[dci]

First and foremost I want to Thank so many people for their support and efforts for this years race. Please do not be offended if I miss someone. This last month and a half has been a blur. First off I need to thank my awesome wife of 35+ years for her total support and understanding of what had to be done. She is an incredibly understanding woman and I could NOT do this without her. The Estep's Danny, Jennifer, Chris and Diane for their insane effort. My son Brandon, brother Paul, sister in-law Deanna. My crew here at the shop Brandon Devies, Terry Houston,and Ladonna for all the late nights and incredible amount of driving time chasing parts, delivering parts and running for food. My cad guy Sam Agosta for putting up with me when I had no more patience. All of my very good friends and customers which if I list all of them will take days and I'm not kidding. Guy's like Ed Page, and his buddy Mike. Jim Robertson and his crew, Mike Mc Carty, Rick Ferrara, Kevin Fautsch, GTO George and his wife, Tom Vaught, Arnie Beswick, the list goes on and on, and on, and on. All of these people helped contribute in some way from moral to physical support and I cannot express in words how much I appreciate that.

THANK YOU ALL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!


The weekend just did not go as planned. We just could not get everything done like it should have been done, but it definitely was not from lack of trying. The dragster fought us the whole way and at the end after over coming incredible hurdles wouldn't fire. We will get it figured out though and see what that engine is capable of hopefully soon. My 455 sounded awesome and performed flawlessly, but it never put down the numbers we anticipated. We didn't know until Sunday, but the tranny was failing and finally expired on Sunday. Our best pass was only a 9.93 at 138 MPH 2970 pounds. Something was pulling the engine down hard and the car just would not accelerate for the first 150 -300 feet which of course is the most important part of the run. I told you I would share the good and the bad no matter what it was and I'm not making any excuses. The car did not perform and we didn't achieve our goal. We are leaving the engine in Danny's car for the rest of this season so we can try to get it sorted out, and I will update everyone as we do. It would have been nice to run well this weekend, but it is what it is.

Please, everyone who helped accept my apologies for letting you all down !!!!!!!!! We will get er done.

[JSPONT]

Keep the updates coming on Danny's car and the dragster. We all know trying to rush everything and get it dialed in in a very short time is hard. At least you made it!! Good luck thanks for posting the timeslip.
Are you going to leave the 2 4's on or go back to the single on Danny's car?

[Tom Vaught]

I had a nice visit with the Estep's when I was hunting for Jim Robertson. Good Peeps.

Tom V.

[GTO Dan]

We spoke at length with Danny and family last night, we were the few still left at the track. You couldn't find a better or more dedicated person to work with. Those heads have so much potential in so many applications it is amazing. Along with the performance they look show quality. Between Danny and Ed you are really going to show what they can do.

Good luck and it was a pleasure meeting you at Jim's pit.

[dci]

Originally Posted by JSPONT

Keep the updates coming on Danny's car and the dragster. We all know trying to rush everything and get it dialed in in a very short time is hard. At least you made it!! Good luck thanks for posting the timeslip.
Are you going to leave the 2 4's on or go back to the single on Danny's car?

Thanks I'm not afraid to admit failure. I will get it figured out though, you can bet on that.
We are going to keep it exactly the way that it was for Norwalk. I really need to know what it will run with this configuration. I really anticipated low nines high eights with this intake set up and camshaft. I have a couple of people who said they have video of it at Norwalk this past weekend. So if I can figure out how to load it here I will. I really need to see the video too. I never got to watch the car go down the track except the last pass when the tranny broke.

[dci]

Originally Posted by GTO Dan

We spoke at length with Danny and family last night, we were the few still left at the track. You couldn't find a better or more dedicated person to work with. Those heads have so much potential in so many applications it is amazing. Along with the performance they look show quality. Between Danny and Ed you are really going to show what they can do.

Good luck and it was a pleasure meeting you at Jim's pit.

Thanks Dan, it was a pleasure meeting with you. The sex appeal is great, but the performance is more important to me LOL. I really think that many of the guy's are missing the fact that these heads will cover such a wide span of combo's from a stock appearing street car to all out race. Over time people will start to see their versatility I think. It's just going to take some time before they catch on. Good times ahead though !!!!!

[dci]

I forgot to thank Mr Jim Robertson and Ed Shultz for their DCI RA5 head purchase this past weekend. Jim's a smart guy and I can't wait to see what he comes up with for his deal. Thanks you guy's !!!!!!!

[Bill Bolin]

I have a couple videos of the car making a pass.....Trying to get all the videos I did up on YouTube.

