On behalf of the whole Stevand crew I would like to wish a very happy holidays to you & yours.

We are extremely thankful for all the support from our sponsors & the dedicated readers. This Blog has grown in leaps & bounds this year solely based on your readership.

Special thanks to Kruger Photos, Wiseco Piston, & Cometic Gasket but without www.morethanafan.net none of this would be possible.

Be fast & be safe! A new year is just around the corner!

This off season is revving up to be a busy one. Along with Matt finishing up his Concord Project, doing some freshening on his Spirit, & me working on the Car Craft Engine Build we are taking on another huge task of building another car to add to the fleet. We will be pulling our resources together & making a long time dream of mine come true.

The plan is to transform my 1971 AMC Hornet into a competitive NHRA Class legal Stocker. Stock Eliminator is reserved for American Factory-Production & some foreign & domestic sports cars. There are 56 or so individual classes that make up Stock Eliminator. The class is called Stock but is far from it in some ways. There are many rules that regulate this class. Some of the rules mandate stock parts while other rules allow for approved upgraded parts due to lack of availability, reliability, or safety.

The 71 Hornet will be run as kind of a rare AMC model known as a SC 360. This was a limited production car for AMC & only 784 were ever constructed.  The Hornet were starting with is an original 71 but NOT an original SC 360. This part does not matter as long as everything on the car trim wise matches the SC car. If the SC had a certain spoiler my “Clone” would have to have that same spoiler etc… The SC 360 was the only Hornet available with a 360. All others had the 304 V8 or a 6 cylinder. The SC 360 combo allows me to use an engine that has a ton of potential to make horsepower to be competitive in Stock Eliminator.

Every step of this build will be constructed around the rules, special attention paid to weight, & every effort to obtain horsepower out of everything possible. The car is classified by the factor issued by NHRA to the particular combination used. The 71 SC 360 has a factor number of 10.91. The performance factor of 10.91 puts the car in the “F” category. The class designation would be F/SA. The “F” being the individual class, “S” designates Stock Eliminator & “A” designates that I will be using an automatic transmission.  The class ET index for F/SA is 11.85. That means that old Project Hornet needs to run faster than 11.85 to qualify for a race.That is asking a lot for the engine & drive train modifications allowed.

The first step in the process has begun. The Hornet was in a flood before I purchased it so it will need completely disassembled & cleaned. As the car comes apart anything that is not needed by rules will be removed. Things like undercoating & sound deadener add up weight that is not needed. The interior has been removed revealing how clean of a car I really have. Not one rust hole in the over 40 year old gem.

This will be a learning process for us & your more than welcome to learn with us. Keep stopping by to see how the project is going.

Due to an extremely demanding work schedule lately my progress has been a little sporadic on the Car Craft engine build lately. With my first real day off in over a month I took advantage of the time & headed to the Hanshue garage to get things in order to drop the engine off to the machine shop.

Wakeman Power will take on the machining responsibilities for this project. They are a highly qualified full service machine shop. They do engines for most of the top performers in our area. Most of the rest of this build will take place @ Wakeman.

Today also consisted of cleaning parts. I really think cleaning parts is the longest single process in rebuilding a Junk Yard Dog. I washed & wire wheeled some of the pulleys & brackets to get them ready for paint to be magazine worthy. I also cleaned the front timing cover & oil pump housing. The modifications to that will be a whole blog in itself with pictures arrows & the whole 9 yards.

This weekend Stevand Racing will head to the International Motorsports Industry Show show in Indianapolis Indiana. The IMIS is a trade show of racing related products & services. This is one of the shows where new products for the up coming year are debut. This is not a public show. It is only open to businesses related to the racing industry. Stevand racing is lucky to be able to attend this event. I believe it gives us a leg up on the competition in that we see these new products sometimes before they hit the market. Another advantage is that we can talk directly to the people who design the products we use & can give feedback to help improve or develop new products. It is an exciting time of year for the whole team.

Well just like that, another racing season has gone by in a flash! My last trip for the year would take me the whole way down to Jacksonville, North Carolina for the Fall Footbrake Frenzy hosted by Anthony Walton and Michael Beard.

