The Year of the Garage
Part I
The best car story I know happened to me. And it isn’t some long ago past glory glimpsed through the mists of time. It happened this past season, 2018. And it began with the year of the garage. I know, not a very promising start. You guys and gals are hot rodders, racers, gear heads, you’re into the scene, you’ll like this, if for no other reason than it didn’t happen to you.
My 1965 Pontiac GT0 has been a lot of things since we joined forces 33 years ago. Counting rebuilds, it has had 5 transmissions, 6 engines and 7 rear ends since I’ve owned it, everyone paid for with coin I didn’t have and bloody knuckles. Mine. Currently it is built as a late ‘60s–early ‘70s hotrod, running a Pontiac 455 engine, turbo 400 transmission and 12 bolt rear end with 3.73 gears. Motor, trans and rear end have all been breathed on. The motor is stock block, stock crank with factory iron 7k3 heads, a flat tappet hydraulic Crower cam, a Performer RPM manifold and either a Holley 780 vacuum secondary or a Holley 950 double pumper. It runs custom 4-2-1 headers and a custom exhaust system, both of my design. It is a street/strip car burning only pump gas. Its mission– run hard on the street, drive to the track, run harder there, and then drive home. The driving home part is important. I don’t own a trailer. The car drives wherever it goes, and, hopefully, gets me back to the garage–the one next to my house. In this role the car has done a stand up job– until a year ago. Wherein lies our tale.
Density altitude—DA– is the measurement of the density of the air compared to sea level. The denser the air the more molecules of oxygen are crammed in a given volume which means the motor breathing that denser air makes more power. This is based on barometric pressure and to a lesser degree humidity and temperature. The lower the DA, the harder the car runs. It is the same principle as doing wind sprints at 8000 ft or doing them at sea level. One is easier. Who cares about density altitude? A traditional drag race is a standing start through the1/4 mile, 1320 feet, measured in elapsed time, start to finish. Consider the increased performance between 8000 ft DA and sea level: a 14 second car at 8000 ft DA runs a 12.60 second elapsed time at sea level; a 12 second car posts a 10.80 e.t.; and a 10 second car lays down a 9.20.
I race in Morrison, CO, nestled in the foothills near Denver, at Bandimere Speedway, NHRA’s highest track at 5800 feet. I have never seen the air at Bandimere at 5800 ft. density altitude. A typical summer afternoon finds the air above 9000 ft. density altitude. In other words the air has the same density as if the track was 9000 plus ft high. At Bandimere racers talk a lot about whether the air is “good” or “bad.” Typically the DA gradually lowers as the day cools to 8500 feet, and then, maybe, to low 8000s in the evening. When it gets below 8000 feet people take notice. Below 7500 feet, you’re calling your buddies at home to get their car to the track, pronto. Below 7000 ft density altitude? Well it happens, but it is unkind to taunt the aging, such as me, with visions of an elapsed time that is all but unobtainable. ETs at Bandimere are occasionally sneered at by flatlanders as being slow. I mentioned this to my friend, and fellow racer, Whiplash.
“Oh, yeah? Bring their car up here and make a pass or two air 9400 feet. See how much they like it, racer boy of the plains.” It’s a touchy subject for Whiplash.
My current 455 has been a horse. It has powered the car for at least 15 years, perhaps more. I would be more accurate except for that aging thing I mentioned. It has been dead nuts reliable. Its best time was a few years back during a time trial against a Lamborghini which is a whole ‘nother story. Remind me to tell you some time. Car clicked an 11.79 at 114 MPH, short shifting the 2-3. The air was about 7000 ft DA.
The 455 short block was put together by a local builder specializing in circle track. A friend and I did the heads. It has been beat on and beat on, and still runs hard. Or did. From mid to end of the 2017 season, the car began losing power. The MPH at the track was off. Once it went soft at the top end. Other times it seemed …just off. But, sometimes, it seemed ok. It was a puzzle. About this same time the car developed, out of the blue, a psycho electrical problem. The headlights and the run side of the ignition became, somehow, joined at the hip. Turn the headlights on and the run side ignition came on. Start the car and the headlights came on. What the…what? While the car’s problems kept me up nights trying to sort them, both the power loss and the whacko electrical I learned to live with. Sorta.
. October 2017. I’m at a Bandimere test and tune night, at the top end of one pass, right before the lights, I glanced at the fuel pressure gauge. It is mounted outside the windshield, it is small, and hard to find at night at 110 MPH. But the glimpse I got sure looked like it was hovering at about 2 lbs instead of its normal 6-ish lbs. Both the fuel pump and the regulator were quality items but both were aging. I turned the regulator pressure up. It seemed to help. A few days later, at the next race, during competition, I am trying to stay ahead of this guy closing on me like a train and the car goes dead lean. I didn’t know what it was at first. With no warning, the motor started hammering and the car dramatically slowed. I got out of it and lost the race which is not unusual for me. Once upon a time I was an ok racer, but that’s been a long time ago. Now one and done is usually my evening. If I do get to the 2nd round, I never get to the 3rd. There are a lot of good racers out there and I am not one of them.
