Potomac-Greg

Meh. Just use the gas pedal half as much.

originalmotorhead

Personally, I think Alan needs to get a set of old tires and mount em on the rear of his car, then go to a large parking lot and make some video of him roasting them off, or power sliding/drifting it in a figure 9 pattern !

Have fun at the track guys.
Above all, keep the rubber on the paved stuff ! (that includes curbing)

Tom

krystar

or put a wood block underneath the gas pedal heheh. analog governor :P

SamGrant951

Awesome!

vt951

Overall, it was a **** poor track weekend. But first I'll give you the good news.

The car is a rocket, but remains extremely composed and neutral at the limiit. I mean, full throttle out of corners and the thing just plants and goes. It's actually a lot faster than it feels... sneaky fast. I hit 140 (indicated) on the back straight without really pushing it, and letting off way early to brake. Which brings me to the brakes... manual brakes suck. PERIOD. It was absolutely scary how hard I had to mash the pedal to haul the car down for turn 7. I will be looking into some sort of boosted brake or dual MC setup before I go back to the track in this car.

So, the bad news...

I almost finished my first 30 minute session, I'm coming into turn 7 at the end of the back straight, and blammo. The clutch pedal goes to the floor, and the rear end is thrown into gear and shakes violently. I coasted through "madness" (turn 8) trying to shift, but the clutch wouldn't release. So, I pulled off track and shut it off. Got it into 1st gear and started it up and drove all the way back to the paddock in 1st (couldn't pull it out for some reason).

I got underneath it and pulled the lower bell housing cover (it's a 2 piece unit from a C5 vette), and couldn't see anything wrong. Sam pushed in the clutch pedal to the floor and it only moved the throwout bearing 3/8", apparently not enough to release the clutch. The pedal felt very light, like there was a bunch of air in the lines. So, we tried and tried and tried for a whole day to bleed that sucker. It never got any better. Many thanks to Sam and JonH for all your help working on the car in the cold rain!

So, I was able to drive the car home about 2-1/2 hrs to Cincinnati, by shifting without the clutch. About an hour from home, the car started vibrating like crazy at any speed above 63 MPH. I called Tom Egan and he said it sounds like something on the clutch or pressure plate has either broken or come loose. Well, he was right... I just got home and jacked it up and pulled the lower bell housing cover again, this time with a good flashlight in hand I could now see the carnage (probably much worse than last time I looked at the track). Big chunks of clutch disk are missing, rivets are torn out and bent, some of the pressure plate "teeth" look like they are bent (not sure if they're supposed to look like that or no).

The moral of the story is: don't use the regular organic dodge truck clutch disk. There may be a high performance dodge truck disk that works better, but I'm going to order a SPEC clutch and pressure plate for my car next.

Sam took a few pics of me out there in my only session, so hopefully he'll post them here. The only pics I have now are of the carnage.

SamGrant951

Pics..sorry they arent that great, I only took pics for a few minutes.











And one for Jon:

vt951

When I went through tech, they told me I had to do a big burnout in order to pass. I passed with flying colors.

What's a figure 9?

vt951

Ah, thanks Sam. The "finger" pic was brought on by my 56th attempt at bleeding the clutch; nothing personal.

vt951

I'm kicking myself for not taking a video of my 1st (and only) session. There was a Ferrari 458 Italia in my run group and I was following him for a while until my clutch blew up. What an awesome machine that was. Also an 800 hp GTR and an Exige S were out there. And a 924S track machine, very well driven by Jon H. And a 944S race car in the pic above; don't know who the driver was but he was really fast in the corners.

968ls1

Alan,
The uneven pressure plate finger height is due to pieces of the clutch disc leaving the scene. The off the shelf Mopar disc got too hot for the soft brass rivets holding the lining to the hub and resulted in the lining chunking off. The Spec units are bonded and rivited and will not come apart. Let me know when you need the clutch/PP and I will get you hooked up. At least you got a taste of the LS1 and I am sure you will be back on track soon.
Tom

luftpirate

Sorry to hear the bad news. With great horse power comes broken drive trains. Is pulling the motor a difficult job?

944CS

Let me tell you, nothing will give you the feel of power brakes, even a Tilton dual MC setup....
I drove an '80's Ferrari 308 that switched to 993 TT Brembo's and rotors all around, with Pagid RS 29's in front and RS 19's in the rear, and a Tilton dual MC....still needed a lot of effort to get the thing slowed. Every part of that setup was done correctly, but that's the nature of non power brakes in heavier cars

arthropraxis

Did you ever drive it on the street? If so, how were the brakes?

JonH

Glad you made it home at least, what a crazy weekend. You car sounded incredible though. I was really impressed how nice your conversion looks, absolutely factory looking work! Get that clutch fig. out and you will own the track.

vt951

Oh, the motor is staying where it is. I'll be pulling the tranny and torque tube to fix the clutch. Tranny needs some work anyway, so it's no big deal.

I think the drivetrain should hold up well after I put in the Spec clutch. The turbo S tranny seems to handle the power fine. It had some issues when I bought it, but I just threw it in the car anyway figuring I would work on that this winter.