teamhallracing.com Blog

Pinks All Out starting line crew selected

We will have a large crew in the pits, but unfortunately, Dallas Raceway will only allow 4 people to accompany the car to the starting line. This put me in a very difficult position, picking only a chosen few for these coveted spots. I owe a great deal of gratitude to a few friends who have helped me anytime i’ve needed it, and i’ve decided that they have earned the right to these positions. The guys I have chosen are:  my Son-In-Law, Manuel Martinez, my good friends: Tony Sears, Bryan Underwood and Preston Crawford. Thanks to everyone else who has helped or will help at the show. We look forward to having a great time! Come watch and support us as we try to win that $10,000 dollars and the Napa tool chest!!

Pinks All Out update

We were able to get a ticket to race in the show, so now it’s time to get everything ready. We just finished painting the Camaro with a new scheme…Sonic Blue Pearl with White Diamond Pearl stripes. Turned out great!! Now to start putting all the pieces back together and get her ready for the show. Come down and watch us run at Pinks All Out in Dallas, TX. on 26-27 March 2010. Tickets are now on sale at www.DallasRaceway.com

Pinks All Out 2010

Speed TV has published their 2010 schedule for the famous Pinks All Out, and it looks like we may be able to attend the one at Dallas Speedway on the 26-27 March in Crandall, Texas. We’ll have to see if we can get in the show once tickets are available. stay tuned!

Camaro update

With the body damage to the Camaro, I have decided to make a few changes to the car…First, I have already started on making the front clip assembly removable, moving the radiator and fuel cell to the frame of the car. Next, I have fabricated a frame system to support the front nose and fender assembly. I’ve still got a few more items to finish with the frontend installation, then I’m gonna change out the steering column.
Should get my axles back from Moser next week, then I can start on the body damage and get her painted.

King of the Track at WRP

We are going to Wichita Falls, Texas today to participate in the King of the Track race for a Wally. Come down and join us!

P.S. We went to WRP to race for the King of the Track deal, and ended our day with a bit of bad luck…We went into the first round on our second tech card, and on launching the car, we sheared all five wheel studs off, loosing the left rear tire and putting the car into the wall at the staging lanes. I was not hurt (besides my feelings), but the car sustained some damage. The left front fender is dented, the front nose piece is cracked, the left rear quarter panel is dented pretty bad, and the rim is no longer usable. Apart from all of that, we are in pretty good shape. Could have been alot worse. No structurable part of the car was damaged, so we can fix the dents and repaint it and be as good as new. We are going to upgrade the wheel studs to 5/8″ studs now so that this will never happen again. Good thing it’s the end of the season. We’ll be back next year better than ever!1

Camaro makes maiden voyage at WRP

Well, we finally got our new engine back in our 79 Camaro, and took her out to Wichita Falls, TX. last night for a few shake-down passes…We had a problem with my new laptop cable, so we couldn’t make any changes to the on-board computer, so we just ran her with the old tune-up… She ran 5.71 @ 121 mph on a single 250 shot of nitrous. Not too shabby! We plan on buying a gender changer for my laptop cable and then I’ll be able to adjust the tune-up for next time. I’m certain that with a little tuning, we can get her down to 5.50’s or better. We are planning on taking her out next Saturday for the Penrod Big Money Race at Sooner Motorplex. Come what her go!!!

Latest on my 79 Camaro

We have completed the engine and have scheduled the Dyno for Monday morning. Providing that everything goes o.k., we should have the car ready to race by Friday night. Look for our Dyno results and video on this website soon!

Update!!! We have completed the Dyno and finally can say that we have found and fixed the problems that plagued us at Pinks All Out…The motor is running great (considering that we dynoed it @ 57 % humidity, raining and only 59 degrees), and we should have it installed in the Camaro by tommorrow night. o.k. already…here’s the Dynometer numbers: 800.8 horsepower with 651.8 foot pounds of torque. Max hp was gained @ 7000 rpm, while max torque was gained @ 5100 rpm. After taking the motor off of the Dyno, we discussed ways to make more horsepower, and a few things that we learned was that the oil pan currently on the motor has no windage tray and very little baffle, making the crankshaft work alot harder. A good Moroso pan would yield 50 more hp. We also found out that  a vacuum pump would have given us approximately 35 more hp. Well, we already have a vacuum pump, we just didn’t have it installed on the motor at the time we dynoed the motor, and as for the oil pan, the new Moroso pan will arrive in the morning and be installed before the engine goes in. This should give us approximately 885 horsepower on motor…then we’ll give here a little shot of nitrous and see how she likes it! A Dart intake was also suggested, but my wallet can’t stand much more right now.  After all, I still have to start working on my Vega soon and I still have to finish restoring my 68 Camaro before next year. We are planning on taking the Camaro out to Sooner Motorplex Friday night (weather permitting), for a few test hits. It’s been over a year since we ran the Camaro and I’m a little anxious! Come watch us run it. If Sooner is closed due to weather on Friday, we may go to Wichita Falls to test.

More on my 1979 Camaro

We purchased a new crankshaft and standard bearings, only to find that the crankshaft didn’t have enough oil clearance, so we had it polished, but it still didn’t have the clearance we wanted, so we had to purchase a set of “X” bearings. Everything is perfect now and our cylinder heads are ready to be picked up from the shop, so our next move will be to clay the pistons, and if they check out o.k. then we can send the rotating assembly off to be balanced. After that, we can complete the final assembly then it’s off to the Dyno for tuning. More to come soon!!!

We have gotten the rotating assembly back from being balanced and have now assembled the short block. Next we will assemble the long block and set the valves and get her ready for the dyno. Should’nt be long now!!!

Barely Legal is coming back!

Well, if you know me, you also know that I can’t leave a racecar down for too long…We have the new motor almost finished, and she’s looking good. We ran into some problems along the way though; bent camshaft, bent crankshaft, rods were nicked from shrapnel, the flywheel was worn out and we were in need of a better balancer, also the cylinder heads had 10 bent valves, so now that we have purchased EVERYTHING new, we should have all of our problems solved. Next week, we will start putting it all together. The motor will be a 505 cubic inch big block, with AFR heads, and a much bigger camshaft (.816 lift with 300 duration)! Approximately 13.5-1 compression, injected on alcohol with a bird catcher on top, and to really top it off, we have plumbed in a nitrous fogger into the intake. Should run somewhere around 5.80 in the 1/8th mile on motor and hopefully, deep in the 5’s on the spray. I will try to keep everyone up to date on our progress.

Down for a while

We hurt the Vega a few weeks ago, and I’m not sure when I will have the time to work on it again. I’ve been extremely busy painting motorcycles and cars, and trying to restore my 1968 Camaro, so as soon as time permits, I’ll get back to working on the racecars. We are planning on starting on the 1979 Camaro motor real soon, so look for it to be the next project to be back up and running. We have most of the items to put it back together, we just need some spare time to work on it. I’ll post more as we progress.