Amish Express, Quest for the 11's: Rumspriga Begins!

Amish Elegance

Schadenfreude
Joined
May 1, 2006
Messages
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Rumspriga--a period of time after the 16th birthday during which children who have grown up in the Amish community are freed from the rules of the church and allowed a taste of the "real" world.:hehe:

Real world, here I come.

With several life changing events on the horizon, I have decided to finally do the lion’s share of finishing my truck off the way I always wanted to. If all goes well, in several months I will become an undeserving father to a little baby girl and in short, have to grow up. But... before someone else in the house gets to be the kid, I’m giving it one last hurrah. LOL

This thread will chronicle the build and detail as much as possible: the pleasure, pain, and hopefully humor of the build and one approach to my goal: The 11 second fuel only quarter.

Before I go any further, I want to be clear: I am not making any claims that this will be the end all, be all project where history will be rewritten and chassis dyno’s broken. But it will be done right. It will exhibit fit and finish that will be to the best of my OCD abilities and those helping me with respect to my budget. I hope to end up with performance and looks that are ‘out of this world’, but with the help of some great friends and industry experts, do so with a budget that is very much in it.

Besides conveying the details of the build, I hope this thread will entertain. I’ll give it my all to make it fun. Even if at times it isn’t for me, I hope it is for you all on Comp D. I’ve got some great stories about people in this industry I’ve grown to call friend. I hope to highlight these folks as I’ve come to know them, and how they have helped or will help with my ‘quest.’

Enough precursors. Lets get on with it.

Some great ideas and innovations start with engineers working on cad stations with huge monitors, and super computers manipulating 3D images. On the other end of the spectrum, some start with country boys in a humble neighborhood bar on a napkin. The idea for this quest was actually somewhere in-between.

One afternoon several weeks ago, I picked up the phone and called Chris at Engineered Diesel.

Our paths crossed several years ago at a dyno event for HTS Transmissions, well before Engineered Diesel was in the mix. Chris was a jovial cat who provided some good bench racing and drank the same beer as I. I believe I also met Glenn that day, but as I remember he was a bit more subdued only breaking typical stoic character to laugh at one of my jokes or shots at Dusty. I digress.

Scores of events and diesel related gatherings since then have provided opportunity for more bench racing and good times with Chris and Glenn. Every time I came away with something new; a new idea, a different way of doing things, a question answered, a good time, and occasionally a mild hangover. LOL

In light of the good times, the knowledge exhibited, and frankly the flat out trick chit I’ve seen these guys do; I decided to entrust them, their advice, and their tools to end my ‘quest.’

Back to the phone call: given our history of good times with beer in hand, Chris was more than accommodating and roused Glenn into meeting me at a watering hole somewhere between our abodes.

We ended up with a lop-sided halfway with me getting the short trip and them getting the short end of the stick with regard to distance; The Waldorf Brewpub. (If you have the means, I highly recommend it. They have their own brews on tap to suit the taste of almost everyone and pour it ice-cold for three bucks a pint on Thursdays. Yay, cheap beer day!)

The Waldorf Brewpub.
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As it turns out, this day was not a Thursday. With our appetites so voracious for their chilled nectar and the details itemized on our check, we promised each other it would be next time. LOL Even so, the food was delicious, the drinks satisfying, and the conversation like many others before, only my end included the twinge of nervous excitement as this was my dreams culminated in a notepad and napkins on the table.

As the evening progressed functional goals, component specifications, performance characteristics were simplified at one point in dialogue where I uttered:

“Dis eees gunna bee bad ahss!”

The 'Pub' Side where the details were formulated.

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The "On Tap" board that wooed our tastes.
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And so it was: Several fellows, accustomed to CAD stations and formal business, under the veil of alcohol and the aspiration of speed found common ground with country boys everywhere, drawing on napkins, drinking, and cipherin' ways to make a pickup-truck fast.

Eat your heart out, Ricky Bobby.

Ricky Bobby said:
I wanna go fast!

You can ‘want’, I’m GONNA go fast! :hehe:


Stay tuned, more details to follow.:ft:
 
Since that rear seal was such a fiasco, I can only imagine what fun the rest of this project will be.. LOL
 
I highly recommend all members subscribe to this thread.LOL
 
Amish, you are the true words master. Your posts always entertain me. Your mind must be a complete circus with hampsters running lose in every direction and most of the wheels broken off the stands. :hehe:

Congrats on a baby! You'll love being a father. There is nothing better than checking the cattle on my four-wheeler and baby girl saying "moo cows daddy...moo cows!". Go to sleep NOW....you'll need it.

I'm probably not much use for being able to help you, but I can offer any CAD services if that helps. (or napkin drawings also). :D


I highly recommend all members subscribe to this thread.LOL

Wow. You NAILED IT! :kick::hehe:
 
sweet AE! Can't wait to read see what all your plans are!
 
