All summer I've been chasing a stuttering before reaching the shift point. Didn't happen all the time, usually the 1-2 shift after the car had sat for awhile, rarely if it had been 20 minutes since the last run, occasionally the 2-3 shift but usually not if it did it for the 1-2 shift, and only once for both shifts and after shifting. ET could easily vary over a tenth depending upon whether or not it did this, and I never really knew when I staged whether or not it would. Made dial-ins very difficult, to say the least. And, if I dialed for the stutter, I risked breaking out if it didn't. I'm fairly confident it's ignition, and what I've found the last two days convinces me even more. It's all MSD, Pro Billet distributor, Digital 6 box, Blaster SS coil, Super Conductor 8.5mm wires (although the coil wire is a Heli-Core 8mm). Yesterday I got a new cap because the one I've been running had a recessed carbon center terminal (the steel was making contact with the rotor spring) and two corroded plug wire terminals (heard MSD had a quality control problem with the cap terminals a couple of years ago). Tonight I ohm'd the wires and found three open, #'s 2, 7 & 8. Hope to get a new set tomorrow. Another race Friday evening, it would be nice if it never did this again.

I had something like this happen to my car. It turned out the fuel line was hit with the jack and was about 5/16 dia instead of 1/2 in. Also I had looked into the carb being to close to the hood and I ran a piece of rubber line from one vent to the other with notches cut for a vent.

I helped my friend chase down a problem like yours on his car. It ended up being the MSD cap also. His ET would vary from each run by a tenth while cutting out/ missing.

Only difference was his did it every run. Were yours is hit or miss, I dont know. Sounds like those parts need replaced anyway.

Hope it does the trick.

Last year a racing bud was having intermittent problems with his car, tried all sorts of things, had it at a shop, they finally found a couple of bad wires. He had told me about that, but I didn't think it applied to my situation. Oh, well.

On a different motor but in the same car, we had a timing issue. The ET kept falling off, tenth by tenth. We hooked up the timing light and the timing was everywhere.
It ended up being a wore dist gear. We added a new gear and all was good again in the racing world. lol.

The speed shop had a new set of ready-made MSD Super Conductor wires, and made me a new coil wire out of Super Conductor stock (just realized he didn't charge me for that). I picked up some new wire looms while I was at it, the ones I had were old cheap 7mm things. Should be able to get them all on tonight.

Man, I sure hope this does it. This has been super frustrating.

Fingers crossed. Let us know how fridays race goes.

I had the distributor out last week when the pushrods bent/broke and I had to take the intake manifold off to fish broken parts out. The distributor gear looked fine then. Timing is also dead steady and stays where set.

I'm not exhagurating, i literally go through 1 MSD dizzy and wires per year....ever since they shipped the bulk of their work to Mexico to be built, their quality has gone straight to ****...but the rest of my ignition stuff is MSD so i'm not real excited about switching everything over to something else.

With this lil street motor i dropped back in my car after losing my 427sb, i literally eat up 1-4 MSD 8mm street wires every fricken time i drive it, so i put it up for the year, $50 for plug wires after each cruise night is excessive by any standard.

Well, whatever it was, it still is. Perhaps slightly worse.

Any updates?

This is almost embarrassing. . .

On the way to Topeka, we stopped for fuel and the station had E85. I only had 10 gallons with me, and a few in the tank, so I added 6 gallons to the tank from the pump.

Thursday evening I unload the car off the trailer at Heartland Park Topeka. The elevation is ~4700' lower, so I jet 4 up. They were having a "street legal drags" at the track that night, basically a test & tune, so I paid the $20 in hopes of getting in a few runs. The car didn't seem all that happy driving around, but it launched well - then sputtered above 5500 RPMs, ran about 3 tenths slower than I thought it should. I thought maybe the fuel reg was messing up (don't have a pressure gauge in the car - I know, I know), so I bumped pressure up to 7 psi. Took another pass, it sputtered all the way down the track, ran slower than it does at 5800'. That was the last pass of the evening before they shut down.

