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Drag Week 2G DSM - 8 Second Street Car

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On my 2G I don't montior water pressure. It's something I want to add but ran out of time and sensors.



This is really good data. This was with no holes in the thermostat? I think I'll remove the thermostat for good measure going forward based on this data. Since it's primarily a race car and won't be driven in colder temperatures much I don't anticipate problems. Thank you!

I never did try adding holes, but Im sure it will help if you end up having any issues. I never had overheating issues with no thermostat but then again I have a really nice big dual pass radiator. My car was built for doing Rocky Mountain Raceweek so very similar to your drag week build.
 
I never did try adding holes, but Im sure it will help if you end up having any issues. I never had overheating issues with no thermostat but then again I have a really nice big dual pass radiator. My car was built for doing Rocky Mountain Raceweek so very similar to your drag week build.

Any info on your radiator? I’d be interested in seeing more about your build!
 
Any info on your radiator? I’d be interested in seeing more about your build!
Its an Afco Racing 80133N with a custom shroud and a Spal 13in puller fan. The car is a budget friendly steel rod 2.0L with straight cut gear 2g auto, s472 now, 8.50 cage and its on Ms3Pro. Ill update my profile to make things easier. Don't mind the mess in the picture, doing some changes this winter.
laser bay 1.jpg
 
That extra coolant pressure helps keep the cylinder walls intact. I had a 30psi on my 1g, and was shocked how fast ir burried it. But seriously, 100psi in the cooling jacket does nothing but prevent localized boiling/cavitation, and supports the cylinder wall. 100psi, might add more strength than a 0.020" overbore removes
 
Okay, I really suck at updating this thread, I need Chris to keep on my case about it. :)

As I mentioned quite a bit earlier in this thread, DragWeek 2019 didn't go as planned and I blew the head gasket and melted the head. At the time I thought the cause of the failure was that I didn't double check the ignition timing in my last minute thrash. In the back of my mind, this concerned me because the failure was much more catastrophic than "just" 10 degrees off on timing at semi-low boost and the car also didn't seem to be making any power for the setup. But, given that the car wasn't running and I tore down a good portion of it at DragWeek to see if I could fix it, I couldn't really dig too much into what went wrong.

Fast Forward to a couple weeks ago and I got my new engine from Buschur Racing for the car and put it all back together. I pretty much did everything I wanted to the car last year so I didn't really make any changes to it with just a couple exceptions. I noticed my several year old alternator was struggling to keep up so I got a new Galant 90 amp alternator and I put that on. Also, the radiator I had in the car worked pretty good but I still wanted more cooling and it also bulged some when the head gasket blew, so I found a larger radiator for the car (I can post more on that later).

Once everything was in the car, it fired right up as if nothing had ever happened and I was stoked. I go to set the ignition timing and its within a degree of dead on with the same settings and same sensors as last year. I find it hard to believe that just changing the block (same crank, same sensor, same front cover, same mount, etc) would move the timing more than a couple degrees. Well that kind of sucks, now I don't know what caused the failure.

I decided to do another step I skipped last year and I checked timing drift with RPM. To my surprise, I discovered the timing was drifting over 30 degrees by 5000 RPM's. That means the car was adding 30 degrees of advance on top of what I had it set to by 5k, and likely approaching 60 degrees of additional advance by 9k.

So now I'm both happy and upset. This explains completely why the failure was so bad and also explains why the car wasn't making any power, but now I had to figure out what I did wrong. I turned out I had the wrong trigger edge selected for my ignition in Haltech. I had carried over some settings from the dragster (which uses an M&W box) and didn't think to verify what the Arc2 was expecting. In my defense, the Arc2 is switchable and its not labeled Rising Edge / Falling Edge, it's labeled by the type of coil which is a little confusing. I had to dig through the instructions to figure out what that dip switch even did. Lesson learned.

I'll do my best to get some more updates and finished pics. I'm hopeful DragWeek still happens this year!

TLDR; I screwed up big time with the ignition trigger edge settings and cost myself a motor, but its fixed now and I took the car for its maiden voyage of 2020 this past weekend.
 
