Slobalt

[doglover44]

Hows Slobalt coming ?

[Ellis V Buth]

Jeg's Speedweek was the official debut for the Slobalt. We pulled in the gate late Tuesday night with a bunch of work to do to the car. The brakes were installed, but still needed to be bled. We got that done and then worked on tightening the new header down properly. We left the trailer to have dinner and work on the other cars and came back to a puddle on the floor. After some head scratching, we found that one of the header tubes got into a transmission line and was causing a leak. So out with the header to put a dent in our brand new header on one of the tubes for clearance.

Wednesday morning is qualifying and class elims day. We have to apply the car number and class designation. We also still have to drain the 87 octane street fuel out of the tank and run some C11 through before going up. We ran out of time Tuesday night after we spent 8 hours on the transmission in the Pinto and didn't get to bed until 4AM!

Take the car to the scales and find that the elevator scales were about 100 lbs heavier than these...so we have to add a bunch of weight. Luckily we were prepared for that but it dampens our spirits a bit because the extra weight means our test data wasn't as close as we'd hoped and the index is going to be a challenge. Fuel check before the run goes well and the weather is decent compared to our testing so we get up there early.

The car goes out and runs well, sounds fine on the shifts and we get a 16.566 at 82 MPH. A measly 6 hundredths above the index...dang it! At this point, we've basically done everything to the car that we can for the week so we are stuck just running it as it is. In the confusion that morning, I forgot to put the NHRA and LODRS stickers on the car. We get in trouble for that at the scales but are able to correct the situation easily.

One of the biggest problems we've run into at this point is the OEM Cobalt computer is untouchable. So we cannot tune it at all and we have plenty to gain from a tune. We have a solution at this point, but a bit of foreshadowing here this solution won't arrive until September so we are stuck with a stock tune until then.

This one went a bit longer than I intended, my apologies. Cobalt proof of concept was a success. Car ran a best of 16.566 and close to 83 MPH in the soupy air that is Columbus. Qualified for both events since there ended up being less than 128 cars there and got to run class elims. It was fun for me because I got to stage up against the Cobalt in my Ranger and for the first time in my life I owned both of the vehicles staging up for a run in stock eliminator! 5 years ago, I wasn't sure I'd ever really own 1 stocker myself let alone 2.

[David Lee]

Originally Posted by Ellis V Buth

Jeg's Speedweek was the official debut for the Slobalt. We pulled in the gate late Tuesday night with a bunch of work to do to the car. The brakes were installed, but still needed to be bled. We got that done and then worked on tightening the new header down properly. We left the trailer to have dinner and work on the other cars and came back to a puddle on the floor. After some head scratching, we found that one of the header tubes got into a transmission line and was causing a leak. So out with the header to put a dent in our brand new header on one of the tubes for clearance.

Wednesday morning is qualifying and class elims day. We have to apply the car number and class designation. We also still have to drain the 87 octane street fuel out of the tank and run some C11 through before going up. We ran out of time Tuesday night after we spent 8 hours on the transmission in the Pinto and didn't get to bed until 4AM!

Take the car to the scales and find that the elevator scales were about 100 lbs heavier than these...so we have to add a bunch of weight. Luckily we were prepared for that but it dampens our spirits a bit because the extra weight means our test data wasn't as close as we'd hoped and the index is going to be a challenge. Fuel check before the run goes well and the weather is decent compared to our testing so we get up there early.

The car goes out and runs well, sounds fine on the shifts and we get a 16.566 at 82 MPH. A measly 6 hundredths above the index...dang it! At this point, we've basically done everything to the car that we can for the week so we are stuck just running it as it is. In the confusion that morning, I forgot to put the NHRA and LODRS stickers on the car. We get in trouble for that at the scales but are able to correct the situation easily.

One of the biggest problems we've run into at this point is the OEM Cobalt computer is untouchable. So we cannot tune it at all and we have plenty to gain from a tune. We have a solution at this point, but a bit of foreshadowing here this solution won't arrive until September so we are stuck with a stock tune until then.

This one went a bit longer than I intended, my apologies. Cobalt proof of concept was a success. Car ran a best of 16.566 and close to 83 MPH in the soupy air that is Columbus. Qualified for both events since there ended up being less than 128 cars there and got to run class elims. It was fun for me because I got to stage up against the Cobalt in my Ranger and for the first time in my life I owned both of the vehicles staging up for a run in stock eliminator! 5 years ago, I wasn't sure I'd ever really own 1 stocker myself let alone 2.

it seems that the 2005 and 2006 2,2 have locked ecm. is it possible to use a 2007 ecm?

