- Joined
- Jan 21, 2007
- Messages
- 1,173
This past weekend I had one of the best times working on my vehicle. I spent the weekend building a 200 4R transmission I bought from one of our fellow forum members. I bought the trans in Ohio over a year ago and had it sent to North Carolina after I talked to Richard about working on it.
The build took several days of working past midnight every day and the time just flew by. The Trans was rebuilt using several tools either made or modified to help in the ease of assembly, and also to blueprint the assembly while being built. There were even laminated templates to set your parts so you could keep track of them. I was lucky enough to have a one on one personal build and this made things go a little quicker then working with up to six people that sometime attend the transmission class. But this allowed a break in the build to witness the wonderful madness that takes place almost every weekend at Richard’s place, which I will call Grand National Heaven.
First, one of Richard’s friends stopped by to shoot the breeze and he reviewed the Trans I was working on. Several minutes after he left, we got a phone call and his car broke down (alternator smoked) so we took the roll back and picked them up. Ironically he broke down next to an Auto Zone and they did not have alternation to fit his car. After returning to the shop Richard and Clint Atkins found that diode was burned out so they rebuilt and checked it out on one of his check fixtures. The alternator was found to be functioning properly. They put the alternator on the vehicle and off he went.
Sunday morning was simply amazing and several people came in to use the chassis dino to have their cars tuned by Cal Hartline. The first vehicle was a very nice 68 Firebird. There were several pulls made on the vehicle and the only interruption in the runs was when a belt alignment issue caused the belt to try and come off the front of the pulley and luckily it was quickly caught and corrected. This car made some awesome numbers and was very nicely done.
The second car was a GN that came in with a stock computer and left with a FAST system and tuned. The fun thing with this car is it was found to have a lagging fuel pump system for the performance the engine could make. Richard suggested we disconnect the fuel pump from the base vehicle wiring and add a little voltage to the pump using a large power supply. This worked and it only took a couple of pulls to get the vehicle tuned. The vehicle will need an upgrade to the fuel pump but besides that it is tuned and ready to go and go fast.
The third vehicle that was to be tested was an all out race car that was never run due to the failure of the boost controller …. I really wanted to see Bob Stanley’s car run on the dino. After all the testing and tuning Cal Hartline held an impromptu tech session on tunings with a FAST system that even I could understand.
This wonderful interruption on the trans build ended at approximately 6:00 PM and we went back and finished it up after dinner. We did have to dig the trans pan out of the dumpster after it was inadvertently thrown out
after a cleaning up in the shop. The pan was left draining in the trash can (our bad). The last pictures are of the trans being tested on another of Richard’s fixtures, an 87 engine set up to check transmission pressures on a running engine without putting it in a vehicle.
Wow what a weekend and what fun… I can’t wait to put the trans in my vehicle. All I need to do now is remove the original trans and put this one in ....I like removing and replacing in the same day. Thanks to Richard and all the people I met it was again one of the most enjoyable weekends I have had in many years and I know every vehicle that came over left in far better shape than when they came there. :biggrin:
The build took several days of working past midnight every day and the time just flew by. The Trans was rebuilt using several tools either made or modified to help in the ease of assembly, and also to blueprint the assembly while being built. There were even laminated templates to set your parts so you could keep track of them. I was lucky enough to have a one on one personal build and this made things go a little quicker then working with up to six people that sometime attend the transmission class. But this allowed a break in the build to witness the wonderful madness that takes place almost every weekend at Richard’s place, which I will call Grand National Heaven.
First, one of Richard’s friends stopped by to shoot the breeze and he reviewed the Trans I was working on. Several minutes after he left, we got a phone call and his car broke down (alternator smoked) so we took the roll back and picked them up. Ironically he broke down next to an Auto Zone and they did not have alternation to fit his car. After returning to the shop Richard and Clint Atkins found that diode was burned out so they rebuilt and checked it out on one of his check fixtures. The alternator was found to be functioning properly. They put the alternator on the vehicle and off he went.
Sunday morning was simply amazing and several people came in to use the chassis dino to have their cars tuned by Cal Hartline. The first vehicle was a very nice 68 Firebird. There were several pulls made on the vehicle and the only interruption in the runs was when a belt alignment issue caused the belt to try and come off the front of the pulley and luckily it was quickly caught and corrected. This car made some awesome numbers and was very nicely done.
The second car was a GN that came in with a stock computer and left with a FAST system and tuned. The fun thing with this car is it was found to have a lagging fuel pump system for the performance the engine could make. Richard suggested we disconnect the fuel pump from the base vehicle wiring and add a little voltage to the pump using a large power supply. This worked and it only took a couple of pulls to get the vehicle tuned. The vehicle will need an upgrade to the fuel pump but besides that it is tuned and ready to go and go fast.
The third vehicle that was to be tested was an all out race car that was never run due to the failure of the boost controller …. I really wanted to see Bob Stanley’s car run on the dino. After all the testing and tuning Cal Hartline held an impromptu tech session on tunings with a FAST system that even I could understand.
This wonderful interruption on the trans build ended at approximately 6:00 PM and we went back and finished it up after dinner. We did have to dig the trans pan out of the dumpster after it was inadvertently thrown out
after a cleaning up in the shop. The pan was left draining in the trash can (our bad). The last pictures are of the trans being tested on another of Richard’s fixtures, an 87 engine set up to check transmission pressures on a running engine without putting it in a vehicle. Wow what a weekend and what fun… I can’t wait to put the trans in my vehicle. All I need to do now is remove the original trans and put this one in ....I like removing and replacing in the same day. Thanks to Richard and all the people I met it was again one of the most enjoyable weekends I have had in many years and I know every vehicle that came over left in far better shape than when they came there. :biggrin:
