Who got in for Sick Week? The registration landrush was this morning.

Racing 5 days at a Drag Week style event in Florida in late January has a lot of appeal for so many reasons!

I'm in. I need to redeem myself from my day 4 DNF at Sick Week 2024. I wear the shame like a millstone around my neck, and there is only one way to free myself of this burden. That process would be:

• Enter the event (done)
• re-assemble engine
• re-assemble car
• fix everything on the list
• dyno test
• track test to dial in the suspension, tires and clutch
• make it to the event on time
• finish the event

So I'm off to a good start, first item accomplished. With that out of the way, the rest should be a piece of cake! The event isn't until late January, so I have plenty of time to goof off and relax before I get started on the hot rod.

Edit : apparently nobody else on Moparts got signed up, so I'll convert this over to a blog of getting ready for and attending the event.

Looking forward to all the updates

Go for it! Looking forward to hearing the action.
I'm local, so will definitely be there a few days.

Joel, START NOW!!!

Fixed your list for you.

You know me pretty well! But I seriously want to make sick weekend the HemiCoupe.
I've got two other car projects that I will be working on simultaneously, plus the building project. And I am short of storage space so I was thinking about driving the 442 down to Arizona before winter and leave it in the garage there to free up space here. Then fly home. And I need to allow plenty of time for goofing off.
But nevertheless, I think I can get the coupe done in time. Then get down south before the event and get some testing done.
I made more progress today, I ordered new rod bearings, cam bearings, and an oil cooler. I already have new rings and the block is honed and ready to go.

Since apparently nobody else from Moparts got entered, I'll just make this thread my get ready for sick week blog and then my event blog.

Am afraid Jeff is spot on with his list.

This is a bucket list thing for me , I retire in 2 to 3 years maybe then I'll have the time to do it .

Good Luck Joel , I'll be waiting to read about your adventure.

Okay so Jeff's list is pretty accurate. I spent a few weeks getting the pole barn cleaned up so I'd have a reasonably efficient work area. Then I drove the 442 down to Arizona to free up some space in my shop and flew back home. Now I'm finally getting started on getting the Hemi coupe ready for sick week. The reason the Hemi was torn apart was that the cap screws that hold the cam from moving forward had loosened up, the cam moved forward, the lobes and the journals rubbed on the adjacent lifters, some shavings from that got into the oil pump and seized it up , shearing off the oil pump drive shaft.

So step one was to take a honing stone and get all of the burrs cleaned up off of the camshaft.

I hope you skip over the Get Sick/ Throw out your back part this year, and get have plenty of time for squirrel watching.

Good news update: The Hemi coupe is all back together and ready to load into the trailer for sick week! I got registered for the two early test and tune sessions for the two days prior to the beginning of the event, so hopefully with that opportunity I can get the clutch and the suspension dialed in and get everything working right. Including the Nut behind the Wheel.

Maybe even a new personal best? Maybe even a 9-second time slip!???


It's 20° below zero, it'll be cold getting everything loaded into the trailer.

Good luck Joel, getem'!!

Have fun! Love the coupe! And the early hemi is the icing on the cake!

Good luck Joel!!

Hoping you get some new bests and finish the week!!

Have fun Joel!

I see a 10.01 in your future...

That's just cruel.

It was meant to be.

Good luck, Joel!!!!

any snow there? Birdtracker

There is a TNT video from SGMP from the weekend and there was some footage of Joel making a pass…….. so I guess he made it
there

I’m not familiar with how his car sounds going down the track, but it sounded like it may have been driving thru the clutch a little.

Do your Moparbilly best to provide great updates!

Be safe, and have a blast, Joel!

Unfortunately, Joel is out of Sick Week. The Heartburn HEMI strikes again. I'll let him fill everyone in with the details.

That sucks....I saw his car in one of the test session vids make a pass...

Bummer

So sad to hear Joel, everybody that has had an event go south understands,,,,,and this was a big one. But never say die!!!!!! Lick your wounds, and rise again!!!!

That's too bad, was looking forward to seeing him run in Orlando on Thursday.

Yes, unfortunately sick week 2025 was over for me before it began. I'm on my way home now, I'll see how much of a report I can get typed before I start falling asleep.

