Project Methanol Injection
Last Updated: 03/29/09

This project has to be one of my biggest projects ever with this car!
So for the 2009 Racing Season we decided that we will put the car on Methanol! It was a hard decision even though we had a very good year in 2008! The type of system that we will be using is made by Ron's Fuel Injection known as the "Flying Toilet". Read on below on what else we are doing!

Picture of the "Flying Toilet" below.

 

This setup will be mounted on a Super Vic Manifold, that means the electronic fuel injection system is going away. This means that the current computer is going away. This means a lot more of my time! Basically the car will have to get gutted, rewired, heads worked on, new mainfold modifed , new fuel system, motor rebuilt, new ignition system and put everything back together before the race season starts! There will be some fabrication needed for the new fuel cell which will have to be mounted in the front of the car. So a lot of home work had to be done prior before we even started on this project. We took steps on what we had to do first and what could be done during the colder months. So below is my time frame and the progress of where we are at on this project.

Project Methanol Started on 10/31/08

During the first few weeks we had to come up away on how we were going to mount the fuel cell at the front of the car. This is the only picture that I took mocking it up.

During that time frame we got the fuel cell mounted and made a front bar to protect it. During the assembly process I will have more pictures of the fuel cell mount.

The next several weeks after we got the fuel cell mounted we had to start on the plumbing of the fuel cell lines as well was to mark what we will need cut to make sure that the toilet bowl would clear the dash area.

The next item was that the motor needed to be pulled out. We did this on 11/08/08 and got the motor apart and the heads were sent off to fix that nasty water leak! The next few weeks we started on cleaning up the engine bay and fix the area where the toilet bowl would be setting at! Pictures Below

After the cutout was made it was time to box it in.

11/27/08 - Cleaning.
Then I started to clean up the engine bay and fill in the holes that is no longer needed. At the same time we took the dash out and stripped out the factory wiring! Below are some picture shots of the engine bay before I painted it and after I painted it.

11/30/08 - Clean and shiny!
Engine bay finally all painted! Ready to accept the motor and new wiring!

12/07/08 - New switches and wiring!
Worked on the new power panel and new switches for the console. I used one of the factory fuse box and relay setup. As you can tell I ran out of fuses in the fuse box and had to use some inline fuses instead. Next task is to engrave the connections numbers in the plate.
We also cleaned up the block and K-member!

12/14/08 - Wiring, Wiring, Wiring!
This past week I installed the power panel in the car and started to wire things up. As you can tell the wires hanging loose will need to be connected to the switches once the dash is installed. I also installed the coil as well as the vacuum canister. Attached is the schematic diagram of the power panel as well as the schematic to the car.

12/21/08 - More Wiring!
Busy week and weekend, I got the dash installed and wired up and tested! Everything works just like I thought it would. It was cool to see the dash lights come on with a click of a switch. There are only a few items to finish up wiring, one being the fuel pump, two being the brake light and the other is the power windows. I also started to put the front together, installed the headlights and finished wiring them up. I also installed the line lock and wired that up as well. I also disassembled the pistons and cleaned up the rings and put them back together again.  I then focused my attention on the manifold, I had to create a new bracket to support the fuel solenoid and the fuel regulator. We also got the new hood in this week as well the crank and piston back from the machine shop. Notice that I'm trying to hide some wiring.

01/04/09 - Need a hood installed?
Did not get a chance to update last week with the holidays and such but I will try to bring it up to date on the progress. Last week I focused on completing the intake. I had to drill and tap all the injection holes as well as a vacuum port and a primer system port. We got the throttle cable in so we could mount the throttle bracket to test it to see how it was going to work. The only issue was that I had to modify the mounting plate so the throttle bracket could attach to it. The picture below shows this. I finished my wiring on the power windows and they work great except the passenger motor is very weak! Might need to replace it.

Then I focused my attention to the hood. I had no idea that it was going to take this long. I spent the past four days working on the hood and the mounting brackets. These brackets my be overkill but on thing for certain that they are mounted rock solid, in fact they are welded to the fender. Below are the pics of the brackets as well as the test fitting the hood on the car. I must admit that this hood looks really killer! It was worth the time and money that was spent on this part of the project. Another item that I started on was replacing the door motor on the passenger side. I got the motor out and a new one purchased all I have to do is to mount it and put the door back together. With the completion of the hood my next focus is to start to put things back together in the engine bay and finish cleaning up the interior.

Test fit hood!

These are the brackets that I made!

Finished! Looks nice!

01/11/09- Motor coming together!

Made some more progress this week on the car. Measured the bearings and the crank to make sure things will fit. Finished the motor install on the passenger door. Pulled the air bag out of the steering wheel, we are getting a new steering wheel made by Grant model 673 (Picture Below) I started to clean up the car on the inside as well. The next project that we worked on was to install the dash pad and install the window. First we had to fix the dash pad because the dash pad was severely cracked, so what we did was that we pop riveted metal to the back side of the dash then covered the dash with some fabric. I have to admit that it came out very nice! Once we completed that we installed the windshield and installed some tin work right below the window. Things are starting to look good now.

02/01/09 - Coming together

Wow, how time flies! Had a little break in the action but I have once again started to get back to work on the car. The steering wheel is now installed. We also finished putting the bottom end of the motor together and started to mock up the front of the motor. This included to see if we can find away to mount the alternator. We also traded out the lower and upper control arms. These will have an offset between the left and right side, should help on roll out and keep me from getting red hopefully. Also they allowed me to tuck the wheel further in the wheel well, can't wait to see how they look. This also gave me an great opportunity to paint the K-member. It's getting down to crunch time, we are about two months away before the first race of the new season!

