Black Pig Too

[brock]

   Sometime about this point we dropped the short motor back in the frame rails, re connected the torque converter and all those other little bits and I remounted the starter and shimmed it to rights. We threw some oil into the valley, primed the pump, connected a spare battery, as the Optima was on charge, and pressed the button, it turns !
   Having done all that and found nothing amiss we went through the heads in a similar fashion, clock the valve stems, check the guides, roll the push rods, etc. After a bit of a wash and spruce up the heads themselves were checked over and assembled, spring heights, guide plate alignment, standards torqued, then assembled onto the block and pulled down in steps to maximum torque. Try the starter again, all still good. Finally it got to the stage that there wasn't anything left to measure or to bolt on and other than three broken collets and a shagged set of valve guide oil seals, all of which we changed, I can't find anything that should be any different.   

[brock]

   After all that the only thing left to do was try it. Reconnect the power and press the button, nothing ! The all conquering mighty Red Top has failed. The Big Fella took a quick trip across the yard to the curly headed pony boy and returned with a brand new battery (thank you Paul ), tried it and it worked, turned over nice. So we've had a bit of a frantic evening making an adaptor to the battery housing and all hands on deck to finish assembling the car and fire it, success is ours, so far.
   The car is now loaded, the power shortage problem on the truck may well be sorted with the Big fella making a change to the wiring on the split charging system, the genny is still playing about but we have a second one on board, another five hours and we are off to try it all out , five hours ! bugger, I'm off

[TwistedPatience]

So it was the battery after all eh! Bugger.

[Manky Monkey]

  Good luck chaps!
If you're at a loose end this weekend, the Pig Posse are appearing at a drag track near you -if you live in Warwickshire. They'll be at Shakespeare County Raceway, Stratford on Avon all weekend.
Go say Hello & cheer 'em on.

[brock]

   ....or not of course. Worked on it 'till well gone quite late Friday, left almost quite early Saturday, arrived in the middle of a sand storm, set up (4 anchor bolts in each foot of the canopy rather than one in each corner), got scruted, paid up for the weekend, waited 'till it died down a bit, ran one crappy mid eleven at a hundred and twenty something, broke the gear box again and trashed the ignition. Two weeks and we'll try again. I was all for beating it with a stick but have been talked into trying a carrot first, we have bought a brand new MSD start to finish ignition system for it and due to the unparalleled generosity of some fellow racers have come home with a different carb to try and buy if it works, unbelievable, take it, try it, pay us when we see you again, or let us have it back, thanks Ian, really, really appreciate it.
   On the up side it looked like quite an interesting meet , a fair few sprint bikes about, a lot of "fast" Fords and some FAST Fords, the HRG series reaching it's climax saw a lot of quick street rods and machines and That Jeep, now sporting a fifty cal. on top of the cage !, mental.
   A big thankyou to our LPWM for all of it, we'll see you in a couple of weeks
The truck behaved itself, water light and power all weekend, minor failure on the blown air heating system, probably a blocked filter, same as had us stopping on the way home for five minutes, the glories if travelling in a mobile workshop, tools, consumables, compressed air, washed and back on the road in no time.

   A few of the many bikes..........     

[Manky Monkey]

I admire your tenacity bro -or your team's powers of persuasion. Id've gone with the stick idea meself.

[tbone]

Any update? that two weeks mentioned is almost upon us.

[Manky Monkey]

In the absence of a full report from Team Pig, (hint, hint), this is the snippet of race info Brock emailed me:

"the car's all apart again while we work through the valve gear. There's a timing problem that I need to get to the bottom of. We did get it back to the 130s though, high gear only and a big miss-fire".

He also sent me a link to one of the press photographer's sites, with a great shot of Black Pig Too. Protected by anti copy software, so go look at it here:

http://peterdonaldson5305.fotopic.net/p61658097.html

[brock]

    Hmmm, not a great deal to report really, we went, we set up and we tried. All was not well with the Black Thing, a persistant misfire and timing issues that made no sense. We also broke one of the exhausts at the manifold which didn't help. The brand new Red Top is a slightly different size to the old one and will not fit the box and a suspect tyre valve let the left slick down. All of that and three less than special runs saw the weekend done, car's back in the shed, one last chance this year and we're trying to be there.
   People having more success than us were Paul and Emma, the Mustang, Dutton and Honda owning fella and the lovely Emma brought the Dutton and old Honda 600 to the track and joined us for the weekend. They pretty much got their moneys worth in paper alone, with about forteen thousand timing tickets  (give or take a few) to show for their efforts. Neither the car nor the bike disgraced itself and both drivers seemed to take to it all fairly quickly and as a bonus we got to tow the Black Bastard about with their truck.
    As a weekend, not an absolute disaster but not our finest.

[brock]

   The car is now fully stripped again, another broken collet in the valve gear was pretty much all the visible damage.
    The new MSD box and coil is fitted, since our old original unit was built they have made the boxes bigger, this meant a new sub frame to carry it. The new matching coil is also a different pattern to the old Mallory one and so needed the same treatment. Fitting the leads brought up another small problem, different style of terminals ! Our good friend Ed, one of the drivers of the Ramraider dragster and purveyor of finest racing consumables and safety equipment, made a special trip up to see us bringing a new set of leads, cheers mate. I have stripped the new MSD dizzy and taken out all of the advance springs and weights and locked it out, as long as it starts we don't much care what it is doing below two and a half grand and we want full advance as soon as the throttle is hit, so, less complex and hopefully fewer potential problems, we'll see.

[brock]

   With the heads off and stripped a thorough clean up was in order, everything was covered in black oily soot, thinners, TFR, Scotchbrite and a bit of effort sorted that. With the valves back in the heads and plugs installed, the chambers were filled with thinners, no leaks, that's a good thing. Paul had been keeping on and on and on and on about lapping the valves, something I wasn't keen on with the machine work we had on the heads. As they held fluid without the springs installed and the guide section clocked true I was happy with them, but he did keep on and on and on and on, so I took them round to see him. he fired up his magic electric lapping tool and went to work, all was well until No. three inlet, a varying thickness of line showed all was not as well as I had thought. Spinning the valve in the lathe showed a wobble on the head. A few phone calls had access to Al's shed next door and a valve facing machine, only then did it become apparent just how wrong I had been, it needed what might be called a fair bit of cutting to get a usable face. No. four inlet was the same. Luckily he had kept on and on and on about it and then gave up several hours of his time to put them right, thank you mate, I appreciate it.

[brock]

   After the pistons had been cleaned we started the reassembly using full copper head gaskets, just like a propper race car, another first class purchase from Ed, dsracewear.com for those that might need his services.

[brock]

   The exhausts are on the bench all cleaned and ready to be welded and the rest of the motor is back together, the weekend is looking feasable. The missfire ? could it be that on the last rebuild some clown had installed the cam one tooth advanced ? one of the downsides of doing it all yourself is that there is seldom someone else to direct withering scorn at, shame really. 

[ByzMax]

Glad you are getting it sorted. Must be so frustrating but will be worh it in the end i'm sure.

I don't really post much in this thread but am a regular and avid reader.

Good luck at the weekend. 

[VALLEYSBOY]

stick with it mucka you've come so far with this build