My son Cam and I got down down to the track at Valdosta Saturday morning, as we had signed up for the 2-day test and tune prior to the Monday check-in at sick week. This is the same track where on day 4 of sick week last year, my car lost oil pressure just as I was about to pull into the burnout box. So here was a chance for the car to redeem itself.
Since my old Mickey Thompson ET streets were now 11 years old, I had decided to put new tires on, but those Mickey Thompsons were no longer available. So I had picked up a set of Hoosier QuickTime pros. Back at home I had got them mounted and when I threw them on the balancer one of them was way out of whack. So I ended out up deciding to leave home with Hoosiers on the car, and bring the old Mickey Thompson's with just in case the Hoosiers were unusable.

So Saturday morning after we got the car unloaded, and finished up a a few unfinished tasks like adjusting the throttle linkage and stuff like that, then went up into the staging Lanes where there was a guy doing track tech. The car sailed right through tech.
I decided to take it for a spin on the highway to see how the tires felt. But the roads were so rough, I really couldn't tell. So I went back to the track and started preparing to make a pass.
I hadn't driven the car since a year prior at sick week, so I went through my notes about shock settings and clutch tamer settings and stuff like that.
I was kind of surprised to see that I had in my notes from last year that I had set the shocks much looser for the pass I was about to make when the engine lost oil pressure. And I couldn't find any note as to why. So I decided there must be a reason and checked all the shock settings and set them about six clicks looser than usual. I switched the fuel system over from the street tank and pump to the race tank and pump and checked the fuel pressure on the gauge that I have up on the regulator on the front of the engine. It was just a little bit high so I turned off the pump while I dug out my wrenches to adjust the regulator. When I turned the pump back on, there was zero fuel pressure. I went to the back of the car and could hear and feel the pump running, but it showed nothing on the gauge. We ended up draining the tank, taken apart all of the lines and filters and checking everything and there was no obstruction. I took the fuel pump out of the car, took it apart and there was no obstruction. I pulled the gear rotor out of it and hooked it up to the jumper pack and the motor spun like crazy. I checked the ball valves and everything I could think of, and then put it all back together. Still no fuel pressure. We tried the street pump again and that had pressure up at the gauge. And a light bulb went off in my head! What if the pump was getting enough voltage to spin, but not enough to build pressure?
So I swapped relays between the two pumps an turn on the switch. I went up to the front of the engine and the pressure gauge was pegged, because of me messing with the regulator and losing track of where it was set. I could hear gasoline running and I looked into the carburetors and saw them overflowing fuel inside. So I quickly killed the switch. It seemed that enough gasoline had flowed down into the manifold that I better clear the cylinders before I tried starting it to avoid a potential hydro lock. So I pulled out all the spark plugs. So I did something dumb. I pulled the coil wire off the top of the coil because I didn't want any Sparks to jump between the spark plug wires and ground and light off any gas fumes that might be coming out the spark plug holes. Well a lot more fuel had entered one of the cylinders then I had imagined. When I hit the key to crank it over a geyser of gasoline came shooting up about 15 ft in the air, and all of a sudden a spark jumped from the top of the coil up to the firewall and now I had a 20-ft column of flame shooting up in the air, and it was spreading all over the top of the motor!
I ran in the trailer and grabbed a fire extinguisher, but by the time I got back out a few seconds later the column had burned itself out and there was just a little bit of flame left around the cluster of spark plug wires. Cam was blowing on it and padding at it with his hand and it went out so I didn't need to use the extinguisher. We both looked at each other like what just happened!??
After I finished getting the engine cleared out, and putting everything back together, it started right up just fine.
Since The Hemi had just been freshened and, now it had been dosed with gasoline, I decided that we should change the oil. Also we cut open the oil filter to see what it looked like. I didn't see anything that looked like a problem developing.


So we removed the exhaust and I did a little bit of fine tuning on the fuel pressure, but by now it was too late to make a pass. So we got everything ready for Sunday and called it a day. We were so busy all day Saturday, that we really didn't pay any attention to anybody else or what they had going on, and we didn't watch anybody making any passes down the drag strip. All we knew was what we heard on the PA system.

