So, we got thru Drag week 2014 in the Olds with only minor problems, and I came home all pumped up to resume work on the coupe, and make sure that it was ready for DW 2015 no matter what! In my mind, I was way past my disappointment of not being able to use a gen 2 hemi.
Wanting to keep the car as old school as possible, (which was required by the class rules anyway) I set up a dropped tube axle with finned aluminum Buick brakes, and retained the original front parallel leaf configuration:



Along with the 392, I also decided that instead of a 4 speed, I would use the T-56 Magnum 6 speed transmission. The 700 Lb/ft. rating and the double overdrive sounded like the hot ticket for a drag week car. True, it was modern, but it doesn’t show. I ordered the trans, bellhousing, hydraulic throw out bearing and driveshaft as a package deal from American Powertrain. They were way late in shipping it, like 5 weeks late and was in a panic calling them all the time. But finally, it showed up.


Thinking about it, what 1962 or older engine could top a well built 392 Hemi? Nothing! I had all the best 392 parts I could find, Nick did an awesome job on the heads, and I had a really cool and rare intake. It wasn’t done yet, I still was waiting on a few things, and had to blueprint and assemble it and dyno it, but things were looking good for dominating the Hot Rod class in 2015!

My friend Jeff had agreed to be trunk monkey for 2015, and was helping out on the build as well.

Then in December 2014, Hot Rod announced the new rules. The hot rod class lost the requirement for an old school build, and more shockingly to me, engine family’s up to 1968 were now allowed!

You know rules makers SUCK. Without warning anytime your combo can be done. Seen it time and time again. Unless you pocket book is deep and time is plentiful it can be bad news. I like yours better this way anyway.
Doug

Agree button

Doug,
The Drag Week founders tried to avoid this by locking in the new rules for three years each time. Still some of the changes still catch people off guard. The new package is good for '18, '19 and '20.

I have to give them credit for locking them in for 3 years, 15, 16, and 17, then again for the next 3 like Billy says with minor changes.

Still, it's nasty when you get stung twice in less than a year, especially after all the effort and $ I went thru to comply, and then they do a 180.

But I got over it.

I've never had the problem of having an extra hemi laying around, I suppose you do get used to it tho.... :P

Furious, it's a good problem to have! I love Hemis, you can never have too many!

Must have seen a squirrel, and forgot about this story...

Short on time as of late. I'll get back to it once the fall rush is over.

So I decided to stick with the 392, but progress seemed so slow, I never had much time available. So I took 5 weeks off of work in January - February to try to finish the 31 coupe for drag week 2016, and to beat Jeff out of a dinner. (We bet dinner on whether the car would be ready for dragweek) I was going to spend a week or so assembling and dynoing the 392 hemi, then 3 - 4 weeks making major progress on the chassis and body.
As usual, lost parts, (launched a circlip, never to be found, had to order a new one from diamond) stuff that didn't fit right,
cutting the main stud girdle for stroker clearance, remodeling the oiling system, setting up my ridiculous 8 carb intake, etc slowed down the assembly, and, burned up a lot of time. It took way more than a week but I got it done.


machining the rods for side clearance



Broaching the hub of a Mopar 340 super damper to fit the 392 Hemi.



Shortening the damper hub to align the pulleys



Cut and re-thread oil pickup for fit oil pan




Drill and tap oil drain back hole in head for external lines to pan



New drainbacks are slightly larger than the adjacent original holes.






I put it in Jays dyno hoping for big power numbers. (BTW, Jays 427 SOHC Ford headers fit with just re-drilling some holes)










Made some check out pulls, then some full throttle pulls, increasing the rpm a little more each time. The oil got milky, changed the oil. After the 1st 6000 rpm pull, I cooled if off and lashed the valves. Went to restart it, and it hydrolocked. Found water had leaked into #8 cylinder, causing the hydro lock. Pulled the head and found #8 cylinder wall was cracked due to the hydro lock. Figured it was a head gasket leak issue. Pulled it off the dyno, tore it apart, found shot rod bearings from the wet oil, had the #8 bore sleeved, pressure tested the block, took great care with the copper head gaskets when re-assembling, put it back on the dyno, made several pulls, but again milked out the oil. Pulled the heads, brought them to a head shop and had them pressure tested and milled .003 for flatness, put heads back on with thread orings around each water hole in the heads and block, put it together, filled it with water and pressure tested it, leaked. I pulled it apart, installed new custom head gaskets with all the un-needed holes gone, extra-extra carefull assembly with permatex red coppercoat. Mounted a radiator sytem on the dyno to use a closed cooling sytem so I could put moroso ceramic seal in it. Pressure tested with no leaks, made some pulls, testing 3 intakes and dialing the carbs on the 8 carb intake. It filled the oil pan with water again.




Now my 5 weeks was gone, no work done on the car, and a broke motor.

