jt1

That is the dreaded "THREE RED X" transmission. It is to be avoided at all costs. Give it to your worst enemy. Or mount it on a Scud and fire it at Saddam. Just joking, I can't see it. Maybe someone else can. John

Pete, I agree fully. Some people seem to think Bush wants to take over Irag and give it to Haliburton, and I don't think that's the case at all. The point is that Saddam is a rogue leader with ill intent towards the US, and significant financial resources. He cannot be allowed to exercise those ill intents. I did not mean to discredit Mike's post; I agree with it 100%. I wish we could come up with a cheap fuel we could produce right here in the US that would work in our existing powerplants. Then the camel jockeys could go back to being camel jockeys again. John

A wannabe politican here in NC, who can't get himself elected, writes a syndicated newspaper column. He's normally a little liberal for my taste, but a recent column about the OIL issue was right on IMO. I can't quote him verbatim, but this is the gist of it. This war is all about OIL. But not for the reasons a lot of people think. If you want to be a military power, you must first be an economic power. Military hardware is very expensive, and most jerkoff dictators who want to do a lot of damage can't afford to do much. But because of Irag's OIL, this gives Saddam the economic means to acquire weapons of mass destruction, either buying them or building them. He has proven that he is willing to use all the weapons he can acquire to achieve his goals, one of them being the downfall of the US. The OIL gives him the money to acquire WMD, and eventually he will. It will then be only a matter of time until he uses them against the US. So it is about OIL, or more correctly, using the economic power of OIL in an irresponsible manner. Until a government is in place in Irag to use that power of OIL in a sensible manner, we are in danger. I thought that was a little different perspective on the OIL issue, and a good one. John

Mike, that was a fine job. Well spoken. John

That sounds like a great buildup, Mike, and a bargain too, even better. What kind of cam/heads/intake/carb are you going to put on that? Can we expect to see a big cloud of tire smoke rise over Fredricksburg????? John

Whyte Dude, there was a LT1 Z for sale in the Atlanta area about a month ago. I saw it on ebag or zcar.com one, don't remember which. You might search and see if it's still available. John

Is this going to happen? I'd buy a CF dash. John

Can you put a gauge on it somehow and see how much pressure it's building? That would determine whether it's a pressure problem or casting mismatch. Question would then be how much is too much? I don't know, but would guess over 2-3 psi is excessive. John

Start with the basics. Is it getting gas? With the air cleaner off, pull the throttle lever on the carb wide open and see if gas is coming out of the squirters. If not, fuel filter, fuel pump, gas line, carb, and tank all need checked. If it's squirting gas, pull a plug, ground it and see if it's firing. If not, check out the ignition system. If it's firing, check the timing to see if it's within range, say 10-15 deg btdc. If the timing looks OK, make sure the dist isn't 1/2 round out of time. Get # 1 to TDC with both valves closed, look to see if the rotor is pointing towards the terminal #1 wire is attached to. Next would be a compression check, then a timing chain check. Was it running when parked? If so, it's likely fuel related. If not, it could be anywhere, just have to start eliminating stuff and narrow it down. John

Design products doesn't have a website I know of, but their address is: Design Products/DP Racing 5462 Oceanus Drive, Unit E Huntington Beach CA 92649 714 892 1513 dpracing@concentric.net It's run by Don Oldenburg and his wife. Ive been told Don used to work for Tilton. You can't really use all these brakes on the street. When you open track the car is when they really shine. I run a lot at CMP, a track that is very hard on brakes, and have never had any fade problems. A lot of people say " about halfway thru the run my brake pedal started getting soft", and this is people with upgraded systems. Repeated hard stops is where the big brakes do there best work. You can see a pic of my fronts here: http://www.hybridz.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7898 Hope this helps, John

I'm about 99% sure that the Arizona Z setup uses Superlites on the front and Dynalite duals (4 piston total) on the rear. It is a very good setup, if pricey. If the setup you're looking at has Superlites on the front and Dynalite singles (2 piston total), it may be made by Design Products Racing. That's the way my car is setup and where the kit came from. John

While the rattle is happening, try holding the gas steady and feathering in the brakes. If the tune changes as you ease into the brakes, I'd look at the u-joints and the flange bolts(both ends) very carefully. John