02/09/09 - Clean up from below!

Busy weekend! The majority of the work was done on this past weekend, I had a lot of cleaning and painting that had to be done. This past weekend temperatures soared into the 70's so it made it prime time for painting. I painted the driver side floor with some truck bed paint, this stuff is tough as nails. I should have took pictures of before and after. Next on the agenda was headers, had to take off all the rust spots and repainted them again. I then painted all the alternator brackets and polished up the aluminum spacers for the crank trigger and fuel pump mounting brackets. I next painted the water pump to make it match the timing cover. I then focused my attention underneath the car to start to clean that up. I hand wiped the underneath part to remove all exhaust and oil deposits that has accumulated since last season. I then repainted the driveshaft and cleaned up the torque arm. I also received my heads this week, so I just had to put them on the motor temporary with intake to see what it will look like! I like it! Then it was time to send these out to be matched up. The next time it comes back it will be on the motor all secured! Won't get to much done this week, I'm heading off to Houston for a Cheer competition.

02/27/09 - Coming together!

Have not updated this page in a while and a lot of things has happened. I got the heads matched to the intake. I also finished up the interior and finished the wiring inside the car. I have tail lights and my fuel pump works for the priming system! The steering wheel is installed and the line locks works or at least it activates. I did have one mistake, I accidentally installed the heads before I put the lifters in. The solid lifters are tall so they cannot be installed with the heads on so a gasket set later the heads were installed. The next thing we did was to install the pushrods and rocker arms we also adjusted the lash. We then primed the motor by turning the oil pump. The intake has been installed as well as the distributor. We should be able to have the motor in the car this weekend and maybe running by next weekend but I won't hold my breath on that. I'm hoping to have it running down the track on March 14th, that gives us two good weeks to get everything ironed out before it goes down the track! That will give us at least 3 maybe 4 test and tune sessions to get everything ironed out before the first bracket race weekend!

03/01/09 - Well it ever run?

Busy busy busy weekend. Finally got the motor in the car and started to hook everything up! So far everything is going together like I planned. We tested the water pump, electric fan and fuel solenoid and it works!

03/14/09 - It Runs!

Time for an update! The car actually runs! We were able to get it started and took it to the alignment shop for the front end. We did have a few hiccups along the way and I will try my best to tell you all about them. The first item was a oil leak at the distributor we think we finally cured it just took some RTV and applied that at the adjustable collar. We think that the oil was getting by the split in the collar thus getting oil everywhere. The next item was the oil temp gauge was not working, found out that the connector was not installed properly thus shorting out the sensor. The next item was another oil leak, we think it was leaking at the oil temp sensor, so replaced the sensor and reinstalled it. We will find out on Sunday the 15th to see if its leaking anymore or not. Another item that we were testing was the cutoff switch. The cutoff switch is used to kill the power to the motor thus stopping the motor from running.  When we turned off the switch it should have killed the motor from running but it did not. So we had to do some rewiring and so far it seem that it will kill the motor when running if you flip the switch to the off position. I'm sure glad that TnT was cancelled on Saturday 14th so we were able to fix these issues. Then we had one more problem is when we were test running the motor it felt that it was missing. We pulled all the hoses off and blew out each one to make sure that no debris were in the lines. We did find one jet nozzle partially plugged up with some sealer. I think we found the problem! The cars much better now!

03/15/09 - Almost down the track!

Finally made it to the track on the 15th but not without the issues that we had at the track. The first issue was that we thought we had the oil leak fixed but to our surprise it was still leaking. We resealed the oil pressure gauge and it the oil was still coming out. The only item that we have not resealed was the intake so we took the intake off and found where it was been leaking at and we resealed it. It was about 4:15pm when we completed the repairs and decided to try it one more time to take it down the track. Well it did not happen the drivers side window would not roll up so we loaded up the car and went home.

03/22/09 - Finally Down the Track!

We made the repair on the drivers side window it was an wiring issue. So we made it to the track early Sunday and I was able to make a test run down the track on the big end to see how the Air Fuel ratio is showing.  As I figured it was running on the fat side so we increase the pill size a little. We also started to lean the idle mixture out as well to help on fuel consumption during warm up. It took almost 3 gallons of methanol to warm it up. Finally it was time to go to the line and see what this puppy can do and guess what, broke the throttle cable at the starting line. So I limped it back to the trailer and went home to get another throttle cable. Finally made the repairs and it was 3:00 and the Test and Tune ended at 5:00 so back to the line I went. I launched and it felt quicker, I quick glance at the Air Fuel gauge showed I was good to complete the past (showing rich). We I completed the pass I shut off the motor so we could do a quick plug check. It showed some signs of timing issues so we decided to check the timing and it was advanced to far (40 degrees) we took some out and adjusted it to 37 degrees. Oh, the first pass out of the box was a 10.89@123! Not bad at all. The next pass we took the timing back and increased the pill size and it did like the changes 10.84@124 So we decided to make one more pill change and too one more degree out of timing to 36 and the car responded again. 10.82@124. The air fuel ratio showed that we could lean it out some more and made a pill change and the car really did not like it 10.86@124 so we went back with the 10.82 setup. We are still working on the lean up startup to help on fuel consumption and so far I think we are heading in the right direction. I was able to make two full 1/4 passes on one tank of fuel 4 gallons. The next item that we will be working on is a spray bar to help us run it on regular gasoline to warm it up and idle through the pits.

03/29/09 - Fine Tuning!

We were able to make a spray bar! Now we will need to test it! That will have to wait until Friday April 3rd.

01/10/2010

Flash forward to present time. The final tune up for the car was using .029 jets and .066 pill. Timing is set at 36 degrees.