Sunday morning we got the car out of the trailer and warmed it up. I sat in the car for a little while and went through the whole procedure of how I launch the car, and went through the gears just sitting there stationary. Then I drove it down to the far end of the pits where nobody was, and did some 3,000 RPM launches to get the clutch tamer adjusted. What I do for that is hold the throttle at 3000 RPM, so it's barely getting any gas and then I dump the clutch. The clutch tamer lets the clutch out instantly to a certain point, and then slows it down with a hydraulic cylinder that's like a screen door cylinder, to ease out the clutch. I can adjust the hit point where it slows down, and how fast or slow it comes out once it hits that point. I set it so that at a 3,000 RPM part throttle launch when I dump the clutch doesn't bog the motor or spin the tire at all. It only took about five or six little hits like that to get it to where I was comfortable with it.
I drove back to the trailer and got all my safety gear on and went up to make a pass. Cam got the two GoPros set up, one pointed at the air fuel ratio meters, and one get an overall view of the cockpit and all of the other gauges.
They had one lane prepped for radial cars, and the other one prepped for bias ply slicks. When I pulled into the staging lanes, there was a line of cars in the radial Lane, but no one in the slick Lane. The guy in charge came and put a blue dot on my windshield with a marker and told me to pull up to the burnout box as soon as I was ready. I still had to put my helmet on and finished strapping in.

That's about all I can type for now, I'll get some more done later.

Left us hanging…… Billy is looking down smiling. I can hear his chuckle and saying “well played Joel….. well played”.

Probably saw a squirrel, and wasn't intentional.

Sorry, it wasn't intentional. I'm on the long drive home, and when I stopped for the night last night I was just too tired to write anything.. I'll be home tonight and get something posted.

👍 👍

I just uploaded that video to youtube. That was my 2nd test pass, and last pass. It was crazy. I forgot to adjust the clutch tamer so it was basically not there, just a clutch dump, I had the shocks way too loose, and I got positioned outside the groove on the starting line. The front and rear tires bounced off the track. but yet it was the quickest pass the car has ever made at 10.04 @ 134.

Getting back to the first pass:
After the burnout, I went up and lit the pre-stage bulb, stepped on the brake and pushed in the horn ring with my left thumb. That activated the line lock and the 2-step. Then I waited 50 seconds for the other guy to pre-stage, then stage. I was planning to bring the RPM up against the 2-step, bump in, and be ready to simultaneously dump the clutch, mat the gas pedal, and release my thumb from the horn ring the instant I saw yellow. But that is not how it happened. As soon as the other guy staged, the green came on. I don't know how or why, because I don't think I staged. But maybe I did. So I just matted the gas and dumped the clutch. I don't think the rpm was up. But it ran a 10.34 at 132.

Joel did you have a clutch tamer in my 67 GTX ??? I've never heard of it and now you got me looking up info on it ...

John, I did not have the clutch tamer on the GTX when I was racing in fast. I don't think they had been invented yet. I'm kind of curious as to what I could have accomplished with it. When I raced the Hemi coupe at drag week 2018, I was using a McLeod adjustable soft lock clutch, switching back and forth between Street and Race. That was a lot of work, plus the wear on the discs during the street drive threw the adjustment out of whack.
So for 2021 drag week I used the clutch tamer. I really like it. It can all be adjusted right from the driver seat by turning two different knobs and there's nothing electronic about it. But I messed up the installation because I didn't understand the instructions. There is supposed to be some kind of detent ball with an o-ring or something to keep it from rattling out of adjustment. I didn't get that right, so it keeps moving. I need to fix that, but meanwhile I just readjusted the correct number of turns when I'm in the staging lanes. I forgot to do that for my second pass at sgmp and it had rattled all the way back to zero on the return Road and driving around the pits.

That is a very astute observation! I had the clutch tamer set to allow for too much slippage upon re-engagement. What it does is controls the release of the clutch pedal. Since I use the clutch to shift, the misadjustment was noticeable on the shifts.

Did I miss the reason you dropped out?
What broke / happened?

Orlando was PACKED yesterday, fullest I've ever seen the parking area.

Things got a little bit out of order in my post. I haven't gotten to the dropout part yet. I'll try and get that done tonight.

Thanks , I wasn't sure how old that device was and I see lots of people getting sub 2.0s 60 fts , I didn't know if this was the trick , though sneaking it past pure stock tech might not be real easy .

I guess I need more seat time to figure out the sweet spot and do yearly clutch refreshes like Donny Brass ???

