The Goal: Goal Exceeded-->10.60's<-- Naturally Aspirated on 93 oct pump gas, maintaining full daily use and as much as 21 MPG on the highway.
 
 

Nothing changed short of improveved weather and some fine tuning. The weather held a constant 59°, 69% humidity and 29.68"Hg absolute Barometric pressure through out the evening. The first pass spun yielding a 1.57 60ft and 10.74. This showed 10.6's were going to be easy. On the next pass I preloaded less and hooked for a 1.46 60ft, 6.746 1/8 and 10.64 1/4 I then followed that up with a 1.45 60ft, identical 6.746 1/8 and 10.67 1/4. In the final pass, I spun again to a 1.60 60ft and 10.85, but a new best trap of 127.94 MPH. My only complaint of the night was traction, Rockingham doesn't believe in using VHT on street nights so you have to run it soft out of the hole. I think I might just get some 10.5's when I run on a sea level track at MIR April 22nd, provided weather conditions are on my side.

Hoover may now be the fastest Naturally Aspirated LT1 Street car on the PLANET! The weather wasn't as good as last time when I was running 1/8ths, barometric pressure was 29.50" Hg, Humidity 70-73%, temp 67-70° depending on the time. Last time I was out there for 1/8ths we had a Bar of 29.80 which is pretty good at Rockingham and the temp was only about 60 later in the evening. At any rate the car was running good, I made 5 passes 10.872, 10.857, 10.834, 10.987(spun 1.60 60ft), 10.829. It seems to have solid 10.8's down and I never ran an 11 all night. The printer was down on my 10.82 run I got a hand written slip so I scanned my second best slip for backup. My MPH isn't where I was shooting for still. Most runs were 125.x MPH, but the run where I spun and got the 1.6 60ft I hit a best MPH of 127.31 MPH. So I guess the MPH is there, just need to find it back. My 1/8 traps(99.x MPH) and 60 fts were a little slower(ran 2 - 1.489's) than last trip out, that's just the weather conditions. In April Hoover will will be running at MIR, so I will get a shot at a sea level track.

It has been a busy winter. Hoover got a new set of pistons allowing for larger combustion chamber that further unshroud the valves, yet increased compression to 12.6:1. Also more intake manifold work, a standard volume oil pump, a fresh set of clutches in the transmission, MT ET Fronts skinnies, and 3.75 rear gears. Finally I completely removed the NOS. Hoover is now 100% Nitrous Free. I found the car to feel different and still need more runs to get used to it. It is pulling harder in the upper RPMs and the 3.75 gears bring the shifts on sooner. On almost every run I ran into the 7250 rev limiter before shifting. This was holding my traps back from there full potential. Only on the last run of the day did I get the shifts right demonstrated by the increase in trap speed. Naturally on that run I didn't hook and lost a tenth in the 60ft. In the old days I could practice my shift points away from the track, but these days the Nittos don't hold it down under 45 MPH. Within another trip to the track or so I should have it running as consistent as last year. But at any rate out of 5 runs, my slowest was a 6.96 and a quickest of 6.90. The result 6.90 and 102.3 MPH. Quickest ET and fastest Trap. That is 3.8MPH faster than Hoover has ever run the 1/8 before, full 1/4 miles should be 128-129 MPH. This was still done on 93 octane pump gas with a little tweaking to the timing map. I have to say it is great having the car back together again. I have been driving it to work everyday for 2 weeks now. The next outing will probably be March 4th and there should be full 1/4 mile runs.

I was out at Rockingham dragway for their Racers Appreciation Event this weekend There were no 1/4 mile classes at the event so all my runs were 1/8 mile runs. Well, in the third round I cut a .501 light. This gave me the bye run in the forth round, an opportunity to Juice IT!! It was running very rich as there was quite alot of black smoke. I definatly need to lean it some. I also didn't engage NOS until I was almost through the 60ft. The result 6.63 @ 106.09 MPH. For all you non 1/8 mile guys, that is the equivelent of a 10.2x second ET. With some tuning and sooner engagment it looks like a 10.10 or even 10.0 may be possable. Time will tell. On another note, in naturally aspirated trim Hoovers best of the day was 7.075 @ 98.44 MPH. The conditions were not as good as last time out, but this is a new best 1/8 mile trap speed. I think this new cam may be working out well.

Did just a little tweaking to the chip inorder to compensate for advancing the cam 3°. I found a little power in the 6500-7200 RPM zone. That helped to get just a little more out of it. I ran an 11.08, 11.07 and a best of 11.063 @ 123.40 MPH That 10 is getting so close, yet so far. This cam is working well, but I am trying to improve my current Camshaft profile. Just hope I don't slow it down.......Stay tuned.