A few months later, I finally started working on the motor again, and found a crack in the #8 intake port in the head that leads to water. I poked it with a probe, and it went right thru. Apparently these is some porosity or a thin spot in the casting. Why didn't the head shop that did the pressure test find this and save me 3 weeks of chasing a head gasket problem????



[img]https://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d137/HemiJoel/hemi%20coupe/hole%20in%20head_zpsqggalkzx.jpg[/img]



Sent the head off to Nick smithberg to get repaired. He did a great job, and it hasn't leaked since.

So 2017 was spent trying to finish the car for DW 17, and after a massive thrash, I finally drove the car for the 1st time the night before we had to leave for drag week. Too many problems came up, so I threw in the towel on the coupe and brought the red 67 GTX F.A.S.T. car.

Another year of working on the car sporadiaclly at first, then really ramped it up in the summer.

10 days before we had to leave for Drag Week 2018, I finally got the car to the drag strip for initial testing.

Then,of course there was a huge last minute thrash to get ready, that is now just a blur. Since the coupe was no where near being adequately sorted out, I said that DW 2018 would just be a test and tune, and develop a to-list. But in my heart, being competitive, I really wanted to win and have everybody carry me around on their shoulder and sing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" while the confetti falls.  But I had to settle for 4th place in the Hot Rod class because 3 awesome cars and drivers were consistently faster than me. But I'm still happy the way it turned out. The whole time, we had the hurricane looming, threatening to strand us and blow us away and drown us. But we dodged that bullet, barely. 

We got to Atlanta Dragwway friday before drag week, and did some test and tune friday night and sat. But right away friday when we got there we had to change rear end gears. The car had 3.70 in it, and I wanted 4.57. 





Brain Kohlman, with the Nitro Coupe pitted by us on friday night- sunday. 



Hemi Squirrel showed up too with his "Almost Funny":



Sunday we got checked in early, we were 12th in line out of 375. Made some test passes,

Moday morning we left the trailer behind and went to the pits and got ready, and to the drivers meeting. 



 Then made 2 passes at atlanta. 
Here is the better of the 2:

second pass in car video

  2nd pass exterior video

Then we packed up to leave;





It started raining just as we left the track, and rained on and off during the drive:

Great story so far.

I guess the dyno numbers are top secret 😎

I agree that the shop who did the pressure test should have caught that leak.

I'll tell you a secret. There are shops out there who don't actually pressure test stuff. I've seen this several times. I've also seen shops that don't do it correctly, even though it isn't hard.

That should have NEVER been missed.

Because of the water leak, I never got a good pull. I was triyng to test a dual quad vs a single dominator vs the 8 carb X3. It took A LOT of messing around just to get it to run on the 8 carbs. I started out so lean, it wouldn't do anything more than idle. There really is no info out there on where to start with this old obsolete stuff. After it was running good and broke in and checked out, and we started trying get some good pulls, the leaking happened. So as of now, it still isn't properly dyno tuned.

Cool story. Some day I would like to at least spectate Drag Week. Maybe even enter.

The milky oil deal would have taken alot of people down. I'm sure it's forever etched in your mind as a sore spot but way to stick with it. That's awesome. -Trent

My plan was to make one pass each day, as early as possible, then hit the road. If the car broke on the road, i'd rather deal with it in the day light. Plus I wanted to avoid the mid day heat at the track. But on my 1st attempt Monday, I had to shut the car off right before the burnout, because the car next to me broke. When I restarted, I must have bumped the fuel pump switch, and I launched with it off. So I had to go back in line. It took a long time to get thru the line for a second pass.

You are right, I was so disgusted. Not just for the wasted time and money, and lack of progress, but because I just didn't know what to do next. I had tried everything. I actually put the 426 Hemi on the cherry picker and hung it in the engine bay. The only thing that stopped me from proceeding was that the oil pump hit the steering box, and I didn't want to redo the whole steering setup.

Backing up a little, I did a moparts write up on the DW 2015 adventure in the parade car, so I'm not going to write about it now, I'll just link to it: https://board.moparts.org/ubbthreads/ubbt...p-pictures.html


But 2018 was a whole different thing for me than any previous. Even though it was my 10th drag week, it was the first one where I was actually in a competitive car of my own. All the times as trunk monkey for Jay, I had nothing at stake. Same with the 3 trips in my 2 convertibles, I was limited to 13.50 ET by lack of roll bar. I couldn't have been in the mix no matter what, and there was no use to try and go faster. So for the first time in 2018, I took drag week seriously. It's a whole different attitude and experience when you are trying hard.

Joel, what head castings are you using on the hemi in your coupe. Reason I ask, a friend claims the 55 and 56 heads were preferred back when he had a 392 in his dragster due to earlier heads having a straighter line to the valves than 392 heads. Just wondering if you had any thoughts on the subject.