For those of you who follow what's going on at Rad Rides! We are starting a Troy Bi-Monthly Blog on this website and facebook page. This Blog will contain updated information about each project, its status, and information about what we are doing to the project to make it a Rad Rides vehicle. This will also inform you when we travel to each one of our Indoor and Outdoor car shows all year long.
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A lot of you who follow what's going on at Rad Rides know that we are all about building street machines, hot rods, and race cars. If you check out the "photo gallery" on our website, you can get a pretty good overview of what we have completed over the years. One of our most recent builds, Hal Wing's "G54" 1954 Buick with Mercedes G55 drive train, has received a number of awards and compliments at recent events. Winning the "Outstanding Full/Radical/Hand built Custom" at the Grand National Roadster Show a few months ago was awesome for Hal and all of us at Rad Rides.
For those of you who like the more traditional street cruiser, you've got to check out the black '55 Chevy we just completed for our long time friend Glen Grozich. Glen's 1955 Chevy is the first black car we've ever done, and there's a reason for that. Color schemes are a big part of the cars we build, so doing a black car isn't always something that appeals to me. But Glen had the vision for a subtle '55 Chevy that blended new technology with pure nostalgia. The OEM styled engine compartment, chrome roll bar, factory style bench seat interior with, and throwback Billet Specialty wheels had that car screaming for black paint. Glen is happy, and we are happy with the finished product.
We have a bunch of projects that are in process at Rad Rides. For you Mopar guys, we've got a '71 Cuda convertible in the paint shop and a '66 Hemi Belvedere that we're setting up for a twin turbo Hemi power. The Third Gen Camaro is getting close to paint. George Poteet's '69 NASCAR themed Torino has already been making the rounds, even though it's in bare metal. From what we hear at the shows, a lot of people like seeing the cars under construction almost as much as they like seeing them done.
About seven years ago, George convinced us to build a '69 Barracuda for Bonneville. We called the car "Blowfish". During the two year build here at our shop, the car received a full chrome moly chassis and cage, underwent extensive body modifications, and was initially fitted with a turbocharged four cylinder Mopar race engine. As cool as it was to win Hot Rod Magazine's Hot Rod of the Year in 2007, the real fun has been racing Blowfish at Bonneville. Even though George drives a lot of his own cars, Blowfish has more recently been driven by Danny Burrow, "the fastest hillbilly on the planet". The car is now running a NASCAR 392 Mopar V8, but that first engine, the Mopar four cylinder turbo motor, remains a favorite of mine. Nothing sounded like that thing. We would hear it coming miles away when it was doing a speed run. You start the car, and everything vibrates. You almost have to be sponsored by Loctite to run that motor in the car, but I love it. Who knows, it might show up somewhere in the future in one of our cars.
Being at Bonneville is all about being able to run your stuff instead of talking about it. You go out there, and you either do it or you don't do it. That's the biggest thing I like about it. Mix in the quality of the cars that are out there, the tradition of Bonneville, and the competitive spirit among the participants on the salt makes for an unforgettable experience.
Because not everyone has attended Bonneville Speed Week, I like to put some of the action in perspective. Since day one, the 300 mph barrier has been our goal for Blowfish. With Danny driving at Bonneville in 2011, we hit 319 mph on one pass, and established a 307 mph average. To put that 300 plus mph run in perspective, there's only five cars that have doors (door slammers) that have a record above 300 mph in 63 years. There are 11 streamliners that have records above 400 mph.
Consider the size of the field. There were 566 contestants at Bonneville 2011. From that number, there were ten records set above 300 mph. George Poteet's car was the fastest car there, and he set a record with his C/BFS "Speed Demon" at 390.709 mph. Charles Nearburg set two records, A/FS at 379.606 and G/FS at 353.825. Dennis Varny's E/BGS car set a record at 330.874 mph, Frank Silva set an AA/BGL record at 324.961 mph, Chauvin Emmons set the C/BFRMR record at 316.002 mph, and Dennis Mariani set the E/GS record at 307.687 mph.
Of those seven record setting cars, six are streamliners, and one of them is a lakester. That means that the Blowfish B/BFCC record of 307.399 mph makes it the eighth fastest record setter for the entire event, but the fastest door slammer to set a record. The other two 300 plus mph records were set by the C/BFMS car of Keith Copeland at 305.596 mph, and Fabio Montani's E/FS record at 300.357 mph. You can probably tell, we like Bonneville!
Complete results are available at the Southern California Timing Association's website at:
http://www.scta-bni.org/Bonneville/Speedweek%202011/results.html
Blowfish is not done racing at Bonneville. We are one mile an hour off the fastest door slammer record. For Speed Week 2012, our goal is to set the fastest door slammer record at Bonneville. Last year we had a few engine reliability issues in that we needed to address. For that reason, we have four big changes for the 392 cubic inch Blowfish motor. First, we are converting over to Methanol, which should be a BIG change for us. We started with ethanol, then we went to racing gas last year, but this year we are going with Methanol. The big advantage with Methanol is the cooling effect on the heads. We need that extra cooling because we keep hurting the cylinder heads. Cooler heads also allows a denser fuel/air mixture.
Second big change is the addition of a mechanical water pump. The extra cooling pressure from the mechanical water pump will keep the motor at a temperature that, again, will help keep the heads at our desired temperature. Along with the extra cooling, we are going with different copper head gaskets with O rings, just to try to build the optimum seal for the heads. We are hoping that these changes will get to us to where we are no longer having cylinder head issues at speed.
Fourth big change to the Blowfish' engine involves added stability to the engine block itself. Lawrence is our genius CNC machine guy, so we had him build a sleeve girdle for the block. The sleeve girdle helps keep the cylinders from distorting at high rpm. End result makes for a slick, sturdy foundation that will allow us to run about five pounds more boost. We believe these four changes we are making to the car will give us another 200 horsepower, possibly more. Goal for top speed this year is an average speed of 315 mph, with a one way run of 330 mph. Like last year, we will be sending out updates from Bonneville.
One more thing... we've got a surprise for Bonneville 2012. We've been working on a new car that will be unveiled this year in August at Bonneville. This new car is being kept under wraps until we get there, but it will be pretty competitive right out of the box. If you like Blowfish, I'm guessing you'll think this car is pretty cool too. It incorporates a number of things we've learned over the past six years, and a few new ideas as well.
Looking forward to seeing everyone this year,
Troy Trepanier
www.radrides.com