Sept is here the summer time North Carolina 95+° Race track temperatures are ending. The X-Pipe is in. I am finally realizing some of the potential gains from the all the exhaust upgrades. Yesterday at Rockingham dragway in a temperature of 72°, Hoover was cracking 123 MPH. The last run of the night yielded the best launch, unfortunately due to an mistakingly early 2-3 shift the traps fell short. It does now stand as Hoovers best NA run though. My next upgrades will probaby include 3.73 gears and 1 7/8 inch primary headers. The cooler temps will probably get the last needed tenth of a second, but I really do want 10's consistently. On a side note, my CSI Electric water pump began leaking. I switched to a Meziere, it is a whole different pump. With a larger motor, a vastly improved impeller and a 2000 hr seal life, I highly recommend this pump over the CSI.

I got the Tri-Flow Exhaust after a month on order. This thing looked beautiful. Except for one detail, the resonator looks highly restrictive. It appears as though they use the resonator to tune the exhaust. When they were tuning this exhaust, they appear be focused on something a little closer to stock. The resonator drops to 2 1/2 inch pipe Then they used three baffles on each side. These baffles block approximately half of the 2 1/2" opening. I had little faith in getting any power improvement with this setup. When I contacted Tri-Flow regarding this matter they told me to give the system a try as it is. Well the results: on an average of 4 runs I gained .2 MPH. Best MPH down .03 MPH, basically there was no change from the stock exhaust. I think this is more of a credit to the stock pipes than discredit of Tri Flow. They are now constructing a 3" X Pipe to replace the Resonator.

On the brighter side at a local 1/8 mile track I got my best 60 ft ever a 1.537! Would you believe this was on my Nitto Drag radials? This track seems to keep the surface in top notch shape, next time I go there I will have to try the ET Streets, with that surface and the ET Streets I should be able to come out of the hole full bore with a 2500 RPM preload!

Hoover attended the EFI shootout at Rockingham Dragway today(5/22/99). Hoover's best time, running on only Exxon 93, No NOS, No Blower, was 11.16 @ 121.50 MPH. Finally beat that 120 down, actually every run of the day was over 120. This run had a 60ft time of the evening was 1.550. All the numbers are starting to come together now. Since the last visit to the track I changed valve springs, tighted the lash to .017 from .020, Added a Mono-Blade 1300 CFM throttle body and made a few new chip refinments. The new springs didn't get the RPMs up, I still limited to 7200 RPMs. It is really starting to look like a problem with the opti-spark eliminator. The exhaust didn't get here in time for the event. I am hoping to get atleast 2 tenths from the exhaust. That will get me my 10.9. What looked so far away is starting to look very close! Once I get that 10.9 I will have to try a NOS run to update the 10.88 NOS run that is begining to look rather weak compared to my new all motor runs.

Hoover ran at Rockingham Dragway last night(5/8/99). Hoover's best time, running on only Exxon 93, No NOS, No Blower, was 11.43 @ 119.95 MPH. Like that .95 MPH? couldn't give me the other .05 MPH, could it? My best 60ft time of the evening was 1.610, I would like to see that in the 1.5's. It seems to be running really good. This new cam idles and drives nicer than the ZZ-X. I am currently limited to 7200 RPMs. At 7200 it sounds like a rev limiter is engaging. This is forcing me to shift at 7100. I am still running the stock exhaust system on it, with Dynomax mufflers. The Tri-Flow exhaust system is next. I should be able to put that in before the EFI shootout on May 22. The next mods I am considering are advancing the cam to 107°, that should give me a little more torque out of the hole. But it is alot of work for a small change, so I am not sure yet.
Also, Gears, I am considering 3.92 gears. Currently, I am going through the traps at 5700 RPM, thats a long ways from peak hp. I shift into 3rd by the 1/8 mile, then spend the entire second half of the track working through the bottom of third gear.
One other consideration: A 1300 CFM Mono Blade Throttle body. I am getting about 1.5" of vacuum while at WOT over 5500 RPM.