High perf has no special meaning I know of. A lot of 2 bolts and oval port heads have that on them. It defintely could have a forged crank, but you know, the only way to tell for sure......... John

All the 4 bolt BBC's I've seen have the two bosses cast above the oil filter where oil lines can be attached. Now, one thing for sure, I haven't seen them all. Unless it's out of a vette, camaro, or ton truck, it's PROBABLY a two bolt, but you can never be sure with GM until you drop the pan and look. If you're going with a real strong buildup, a two bolt with aftermarket caps is desirable anyway. If you're looking for 600 hp or less, a two bolt with studs is fine anyway. I wouldn't worry about the 4 bolt too much. John

There's a real neat compression calculator on KB's site that let's you play with gasket thickness, deck height, head cc, etc, without doing all the math longhand. That looks to me like a little too much compression for pump gas, you might want to check on some different pistons. http://www.kb-silvolite.com/calc.phtml#comp1 John

I was getting my car ready for an OT event at Roebling this past weekend, and decided to check the corner weights. I had previously adjusted the coilovers by *ahem* visual ride height estimation, and suspected the weights were not optimum. I borrowed a set of wheel scales from one of my circle track buddies and checked it out. Sure enough, the weights were: LF 595 RF 730 LR 658 RR 547 Total 2529 After a bunch of adjusting, I got: LF 656 RF 667 LR 598 RR 610 With my big butt in the seat, this yields: LF 716 RF 664 LR 717 RR 642 Total 2739 And the following percentages: F 50.38 R 49.62 LS 52.31 RS 47.69 LF-RR 49.58 RF-LR 50.42 All my chassis setup experience is with circle track stuff, I've just got into the OT thing in the last year or so. So, this brings up the question of what is best for an OT car? My goal was to get everything as even as possible, but is that optimum? I'm not far enough along to worry about getting the best setup for certain tracks, just want something for general usage at OT events. The rest of the setup is 250 # springs on all four corners, tokico 5-ways in the middle position, 24mm front bar, no rear bar, tires are 225/50-15 Yoko AVSI's, run at 38 psi. The above weights were with 3/8- 1/2 tank of gas, which is what I usually start a run with, burning 4- 4 1/2 gals in a 30 min run. The car has a light push on entry and in the center of the turns, rotating easily with the throttle on exit. What do I need to do to improve? Thoughts, comments & observations? John

Congratulations!!!! Your journey has just begun............ Enjoy the ride. John

I know Ram makes an aluminum one, and probably a steel one.

Joke, fellows, it's just a joke. That has been around a while, I ran up on it and decided to throw it up for the heck of it. Now if I could photoshop in a pic of my car going by...... John

Got her tuned pretty good! John

Well come on, man, let's see some pics! Of the sheetrock I mean. John

Mike, I don't live in the Boone area, just pretty familiar with it, some friends have a summer house there and we sponge every chance we get. If I wanted to move to the NC mountains, I'd get away from Boone a little bit just because of the above crap. I can't believe he bought a house for $140,000, property values have really soared in the Boone/Blowing Rock area. I don't know about the rainy part, I never thought it rained any more there than the rest of western NC. I live about a 2 hr drive south of Boone, right at the border of the piedmont and foothills. Nice place to live, but very economically depressed right now. Rutherford Co. has the second highest unemployment rate in the state, a lot of manufacturing jobs have gone south and ANY job is hard to find. If you want to come check the area out, let me know and I'll give you a guided tour and a good meal! One benefit- my closest neighbor is over 1/4 mile away and likes hot rods, even if he is a mustang guy! John

I have the air gap and love it. Good torque down low, pulls to over 6000 easily, no hood problems with JTR mounts and 1 1/2" drop base air cleaner. It is cold natured in cold weathter. I open track my car, so the mid range is important to me. I haven't tried the Vic jr, but my experience with other single planes is that they really hurt the low end till you hit about 4K. Single plane would likely be the ticket for a high stall drag car. John

130 sounds reasonable to me. It will improve with break in. John

That's great. As a western NC native, I can assure you that a lot of the people in the Boone area are very, shall we say,..... different. Most of the different one's have moved here from somewhere else and are determined to make their own stamp on NC. Boone has a maze of regulations on just about anything you can think of. I like this guy's style and would like to hear the outcome of his battle with the POA. John