saw a little puff of smoke between the spacer and intake,sure enough a bad $2.00 gasket so after a new gasket and new throttle plates it was fixed

The initial problem started three years ago with the car going into neutral on the low to high shift by the air shifter intermittingly, not every time DUH
I convince myself it had to be that old Phantom shifter so I bought a new one from Biondo, I had to take both of them apart to swap the shift cable and I didn't see anything wrong with the old one, NOTHING Strike two
The problem on the shift into neutral stopped but another one took its place, which I now think was that stupid plastic button on the end of the shifter bolt being loose that shove the shifter into high gear but was not allowing the tranny to go into low gear properly
I guess I can remain positive and say I'm still learning from this, DANG IT

Update, it still missed with all the new tranny and converter parts with the shifter adjusted correctly, it wasn't them
I had put a Outerwear prefilter over the large 14x5 Dominator air cleaner paper element this winter. I made one run and it missed bad off the trans. brake for 80 to 100 ft. and then it didn't run as good as it would last year with the old parts. I remove the prefilter and made another pass, it got worst I had removed one spark plug between the first and 2nd run, #7, and it looked okay . I put in 8 new plugs in with the next step colder Autolite #3932, it had 3933 in it after the second run and none of them look bad
It ran a bunch worst with the colder plugs I decide to check all the spark plug wires and all of them ohm good, between .752 K to 1.23 K so I decided to try a different, hotter set of plugs so I remove all the 3932 and put in a set 3934 gapped between .025 and .028, I took it out to the end of the pit space far away from every one pits, the racing was done for the day and a lot of the racers had left for the day, Madras drag strip is on the local airport so there is a lot of connecting asphalt not used for racing or airport taxing or parking. The car drove a lot better at part throttle and it accelerated well at WOT off the tranny brake
The real test will be the first time trial run tomorrow
I'll let you know the results after the race tomorrow.

On to the next step of trouble shooting 101, not fixed yet
I'll do a leak down and valve train visual inspection next to look for a broken spring, which I'm sure it doesn't have due to this miss happening for a 2 to 3 second time at WOT after letting go of the trans brake button in first gear, it quits missing and revs up to the shift point of 7000 RPM with further no missing in low or high gear
I really love a good challenge, I'm really looking forward to solving this one

I hate this web site some times
I had attempted to add to this thread and it wouldn't let me saying I wasn't allow to post on this site
MODS, WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON

2nd attempt, I called Taylor spark plug wire company to verify how they want their spark plug wires ohm tested on their Pro 8MM Spiral core brand. I had tested it correctly at the track yesterday but when I looked at the coil wire I didn't verified that is was the same brand and size as the spark plug wires, of course it wasn't It had way more resistance than they recommend (350 ohms per foot),7.4 K ohms in less than 15 inches
I look at MSD site and tried to contact one of their techs on the phone, over one hour wait time so I read some of their common answers and question and they state to only use spiral wound resistor type wires on any of their race ignitions like the 7AL2 I use
I had installed and was using a regular Autolite brand 7MM non spiral wire core when I look at it today, it was a standard type used on normal street cars It had worked okay for a while Not anymore, evidently
I replaced it with a new Taylor 8MM spiral core wire like all the other ignition wires on the car so hopefully that gremlin is behind me.
Now to find a good safe testing place close to Bend to do some real short WOT testing off the tranny brake
More to follow