Fellow racer loaned me his spare MSD Blaster SS coil for the first TT Friday. Ran exactly the same as the last pass, almost a second and a half slower than it should be. I pull all the plugs, they look fine except #6 had a little color on the porcelain, so I check the new wires for resistance - fine. Maybe a dead plug - try to get a new set, all they have is peanut plugs. Now I'm wondering if the E85 I got on the road was really E70, so I jet down to my Bandimere jets and take my 2nd TT - it actually runs down the track, still sputters from time to time, but mostly in 3rd gear, and is still slow. Enter the gambler (jackpot) race, manage to win 2 rounds when the other racers had .314 and .133 RTs, respectively, they shut down the race after 2 rounds and split the pot among the 2nd round winners.

Saturday, one time trial before the Race of Champions race, in which I'm to represent my track in Sportsman. I go down one more jet number on all 4 corners before the TT, it pulls better than it has all weekend but still missed a few times in 3rd. So, before 1st round of the RoC I commit the cardinal bracket racing sin and jet down one more size and dial a hundredth under my TT time (12.23). A 0.003 RT helps at the top end and I get the win light - would have run a tenth quicker. Guess at a 12.12 the next round, again better RT, would have run on the dial-in. Dial up a hundredth the next round because DA is rising, get a red light win, runs a 12.128 on the 12.13 dial. I get a bye in the semi finals, air seems to be getting better, dial a 12.11 and run a 12.110. In the finals, they rosin & spray the starting line after pulling me through the water box - burn-out was weird, slips on the line, lost .02 in 60', can't run the number and lose.

Sunday morning no TT, 8 a.m. first round Sportsman eliminations, humidity sky high, don't have a clue what to dial so put 12.12 on. Have a .023 to .037 RT advantage to a 13.72 dial-in in the other lane, back off at the top end after going around him, get back on it, his win light comes on. Gave back the strip by .0047, would have run a mid-12.11. 0.043 package loses to a 0.039 package.

Long story short - it was jetted too fat all season.

Oops... at least you've found the problem I'm guessing E85/E70 doesn't really leave much of a color on plugs normally?

was this is the 57 or in the camaro? those numbers seem to me like it's the 57 though...

you did say you were planning on running the camaro, i'm interested if you did and what kind of numbers you got out of it at the lower elevation.

Glad you got it sorted out.

Right, only the gasoline will leave color, and 15% isn't much to do that.

This was the '57. The Camaro wasn't as fast as expected, ran 13.4's (but was a 13.4 each run). Not sure why it wasn't any quicker, it seemed to pull just fine.

We'll see this Friday when I run it at the home track again. I'm going to go down 2 jet sizes and see what that does. Ethanol has more oxygen in it than gasoline does, so the jetting change for altitude isn't as much.

13.4 is still excellent for a street car though! glad you did relatively well even though you had issues. i'm also excited to see you've found the culprit and may be able to fix it without too many issues.

i'm missing my carb right now...

A street car driven 565 miles each way to the race, no less. . .

I alway like driving mine to the track and running faster than some trailered cars. Its not quite as far of a trip as yours, but its still street driven none the less.

Oh yeah, congrats on the rounds you won! Sucks having to chase a problem in the middle of rounds.

I wasn't really chasing the problem between rounds, but getting to eliminations.

My wife asked me this morning how I felt about the week's events, and overall, I can't complain. There were a bunch of guys who didn't win a round all weekend, so at least I don't have that monkey on my back.

And if I can rely on the car for the rest of the remaining races the next 3 weekends, that would be icing on the cake. As it stands now I'll be on the podium for 4 classes at the track awards banquet in November, so by any measure, that's a successful season already. And, I'm in the hunt in three more classes that will conclude in the next 3 weekends. . .

You say that until you break something, then it sucks since you have to find a ride for you and the car at that point.....Even when my junk was running 13's i trailered that pig just for the breakage chance and not having to wait around, or pay money to get'r back home, inconveince freinds, etc.....

but i know whatcher getting at...

If I had a trailer, I would tow it just for that reason. lol

Breaking has definatly crossed my mind. Most of the guys at the track are willing to help out. I usually go with a friend although he tows his own car. Luckly I am only about 20 miles from our local track.

