What happened here is the result of pushing pulse frequencies up higher than we have tried before at these current loads and in a result, back EMF blew out the MOSFET’s in the Progressive Controller output circuits. When a MOSFET fails, it shorts out, which meant these two super high power pulsoids stayed on TOO LONG, and got very hot as in “What’s that smoke??? Oh crap…” kinda hot. So, we failed the smoke test. But, we do know what caused it and will get it corrected.

The entire concept of high frequency pulsing is to smooth out Nitrous Delivery, and we’re trying to learn what works, and what is a problem. Well we found it! Highpower is redesigning the output circuits for this application to handle what we’re attempting to do and we’ll have repair parts here soon.

The post Destructive Nitrous Flow Testing appeared first on John Heard Racing.

After watching the awesome 60′ times the 275 radial cars have been laying down, I finally made the decision to give them a shot this year. The Nova will be legal in every class in this area with this tire, and quick too “if” I can make them work. This might be interesting on marginal track surfaces but we do have a lot of power control capability on the car, so I think we have a decent chance of them working.

Putting 275′s on 12″ rims was not all that fun to get them to seat on the rim, 1st one went on pretty good but the second fought us for about 30 minutes before it gave up. I used Permatex Hi-Tack to glue em’ on (that’s some sticky shit!), and we’re going to screw them also as I’m not sure the glue will hold them on the wide wheels. It’s certainly strange looking now with the little tires on it, and a bit funny. We’ve gone full circle now. 3 time’s I’ve redone the mini-tubs on the car to hold progressively wider tires, now we’re all the way back to the original tire size I had on the car when I started messing with it.

Next project is a gear change, we had 4.10 gears in it and thought that might be a bit much for this tire so going up to a higher gear. The to-do list is getting shorter and shorter!

The post Switching to 275 Radials – Will it hook? appeared first on John Heard Racing.

I made this out of some scrap .040 thick aluminum sheet and bent all the 2″ tall sides by hand. It would have been a lot easier and a bit better looking with a brake and to weld all the seams, but had to make due with the tools available. The seams have an interior plate over them and siliconed to keep them from leaking.

I welded two dzus mounts to the front tube crossmember to attach it there, made two plates that attach at the middle crossmember, and there are two dzus mounts in there rear (see photo). Other than the bolts in the middle, it would be very fast to install and remove. I couldn’t come up with a way to use dzus fasteners in the center though.

It fits close to the pan as there is no extra room to let it hang down very far or I’d be ripping it off when loading and unloading the car. All that’s left now is to buy some Pig Mat to glue down inside the pan and this project will be all finished up!

The post Home Made Belly Pan appeared first on John Heard Racing.

Last race out with the car I turned it on going down track by accident, and hey felt pretty darn good!

The clamp, which took a while to find is from Allstar Performance PN#ALL10456 for 1.25 tubing. I made a little mount out of thin steel tubing to attach it to the clamp. Works out pretty good and you can adjust it about anyway you want.

The post Racing Interior Fan Setup appeared first on John Heard Racing.

First pass off the trailer we ran it on the motor as I wanted to make sure everything worked, and thought it might be a good idea as I’m very rusty not driving for the last 4 years. It went a lazy 6.19@116 which didn’t set any records, but I wasn’t surprised it was a bit slow since we were only running it on 30 degrees of timing (nitrous baseline).  Good news is it didn’t get hot, nothing fell off and other than a little too much oil in the dry sump which blew out and got on the header, it ran without a hitch.

2nd pass we decided enough of that and turned the bottle on. Ol’ Blue responded with a 5.30@136  and a 1.30 60′, not too shabby as that’s about as fast as it has ever went before but with a lot less nitrous and a real lazy launch on the progressive. What I was really impressed with was how stable the car was, before on a run like that it would be drifting around downtrack a bit, but this time I swear I could have taken my hands off the wheel and it would have drove itself. So that’s certainly an improvement! I’m not sure if that was due to the weight changes, the new 25.3 cage, or what, but it sure was nice to drive.

3rd pass, some dummy flooded the engine in the staging lanes. Never had that happen before, and the way it was acting I thought the timing was way off so we pushed it back to the pits. After doing some inspection I tried it a few minutes later and it fired right up. Duh.. Ok, well we’re qualified anyway, so it’s not a big deal.

