What happens in a tear down...

Here, I will try to give you a sense of what happens in an NHRA tear down. We have now been "torn down" three times in total, and it appears pretty obvious that there is no typical tear down.

 

First off, the name implies that someone tears you down. That couldn't be any more wrong, as they tell what they want, and you tear it down. So, you either take teh car to them, along with your tools, or they come to you. This depends on the Race Schedule, the Division, and the Event itself.

 

In Charlotte, they selected the Class winners, and told us to bring our cars to the tech area, and the only thing that we had to take off of the car, was the Throttle Body. They also measured our wheelbase, and body height.

 

In Chicago, they came to our pit area, had us pull a head, measured bore, stoke, piston dome height, combustion chamber size,  cam lift, valve sizes, intake and exhaust plenum sizes, wheelbase, and car height.

 

In Las Vegas, it was very similar to Chicago, excpt for two things; One, they invited us to to bring the car to the Tech area for tear down. And, it ws our decision to go to tear down, as we had done nothing yet to warrant a tear down. But we did want to go for a Record, and that would result in a tear down, if we were sussessful. But the schedule was not all conducive to normal orderof things, make a record run, tear down, then run again and back up the run. We were to run late evening, and would have only a few hours in dimming light at best, and probably in the dark, to tear down , and get it all back together for the next run. So we went to the Division Tech Director and asked how he saw it happening. He said, would you like to tear it down now before the first round? We had about 6-7 hours before the run, so we said :yes". It really wasn't a matter of whether or not we could set a record. We knew we could so, we went back to our pit area, loaded up all tools that we thought we would need, and put them into the back of the Ram 3500 we use to tow the car. Then Keith drove the truck, and I drove the car, and took it to the Tech area. Then I started the car, (yes, I do know how to drive the car) and moved it into position for the tear down.

 

This first picture is what the motor looks like before tear down.

 

The first thing to come off the car, is obviously the hood.

Next is the black bar that you see at the top rear of engine on body (4 bolts).

Two things happen at once next. The exhaust header on driver's side is removed (5 bolts)

But did I mention that you also need to jack up the car, and set set jack stands for safety?

The next thing was to drain the water out of the block, so it doent fill teh cylinders when teh head is removed. We put a petcock in the block so opening that, and opening the drain at the radiator, pretty much empties it all out. The header comes off first, so they we don't have to lay in the drained water while removing it.

 

And then, the "hat" the seals the throttle body to the hood comes off (4 bolts)

Since the car is jacked up, I stand on my tool box so that I can reach the bolts.

The throttle body is removed for measurement. (4 bolts)

Next are the fuel rails fule line connections (2 fittings)

Throttle cable is disconnected, along with two return springs. (3 connection and 1 bolt.)

Intake manifold is removed, (6 additional bolts)

Coil Packs are removed on driver side headand passenger side head. (16 bolts)

Valve cover removed on Driver side. (10 bolts)

 

Although we used a folding table from the trailer to hold working tools and parts,

We used the bed of the truck to hold parts when they were neither involved in tear down or assumbly.

 

Rocker arm assemblies are removed from driver side head. (8 bolts)

Next the head bolts are removed (5 small ones,, 10 big ones) and Head is removed. 

You can see the pistons, and the coil packs form the passenger side. The reason that the passenger coils packs are out, is that we need to remove one spark plug from each odd cylinder so that the engine is easier to turn over manually when checking stroke, and valve lifts. (4 spark plugs removed)

  

Her you see the head with valve springs and gasket on work table.

Next the head goes into the trailer to have things checked.

The gasket is measured on the table.

In the tech trailer we were told to remove one intake and one exhaust valve from the head. 

This turned out to be the biggest pain in the whole process.  The valve compressor, which squeezes the valve spring, so the retainers can be removed is almost right, but not perfect.

The tech guys said their valve compressor was even worse. So we struggled on, and finally,

after a good 30 minutes of hard work, the valves were both out,  and measured. 

Getting the valves back in and getting retainers and clips back in place took about the same time as removing them (ouch, and I say that quite literally as Keith smashed his thumb doing it). Compressing two springs, removing two retainer and four valve stem half clips sounds easy enough,

but trust me and Keith, it really isn't!

The head is replaced on the motor, solid lifters installed in place of hydraulic lifters which would require engine to actually run while being measured, and that isn't at all practical. So here are the Divisional Tech Director, and Tech measuring things. You dont see us in this picture, but considering how difficult it is to properly measure the lift, getting measurement tools properly horizontal and vertical at time, we watched intently to make sure the measurements were right. And they were.

So, once again, all measures OK,  and we hear the magic words. Looks good, put it back together.

The first thing to do, is to remove the head and remove the solid lifters, replacing the hydraulic lifters.  

We heard the call for stock to the lanes as we were putting it together again, and we were pretty confident that we could have it back together in time to make the run.We also heard that it was possible that there would be a make up run available in case we didnt finish it.

To consider how long it took to get things back together, factor in time to find the right bolts, and right tools. Also include the extra time to get at some bolts, that were not tighened, as Keith did the big head bolts, tightening and torquing, and I assumed that he had done the small head bolts too. He had not, so once the intake manifold was on, we realized it, and worked around teh intake to tighten the five small head bolts. Then, we also realized that we misplaced, one bolt. It was a common metric bolt and we knew we could pick one up at Lowes, and if necessary run without it. And for teh total time, you can also factor in the extra time required in about 6 trips back to the trailer for "something" we forget or simply didn't anticapte being needed. Tonya, Keith's wife, made several trips, and I made a few more. In some cases it was simple, like a few more rags and carb/brake cleaner for cleaning up the heads for measurement. And in other cases it was in a desparate search of an elusive socket, or a wrench that had somehow been missed.

So, here we were almost back together, and I felt a drop of rain. Then another.. and another...and we decided to just put the hood back on theh car without the brace at the back, and get back to the pits before the rain really comes. So Tonya drove the truck, Keith drove the race car, and I drove the gold cart/pit vehicle and we all scurried back to the our pit.

The rain was starting to really come down now, so I jumped off of the golf cart, and I directed Keith into the trailer with the car. The rains really started now, and it was immedially obvious that there wouldnt be any more racing tonight. So we went to Lowes, got our exhaust manifold bolt, went back to the Hotel, got a bite to eat, and waited for the morning racing. We didnt know what time we would race, but it made sense that it would be early, and it was. Our first run was around 8:30 am, and our second run went at around 11:30 am.

We ran a relatively slow, but "safe" time on the first run, And for the second run, we needed to run within a 10th of second over it,  to back it up, or a 10th under it to be the new record with the slower run backing it up. But any other number under it, would back up the slower number. So we ran a 10.02 which was much faster and backed up the record run of 10.23+ in Las Vegas,  which when converted to sea level came out to be 10.05.

So that is what tear down looks like...

God Bless and Safe Racing my Friends.

David