Tigger’s Digger came to life Friday night, January 21, after a several hour thrash by Jim Maroney (the head of the Western Fuel Altered group), my friend Levi Hill and myself. We set the butterflys and idle on the injector, leaked down the barrel valve (and are not totally satisfied with it yet) and set the timing.
It sputtered to life fairly easily, but the timing was way off and it was barking very sharply with big yellow flames (not good on alcohol), so after advancing the timing to around 35°, it sounded pretty good. Since it was about 8:30 at night, we were in the race shop with the big door open but it was still very loud inside, and the fumes got pretty gnarley LOL.
After about 10 minutes total of fiddling with a variety of things, we were just letting it run when it just shut off, with kind of a weird sound. Jim looked at me and said “we’re done…” The timing chain had broken – a brand new good, solid roller (not split) one that maybe had 15 minutes on it. But no matter, at least it was running.
Engine came out last night after a protracted battle and I got it apart. Haven’t yet determined the cause of the failure, and now I’m contemplating some sort of gear drive.
I had a friend who is an NHRA tech guy and is authorized to do chassis certs. He checked the car out (that had passed with flying colors 4 years ago) and told me it failed in three areas…… unreal. Three relatively small things, knitpicky things, chickenshit things (in my opinion) that will have to be fixed before I can run. One of them will require the rear end housing to either come out or at the least be loosened and slid back. What a pain in the ass, all because (again, in my opinion) some bored SFI guy decided he didn’t have anything to do so he was going to go back and create some work…… oh well.
I’ll keep everyone posted, and thanks for visiting!
Tigger's Digger B/FD 