The Road to Bonneville and back

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The Road to Bonneville and back

Post by Plechtan »

Some of you may have wondered what happend with the Bonneville truck the speed trials were in August and it has been strangely silent.

The project started last September when i purchased a Comanche from Dallas TX. It has 236,000 miles and my son drove it home to Illinois. We worked over the winter and spring preparing the truck, lowering the suspension, installing the roll cage and doing all the race prep stuff. The engine work was proceeding at the same time.

I can't count how many vendors did not meet their delivery dates. one of the worst was the crank grinder who kept inisting that it would be done next Monday. When i finally went to pick it up, he had not even done any work on it. He had it for 4 months.

By the end of June everything was coming together, except that the cam grinder did not have the cam back from the heat treater. I finally received the cam around July 15. We had to leave for Bonneville on August 4th

The engine builder got me the engine on July 24th, just 10 days before we had to leave. That was a Friday and we spent the weekend installing the motor. I knew it was a 2002 WJ block and i knew the motor mount bosses were different. I Used Brown dog mounts for a 2001 wrangler, but the block was tapped for Metric. Try finding grade 8 metric bolts on the weekend.

The headers had been fit using the stock jeep mounts on the 1998 4.0 block. The Brown dog stuff was different and of course interfeared with the headers. The Quicktime bellhousing went on OK as well as the Quartermaster clutch. I had a special T5 built to bolt to the Quicktime bellhousing which had a standard Muncie/t10 pattern. I used a standard GM trans mount and fabricated a spacer on the stock crossmenber.

The water pump was not on the block when the headers were fabricated, and the later block used a different water pump anyway. When i tried to install the water pump, the inlet was only 3/16" away from the header. No room to push the hose on. We ended up welding on a piece of tubing to extend the inlet.

Things were coming togeher, The engine was in, cooling system hooked up, measurments taken for the drive shaft. By sunday night we were feeling better about leaving in 8 days.

Allot of work was left to be done, and I was not able to take off work. so in the evenings we got the throttle linkage working, clutch working Fuel system finished, and started wiring the engine.

I got the drive shaft on Wendsday and went to install it on Wendsday night. We went with 1330 u joints over the stock 1310. But somthing was not right. the Ubolts did not fit the yoke. I did some reasearch on Thursday and found out that their are 2 versions of the 1330 U joint. The side that goes int the driveshaft is the same on both, but the side that goes into the yoke could have a standard or large cup. The large versions were used on ford trucks. I called Randy's ring and pinion and confirmed that i had purchased the ford style. Randy's gave me the Dana number for the U joint and bolts i needed , but idiots at the auto parts store cound not cross reference them. I ended up comparing a standard 1330 to some Ford replacment ones. An 89 Bronco was the one that worked.

By the following Sunday afternoon ( 2 days before leaving) we were finally ready to start the engine, and it started right up! We had a couple of leaks, but it was running . I had a dyno reserved for tuesday afternoon. the Dyno shop was on the illinois/ Iowa boarder and on our way to the salt.

On Monday we were finishing up odds and ends. Tuesday morning we were packing and planning to leave at noon. About 11:00am the dyno shop called and said that the dyno was broken and we could not run. I think it was a bunch of crap, and they just threw me under the bus for another customer.

I was at the store picking up some stuff and when i got back home my son was in the truck with the engine running with the trailer hooked up just waiting for me. I told him the news about the Dyno. He just shut the engine off and went into the house.

I got on the phone and started looking for a Dyno shop that could get us in and that was also familuar with the Haltech ECU. I found a shop in Milwaukee that could help us out. the only problem was that Milwaukee was 100 miles in the wrong direction and they couldn't get us in until the next day.