Reminds me of Seth Green from Sex Drive...No this GTO judge has me completely confounded...lol
 
Thanks for the replies, fellas. I hope to keep ya'll entertained.


Jory, I'll be starting another thread on fatherhood advice here shortly. LOL I will be fitting the rig with some new shoes once the engine gets done.

Perhaps 30's?
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Nah, I couldn't roll like that. They'd have to be blacked out. :hehe:
 
Sweet!

Fatherhood advice? RUN FORREST RUN!!! No, really, that will be a 40 page thread. It is all good, just takes tons of patience. :D
 
Pictures of the Blackness...
Some of these aren't the most recent. I hope to be able to update shortly, but for now these should get everyone on the same page as to what we're working with aesthetically speaking.
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DSC_0176.JPG


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Now that you’ve heard the story, lets try and make sense of the scribbles from the napkins at The Waldorf.

First off, the foundation: Besides what’s in the sig, the truck before all this started was still very fun. It has spun the rollers to four horse shy of 500 on stock sticks and CP3 with 1090 foot pounds, blowing through an under utilized HTT 64/71/13SS charger. Power is converted to motion through a HTS built billet transmission, and the best timeslips the truck has seen with its limited track exposure is low 13’s with these crucial under utilized accessories.

The current mod list is much longer but we’ll bump into those along the way. With the hp/et details, you can get an idea about what hulk was dropped off at the Engineered Diesel shop several days ago.

When it sees the light of day again, it will be sporting a few new accessories:

Custom Twins:
Engineered Diesel. Utilizing the wonderful SS exhaust housing found on my exsisting HTT 64/71/13 ED is going to blueprint a top charger somewhere in the 62 neighborhood. The bottom charger will start life as an S476 and will be blueprinted and changed to their specs. Compressors will be polished, anything not stainless on the exhaust side will be ceramic coated, and the charge air piping will sport a powder coat hue TBD. This will also require a switch to a second generation aftermarket manifold (replacing my perfectly functional ATS piece), ceramic coated as well.
The HTT 64 on the truck now as well as the ATS 3rd gen manifold will find new life with a new exhaust housing on another truck in the family.

Twin CP3 Pumps:
PPE Via Big Power Diesel. Craig Johnson of Big Power Diesel has been a dear friend of mine for quite some time. Ever since he spent a weekend at a diesel event in Texas several years ago hanging out, helping, and taking the berating of a rookie auctioneer with a harelip, I have called him many things besides but regarded him as friend. Craig has suffered through the “I wanna…” conversation many times, all with the same closing. “Whenever you’re ready I’ll do what I can to help.” Help he did: My pumps were here in plenty of time for some mock-ups at ED. Without Craig I couldn’t have begin to have gotten them in time. As a thanks to Craig, if any of you ever talk to him, please refer to him as “Flute Man.” He’ll know who to thank. LOL

Injectors: Vector 12.2 Pendragon 9x19 Illegal Alienators (with lift) by Engineered Diesel. They’re "DVD’d" to precise tolerances and come with extra mirrors because you’ll need them to see any smoke. LOL Ok, ok. They don’t really have a neat name like the one I made up, but I’m pushing real hard for the one above. Who wouldn’t want Pendragon 9x19’s? Sorry to all the vendors who I encroached copyright or trademark on existing products. Thanks also to Timbeaux who informed me of the intricate process involved in DVD'ing a set of injectors. :hehe: (Pendragon Injectors, Copyright 2009 Amish Enterprises and Engineered Diesel. Just in case. )

Actually, ED has an established relationship with a knowledgeable yet largely unknown shop that has the ability to hone, flow, and balance a set of CR injectors. The conversation with Glenn went something like this:
“How big uh sticks will we need?”
Glenn *** quietly contemplates ***
“Don’t give me no smoky bastards that’ll haze at idle.”
Glenn *** breaks from contemplative distant stare to give me look indicative of stupidity and contempt ***
“They’re flowed, right?”
“Yeah”
“Not gonna give me no extra holes?”
“Nope, not gonna need em.”
“ How big?”
“You want me to make up a HP number?”
“Just give me some idea of how big you’re thinking.”
*** Glenn finishes contemplative stare. ***
“We’ll see. Most likely 30-40%. If we need bigger, we’ll go bigger.” Said Glenn.
Amish*** fakes contemplative stare while thinking about dinner ***

Studs:
ARP… No good story here. Just too far north of the mason Dixon and too chicken to try the proven The Jeff Garmon magic headbolt trick. (Even though it’s simplicity was explained to me from “The” himself. ) I feel like a Nancy coward for not doing it, and will be forced to minimize the Garmon war cry of “HOLD MY BEER!” before any shenanigans in the future.