[Ellis V Buth]

Originally Posted by David Lee

it seems that the 2005 and 2006 2,2 have locked ecm. is it possible to use a 2007 ecm?

Yes, or a Cavalier ECM. You'll find out later in the saga which route we choose to go.

[David Lee]

Originally Posted by Ellis V Buth

Yes, or a Cavalier ECM. You'll find out later in the saga which route we choose to go.

Thanks

[Ellis V Buth]

This post will catch us up to before the Fall Classic.

After Columbus, we tested multiple things and tried many different theories. We procured a set of NOS 7x19.5 slicks that are a bit softer than the road race/circle track tires we had. We read Billy Nees build thread on the Cavalier and tried some of the tricks he tried (flopping the cams specifically) but our results for all of these tests yielded a series of runs between 16.53 and 16.51 in the morning air at each track (Indy, BG, testing at various bracket events and Wild Wednesday). A few of our tests (smaller injectors to try and help the 10:1 AFR with the stock tune while waiting on the new computer to arrive) resulted in significantly slower runs. We even tried tricking the car into thinking it was running at a different temperature to try and get the AFR back in line and resulted in significantly slower runs!

We were able to procure an 05 Cavalier computer and wiring harness which will allow us to tune the car. Getting away from the stock computer and moving to a tuneable ECM ended up being the proper solution. We found a company in Michigan that had all the equipment and it came pre-loaded with their "drag race tune" and we took it to the 1/8 mile track in Terre Haute. The AFR and timing curve are specifically what interests us initially...AFR being pegged at 10:1 and timing being locked out at 20 degrees has to be our biggest limiting factors. We are also interested in messing with the shift points and trying to lower the line pressures (another idea we got from Billy). The test and tune at Terre Haute yields our quickest 1/8 mile passes to date (10.40 compared to prior 10.60s) so we are now convinced that we are under the index on the 1/4 mile.

St. Louis double divisional is the official debut of the car with the tuneable ECM and it does not disappoint. Based on our 1/8 mile data and some tune changes we have queued up, we believe the car should be around a 15.99 if everything carries down track like we think it should. Our initial run with the baseline tune ends up with a 16.21 at 84 MPH. A full 3 tenth improvement from the prior 16.51 best! We are now under the index. We load up the tune changes that we believe will pick the car up another couple tenths and we wait for 2nd qualifier to try and get in the show. The weather, however, had other ideas and we ended up outside the show and with an untested tune for race 2.

Luckily, several cars left between races and we only have to out-qualify a couple of cars (which we didn't know when qualifying started). We leave the new tune in the car and we put the "class oil" (FL0) in the car to ensure that we should be far enough under to beat a few cars. The wind has changed to a head wind which slows the Ranger down 8 hundredths on this run, but the Cobalt goes out and runs 16.02!!! The changes in tune and the "class oil" combined picked us up almost another 2 tenths. We are now .475 under the index in the same weekend we made our first under the index pass at all.

The ECM was $900, tires were $300 plus shipping, other miscellaneous parts and pieces and tax from the rest of the year all add up to a total of $1,800 spent to get the car from completely street to around .5 under. Obviously, if we could have gotten the ECM sooner we could have saved some of the smaller tests and saved a little money along the way. I'd estimate the extra savings would have been in the $100-200 range but we wanted to get the car under the index however we could while we were waiting on the ECM.

There is still 1 more race on our schedule after St. Louis and plenty more to update on the build over the winter.

[MR DERBY CITY]

That’s a good lookin car. I have been following this build closely and even drove to Bowling Green,Ky to watch it run on a warm Saturday afternoon. Now that it runs 5 tenths under I think you guys should pony up and spend a few hundred on a custom fender cover ..

[Larry Hill]

Now that is almost a sales pitch you can’t ignore.

[Ellis V Buth]

Originally Posted by MR DERBY CITY

That’s a good lookin car. I have been following this build closely and even drove to Bowling Green,Ky to watch it run on a warm Saturday afternoon. Now that it runs 5 tenths under I think you guys should pony up and spend a few hundred on a custom fender cover ..

She ain't too pretty just yet. It was a good looking single-color car before I backed into it a few years ago in the driveway with my F250. That's why the hood and bumper cover are different colored than the rest of the car.

MJ, I'll probably be reaching out sometime over the winter to take you up on this.

[MR DERBY CITY]

Originally Posted by Ellis V Buth

MJ, I'll probably be reaching out sometime over the winter to take you up on this.

There you go Larry 502-693-173five.