Back in the pits fuel pressure is fine, oil pressure is fine, but the car has a knock. I’m shook, unnerved by the car’s phantom power problems, the bizarro electrical, the complete zombie behavior of my formerly rock steady car. And now I’ve hurt the motor. I consult with Whiplash, who knows motors. The knock is connected to RPM and it’s pretty loud. We agree, this ain’t good. It’s about 35 miles to my house. I don’t want to drive 35 ft with this noise. I make the call, and call the wrecker. I load the trunk with all the junk I carry around and reinstall the street trim. I give Whiplash a hamburger I’ve been saving, he’s still in competition and I won’t be needing it.
“Star’ the car agai’,” Whiplash tells me with his mouth full. He listens a moment and swallows. “Leave it running. Come here.” He shows me where to put my hand near the firewall, which is easy since I don’t run a hood. The knock is a loose header bolt, I can feel the exhaust pulsing. The noise is an exhaust leak with an extra metallic clang. This is a simple fix and I can drive home. I hear the diesel rumble and look up to see the big flat bed wrecker turning into the pits. He’s a friend I’ve pulled away from his family on a Friday night. He’s driven some 40 miles to rescue me. I cannot tell him it’s a false alarm. I can feel my wallet lightening in my pocket. Between P.O.ed and philosophical, I choose philosophical. I’m out the money, but it’s hardly a disaster, just a little bump in the road. Little did I anticipate, just around the corner, the avalanche of failure looming over the car and me. Being towed home that night would be the best thing to happen to my car for the next year.
Whiplash wads up the greasy wrapper and sticks it in his pocket.“You got another hamburger?” he says. And then, like he can see into my future, “I’ll tell you what else is wrong with it.”
The Year of the Garage
Part II
The ride home on the back of the flatbed wrecker was just the beginning of the humiliation facing my 1965 GTO and me. I love to drag race. But it is not a frivolous pastime. To go to the track things have to fall in place. One, the car has to be working (that’s a Big One), I need the money, (about $100), my schedule has to be clear, and I have to feel up to it—my street-strip car kinda beats you up. It’s loud, it’s hard to steer, it smells like raw gas and exhaust. It’s got numerous air leaks around the doors and windows. It rattles and bumps down the road. Until the tires warm up, you’d swear they’re square. Old Pontiac rides like a wagon, and not a Catalina, more like a Conestoga. The manual drum brakes were barely adequate in 1965 with a mild factory 389 engine. Now with the muscular 455 and today’s high speed congested traffic, they are a white knuckle exercise in terror. You have to drive 3 or 4 cars ahead to give yourself room to slow or stop. They require hyper-alertness and significant leg strength both of which are tiring.
If your thrill fix runs to a healthy dose of risk taking, you could do worse than ride along with me in a rain storm on the freeway. The car wears its DOT race slicks on the road. These are race tires rated for highway use. Dry highway use. In the wet, 50 mph is about maxed because the DOTs break loose at the slightest hint of throttle and any faster they start to plane. Other drivers are flying by, inundating the antiquated one speed wipers with sheets of spray. I have the steering wheel in a death grip and when the brake lights ahead erupt in a smear of red through the rain streaked windshield, I frantically pump the brakes, checking both mirrors for a possible escape path, and try to gauge the slowing mass of metal ahead. Should I pass them on the shoulder or just put it in the ditch? Yeah, I know, I know, get some better brakes.
Even an evening race is an all day event. I need to figure out my food, prep the car, leave on time, about 2:30 p.m. Evening events are Wednesdays or Fridays and I can look forward to 45 minutes to an hour and a half of afternoon rush hour slow and go and coming to a complete standstill on I-70 to get to the track. If traffic ever does open up, the 3.73 rear end ratio and the short DOT tires make for a low cruising speed. In summer the car is overheating and by the time we’ve arrived so am I. Once there, I need to unload the car and prep it for competition. The race goes for hours. When I’m done, I need to reload the car and return it to street trim. Stop and get gas. And then drive it home. I will be lucky to get home by midnight, completely whipped. I am not whining here. I love it. My car is what I do for fun. But a day at the track is not the equivalent of dinner and a movie. Besides whose got money for dinner and a movie? I gotta buy tires.
On top of all this, Bandimere has to be open with an event I can participate in, and no rainout. The ride home on the flatbed signaled the end of my 2017 season. I was done for the year.