Here is a video of the first pass that Cam sent me today. Check out the stage light. I was pre-staged, didn't move forward at all, and the stage beam light came on. I didn't even notice that my stage light came on. I was going to bring the RPM up against the 2-step and bump in to stage. The other guy staged, and we got the green. So when the green caught me by surprise, I pretty much just left.

Why did my stage light come on when the car did not move forward to break the stage beam?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PONxJrkHBh0

Back in the pit, I noticed gear lube all over the floor. Looking under the car, I didn't see anything wrong. So we pulled out the floor and found the culprit. The little rubber boot around the shifter tower was not pushed down and locked onto the trans. Easy fix.
After getting the mess cleaned up, we checked the gopro, and saw that the air fuel ratio had been very rich, right around 10: 1. That explained the slow mph, as the car has run 137 before.
So I adjusted all 16 main jets to lean it out just a little bit. And I dropped the fuel pressure by 1/2 psi.

Then came the 2nd pass. When I was doing the burnout, the car moved quite a bit to the left. As I rolled ahead towards the starting line I steered right a little bit to try and get into the groove. But it was a half-hearted effort. I should have backed up and got centered but I didn't, so I launched from a bad position, out of the groove. That, combined with the shocks being set to loose made for a really crazy launch. The front wheels came up a little bit then went back down on the ground, then bounced up again, then the rear came up and the left rear tire bounced off of the ground, the car pushed hard to the left and I had to quickly steer to the right to get the car back on track. But it settled down and I ended up running a 10.04 at 1:34, which is the best ET the car has ever run. I normally don't look at the gauges when I'm driving, I concentrate on keeping the car pointed the way it's supposed to be. But towards the end of the pass I made a quick glance down at the air fuel ratio gauge and it said 22 :1! Way crazy lean. I immediately lifted.
On the return road, I noticed the sweet smell of antifreeze, and when I stopped at the timing shack to get my slip, I could see steam coming out of the driver side header. I figured that running it that lean, it probably fried a head gasket or worse. Back at the pit, I gave Cam the bad news.
When we watched the GoPro, I saw that the AFR didn't actually go lean until the very very end when I glanced down. Through the rest of the pass it wasn't too bad. We pulled off the cylinder head and I didn't see any thing that looked like a blown or leaky head gasket. I figured that the head or a cylinder bore must have a crack.
So not really having a way to test it and have it fixed in time for the next day, I had to drop out of the event.
It's a big disappointment, that's for sure. But I'll get over it.

Cam and I discussed making it a week long vacation in Florida, doing some sightseeing, spectating at Sick Week. It sounded like fun, but I was anxious to get busy working on the Hemi, pressure test, and figure out what went wrong. Cam just got word that his prototype castings for a new Model A 4-banger intake manifold that he designed are ready to pick up at the foundry, and he wanted to get back and pick them up and start machining them for his company, Nystromperformance.com.

So he changed his flight to tuesday evening out of Atlanta. I dropped him off, and headed toward Minnesota.

Now I'm back home, got everything unloaded, washed up the trucked and camper and got them into the shed. Tomorrow I'll wash the trailer, then get busy on the coupe.

So what is next for the Hemi Coupe? Keep flogging the 392? Switch over to Gen 2 power? Keep trying to do the drag and drive events? I have a lot to think about.

OMG, did he say antifreeze?

Well it was below zero when I left home, and there was snow in the ground in Georgia with nightly lows of freezing or thereabouts predicted. I was planning to dump the green stuff when we got to Florida, then put some back in for the trip home.

As Arnold said "I'll be back".

Joel, hopefully the leak isn't too bad and an easy repair. There is something special about a gen one Hemi, and i hope you decide to keep it. There is a guy up in Grand Forks, last name Swedberg, who is in his eighties and plans on clearing out a rather large collection of early Hemi stuff, wants to take it all to the March meet this year. If you would like contact info, i can get his number for you . I am not sure what all he has, but it is all gen one race hemi stuff as i understand. Those carbs on a blower would look cool, don't you think?😊

Jim is a friend of mine, does excellent work too. He's the guy that had the Ti valves you were looking for about a year ago.
A couple of us have pestered him for years to write a book about him life in Top Fuel racing back in the old days.

If you watch the video closely,your car did move slightly between the first and second staging lights.