We started the trip off on Wednesday with a full day of driving ahead of us, On the way down we broke up the trip by stopping in Asheboro, NC to spend Thanksgiving day with my Grandparents, It is always a good time down there with them. We had a rather quick and easy trip down with no problems for ourselves at all and made record time, only having one delay. We stopped @ a rest area for a quick pit stop & wound up helping out a guy and his wife at a rest area who ran out of gas and had a couple of miles to go until the next gas station. I told him I only have one little container in the trailer and I wasn’t sure how much was in there. So we walked back to take a look and I only had about half a gallon in the container. So there I was trying to siphon the gas out of the four wheeler and generator to try to give this guy. Needless to say he was very appreciative with whatever he could get I helped him fill up and off he was. Luckily for him the next filling station was only about five miles down the road and I beeped and waved as we drove by.

Friday got us up and out early to make the three hour trek across North Carolina to the coast and try our shot at five grand. On day one the car worked rather well but I on the other had was a little off key. I ended up  losing my first entry in second round and my other entry in third round.  Not the best way to start off the weekend but at that point what can you do!

Day two brought on two races in one day, The first of them being for a shot at twenty thousand dollars. I got my act together a little better on day two but still fell way short of my goals. I lost both entries third round with my first one I was .005 red and dead on with a 1 and in my second entry I missed the tree pretty good with a .045 light and running dead on with a zero, Once again losing the round of the money.

Later that night after they finish up with the twenty grand race there is another five grander scheduled. Its about dusk now and temperatures are dropping pretty rapidly but we continue on. Once again I carry both entries to the third round and fall again ( Talk about frustrations) The first one I make a mistake and get behind .009 at the finish line after having my opponent covered on the tree. With my second entry I make it out to about the 330 ft mark and my car starts moving all over the track and I have to roll out of the gas giving my opponent the easy win with the track temperatures with what they were a lot of people had trouble getting down and that resulted in a six car split and everyone went on happy and safe, And on that note my season was over.

It was not the best trip South I’ve ever made but still had a blast hanging out with friends and meeting new people and sometimes that’s worth it in the end. Id like to take a second just to thank everyone for the support this year on and off the track and everyone who has followed us on here for the past racing season. It’s been fun telling about how good or bad we have done as well as some of the funny stories along the way and that is why we do what we do. I hope you all have enjoyed and hopefully we can come back at you in 2013 bigger and even better! Stay tuned throughout the winter to follow progress of our upgrades.

In between the longest race of the year & a non stop work schedule I managed to make a little more progress on the Car Craft engine build. In the last update I had disassembled the motor & did some checking of critical dimensions. With that complete I was ready to move on.

The next step in the build was the modifications to the block to improve the marginal internal oil system. The oil system was sufficient for stock applications but lack luster for high performance applications so we have to modify it. The oil goes from the pump to the block & up to the lifter galleys through 1/2″ passages.  There is also a 90* corner in there to complicate things. We drill the 1/2″ passages out to 9/16″. it does not sound like much but add up the gained diameter by the length of the passage & it does make a flow difference. We then contour the nasty 90* corner with a die grinder then smooth with a small sandpaper barrel.

The next oil modification is to get more oil to the #4 main bearing. This is done by taking oil from the front of the motor closer to the oil pump & diverting it through the lifter galley above the main journal. We drill & tap the block in these 2 areas to 1/4″ npt & join the two together with a #6 0r #8 braided hose.

Another thing we do to divert oil to the crank is to put a restrictor in that restricts oil to the drivers side lifters. A 3/8 pipe tap run through the journal @ the front of the block (no drilling required) is a perfect spot to use a steel pipe plug with about a .060″ hole in the center. @ 70psi that will still provide plenty of oil to the lifters & valve train.

The final oil mod will be for future use on this budget minded motor. There is a sort of hole in the block on the passenger side bottom of the block. It looks like a locator hole for a machining process but it lines up with the oil pickup. the diameter of the hole does not need opened up but a thin amount of steel needs drilled to break through to the oil pickup passage, The hole is then contoured then tapped for a 1/2″ pipe fitting. There is an oil pan set up that uses an internal oil line that connects to this spot of the block for more direct oiling to the inlet of the oil pump,

That is the end of the oil mods & now the block gets thoroughly. All that drilling & grinding will get metal everywhere. A clean block is a happy block. The water passages on a block often hide a ton of sediment from years of water minerals & rust. A good set of engine brushes make block cleaning a lot easier. This motor had a lot of sediment. It took many times of scrubbing & rinsing to get things clean enough for the next step.