It seemed obvious the performance drop off was fuel delivery, but where? I am philosophically, not to mention financially, opposed to throwing money at something until it’s fixed. Buying a new one of whatever you think is broke and screwing it on the car, or worse, having someone else screw it on the car, is not the spirit of grassroots racing. “Check book hot rodding,” Whiplash calls it. I run a Mallory fuel pump and Mallory regulator, both have done yeoman’s duty for years. I started with the fuel pump which is mounted at the rear of the car just in front of the fuel tank. The Mallory 140 is a quality unit, delivers far more fuel than my engine requires, and can regulate pressure up to 12 lbs. However the pump regulator is poorly engineered and will leak if adjusted too often. I took the pump off the car and modified the pump regulator so it was no longer adjustable, but would permanently deliver the full 12 lbs to the main regulator. And it wouldn’t leak. I cleaned the geroter and cavity and reassembled the pump and reinstalled it under the car. That didn’t feel like enough work, so I replaced the fuel filter and blew out the lines, which might have damaged the regulator, so I rebuilt it. I checked the carburetor float levels. I went back to the fuel pump took it off the car and took it apart again. The fuel pump motor was dirty with years of dust from the brushes. The brushes themselves were worn to nubs. A new Mallory 140 from summit is $315-ish. Mallory provides new brushes for about $30. Brushes, that’s the way to go, I decided. .
In the middle of all this 2 tiny synapses in my brain finally find each other. Years ago I had modified my stock fuel tank with a baffle that allowed the custom 1/2” fuel pickup in the front of the tank to function with only a few gals of gas. On a stock 1965 GTO, and most other cars of the era, it is necessary to run about a half tank of gas to avoid uncovering the pickup during hard acceleration. Half a tank of gas adds needless weight to the car.. With the baffle installed I could run 2 or 3 gallons and never uncover the pickup during hard acceleration. Pretty trick, right? But now it’s bugging me. Could the baffle have come loose? Maybe that’s what’s causing fuel starvation. How could I check if the baffle was still welded in the tank? The brushes can wait. I drop the tank. As I am positioning the tank with one arm and supporting its weight in an awkward position with the other, I feel a pop and pain shoots through my right arm. I drop the tank with a thud on the concrete, grab my arm and writhe in agony under the car. It’s my rotator cuff I tore years ago and have nursed back to health. After about 20 minutes the pain subsides enough I can crawl from beneath the car and get shakily to my feet. I need to go in and lay down. But I have to know something first. With my arm clutched to my side, I insert a metal rod through the stock float–fuel pickup hatch and, through gritted teeth, bang on the baffle. The passenger’s side of the baffle is solid, the driver’s side twangy. That side has broken its weld. It would no longer hold a few gallons of gas under hard acceleration. Now what? Few are the shops willing to weld on a used gas tank. The baffle is loose but that does not explain all the fuel starvation. I still have one more task.
I call Whiplash.
Me: Is this a bad time?”
Whiplash: (obviously chewing) Nope.
I explained all I had done chasing the fuel problem.
Whiplash: Did you check the fuel pressure gauge? How do you know it’s giving you an accurate reading? Maybe everything is fine. Maybe you set the regulator too low but the gauge is reading high. The carb is starving but you won’t give it enough gas.
Me: Everything’s about food with you, isn’t?
Whiplash: I’ll hang this phone up right now.
Me: OK. OK. Sorry. What else?
Whiplash: You check the electrical?
Me: Electrical?
Whiplash: It’s an electric pump, ain’t it?
Me: But I got fuel pressure at the carburetor. The pump is working.
Whiplash: Maybe it’s not getting a full 12 volts under engine load or high RPM or high vehicle speed. Maybe it’s cutting out—pump’s getting juice, then not. Maybe it’s a loose connection or maybe that whole spaghetti factory you call a wiring harness is completely cooked.
Me: Again with the food.
Whiplash: I had some other ideas, but your hamburger debt just went way up.
And with that, Whiplash hangs up. You can’t talk to Whiplash when his fuel pressure is low…I mean when his blood sugar’s low. I find I cannot open a can of stew for my own supper. I crumble a handful of crackers in milk and give my arm the rest of the night off.
A few days later, my arm still wounded, I rig up a contraption to measure fuel pressure in parallel with the regulator and gauge. They read the same. This is good info. The fuel pump, the regulator and the gauge are all doing what they’re supposed to. I knew I had gas, did I have enough gas?
Fuel pressure is valuable information but only at high engine load. On carbureted engines fuel pressure at idle or cruise is useless information. There is never enough fuel demand by the engine to tax the fuel delivery system. So fuel pressure is irrelevant. Only at wide open throttle under high engine load, i.e. hard acceleration, does fuel pressure become paramount. It is critical the car has sufficient fuel pressure to keep up with engine demand. If the fuel pressure drops at WOT and high engine load, allowing the engine to go lean–say about the 1200 ft mark at the strip–the life expectancy of the motor is measured in seconds.
I have fuel pressure at idle in the garage. Means nothing. How do I measure at WOT? Only one way, take it out and run it. Bandimere is closed for the season, which means a back road or empty freeway. Which means the car gets buttoned up, comes off the jack stands, I re-instate my liability insurance I’ve suspended for the off-season, and we go for a ride. How to reinstall a gas tank with one arm I cannot imagine. The thought of all the extra work makes me a little sick.
And what about the electrical? Is the pump getting a full 12 volts all the time? What about my twilight zone electrical issues? Are they connected somehow to the fuel pump? Should I call Whiplash? Can my food budget take the hit? I hate this not knowing. Uncertainty heightens my insecurities. Geez my arm hurts.