Coolant Bypass: After much research on the matter, we will be combining the best of everyone’s solution to this issue with a somewhat unique approach. It will be very clean aesthetically and offer adequate flow and reliability for its intended function. Thanks to Comp D and Johnner Porterfield for the various ideas of how to skin that cat. In the end we’ll end up with a cat hide like everyone else, with a unique spin on things to fit our needs.

Valve Springs and Chromoly Retainers:
Not really much to get worked up about here, so I didn’t. Springs go “boing.” These ones have a little more “boing” to hold the valves closed against the increased boost pressure and RPM. The chromoly retainers have a superior strength to weight ratio allowing the extra “boing” to be more effective and offer increased durability as the springs go about their job of holding the valves closed when they’re supposed to be. (How’s that for technical? LOL)

I’ll let Chris or Glenn elaborate further on this, but I can tell you they’re a dual coil and especially effective at shooting chromoly retainers across the shop when my finger slips off of them. :hehe:

Intercooler: Technically aftercooler, but who’s counting. I’ll be ditching the stocker in favor of a fabbed aluminum job acquired behind partially closed curtains with much smoke, mirrors, and the faint smell of patchouli in the Engineered Diesel shop. It will allow the charge air from the twins to be chilled to more palatable temperatures in the pursuit of power. Remember kids, it isn’t all about velocity so much as… density.


Intake Horn:
I bought a Cool-er-Tube if that’s the name from the manufacturer (sorry if it isn’t) who set up a booth at the Zanesville, OH pull put on by New Era Diesel last year. It resembles many of the tubular setups you’ve seen on here, but made from stainless steel. Good quality, especially for the price. Though it came with a remarkable hand polish job on the exterior, it went out for electropolish and passivation inside and out as soon as I got it home and has been patiently waiting installation ever since. It should compliment the goals of the project nicely as it offers uninterrupted smooth passageways right into the rough cast right angle of the factory intake boss on the head. LOL (No milled intake and ported head yet, piggy bank said oink. )

Driveshaft Loops: HD Fabrication. Aaron at HD has some good cheese between his ears and has devised a way to mount driveshaft loops using factory bolt locations. This trick setup comes powdercoated and ready to install. They are available in a variety of finishes that look too good to be tucked under most any truck, especially this one. Surprise, surprise, I opted for the black ones.
This should keep any driveshaft from harpooning the asphalt in the event of a u-joint failure, as well as prevent the undercarriage from having the bejeebers beat out of it in the same unfortunate event. I’ll have pictures shortly but they’re a tubular construction built to the specifications of NHRA, NADM and all other popular sanctioning bodies.
I don’t know as I’ll run into this as a requirement at the 11.50 mark per NHRA’s book (I said “Quest for the 11’s. Not 11.0, just 11’s. I have no desire to install a bar and go that caliber of crazy at this point.) , but a truck this heavy running sub 12’s just makes sense to have these things retained and not flopping around like an aroused bronco’s tallywacker at 100+ mph.

Additional Gauges: Autometer Cobalts by Pure Diesel Power. I have known Garrett for many years and seen him early in his pulling career break countless parts in his pursuit of sled pulling power. A good head and determination combined with school of hard knocks training through countless hooks has given Garrett the knowledge to know what works and what doesn’t. In the pursuit of “durability testing,” he has experienced more setups than I can shake a stick at. Even before he started Pure Diesel Power, I can remember thinking, “As many parts as this guy breaks, he needs his own shop.” As fortune would have it, he does.
Garrett and Le Rae are wonderful folks who will go the extra mile to make sure anyone who calls gets what they need. It has been my pleasure knowing them. These folks truly live diesel performance. More details about PDP to follow.

The Cobalts I bought from PDP will compliment the existing gauges and offer more information on the status of the twins and fuel. I’ve included just enough gauges to get the information I’ll need on a regular basis to evaluate performance. I like keeping it simple. I’m of the school of thought, “The only people with oil temperature problems are those with oil temperature gauges.” LOL

We’ll also be using these gauges in a tricky way that I haven’t seen before. Stay tuned as we engineer the details.

That’s the big stuff. We’ll bump into more details, bits, and pieces as the project comes together.

Stay tuned.
 
What, you on vacation?

Craig Johnson of Big Power Diesel has been a dear friend of mine fo Ever since he spent a weekend at a diesel event in Texas several years ago hanging out, helping,

******:kick:and taking the berating of a rookie auctioneer with a harelip, :kick:******

I have called him many things besides but regarded him as friend. .


Guys, the asterisks point out, quite possibly the biggest understatement in the history of CompD.

We are all very glad, after that weekend, Fluteman did not go postal and head for the clock tower with a high power, or at the very least, hold his breath until the mean people apologized.LOL
 
You mean there are more of you Amish gone wild? (referring to where the current turbo is going)
 
Good to see things getting going. "Ye will be looking foreward to the seeing flying black yoder at work.
 
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