#lildebbie build thread

I have always had this dream to run my UPS truck on the strip....but I know it'll never happen. So Im going to live that dream vicariously thru you guys. :hehe:

Keep up the great work!

The young girl that delivers to our shop everyday runs the chit out of her truck, I noticed they went to gas engines now. Hers is idle or wide open.
 
Bad news on this update. After a good and consistent performance at the roadkill ziptie drags we decided it was time to give the truck some more fuel. We picked up a mac rack plug from Powerdriven that takes the rack travel from 19mm-21mm to give us a little more fuel at full throttle and maxed the barrels. We also have a friend that has a general industrial machine shop so in search of more fuel we had him take the stock delivery valves and grind them down from 8.0mm to 7.5mm. He couldn’t take it any farther or he was going to start hitting the top part of the delivery valve if he went any further. After talking to Will at PDD he informed us that while not technically full cut dv’s, taking .5mm (.020”) off would yield as much fuel flow as a full cut.

We then made our way to the local drag strip test and tune and were excited to find out how much more power we squeezed out of Lildebbie when unfortunately, on our first pass we had a small but very bad malfunction. After pulling a much improved 60ft time, at about half track something went terribly wrong. A faulty and very old radiator cap could not hold anymore and blew off into the overflow which then filled and blew off almost directly in front of the passenger side front tire causing essentially an oil slick and causing the truck to lose control and slide across the track sending it head on into the concrete wall. While no one was physically hurt the same could not be said about Lildebbie. With both frame rails bent and motor and trans mounts broken the truck was towed off the track and winched back up on the trailer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDSdlnpI0Bg&feature=youtu.be

bent frame rails 1.jpg

bent frame rails 2.jpg

lildebbie front end.jpg

sideways bumper 1.jpg

sideways bumper 2.jpg

snapped motor mount bolt.jpg

Once we got the truck home we found that the motor would not run and did not want to turn over freely. After checking all the simple/easy things the only thing left to do was to pull the motor. After only being in the truck for a few months we reluctantly pulled the motor and started to disassemble. During disassembly, the news began to get even worse not only was the truck totaled from the bent frame but the connecting rods were bent and to make matters even worse the 1st cylinder was cracked almost from top to bottom between the 1st and 2nd cylinder thus essentially making the motor also totaled.

bent connecting rod.jpg

broken cylinder.jpg

#lildebbie was taken from us way too soon. We know her legacy cannot die here. Hopefully we will be able to find another truck and continue in the name of #lildebbie
 
What a tragic way to take out the truck completely. Glad everyone's safe, none the less.

It looks like it was fueling hard on the take off.
 
I found some pistons in the Power Driven bone yard.... might be able to get another turbo put together as well, we need to see a true 12 second box truck!!!!! Compared to the previous runs, you DEFINITELY picked up some fuel with rack plug, racked barrels, and full cuts!!!
 
Damnit man...That sucks!! Glad everyone is alright. I can't help but wander if the scenario went bent rods, cracked cylinder, pressurized coolant, popped radiator cap and over-flow, oil-down, crash-boom-bang. Hope you all are able to get 'lil Debbie resurrected in some form or another. It has been way fun to keep up with the progress!
 
Fack! One of my favorite builds on here! Glad y'all are ok though. No chance of getting it on a frame straightener? I actually had to do that with my orange truck back in the day after getting rear ended and it worked great.


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Fack! One of my favorite builds on here! Glad y'all are ok though. No chance of getting it on a frame straightener? I actually had to do that with my orange truck back in the day after getting rear ended and it worked great.


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I would think box trucks are a dime a dozen. Might not be worth the effort.
 
Speaking as a huge fan of LILDEBBIE, I'm sorry yall experienced this setback.
But fortunately no one was injured and it seems the replacement is already on the todo list.
Maybe a roller in need of a 6BT!!??? :rockwoot:

Keep up the great work guys!!!
 
I bet replacing the frame with a tube chassis would cut some time off ??
 
Now that's an idea^^^! Then fix the front of the body work witg something a little more aerodynamic.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk
 
Gotta keep it a box truck body, just get it lighter. Aren't those bodys aluminum?
 
Looks like old FedEx trucks. We have some that are similar. You'll want to use a P700 chassis, not the P1000. Smaller truck, shorter wheelbase, less weight.

I honestly like the fold-up shelves...smart idea.
 
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That's phacking bogus!!! Glad everyone was alright but damn I feel bad for the truck. Looked like you were moving pretty good on her last run before the rad decided to take a dump. Best of luck
 
Lildebbie lives again!!! What began the whole box drag racing in the first place was the idea of swapping a 4bt into a Ford Excursion so even though we were having so much fun with the truck that we couldn’t stand pulling the “race” truck apart we had been recently searching high and low for another 4bt motor to do the conversion with. We of course could not find as good of a deal as we had on the first one but it just so happens that the same night we wrecked #lildebbie we found another truck almost the same and for almost the same exact price. We picked her up the same weekend not knowing what the complete plan would be for the future of #lildebbie but it was not long after we got it home and started looking it over that it became apparent that a #lildebbie2 needed to happen.

new truck.jpg

pulling motor.jpg

pulling tranny.jpg

So, then the work began to re-do everything we had done in the past year. Everything was removed and both motors completely torn down. The goal is to still end up with two running motors but to use the new trucks block with some craigslist connecting rods and everything else off the original lildebbie motor. After taking both blocks down to the local machine shop we now have two usable blocks the original one with a sleeve in the cracked cylinder and the other with the virgin std. bore honed out to provide a new surface and extra piston to wall clearance of around 8/9 thousandths. The new motor we got did have over 300k on it so it was definitely time to give her a rebuild anyway. We also opted for the clevite/mahle h bearings this time around because our hp goals have changed and we now plan to take this motor as high as possible with still keeping the stock block and head. Also in the spirit of high hp we decided to use some non-intercooled pistons and do a little custom work to them by widening the bowls out from 61mm to 64.5mm and cutting a 30 degree chamfer to give as big of a bowl as possible and we also decided to up the compression some more by taking 20 thousandths off the block. This got a little tricky because we have plans to run a bigger cam in the future so we also had to cut the pistons down to keep the protrusion in check.

blocks ready to go.jpg

crank end play.jpg

new pistons and fire ring.jpg

With all of this complete the only other thing we decided to address at this time was the rear axle/wheel/tire combo. We searched craigslist and were able to find a dodge dana 70 to replace the 70HD and give us a dodge 8 lug bolt pattern so that we can run some lighter wheel/tire combos. This should make quite a big difference considering the 4 comercial wheel/tire combos in the back were over 100lbs each.
The hope was to somehow still make it to rudys 2017 fall race (last chance for a diesel race this year) but with full time jobs and so much to do there just was no way to make it happen. The local drag strip however will be open on Friday nights through November so we for sure will be getting #lildebbie2 back on the track in the next couple of weeks. With the fueling upgrades we made before the wreck and the new upgrades to lildebbie2 we should be able to bump the timing a little higher maybe 30 degrees. We are thinking we should get into the low 14s or maybe even break into the 13s.

tranny cleaned up.jpg

welding rear end.jpg

new axle in truck.jpg
 
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