So 5 am on wendsday we left for the dyno shop. We got there about 7:30 and unloaded the car, got it up on the Dyno. We had no tune at all in it, and the dyno guy wanted to use the TPS th control the fuel table, where we had been using the Map sensor. We verified timing got it running and warmed up. We were running it in, we seemed to have an oil pressure issue, we had 30 lbs at idle, but with the pump we had it should have been more. the pressure did go up to 70 Lbs at higher RPM's

After it was warmed up, we seemd to have a miss, we checked the plug wires with a timing light and we had no spark on cylinders 4 and 6. Was it the computer? coil packs? wiring? after allot of screwing around it was decided that the 2 of the coil packs were bad. it was now 1:30 in the afternoon and we could not find the packs locally available. we did find them back in illinois but it was a 4 hour round trip. The Dyno shop told us that the city had noise regulations and they could not run the dyno past 6 PM. So that was it, we were done for the day. Nothing else to do but head back home and pick up the coil packs and try and be back at the Dyno shop early on Thursday.
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Re: The Road to Bonneville and back

Post by Plechtan »

Thursday morning, back up at 5:am. we were suspose to be halfway to Bonneville by now. Probably middle of Nebraska, but we were heading 100 miles in the wrong direction again, back to the dyno shop. My wife had a afternoon flight to salt lake, and we were suspose to pick her up at the airport around 5:00pm. Since it is a 24 hour ride from Illinois to Utah I knew that wasnt going to work. The new plan was for her to stay in a hotel and hopefully we would be on the road by noon and pick her up at noon Friday at salt lake. Tech at Bonneville was Thursday and Friday. Racing started Saturday morning. So it all might still work.

We got up to the dyno shop around 7:45 and put the new coils in, still no spark. Very strange we screwed around and finally ended up changing the plugs even though nothing seemed wrong with them, Then we had spark. I have no idea why. But now it was about 9:am we warmed the truck up, turned it off to check some things, and when we went to start it back up, the starter would not engage. It was a new Mc Cloud flywheel. we pulled the starter. It was a little tore up, but the engine did have a 13.5:1 cr It looked like the over running clutch was shot. That will teach me to by stuff from Autozone. Because we were running an AMC V8 bellhousing and early design flywheel, Cherokee stuff would not fit. We needed a Wagoneer or AMC V8 starter, The local autoparts store did not have one, but we could go to the local Napa Disribution center, about 45 minutes away. So off we went and about 2 hours later we returnrd with the starter and installed it. The Clock is running on the Dyno the whole time.

It was about Noon, and we started to run. we had no map at all in the ECU so we started out with a no load tuning to get a baseline. We decided to do a Full throtle pull, My som mashed the pedal to the floor and pulled the throttle cable out of the fitting in the linkage, The cable did not have a fittng on it, it just went through a hole and a screw put pressure on the side of the cable. The cable was now completely into the housing . It would not push out. We were screwed.
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Re: The Road to Bonneville and back

Post by Plechtan »

It turns out that the place i purchased the cable from was some what local, so we decided that the Dyno operator would operate the throttle linkage by hand, while my son was in the car, I ran out the speed supply to see if they would repair the cable. They did but made me wait, I got back about 2 hours later and not much had beed done. The truck had oversped the dyno. it had a maximum speed of 155mph and the truck was designed to go 185. Even in 4th gear it would go to about 160. So they had to run in third gear. That was going ok until they got a flat tire. A Flat tire! I said, you got to be kidding me. We had purchased new Marsh Racing wheels which the centers completely welded. This is a rule book requirement. The rule Book also requires Metal Valve stems. We also bought these from marsh and they installed them into the wheels. What they did not do was completely tighen them. The Nuts were inside the wheel so you had to break the bead on the tire to tighten them. More time lost.

We put the new throttle linkage in, adjusted everything so we woul not pull the cable out again, warmed it up a little, then did a pull. at about 6,000 rpm the oil filter adapter on the block blew off. we immediately cut the engine. The adapter replaced the ol filter and had two, 1/2npt ports. it is designed to be used for a remote filter setup. Since we had an external oil pump, we were just using 1 port to get the oil into motor. The oil pan had a pickup with a tube that went through the side of the oilpan. So the oil was taken from the pan, to the pump to a filter, then an oil cooler then into the adabter and into the main oil galley of the block. So when the adapter blew off we lost all oil pressure. We hoped the main and rod bearings were OK.


