Spring 2018 update: As new years passed and we started to strategize about the upcoming year we began to get excited because we had our truck freshly rebuilt and ready to go with only a handful of passes on it since getting it all back together after the wreck mid-summer 2017. The first local test and tune this year was on Feb 23rd so we got the truck out a week before and ran it down the road to get it warmed up after sitting all winter. After doing a few boosted launches and being reminded of how impressive the little 4cy can move the big box we headed back home and quickly realized we had a coolant leak on the back corner of the head on the exhaust side of the motor. It looked as if it was a blown head gasket which seemed likely as we had not retorqued the head bolts after it had sat all winter. After pulling the head to find nothing obvious we asked around for some advice and came up with the potential theory that the combination of the high rpm load on the stock cooling system and the head lifting enough with the stock bolts that it blew the water gasket but not the fire ring. So, we put it all back together with a new electric water pump and the first time we started the engine it was leaking yet again. Reluctantly we pulled the head again and took it down to the machine shop to have it magnafluxed. Sure enough there was a crack running vertically just behind where the last short head bolt is.
head cracked-feb-18.jpg
Luckily, we had another head from an early model case backhoe at home. While not ideal we took it down and had it checked out. It did have two cracks in the usual spot from the injector port over to the valve seat the one was not bad and the other was deep into the valve seat so we had it replaced and started to port and prep the head to replace the cracked one. With the test and tune fast approaching we couldn’t resist the urge to run it down the track so we slammed it together one more time after many failed attempts at welding the cracked cast steel and then putting some muffler patch on it and finally putting some leak fix in the radiator we had the leak “stopped” at least enough for a couple of passes at the track. Luckily, we made it to the track and the bubble gum held just long enough for us to make 2 passes. The first one was against a corvette which we had sweating hard for the first 1/8th mile and put down our best pass yet with a 14.05 but the trap speed seemed low for the et and we remembered that the fuel pressure was looking low whenever we had it out testing on the street so we decided to replace the fuel filter which ended up being full of orange rusty fuel from the old steel tank. The 2nd pass of the night happened late because the track was so busy and the truck spun pretty bad off the line but you can see that the trap speed was still almost the same as the first run and after analyzing the slips, from the 330’ time to the ¼ mile time on the second pass was actually two tenths faster than the first run, which means we are all over our goal of breaking into the 13s if we can just have some luck come our way. Stay tuned, #lildebbie will hopefully be making some passes in the 13s at rudy’s this spring.
IMAG0857.jpg
IMG_2697.jpg