[Bill Bolin]

https://youtu.be/dqa3FG0xvww

[Bill Bolin]

Another one https://youtu.be/C1O1XvGeoQw

[Half-Inch Stud]

The engine assy looks great in those photos.

What kind of converter and transmission?

[mgarblik]

I am sure everyone realizes that when the engine leaves the dyno and goes in a car, everything changes. The engine then becomes one of many pieces in the total package. So many things can conspire to spoil an engine debut at that point. We had a great engine that a non-shifting transmission ruined last year. You have a team that will get it worked out and put up the numbers soon. Sorry I was unable to spend time checking out the cars and the heads on a running engine. Obviously, Ram Air V heads are of supreme interest to me in the future. Possibly for my 62 Catalina! Keep up the effort.

[dci]

Originally Posted by Bill Bolin

I have a couple videos of the car making a pass.....Trying to get all the videos I did up on YouTube.

Thanks for posting the video's Bill. I didn't get to see the car run at all. I went for his last pass, but that's when the tranny took a crap.

[dci]

Originally Posted by Half-Inch Stud

The engine assy looks great in those photos.

What kind of converter and transmission?

BTE converter I believe, powerglide trans.

[dci]

Originally Posted by mgarblik

I am sure everyone realizes that when the engine leaves the dyno and goes in a car, everything changes. The engine then becomes one of many pieces in the total package. So many things can conspire to spoil an engine debut at that point. We had a great engine that a non-shifting transmission ruined last year. You have a team that will get it worked out and put up the numbers soon. Sorry I was unable to spend time checking out the cars and the heads on a running engine. Obviously, Ram Air V heads are of supreme interest to me in the future. Possibly for my 62 Catalina! Keep up the effort.

Thanks Mike, Danny had a ring and pinion failure a week or two before Norwalk and we think that's what killed the trans. We'll get it sorted out and I'll keep everyone posted.

[Jim Robertson]

Don,
It was pleasure seeing you again and meeting Brandon and some of your family members. No worries, you and the crew will get the engines sorted out. Thanks again for your commitment and tenacity on the V front.

[fastbirds]

Don
It was a real pleasure to meet you in person. I am looking real forward to seeing what power my new RAVs will do with twins and alcohol. Thanks again Ed

[dci]

Update: As stated earlier Danny's GTO at Norwalk ran a best of a 6.39 1/8th and 9.93 1/4 @ 138 MPH with my RA5 pump gas 455. The car had to weigh 2970 pounds to be legal for Tom's heads up race and is why I chose to enter it in that deal. This way we have a predetermined base to work from and to substantiate the results. Since Norwalk Danny has been chipping away at getting to the real potential of this engine in his car. He first went to Puducah and ran the car the same way it was at Norwalk to have a solid base to work from. The car ran almost exactly what it ran at Norwalk. We then changed the intake back to my cast intake and a 1050 Dominator to see if the tunnel ram was hurting it with no change in ET or MPH. The next thing Danny changed was the converter. He had a 5500 in it to start and switched to a 6200 which he confirmed against the trans brake for both converters. The car picked up .24 seconds and 2 MPH. Then we made a rear gear change from 4.10 to 4.56 and the car picked up another .17 seconds and 4 MPH. So so far we have picked up a total of .41 seconds 1/8th mile and 6 almost 7 MPH. The engine wants more converter, gear, and RPM. So Danny is changing out the converter again to a 6700 and will test again to see what the results are. Then he is going to put a 5.13 gear in the rear to test again. We still have not moved the shift point up yet and we think it wants around 7600 - 7800 rpm. We started at 6600 at Norwalk and Danny has only tried 7000 so far with an increase in MPH. We are not quite where we thought it would be yet, but we are getting closer. Since Norwalk all of Danny's testing has been 1/8 th mile so all we can do for the quarter is calculate the out come. If we do that with the best 1/8th mile we have so far it looks like this 5.98 x 1.57 = 9.388. That would be a .6 improvement over Norwalk. Danny has about 20+ passes on the engine since we installed in his car and we had 25+ pulls on the dyno with out any failures so far. Danny pulled the rockers off and inspected the pushrods, rocker tips, rocker shafts and valve stems and said it looks like it hasn't even been run. So the valve train looks stable at least up to 7000 RPM. Stay tuned, I'll keep everyone up to date as I get the results.

Almost forgot to mention: Danny bracket raced the car a couple of weeks ago and ran within .003 on 5 passes. He red lit or he would have probably won that night. Said the car has never been that consistent.

[mike leech]

Good to hear!

[Tom Vaught]

Sweet to hear that Danny is happy with the testing and your engineering is showing promise, and more to come.

Good Job Don and Danny!

Tom V.