Funny, not funny. We all do stuff like this and I think it's what keeps you sharp in the end. I would bet my bottom dollar that you never make that same mistake again.

You can be sure of that! In reality, it was mostly just due to rushing. Sure, I might have made the mistake in initial setup, but a normal test I do on any car is verify timing drift with RPM. When I got the car running the day before the event and still had sooo many loose ends to tie up, that was a corner I cut. A very expensive corner.
 
Okay, I really suck at updating this thread, I need Chris to keep on my case about it. :)

As I mentioned quite a bit earlier in this thread, DragWeek 2019 didn't go as planned and I blew the head gasket and melted the head. At the time I thought the cause of the failure was that I didn't double check the ignition timing in my last minute thrash. In the back of my mind, this concerned me because the failure was much more catastrophic than "just" 10 degrees off on timing at semi-low boost and the car also didn't seem to be making any power for the setup. But, given that the car wasn't running and I tore down a good portion of it at DragWeek to see if I could fix it, I couldn't really dig too much into what went wrong.

Fast Forward to a couple weeks ago and I got my new engine from Buschur Racing for the car and put it all back together. I pretty much did everything I wanted to the car last year so I didn't really make any changes to it with just a couple exceptions. I noticed my several year old alternator was struggling to keep up so I got a new Galant 90 amp alternator and I put that on. Also, the radiator I had in the car worked pretty good but I still wanted more cooling and it also bulged some when the head gasket blew, so I found a larger radiator for the car (I can post more on that later).

Once everything was in the car, it fired right up as if nothing had ever happened and I was stoked. I go to set the ignition timing and its within a degree of dead on with the same settings and same sensors as last year. I find it hard to believe that just changing the block (same crank, same sensor, same front cover, same mount, etc) would move the timing more than a couple degrees. Well that kind of sucks, now I don't know what caused the failure.

I decided to do another step I skipped last year and I checked timing drift with RPM. To my surprise, I discovered the timing was drifting over 30 degrees by 5000 RPM's. That means the car was adding 30 degrees of advance on top of what I had it set to by 5k, and likely approaching 60 degrees of additional advance by 9k.

So now I'm both happy and upset. This explains completely why the failure was so bad and also explains why the car wasn't making any power, but now I had to figure out what I did wrong. I turned out I had the wrong trigger edge selected for my ignition in Haltech. I had carried over some settings from the dragster (which uses an M&W box) and didn't think to verify what the Arc2 was expecting. In my defense, the Arc2 is switchable and its not labeled Rising Edge / Falling Edge, it's labeled by the type of coil which is a little confusing. I had to dig through the instructions to figure out what that dip switch even did. Lesson learned.

I'll do my best to get some more updates and finished pics. I'm hopeful DragWeek still happens this year!

TLDR; I screwed up big time with the ignition trigger edge settings and cost myself a motor, but its fixed now and I took the car for its maiden voyage of 2020 this past weekend.
That's a hell of a price to pay for having the wrong trigger edge selected. Hopefully other Haltech users know about this. As frustrating as it is knowing that it was preventable, at least you know what happened. It's never a good feeling when you can't diagnose the cause of a failure. Congrats on getting it all figured out and running again.
 
That's a hell of a price to pay for having the wrong trigger edge selected. Hopefully other Haltech users know about this. As frustrating as it is knowing that it was preventable, at least you know what happened. It's never a good feeling when you can't diagnose the cause of a failure. Congrats on getting it all figured out and running again.

It's an any ECU concern. Anyone setting up any aftermarket ECU in any car needs to be conscious of trigger edges. They also apply to cam sensors, crank sensors and ignition outputs, although I think only the ignition output one would cause what I did.
 
It's an any ECU concern. Anyone setting up any aftermarket ECU in any car needs to be conscious of trigger edges. They also apply to cam sensors, crank sensors and ignition outputs, although I think only the ignition output one would cause what I did.
I suppose those who are setting up an aftermarket ECU (and aren't in a rush :D) will know about it.
 
Rocky Mountain Race Week is doing an event in place of Drag Week. Still spots open! Going to be a cool mix of Rocky Mountain and Drag Week cars/people.
 