4th pass which was the 1st round of A Field eliminations, that same dummy forgot to turn the Nitrous switch on. So we lost that one quite fast as we were racing Johnston in Chris Rose’s old Mustang which was running in the 5.20′s – he would have probably easily beat me anyway, so again no big deal but I was kicking myself for wasting the pass regardless.  Just a matter of getting back into a routine during staging, did I mention I need more seat time??

MAKO has a 2nd Chance race for those that lose 1st round, so we got to run that one.  With no changes in the tune up, it went another 5.30@135 on a competition bye run.  Next in round 2 we met Mike White in the awesome Malibu. Mike stepped his up a bit and killed me on the tree, he went 5.38 to my 5.32, which would have got the win if it wasn’t for my turtle like reflexes haha.

So, got knocked out, but hey I wasn’t expecting much, just hoping nothing would fall off and we didn’t tear it up, so all in all we had a very good outing. The car ran pretty darn good with a best 60′ of 1.27 on some 4 year old tires that had 20 passes on them already. So we’re pretty happy with how it turned out. We have a few more projects to finish up on the car this winter but no major work so you can bet it’ll be ready to rock and roll 1st race in 2013!  I have a feeling I need to practice cutting a light over the next few months…

The post 1st Race for the Nova after Rebuild Completed appeared first on John Heard Racing.

However that trim was a lot better than what I had, so I’m happy and we got that little project finished up. After the trim was back on we lifted the front end back into place, and thank goodness didn’t scratch up the fenders. The carb is a bit too close to the hood now, so unfortunately I’ll need to take my 1″ spacer off to get some clearance which might cost a little horsepower – that makes me wish I had got a 6″ or bigger cowl (current one is a 5″). I suppose at some time we’ll probably look at putting a forward facing scoop on it, but I’ve been dragging my feet on that one as I like the cowl.

We’re ready to set the caster/camber/toe, set corner weights, and start wrapping up a few hundred little details. Hope to take this ol beast to a test n’ tune here before long. Tonight we’re putting it on the scales to see where we’re at as there’s not much else left to bolt back on. Crossing my fingers we’ll be underweight for MAKO!

The post Front End Back on, Window Trim Installed appeared first on John Heard Racing.

The front windshield however is a preformed Pro-Glass part and it does have the scratch resistant feature, it was quite expensive, so I’m hoping it will last for a while.

On the doors, since I removed the wing windows for some weight savings I had to get 73-74 window fuzzies to fit the full length. However the rear windows on the 73′s are quite a bit different than the 71 models, so that took quite a bit of tweaking to the trim to make it fit the window, in fact it took all morning last Saturday to get those in there. Since the clips don’t line up either, the trim is pop-riveted to the upper door skin to hold it in place. There are probably a number of different ways of doing this, but I wanted to try and make the windows look “stock” if possible and retain the little chrome strip the fuzzies have.

Since the Nova has a full door frame and the windows are reasonably flat, the sheet lexan worked out pretty good. The door and quarter windows are fastened with 10-32NF Flat Head Cap Screws with Ny-lock nuts screwed into the upper door skin to hold the window in place.  In the window grooves on front and rear I used the original style seals which worked out decent. The 3/16 thick windows are a little thinner than the original 1/4″ thick glass, but it seems to work out decent.  I’m glad we went ahead and did 3/16 vs 1/8 as the windows seem less wavy than the thinner lexan and it probably didn’t add but maybe a pound or two more than the 1/8″  I’m guessing.

The rear window is sealed with 3/8″ thick Butyl tape like used for regular windows and is also fastened with 1″ long flat head sheet metal screws. That’s a easy to screw up process getting everything laid out well so that the chrome trim will cover the screws, and the screws lined up well with the window lip.  I used the stock glass as a template to cut the lexan, and in hindsight should have added maybe 1/8″ or so bigger to give me more of a lip to put the screws in with. I won’t make that mistake on the front window – I’ll cut it out a bit oversize to make sure I have plenty of lip to work with.  All the screw holes are countersunk with a 82° countersink that I got from Jerry Bickle Race Cars. It’s a fancy took that sets the depth of the counter sink nicely.

I did learn that you can put the Nova’s rear windshield trim on backwards, which was a real aww crap moment when I discovered what I had done, but luckily I was able to remove the trim without chipping the paint! One thing I hadn’t realized was how bad the lexan is with static – it attracts dust like crazy. I’m going to try some Plexus Lexan polish to see if that helps with that issue.