I was a little concerned about driving the Camaro that far and then breaking something. But, the most likely things to break at the track are drivetrain stuff, and all of that is pretty stout for the power I'm making now.

I'm going to go fill it up soon, I'll let you know the average MPG for the trip. . .

Im guessing my car gets less than 10 mpg. lol

Really, On T&T night, I can get about 6-7 runs in plus the 20 mile trip home and just burn a little over 1/4 tank.

i picked up a trailer about a month ago. it's been the best thing i've ever invested in. paid $600 and got this:



i spent another $600 on fresh tires, rewiring/lights, and lumber, and spent about 2 weeks in my spare time and came up with this:




i highly recommend that ya'll try to do the same, not having to worry about how i'm getting my junk home if i have a mishap is an excellent feeling.

Very nice. But, that assumes you have a place to store a trailer. Right now, I need to get the borrowed trailer back to its owner before the HOA comes knocking at the door.

(How'd we get to talking about trailers????)

sorry, didn't mean to hijack...

1152 miles, 5 passes down the track, 23.0 MPG average.

Talking about a break-in motor swap. If it had any bugs to work out, you would have found them on that trip. lol

Congrats.

No sweat. We'll just pretend it's my "everything about drag racing" thread. . .

Back to your troubles, I didnt know that with E85 you could read plugs.

So not even a line on the backstrap, or just no color on the porcelain?

The porcelain looks white all the time, when we dynoed my first 427 combo on the E85 we had to rely solely on A/F reading taken by the computer to get it spot on throughout the range which aided largely in tuning a basically stock 950HP within 4 pulls of the stick and we were spot on. It was a cold blooded beeotch to start and stuck the garage up like rotten potatoes, but once up and running she street drove great and ran down the track excellent..won the first race ever entered with it matter of fact spot on deadly ET!!

But it's a different type of tuning that is'nt anywhere close to what we're used to on gasoline.

The color I did see was probably from oil vapor rather than fuel.

I should have realized it was running rich, because it didn't run all that bad when cold. I assumed it was due to improved air bleed metering.

I guess a A/F meter is the way to go especially with the E85.

five7kid, Were you run at different altitudes from changing tracks, tuning could be hit or miss without a A/F meter.

I guess all carb guys should add one.

I have been racing at one track, Bandimere Speedway, elevation 5800', all spring and summer. Last weekend, I was at the NHRA Division V Summit ET Finals at Heartland Park Topeka, elevation 1100'.

That kind of elevation change usually means you can make a predictable jetting change in a carbureted car. Contrary to popular belief, you don't have to change carb jetting day-to-day. A big elevation change like this, different story.

What I learned is I had been running rich at the home track all year. Nobody - at the home track, on internet forums, anywhere - suggested that my issue could be that I was running rich.

The "nice" thing about an A/F meter and E85 is stoich is different for E85 than it is for gasoline. I asked around a lot about someone who did dyno tunes and knew what they were doing with E85 - every time I thought I identified a place, someone would say, "Don't go to them." Doesn't instill a lot of confidence, and it wasn't like I was having a horrible season.

I forgot you were at the final which is a once a year thing. So you really will not be changing elevation unless you stray to different tracks. (my bad)

Hopefully your experiences will help other guys on the board tuning for the E85 conversion.

Let us know how it goes next race.

first thing I recommend to people at the track with tuning is to get a wideband. Also most of them now have adjusted tables for E85 tuning also. I love watching my a/f ratio going down the 1320 so I can adjust quickly and easily on my first 2 tnt passes of the day and then be fine for the rest of the day typically.

I haven't been able to justify in my mind $500-$700 for wideband capability. To boot, I'm planning on an LSx swap for it after this season, so putting wideband on now would be a bit of waste.

Also need to be careful about the data logging capability. It isn't allowed in a lot of classes, including the ones I run (allowed during test & tune, but not during time trials or eliminations).

the gauge doesn't data log by itself though...i picked up a used wideband for $150, the o2 sensors are really cheap too.

i bought a $260 wideband for my car. Got it new in the box for $200 off ebay. No data logging just a gauge I mounted in the dual pillar pod I bought

You guys are going to be in big trouble if I go out and spend more money now. . .