It was about 3:30 in the afternoon by now, and we were screwed, the adapter had only engaged by two threads and the threads were broken out of the adapter. so it could not be repaired. My wife was on a plane to salt lake, and we had not started our 24 hour drive yet.
Last edited by Plechtan on September 26th, 2009, 4:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Road to Bonneville and back

Post by gradon »

The story's getting exciting. . .
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Re: The Road to Bonneville and back

Post by Bodo »

where's my popcorn eating icon?

Sorry to hear about your problems :brickwall:
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Re: The Road to Bonneville and back

Post by John »

Did you leave out the part about needing to pick up more Rollaids?
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Re: The Road to Bonneville and back

Post by Plechtan »

So where was I, oh yea, it was 3:30 on Thursday, the oil filter adapter just blew of the engine dumping about 4 quarts of oil on the floor in the dyno room and my wife was on a plane to salt lake.

Time to go to plan B, the engine had a basic tune in it, but we had not fully tuned it. we needed a new oil filter adapter and could not find one locally. I borrowed the computer at the Dyno shop and ordered a new Moroso adapter from Summit racing and had it shipped overnight to my Wifes hotel in Salt lake. The AMC 6 application is not listed in any catalog, so it took a little while to figure out which adapter would fit. We got the car off the dyno, but wanted to pull the two front tires off and tighten the valve stems. Some other clean up work and by the time we got the car loaded and were ready to leave it was 5:30pm. Of course before i left i had to settle up with the Dyno shop. The truck had been on the dyno for 2 days, and dyno time is usualy in excess of $150.00 per hour. The guy who owned the shop took pity on me and only charged me $950.00 for the whole thing. More than i had planned on, but allot less than it could have been.

As we left the shop i realized that the 24 hour trip would probably be more like 26 hours because we were 100 miles in the wrong direction. The last time we went out to Bonneville we drove for 12 hours, stopped for the night, then drove 12 hours the next day. BY the time we were leaving the shop, my wifes plane had already landed and she was on her way to the hotel. We would have to drive straight through to make it to the salt before nightfall on Friday. Tech would probably be closed by the time we got there, and i don't think we would pass tech with the oil filter adapter hanging off the side of the block anyway.


My 24 year old son was driving as we left the shop. we were using his 2007 Dodge Ram 3500 with the Cummins diesel. We had a pickup camper in the bed that weighed about 2,500# and were pulling a 28 foot enclosed race trailer, with the car and all the tools and other stuff in their i figure it was weighed about 10,000# . That put our combined weight some were around 21,000# .

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Last edited by Plechtan on September 27th, 2009, 8:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Road to Bonneville and back

Post by Plechtan »

I was a little worried because the day before My son went over some railroad tracks a little too fast and one of the bracket that holds the pickup camper on broke. We rewelded it on Thursday night, but as so many things had gone wrong over the last couple of days i was beginnig to think that we were jinxed. What will go wrong next? Maybe the truck would not pass tech. We followed to rule book, but you never know. the whole car was brand new and we had never built a car before.

I tried to look on the bright side, the car had a basic tune, and i has the software on my laptop so i could make adjustments. the oil filter adapter should be waiting for us at the hotel, so we could probably go through tech on Saturday afternoon and still run the remainder of the week. That's if we didnt wipe out the bearings when the adapter blew off and we lost oil pressure.
I tried to get some sleep, I had been up since 5am and we were driving straight through, No luck sleeping. I switched with my son and started driving around Walcot IA. That is where the "Iowa 80" truck stop is. I drove most of the way across Iowa, but was too sleepy i stoped a little way befor Nebraska and let my son drive again. He only drove for about 2 hours anf had to turn it back to me. We were both pretty shot. We were trying to make up some time, we were doing about 80mph most of the time and getting about 9 mpg.