 We also wrapped up the front lexan window install and I actually remembered to weigh the difference, looks like right at about 10 lbs savings over the aftermarket glass window. An original glass window might be a bit heavier, this was as compared to a PPG glass window. The front windshield is a formed Pro Glass Brand that is 3/16″ thick. Aside from the price, I was impressed with how well it fit the car. We did have to trim the window as they ship them oversize in case you want to flush mount it.

Like on the rear, we used 3/8″ thick Butyl tape again and used flat head screws spaced 6″ apart. I know a lot of people put the screws in like every 3-4″, but that really looked overkill to me. Hopefully it will work ok and not have any problems like that.  An additional note, the installed height of the glass on the front and rear was about .400″ which worked out pretty decent for the trim and it fit nice and tight. The clips for the trim were installed pretty tight, about 3/4 of the way full tight in the clip grove.

The post Nova Lexan Windows Project Wrapping up appeared first on John Heard Racing.

Apparently the fuel pump didn’t like sitting for the last few years, Aeromotive got us fixed up within a week with a rebuilt A2000,  so we’re good to go there.  Had an oil pump leak and Nutter is fixing that one for me, so once it gets back we’ll be back in business.

Most of the Nitrous Plumbing is finished now so it’s time to do some flow testing and other odds and ends to figure out a starting point on the Nitrous tune up. Lots of new ideas going on this time around so in a bit of uncharted territory now.

We’re running the new Highpower Nitrous system, it’s a plenum single stage system similar to the old spider plate I used to have. This should be a fun project to see how well it works.

Here’s a video, and don’t be hating on my fancy flip-flops! -

Besides a handful of small projects on the To Do list, the next major one is to get the lexan windows installed which is the next project.

The post Ol’ Blue is Alive Again… appeared first on John Heard Racing.

Pro-Werks are making these now in both 6 bolt and 12 bolt versions (12 bolt shown) and they are very nicely made, we got this one at the Chassis Shop. This should make filling up old blue a bit easier without having to fight that old flip lever ever again.

One thing I did learn is that you need to lube the o-ring with some silicone grease. I first lubed it with some lightweight oil, but after it set a while it was almost impossible to unscrew.  I didn’t really think much about it but according to Stu at Pro-Werks, the o-ring will absorb that light weight oil so he recommended using a silicone based lube.  I used some Permatex Dielectric Grease on it (which has silicone in it) and that seems to have done the trick, it’s pretty easy to unscrew now.

Oh, by the way, if you need a 12 bolt flip lever type cap for whatever reason, I have one for sale cheap!

The post Billet Screw On Fuel Cap Update appeared first on John Heard Racing.

First of all, I knew I needed an electronic flasher to work with the LED lights, so a quick trip to superbrightleds.com over in St. Louis scored me a FL3-RED electronic flasher which is nice because it has a mounting tab for mounting. Then I started to started to realize that it’s not so simple to make a turn signal blink, while applying the brake light at the same time that is. This is because the Nova has (functionally) one light LED in the rear on each side that functions as a running light, turn signal and brake light. The running light is really just a reduced voltage hookup that I setup with a resistor and a diode so it doesn’t backfeed, so it actually acts like a normal 1157 two element light bulb.

Even with that setup, the simplest circuit I could figure out to run the blinkers, but isolate the brake light at the same time involved 4 relays and a mess of wiring… that didn’t sound like a lot of fun. So, after doing a bit of research I stumbled across the Hopkins #48895 Trailer Light Adapter. This cool little adapter is made for all LED light circuits and lets you drive a 1157 x 2 bulb configuration from a car with 4 lights, or in this case, a race car with a toggle switch to activate the turn signals.  I know most people that read this are thinking, John, quite screwing around with that stuff and get that car finished (Todd Kitchen Quote), but hey it’s just one of those things. The Nova is licensed, tagged and insured and I wanted to keep it street legal, even if those trips on the street are very few and far between. I just thought I’d share this little tip as I think it’s a nice and simple solution.

Now we have turn signals! Time to get back to race car wiring circuits and the data logger reinstallation which is fully underway.

The post Turn Signals for a Race Car? appeared first on John Heard Racing.