Rocky Mountain Race Week is doing an event in place of Drag Week. Still spots open! Going to be a cool mix of Rocky Mountain and Drag Week cars/people.

I saw that. I'd love to go but I'm not quite ready to make that tow to the start of the event.

Can you talk more about the issues you're facing?

Sure. So I will need to do some other updates in the future as to how I got here but just to fast forward.

The car went 134mph on its first full pass just rolling off the line (it took 5.99 seconds to get to 30 PSI, which was peak boost, so I'm pleased with that).

Second pass I just turned the boost up some but still rolled out. 1-2 shift was good. 2-3 shift started to shift (can see an RPM drop beginning to happen in the data log) and then the motor just free wheeled onto the rev limiter. Coast down the track and try to drive, no forward gears. I'm halfway off the track and stuck. I put it in reverse and nothing. Just free wheels in every possible gear. It was making some sort of grinding noise also so I was scared to re-start it and check pressures.

Pulled the trans and went through the entire thing, it all looked perfect. I checked the pump, valve body, clutches, etc. I checked the torque converter and with an input shaft in the turbine, if I spun the turbine with any sort of side load, it made a nasty sounding noise, like the turbine blades hitting the stator or pump. I know this isn't normal for the input shaft to move like that, but I also don't believe it's normal for the turbine to be able to contact anything inside the converter. So I sent the torque converter back. Precision called me and said there was nothing wrong with the torque converter. I sent them the video and told them I can't find anything else wrong. They assured me nothing is wrong in the torque converter and I think I may have upset them a bit by questioning them so much but not sure. I just want to fix my car though.

I got the converter back, went through some more stuff on the transmission, then put it back in. Start the car and no gears, forward or reverse. The car won't even turn the hubs over with the car in the air, in gear and rev'ing the engine a little bit.

I ran all of the pressure tests on the transmission this time and they all came back good. I also checked the 4 clutch pressures in neutral, to make sure nothing was being engaged when it shouldn't be, they all came back 0 as expected. I then datalogged the input shaft sensor to see if the input shaft was spinning in neutral. No RPM registered in neutral or any gear. Obviously the sensor could be bad or my wiring or the setup, so I wasn't convinced the input shaft wasn't spinning. I pulled the reluctor out of the transmission and stuck my head in the wheel well with the engine running (not recommended) and I could visually see the input shaft (or at least end clutch) wasn't spinning. Next I pulled the end clutch cover off and checked that I could easily spin the input shaft over with the end clutch (confirmed the two were connected and nothing was bound up). Put the end clutch cover back on, started the motor and then turned the end clutch with a screw driver through the reluctor hole, confirming that nothing binds up when the engine is running.

The last test I just performed was pulled the cooler feed line, which I understand is the converter discharge, started the engine for just a couple seconds and it pumped a quart of fluid out into my jug, so the torque converter is getting fluid.

At this point it seems to me like the input shaft and turbine in the converter are not connected for one reason or another.

I was able to borrow an IPT restall converter from my friends over at RX4Speed so my plan is on Wednesday to pull the trans again, take a bunch of measurements/pictures of everything. See if I can compare my billet input shaft to a stock input shaft and ultimately, put the IPT restall in the car and see what it does. I don't know what the problem is or the cause of it yet and I don't want to speculate or place any blame at all so please don't ask me to.
 
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Possibly a crack in the transmission internally somewhere.

I'm not sure that could be it. If it was a fluid path that was leaking I think one of the pressure readings would be wrong/low. Also, the input shaft should spin in neutral with just fluid going to the torque converter, which I've confirmed it is. I'm hoping to have it out tonight and maybe have more info.
 
Pulled the transmission out last night and I believe I found the issue but I need to take some measurements before I can be sure (can't get calipers where I need to without pulling some more stuff apart). The issue isn't what I originally thought which is why I didn't post my theories to begin with.
 
Okay, I finally have conclusive evidence as to what the issue with my transmission is and I should be back up and running soon. I'm going to refrain from any more details until I can speak with the part manufacturer and work out repairs.
 
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