I forget who was driving, but as we crossed into Wyoming the sun was coming up. I wasnt feeling real good, but i hadn't really slept in 24 hours either. Construction zones came and went, wind and rain too. not an easy drive with a 20,000lb rig.

We finally got to my wife's hotel in salt lake about 4pm. We picker her up, but the desk clerk could not find any packages addressed to her. Where was the adapter? It was nt at the hotel, I guess i would have to wait until i got the internet to track the package.
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Re: The Road to Bonneville and back

Post by Plechtan »

We were still 2 hours away from the salt, and they would not let you onto the salt after dark. So back on the road. we made it to Bonneville at about 6:30pm. Tech had already closed, but the guard at the pit entrance let us in so we could drop the trailer. I still felt like crap, but we had a Hotel room reserved in Wendover NV which was about 5 miles away from the salt.

Bonneville is in Utah 4 miles away from the Nevada boader on I80. Salt lake city is about 100 miles east of Bonneville. Well as we all know Gambling is legal in Nevada. It seem that the good Mormans in Salt lake don't mind driving 100 miles or so on the weekend to do a little gambling. So Wendover use to be a little sleepy town with a Motel 6 and a Best western, it now has 4 fairly large Casinos and a bunch of hotel rooms as well.
The hotels don't like Speed week because all their rooms get filled up, but the people don't gamble much.

We had a room at the Rainbow hotel and Casino. I just wanted to get to bed. We had to get up early to get our driver and Crew wrist bands. Without them we could not go the the Driver orientation at 9:00 Am
We got out to the Salt about 7:30 the next morning. We tried to get into the pits but we didn't have a pit pass. So our trailer was in the pits, but we could not get into the pits. You had to go to regristration to get the pass so we drove over and the line at registration was already a couple of hunderd feet long. It turns out that they didn't open until 8am. We finally got up to the registration desk at about 8:30 and got our wrist bands, but we needed the pit pass. Turns out we were in the wrong place for that, since we were pre registered we just had to go to the table at the begining of the tech lanes to get our envelope. no line at all there since everybody had gone through tech the two days before.
We finally go into the Pits, but it was getting close to 9:am and we had to go down the starting line for rookie orientation.

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Re: The Road to Bonneville and back

Post by Plechtan »

We got to the starting line about 5 minutes early, Quite a fewpeople were there maybe 3 or 4 hundred . They had a schafold set up about 20 feet high with about a 10x15 platform on top. it had a railing around and a fabric roof over it. About 9:10 they started, but it was not rookie orientation, it was a bunch of " let me intorduce the mananaging director of this" " we would like to thank this other guy" Etc.

I still was not feeling well, and had been standing for about an hour and a half. I was feeling a little dizzy. I told my son to call me when the orientation started and then walked back to the truck. As i was sitting in the truck, i reviewed some of the events of the previous day. Lee Hurley called around 4:30pm on Friday looking for me in the pits. The call went to voicemail due to the poor cell service in Utah. I did call him back, but then my call went to voice mail. I really wanted him to see the car and see what he thought. Lee did the head for the car, and i was lucky enough to go out to dinner with him last march. My wife and I were driving back from Florida to Illinois and i stopped in Birmingham to pick up the head. Lee had been helpfull through the entire project with both advice and components.

I checked my phone, no calls or voice mails. It was still early, if i didn't hear from Lee by noon i would call again.