I decided to fill this block more for future use than for the budget build. Filling the block uses a material called “Hard Block”, There are other brands of this material on the market but Hard Block is the most popular. Hard Block is a concrete like material that contains metal filings. The composition of Hard Block is designed to expand & contract with the heating & cooling of the block to hold its strength. Filling the block strengthens the cylinders keeping them rounder for better ring seal & providing lower end block stability for longer bearing life.

The fill is done in 2 steps. One day one bank, the next day the other bank. The filler is mixed with a specific amount of water into a pourable slurry. Like a milk shake. The block deck should be level to prevent a un even fill. There are pretty specific instructions provided with the filler. Follow them closely. Once we are done filling the one side of the block we then bolt a torque plate to the deck surface. A torque plate is used when boring the cylinders to duplicate the cylinder shape when a head is bolted on. Most people do not have AMC torque plates, also known as boring plates. If none are available just bolting a head on will work just fine. Make sure to torque the head to specs.

The next day repeat the process to the other side of the motor. Machine shops will do this for you for a fee of course.

The block is now ready to head to the machine shop & while it awaits its spot in line I will be getting the timing cover/oil pump ready to re install. More to come……

I started this update a week ago but a computer glitch lost half of it forever. I was pretty mad to say the least & deleted it all! Well, I have calmed down a little & ready to give it another try.
The Halloween Classic @ Summit Motorsports Park is a tradition that has been going on for 37 years. The once small gathering of racers to close out the race season has turned into the worlds largest sportsman event with entries totaling over 1300 in some years. The race has grown into a 7 day long super race with multiple races, contests, & give aways.
Sunday is known as move in day. Picture the race track having a black Friday sale offering half price cars. That is the sense of urgency getting into the track to get a good parking space for the week. Just picture 800 plus race rigs trying to get in the track first to get the best spots. Exciting & a truly awesome sight.
We weaseled our way in with the crowd & managed a decent parking spot for the week. With all this mayhem there is still a race to run. We parked then unloaded the 3 Stevand race cars. Yes 3 Stevand cars. We hired Matts girlfriend Amanda to wheel the company Javelin in the Sportsman class. We got the cars fueled, prepped & made it through our time trials without incident. On to eliminations! Both Matt & I exited the race in the 2nd round but Amanda powered on & made it to the 4th round. The first day of this massive race was in the books.
The rest of the week consisted of a huge Corn Hole tournament on Monday. Tuesday was the Mean Motorhome race (a real sight to see). Wednesday started the Gamblers races. Amanda was entered in a Wednesday Gamblers race. She was killer on the tree all week recording a perfect reaction time first round Sunday. Today was no exception. .014 on the tree but coming up short on the other end of the track by .0001. She was MAD! See Picture. LOL
I went out to the track to make some time runs on Thursday to get my head back in the game. Thursday was to be the last nice day of the event. The announcement was made that the schedule for Friday was to change in anticipation of rain. The original schedule had time trials all day with Mine & Matts Gamblers race to start around 6:00. The new schedule had us on track to start eliminations @ 8am Friday morning. No time run just straight to eliminations. Matt & I got to the track @ 8am sharp only to find they decided to start a few minutes early. YIKES! There were only 128 cars in the class. That’s 64 pair to go down in the round. We had to hurry. We both made it to the lanes, half prepared but won our rounds. Whew!!! We went back up shortly after 1st but were sent back due to a pesky mist. The mist subsided & we both won our 2nd round. That would be it for the day. The money was split between the survivors of 2nd round. We were just happy to be in the mix but frustrated on the other hand we were robbed of the chance to win.
Saturday is the big day of the Classic. If you have never experienced it you need to. Matt & I both won our first round. Amanda won her first round of Sportsman in the Javelin. Things were looking good. Racing continued till late in the evening when Mother Nature decided that was enough. The kids got their chance to trick or treat. Imagine going trick or treat from car to car on a busy day @ Cedar Point. This is like Christmas for a little kid. Then the famous Jaz Wheelie Contest. Watch it on You Tube & it explains itself. But regardless of the fun off track we were done for the night.
Bright & early we were back @ it. They finished up 1st round of Super Pro & made the Call for Pro. That’s our cue to head up for 2nd round. Both our cars were stuck on the dial. Better than most of the year & it showed on track with us both advancing to 3rd round. That’s where the fun ended. Hurricane Sandy had arrived. The rains came & would not leave till later in the week. There is a policy in place @ the Classic to make sure the event is completed that weekend. The dreaded Tent! All the remaining tech cards are put in a pile & 2 @ a time are chosen. The 2 cards are then shuffled, put behind the track owners back, the driver of the 1st card picked then chooses left or right.  The card that is picked advances on. Amanda lost 2nd round, I lost 3rd round & Matt lost down to 9 cars. Our Classic was over.
Most of us were not happy with going to the tent but with the massive car count & distance traveled by some racers it is the fairest way to go. Our season is done for the most part. Matt will be heading to the Fall Footbrake Frenzy @ Coastal Plains Dragway in Jacksonville, North Carolina to try & win his share of $30,000 in prize money. It is time for me to continue with the Car Craft engine build & work on my newest project for next years race season.