Updated 10-1-98

        I have always owned a hot rod of some type or another since I was 17, but Hoover is my first Corvette. I first picked up Hoover on December 27 1996. He had only 18,000 miles on the Odometer and was in almost perfect condition. It didn’t take long before I had to start making him faster. By March with 24,000 miles on the clock, the cam was out. I was still thinking mild in these days, so I elected the ZZ-9 from TPIS. With the cam change I also added a K&N air filter, TPIS custom chip, DynoMax Mufflers, an adjustable Fuel pressure regulator and a 58-mm throttle body. The rear end got a new center section with 3.07 gears instead of the stock 2.59’s and I ported the intake manifold. Now, Hoover felt much more lively. My first trip to the track was Corvette Day at New England dragway, NH on June 28. It was over 90&deg;, but Hoover managed a best time for the day of 13.4 @ 105.1. I was please with this, but never satisfied. It seemed that Hoover’s weakest points were, his out of the hole torque and exhaust always needs to breath free. At this time it was still difficult to locate full-length headers for an LT1. I didn’t want to settle for the shorties, all my brothers and friends had L98’s with full-length headers and I couldn’t let them have that advantage. I decided to buy full-length Hooker Super Competition headers for an L98 and make them fit. It was not a very complicated procedure, I just had to adapt the EGR and dimple the tubes for the motor mount bolts. I then got an SLP torque converter from Summit Racing. This Converter let my combination leave the line at about 2500 Rpm’s, a big improvement over the stock 1650.
         We all attended Corvette Day at Lebanon Valley Dragway near Albany, NY. So I got the opportunity to try my new additions. Between the headers and the torque Hoover felt much snappier.  Another hot July day, but Hoover managed a new best of 13.159. This was quick enough to beat brother’s Super Rammed 89 who immediately bough Nitrous Oxide. Naturally, I had to counter with my own Nitrous system, a wet plate system from NOS. Back to the track. This time Hoover cracked a 12.24 @ 114. That NOS sure works good! Naturally both my brother and myself weren’t, and never expect to be, happy. We had true daily drivers that got over 20 miles to the gallon ran low 12’s with out that much money invested. The next step for us both was a set of AFR heads and rockers. Unfortunately by the time we got them back together it was so late in the season that we never got them back to the track.

 As spring approached I was so anxious to try my new combination, I was at Englishtown on the first Wednesday night they were open. It was cold, so power was up and traction sucked. Apparently there were a lot of impatient people, it was 45&deg; yet I could only get 3 runs in the whole night. First run out, 12.72 @ 110 MPH, Traction was bad, 2.0 60ft. I was still running on last years GSC’s and at 45&deg; that rubber was stone hard. The next run I babied the throttle a little more, I managed a 1.96 60ft which led to a 12.68 @ 109 MPH. On the third run, I spun more again and ran another 12.7. After this outing, I decided I was going to have to try tires that hooked a little better. I drive my car too much (500-700 mile a week) to use any softer tires on a regular basis. I like to feel that as I am driving to work, my car runs as fast as when I am at the track, but it was getting hard to be consistent at all. So, I decided to try some BFG Drag radials. These hooked hard with my setup at that time. Traction was no longer a problem. For some reason Corvette day at Lebanon Valley was early in 98. It was early May. At this event I ran with NOS. First pass 11.71 @ 121 MPH, second run was 11.518 @ 119 MPH with a 1.70 60 ft. I was happy with my performance now, but I already had the next upgrade underway. I decided that to fully utilize the flow potential of my new heads I needed either more cubes or had to let it spin more. A new cam sounded cheaper and easier than a short block did. I wanted to go to a mechanical cam, I ordered the Comp Cams 236/242 from Lingenfelter but they sent me one for an old style block. When I called them, they told me to use an old-style timing set. Obviously this won’t work if you believe in having something turn your water pump and distributor. I sent it back, and called Comp Cams direct, they wanted 3 weeks to make one. I didn’t have the patients, god for bid I had to drive my car as it was for a couple weeks. Next, I tried TPIS. Their 241/241 sounded a little bigger than I wanted to go, so I though maybe they could get me something with only 236&deg; on the intake. Chris said nope, and then talked me into trying the new ZZ-X. I said what the hell, and ordered it! This was only the beginning of a long journey.

         The first Saturday after I got the cam, I popped it apart and installed as one day operation. I forgot to bring my dial indicator and degree wheel with me so, I skipped out on the degreeing part. I have degreed several cams before and they were always within 2 degrees or so. Bad Idea! I had it all together, started it up. I hope I can get this Idle a little better. It was idling with very low vacuum, about 6". This was causing it to ran very rich at an Idle and would foul plugs. As I test drove it. He didn’t have quite the torque he used to, but as the revs picked up it was rocking! I was thinking, "now if I just had the cubes to help recoup some torque".  It wasn’t long before, my brother came up along side me on the highway and hammered it. I was on it immediately. He was pulling on me, shit! At about 6300 RPM’s, BOOM, trail of smoke! It looked cool but, Damn! A piston exploded, I mean there wasn’t one piece of this piston bigger than a cubic centimeter! Pieces of piston were pushed back up into the intake manifold, then sucked into other cylinders, what a mess! When I pulled the heads off you could see that the intake valves were just hitting the pistons. It looks like a clay test would have been a definite good idea here. That was May 28, I figured now it would take at least three weeks to get him back together with a stroker motor. That was definitely an optimistic piece of thinking.
             I knew that almost everyone that builds a stroker motor, uses a 3.75" 400 crank to build a 383. I also knew that if I had an L98 as my brothers did, I would go straight to a 400 block. I could not put a fortune into a new motor that allowed other to have a competitive advantage. I decided to use a 3 7/8 stroke, 4.060" bore and 6" rods to try and keep the rod to stroke ratio reasonable, so I could still rev. This gave me 401 cubic inches! That would be enough that, if properly assembled, should defend against anyone. This was a great Idea, but no one made a piston to do the job. That meant custom pistons. I called many piston manufacturers and the fastest was Ross Piston. They said they could have them done in three weeks. They would be reverse domed forged pistons. The reverse dome design, left a nice tight quench of only .045". This meant that 11.5:1 compression shouldn't be a problem.