When i got to the hotel room on Friday night, i got the internet working and checked on the Oil filter adapter from Summit. The tracking information showed scheduled delivery for Monday. I called summit, they were no help and could not explain why the overnight shipment was taking 2 working days to arrive. They suggested i call UPS and maybe i culd pick it up at the distribution center because it showed the parts to be in Salt lake city. I called UPS and they told me that the distribution center was closed on Saturdays, and i would just have to wait until monday. This ment that we probably could not run the car until Tuesday. It was about a 4 hour round trip to Salt lake and depending what time UPS got to the hotel, it would probably be late in the day before we got the adapter.
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Re: The Road to Bonneville and back

Post by Plechtan »

My phone rang about 10:30, i had dozed off, it was my son, he was coming back to the truck. All the rookie drivers would drive the special in a regular vehicle to make sure they knew the lay of the land. The vehicles were lining up now, and as everybody went down the course the instructor would describe thing over the CB.

Bonneville is usually set up with 3 courses, the length of the courses depends on the condition of the salt. Some years they only have 2 courses. If they are able to have 3 courses, they are called the special cource, the short course and the long course. All rookies must start out on the special course. The special course and the short course are generally about 5 miles long. Timing starts at the begining of mile 2. Miles 2 and 3 are timed as well as the first 1/4 mile of mile two. If you exceed 175mph in the first 1/4 mile of mile 2 you then move to the long course. So basically you have a mile or two to get up to speed, run a flying mile and 2 miles to slow down. The long course can be as long as 10 or 11 miles, but this year it was only 7 miles. on the long course you can take your time from the second, thid fourth or fifth mile as your record time and again 2 miles to slow down.

All rookies that exceed 125mph need to get their 150mph license. to do thin you have to make 2 runs between 125 and 150 on the special course. Once you have the 150mph license, you can go for the 175 and so on.
The special course is as far away from the short cource and long course as possible. Those old timers don't want the rookies screwing up their racng.

Anyway we lined up and proceded down the course at about 30 mph. The naration was coming out of the CB which suprised me because we did not have an antenna on the truck. My Son usually has dual antennas coming from the toolbox in the bed. since we put the camper in the truck he had to remove the box and the antennas with it. We had brought an antenna with us but had not had a chance to mount it yet. To pass tech the tow vehicle has to have a working CB.
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Re: The Road to Bonneville and back

Post by Plechtan »

Buy the time we got back to the trailer it was about 11:30am. We started to set things up and get the truck out of the trailer. We still had some cleanup to do on the wiring and such, the rule book had a statement about Neatness and quality workmanship.

About 1:30 Lee Hurley called, he was looking for us and turns out he had just driven past . he was about 400 yards past us. he swung around and parked. Lee is not a small man, must be that good southern cooking, and he was in this intermeadiate sixe car ith 3 other men about the same size. After thry all piled out i suggested they get a larger car next time.

I intorduced my son to Lee and he inspected the car, he had some compliments and some suggestions. We had a little more conversation then he wished me luck. Lee was leaving Sunday Morning so he would not be able to see us run.

We put the car back into the trailer and headed back to the Hotel. Not much we could do without the oil filter adapter, plus i still was not fealing right.

The next morning we slept in, and headed out to the salt around 11am. We did a little work on the car, watched a couple of runs. By 3 o'clock i realized that i was not feeling any better and was probably fealing worse. I told my Wife and Son that we should probably go the the emergency room to see whats going on. we packed up and got into the truck. We went to "points of interist" on the GPS and put in hospials. The closest one was 95 miles away. We pushed "select" and were on our way.

Anybody who has ever been to an emergency room knows wha it is like, so i will spare you the description. After bout 2 hours, and a bunch of tests and a chest xray, the doctor came back into the room and said, " you have Penumona and Dehydration, we will have to admit you.
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Re: The Road to Bonneville and back

Post by Muad'Dib »

Yikes .. hope you start feeling better soon.
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Re: The Road to Bonneville and back

Post by Bodo »

I hope it's not too serious. Get better soon.
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Re: The Road to Bonneville and back

Post by amcinstaller »

2 hours? thats it? we brought in my daughter (19 months old) running a high fever that had been ongoing for two days and we waited 6 hours here!

feel better though, need to be tip top for the best time!! :cheers:
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