A while back I had talked about a project that I would be working on this past summer. As with most projects this one is running behind. I have started the process of building an AMC 360 engine that will be documented & have an article written about it in Car Craft Magazine. I plan on following the process on here for our dedicated followers. Check back often for the progress.

The firs order of business with any engine build from scratch is to find a good core engine to start with. Any motor can look good on the outside & turn over but be junk once you dig in. It’s heart breaking when you spend a couple of hundred dollars on a core only to pull a head & find a badly rusted cylinder or a crack from freezing.

So our first step with the build is to disassemble the engine slowly & look over each part carefully to see what kind of a life the engine had & if it is worth salvaging. I started to disassemble the old 360 to see what we had. It didn’t look too crusty on the outside which is a plus. I pulled the intake & the heads. There was not much sludge in the valley. The bores looked surprisingly good for a 40 year old motor. The head gaskets were factory originals showing that the heads were never off this motor. The less a motor has been messed with the better piece you have to work with. This motor appears to be a gem.

The next steps are cleaning & checking. We use a degreaser we get from a commercial cleaning supply company. One inch in a spray bottle & the rest filled with water is enough to make you choke from the fumes & peel the skin off your hands. Perfect! Spray it on all the parts scrub with brushes, rinse in scolding hot water & blow dry with compressed air. Sounds easy but it is a ton of work. Once all the parts are clean we can start the checking process. Close inspection & accurate measuring is one of the most important processes in my opinion. A flaw or an off measurement caught before the build starts can save thousands of dollars & endless hours wasted. We check all bore diameters & deck heights. The deck height seems to be an important measurement in AMC engines. We have seen some off as much as .015. That is huge in the engine world.

These first steps don’t seem real glorious but are extremely important to start thing off on the right foot. The next steps will be to modify the block for improved oiling & partially fill the block with Hard Block to strengthen the cylinder bores. Then off to the machine shop!

The title pretty much sums it all up, but with success there are always obstacles to overcome. This was another week of unforeseen dilemmas. If you recall I left last week complaining about having to spend four hundred dollars in tires for my Spirit. Well that did’t happen, apparently it was some sort of sign that I shouldn’t buy tires because the Monday that I had the guy call and place the order he was quick to call back and tell me the owner of Hoosier Tires had died and there was no one in the office to process the orders, so after waiting another day, I tried back and still no luck. Yes there were other options on getting them but at this point I had burned up half a week trying to do it this way and it was going to be a hassle to get. So a call to Steve and he brought a used set that he had in storage to try out.

Now for the bad news! On Thursday night I was driving home in my truck and I hear this unusual sound coming from under the truck. I listen closer and it does it again, I think to myself, “oh, that’s weird” and proceed on not thinking much of it until of course I get to the next stop sign and now my truck wont shift out of first gear! Just great. So I limp  home and start to do some research on what it could be. I pretty much come to the conclusion that its not any of the “simple fix” problems that those trucks are known for. So here I am one night before a three day race with a broken tow vehicle and a car and trailer that are to big for any truck I can borrow. Now what? I make a call to a family friend of ours Hayden (Mr. Ford mechanic) and he pretty much confirms me that I’m screwed! But thankfully he is willing to help out and to the tune of $2,100 i can get a new Ford direct transmission for my truck. (That $400 for tires doesn’t seem so bad now) So we set it up to get it to his place and fixed in a few weekends from now.

Now that we have that all figured out I still have to find a way to get my stuff to the track , luckily Steve made it in town early enough to drive to the track and drive back to my house (45 minute drive) and get us back to the track just in time to sneak into the lanes with the last class running for our one and only time trial for the night. We made our passes and everything went smooth as silk. So smooth that Steve made the last minute call to enter both Top and Mod. Something that we don’t usually do but it was his second to last race of the year and he had the itch. I’m one to never talk someone out of racing so I quickly take his money and ride up to buy an entry for him before he changes his mind.