Each day of summer would pass as I still had no Corvette to drive. This is where I kept getting lots of new toys. Each day that I got too annoyed at the thought of no Corvette, I would order more parts. I bought things like a bottle heater for my NOS, a Cold air induction, a Vigilante converter…. I probably would have never let myself buy so much junk if the car worked, but this was kind of a therapy. I decided that I ought to freshen up my dead stock transmission before putting in the new engine. My youngest brother Dan of Danstrans in Troy, NY handled that. Funny, every time I go to the race track, there seems to be someone telling me that their 13 second car is too powerful for a 700R4. Yet, mine shifts in an instant during 11 and even 10 second passes.

Now finding a machine shop was the next problem. After leaving all my parts at two different machine shops for two weeks each they would concede that the job was beyond them. I have found that machine shops are dangerous. They can really screw up your perfectly good parts. I was really beginning to worry that I would never get this thing back together. I was then lucky enough to find Larry at Pro Motion engines in East Hanover, NJ. When I spoke to him he already knew what I was looking to do. This is the first machine shop that I have ever come away from with no regrets, I was confident that the job was done right and highly recommend him to anyone in the NJ area. Now that I finally had all my parts back and machined I was finally ready to put Hoover back together again.

That Friday night I was in the garage checking clearances and installing pistons until 5 AM. I got up Saturday and finished the long block, both degreeing the cam and clay testing this time. Sunday was the big day, I had two of my brothers there to help put the new motor back in. By 9:00 he was ready to fire. He smoked at first, then after a couple good blasts to seat the rings, all clean. I was ready to drive him to work in NJ from Albany, NY the next day. Originally, my target date was the 4^th of July, It was now August, I never got to drive Hoover through the whole month of June and July. My new target date of Aug 8(Corvette Day at Englishtown) was quickly approaching. But, that still wasn't meant to be. A strange new problem, my distributor was self-destructing. I replaced it with a new one, and same result. Apparently the distributor drive shaft was walking out of the cam and ramming the rotor through the cap. The day of Englishtown Hoover was running like hell. I wasn't even going to run him, but I finally decided I may as well go down the track for the hell of it. I was truly shocked when I got a 12.0 time slip. Hoover, was missing really bad by third gear.
I was done screwing with the Opti-spark, and ordered the Opti-spark eliminator. Now, Hoover was running much better. I needed to head back to the track.

A nice cool Wednesday night, what more could I ask for? I headed down to Englishtown alone, I couldn't wait to find out where Hoover stood. Usually when ever I go through tech, they hardly even look at the car, but for some reason this time, maybe because of the ZZ-X idle kept telling me "Make sure you keep it over 12.0". Now, I knew I was going to have problems. I figured, what can they do to me, hopefully I am fast enough piss them off. The track didn't seem to be in the best shape for Hookup. When I went to launch I walked it out real slow, got the nose up and laid into it. I had to run very soft on the throttle but it felt like a decent launch none the less. I let the transmission take care of the 1-2 shift at ~6700 RPM, then I shifted the 2-3 myself at 6500. When I pulled up to the booth and they handed me a time slip with an 11.72 @ 117 MPH with a 1.72 60ft I was ecstatic. I knew that I would be able to tune it to better, but didn't even want to try improving on it now. This was only 2 tenths behind my best previous NOS run. Nobody came around to bother me. Apparently they were going to let me get away with it. Next run, I decided to give the juice a try. On the launch, I babied it once again, but once I got down the tires couldn't quite hold on. They didn't go completely up in smoke, as the BFG Drag Radial do, though. The transmission took care of the 1-2 again. For the 2-3 the rapid acceleration had my timing off and I shifted late ~ 7000 RPM's. As I went through the traps I glanced down at the speedometer and saw 133 MPH! I knew this run wasn't perfect but it felt like the fastest run I ever made. I thought I had a good shoot at getting my 10 second slip. I pulled up to the booth, They said "They want to see you in the tower", I'm like "can I get my slip?", they replied "No, you are in trouble.". I went up to the tower and I don't even know what he was grumping about, something about not being able to do that without any safety equipment. I was just looking down at my slip, 11.04 @ 128.7 MPH. Fast perhaps, but still not my 10 and they weren't going to let me try again tonight.

To be continued when I get the chance...

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