Gosh Darned Ole Fluid Couplers…
Written by Camp Stanley
Photos by Axle Weiss
Hagerstown, MD – So how has it been going with the installation of the torque converter (read fluid coupler) in the 
“Appalachia on Steroids” Camaro you may be wondering? We made the conscious decision to make that leap at the end of last year but as in all things new, some things are not really all that easy!
We headed down to Mooresville, NC to test the new parts and pieces to be sure all would be in the ready for the first ADRL race in Houston, Texas. Before we left I scoured the web for all the war stories on what NOT to do when you put a torque converter in a high horsepower car.
I put all of this profound knowledge I garnered into a little cheat sheet/booklet so we could try our best not to make those same errors. More on that later!
Upon arrival on a beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon we unloaded the car and proceeded into our new year start up of the engine and filling and checking the new LencoDrive transmission.
The transmission part went well but the motor part was way, way downhill after that. After setting the timing with the MSD mag 44, next up was to phase the crank trigger to the mag. In our case this takes several start the car, shut it off, adjust and then do it all over again.
This was when I noticed the motor just didn’t sound right. And after checking, rechecking and double checking 37 times we realized that there may be a distinct possibility that we had an issue with the new camshaft we installed in the engine this year.
After a confirmation phone call to Mike Janis at JanCen Engines and a swap of some plug wires it was indeed a cam ground for a different firing order than what we run and what was specified. But that issue was solved with the swapping of several spark plug leads. But it was hint of things to come!
Sunday was another bright beautiful day and although we couldn’t start the car before 1200pm because of churches close by we had other things to do. Shannon, better known as Sparky in some circles, of Davis Technologies had come up to finish the wiring of the last few components that had arrived after I left his shop in NC in January.
I had taken the car to him for a complete PROFESSIONAL rewiring job that we surely needed. A man has to really love his sponsors!
And then it was time to make some smoke from the Mickey Thompson tires and see if we could go from A to B easily. And that is where things started to go bad wrong. At the end of the burnout John couldn’t get the car out of forward. So it was shut it off, tow it back, set the idle, try it again.
Then it wouldn’t go in forward because we had almost killed the trans brake on the pro jacks! We got two lousy part hits and the sun was starting to go down. Remember that cheat sheet I spoke about earlier? Don’t forget it!
The next attempted hit on the car we managed, of all things to SET THE DOOR on fire! The timing retarded as it was supposed to do but never went back in and as John got ready to stage the car the alcohol that had been blown up on the door decided to go up in smoke and take the decals, the paint, the gelcoat and the resin in the carbon fiber along with it!
After we sorted that mess out we FINALLY got one hit on the car with a wounded trans brake that gave us reason to believe all would be well for Houston.
And now back to my little cheat sheet/booklet on what not to do. When we were ready to leave Mooresville at 1030pm I had checked off every single solitary item on that list! AND added “catch your own door on fire” to it! So after a little mini team meeting we threw that booklet in the trash bin and headed back to the hills of Maryland.
More about Houston in another article…soon…