Friday night we both did really well. I myself giving it back again by .0007 witch is virtually nothing even though I had a significant lead off the starting line, I just made an error at the finish line. Steve, on the other hand, was going deep in both classes as he has been on a roll for the past month. He made it down to eight cars or so in the box class and ended off the night with a victory in the no box class. Which brings the total to three wins in three weeks which is awesome!

Saturday brought us to the first of the big pay days, there was two thousand dollars on the line today and I could have used every penny of it at this point. The morning started off a little slow with some AM showers but that gave us just enough time to hit up the local BBQ joint down the street which was well worth the wait. When we got back I got to looking at the tires that Steve brought from storage and made the choice not to switch them with the ones that were on the car. Due to the rain they cut it from two down to one time trials which is fine with us since we seemed to have a pretty good handle on things so far. It had looked like we picked up right were we left off the night before, Steve going deep in both classes with myself knockin them down in the no box class. Steve ended up losing  fourth round of no box on a goof run when the car slowed up and he made the choice to spray and drop to try to break his opponent out. It almost worked but ended in a loss. But went right back up for the box class and managed to go a few more rounds and took himself out with a .003 red reaction time. On my end of things, I found myself in the best possible spot; a by run at three cars to the final round which is great because all I have to do is make it to the starting line under my own power and I’m in the finals. I come up for the finals and meet up with Nick Bowman a PRP local who has been on a roll of his own lately. We made a pretty decent split with the money seeing how we were both in need for it and the runner up only gets $750. So we did some working shook hands and went at it…Well almost, Just as we were getting ready one of the three cars left in the box class had a minor brush with the guardrail. Driver was OK and car was only a little bumped up a lot better then what could of been. So after a short clean up Nick and I shake on it again and go at it take two. We have run in the finals a few times and they always seem to be good ones and this was no exception. He had me on the tree by a little but gave me enough room on the other end and I gave it a little to much working and got behind once again! This time .0006! Was I mad? Yes! But in the end it didn’t much matter. I made a little bit of money to my transmission repairs and Steve and I were in both finals for the weekend that is a successful weekend no matter what.

Sunday was cut short due to some timing system issues and the eventual rain storm that was expected to come in. After that we made the double trip to return my trailer and go back to get steve’s and he was on his way back to Ohio, Another weekend in the books for us here at Stevand Racing.

After our big weekend last week we found ourselves with not much to do the following weekend. With Steve out of town for work I chose to hit up Pittsburgh Raceway Park for a 10.00 and slower and 9.99 and quick race format.

I wasn’t real happy with the way my car was working the prior weekend. It seemed to be moving around a lot in ET throughout the weekend. The weather was changing rapidly last weekend so i didn’t want to just jump into changing stuff if it wasn’t really the car. So I made the trip out to PRP and made my two time trails. The results were somewhat of the similar results from the week before. It picked up two hundredths from pass to pass witch may not seem like a lot but from how it usual runs it is.

I managed to make it down to 8 cars were I gave back the finish line by .0001 it gets hard to race when you are not really confident in the dial in the you choose. It makes you have to drive the finish line tighter and that’s when mistakes like that happen. So now its time to change the car up since the last two weeks in a row its moved in ET more then I would like it to. Since there seems to be a lot of variation in the sixty foot times (The first increment on the track) I’m leaning towards its time for a new set of tires and hopefully that will calm things down some and make it repeat like I’m used to it doing. So lets just hope its the tires seeing how its a four hundred dollar investment$$$$$. Donations are graciously accepted.

This week starts the month long swing of Halloween races at the local tracks. Steve and I will be back at PRP this weekend for there Halloween race dubbed Ghosts Ghouls & Goblins. Lets hope that the tires will do the trick and I can bring in some cash and make them pay for themselves!

This is the first ever all Stevand Racing podcast on the More Than a Fan Podcast Network.

I (Josh) recorded the  inaugural episode in the More Than a Fan Basement, but Steve makes his appearance via Skype, so he could be anywhere. He even told me he was naked. Luckily, we had the video turned off.

(I wasn’t wearing pants, either)

We talk about Steve’s time in Indy, Matt winning the Dragway 42 Championship, and the guys weekend at Pittsburgh Raceway Park.

Here you go, let us know what you think!