So I was real excited to get to the Buick shoot out at Reynolds Ga on Friday, gates opened at 9...left the house at 7 got there right at 9 and was hoping to make some passes at 10 am as I thought they would. Well turns out they did not start running until noon and go figure it was like 88 outside.
I was hoping to get some good tuning in and beat my e.t of 11.54 @ 116 on 19psi I did last year well it did not start good first couple of passes were way off so started playing with the tune after about 5 passes i had the car close to where it was back down to a 11.8 @ 119 the only problem is that it took 23psi to achieve that and the car seemed sluggish and slow to boost off the line.
My next pass i gave it another pound and degree since I had 116 in the tank and had been making clean passes with no knock I went again. This time the car still left the same kinda sluggish but once I got passed the tree it started to pull real hard and I though ok this is gonna be a good run! well just after I shifted into 2 the back end started to get mushy feeling....for a split second I thought I had broke an axle then before I knew it I had the car completely side ways pointed at the wall I was looking at the finish line through the drive side window....I then tried to throttle it straight and it came back hard the other way I was again pointed at the wall and now this time looking at the end of the track through the pass sine window. I did this again back and forth 2 more times trying to dodge the timing boxes in the center of the track and the walls on either side. During all of the back and forth the car sounded real bad so then i knew something in the engine not the rear let go.
I finally got her settled down and off to the left side of the track....got out and popped the hood to find the lower radiator hose blown in half. Once i got pulled off the track I started pulling plugs and sure enough I blew a head gasket which pressurized my cooling system and blew the rad hose.
I just pulled the engine apart today and found #5cyl blown out......I look on the bright side and say at least I am only fixing a bad gasket instead of lots of paint and body work.
I was hoping to get some good tuning in and beat my e.t of 11.54 @ 116 on 19psi I did last year well it did not start good first couple of passes were way off so started playing with the tune after about 5 passes i had the car close to where it was back down to a 11.8 @ 119 the only problem is that it took 23psi to achieve that and the car seemed sluggish and slow to boost off the line.
My next pass i gave it another pound and degree since I had 116 in the tank and had been making clean passes with no knock I went again. This time the car still left the same kinda sluggish but once I got passed the tree it started to pull real hard and I though ok this is gonna be a good run! well just after I shifted into 2 the back end started to get mushy feeling....for a split second I thought I had broke an axle then before I knew it I had the car completely side ways pointed at the wall I was looking at the finish line through the drive side window....I then tried to throttle it straight and it came back hard the other way I was again pointed at the wall and now this time looking at the end of the track through the pass sine window. I did this again back and forth 2 more times trying to dodge the timing boxes in the center of the track and the walls on either side. During all of the back and forth the car sounded real bad so then i knew something in the engine not the rear let go.
I finally got her settled down and off to the left side of the track....got out and popped the hood to find the lower radiator hose blown in half. Once i got pulled off the track I started pulling plugs and sure enough I blew a head gasket which pressurized my cooling system and blew the rad hose.
I just pulled the engine apart today and found #5cyl blown out......I look on the bright side and say at least I am only fixing a bad gasket instead of lots of paint and body work.
glad to hear you saved it and hopefully its a relatively cheap fix.
