Cal trac /mono leaf results

-
I wouldn't run anything else but cal tracs if I had a leaf spring car,those super stock springs was ok 40 years ago,but very outdated today
 
@440outlaw.....Actually at this point the SS springs/snubber worked way better, and so did a few others including my wifes Dart.Her car worked better with stock V/8 springs,Comp engineering adjustable shocks and a snubber.I took them off her car when we put it back on the street, thinking they would work on my car with the mono leafs and correct shocks.
SS springs may be old tec. but they worked much better.I know several people running them clamped, and they work great.
@Mechinxh.....No, but we did photo the tires both sides, and it is the same. What are you looking for?
Thanks Chris
 
Fast is cool, don't have any problem with that, but is it consistant? If so, what is the secret, because consistancy is what's evading me!....Nice car, cool pic
 
@ crackedback....." It's your chassis and tuning" is pretty vague...Do you know what my chassis and tuning is? With all due respect how can you make such a blanket statement?
I am looking for help with tech info, not pictures and stories of how wonderful yours and "all the fast cars"are working.
I am looking for "well mine did that, and this is what I did to fix it"
So what is the real issue? Hook and spin in mine. Has nothing to do with tune up. It's all in the 60's.These things are not rocket science!
This is not my first race car.I am 65 years old, and have been doing this since I was 14. I have worked in chassis shops, built tons of race races, from rear engine wheel standers, to fast street cars.
As far as the "chassis and tune up" goes,The car worked perfect with SS springs and a snuber. Nothing else in the engine/trans/converter combo was changed, other then spark plugs.
The chassis is the same junk everbody else is running,Everything has been gone over and over and is up to required specs.So what is difference?
Are you transbraking, or footbraking? That could make all the difference in the world from what I have seen and heard so far.
Are you a small block or heavy BB? Is your wheel base as short as mine? Valiants have a short wheel base.
Any where we set the Cal Tracs,shocks, or tire pressure, the 60's are inconsistant and suck.That's that.
The people at Cal Trac, as nice as they are, are really no help.One is pretty much on their own.
I am glad yours work for you :)
With that said, if you or anyone has some concrete info I could really use it.
Thanks Chris
 
Thought there was a post at the front of this forum about setting up Caltracs? I don't have a race car, right now, but the instructions contained in that post, look very informative to me and I expected to use them.

Looked up the post and it was done by Mshred.
 
What are you using for rear tires please include compound and if your using tubes. How much front suspension travel. Also provide track temperature and how the track is prepped.

Are you launching off a transbrake. If not how.
Tire pressure
Are you sure your staging the car the same......this does matter
What does the car have for shocks.
Does the car have a good converter. Not a 600$ Friday night special, this is an area that commonly gets overlooked
Has the car been scaled. What is the weight bias. Have you tried adding weight to the rear. You would be surprised how many stock and superstock cars that do.


Otherwords describe your drag race with absolute detail. Keeping track of the above and running good parts is what makes a car consistent
 
@tubbedamx:
Thanks for the consideration:
track prep is good, they spray and drag before Pro and S/Pro each time. 85-100 Degrees cold or hot doesn't matter
Hoosiers D06 11.5W (13 1/2") 29.5X15
No Tubes
5 1/2" front travel, free no binding, Cal trac shocks all around
Transbrake. Have tried leaving at full on 5500,or 5000 chip, but right now 3700 chip seems to help, but still incosistant 60's
JW 8" $1200.00 5500 converter freshed 30 passes ago
Not scaled,weighs 3250 with me in it.Don't have access to scales.
Have not tried weight, but my friend put 150 LBS in his trunk and it seemed to help him. But he is a B body. Not against doing that.
12-14 LBS tire pressure. 14 LBS it was too loose going down the track,11 wades the tires. 13 seems best, I ran 12 with SS springs
69 Valiant
108" wheel base
451 BB (440 tall deck) M1 1050 D.P.
Ultra Dyne solid 620 lift with 1.6 rockers, nets about 663 lift
Bull Dog aluminum heads (un-touched)
460 HP to rear wheels (dyno'd)
9" with 4:57 gears & spool
J.W. Ultra Bell Glide' with pro brake
Standard stock glide low gear
Cal Trac. mono leafs
Rear shock mounts have been lengthened so that the shocks are close to centered.
They don't bottom out, or hit the end when extending. That was an issue I thought I had in the beginning, that they were bottoming out.
I stage and leave the same everytime.My lights are very consistant, so that tells me that part is fine.When I went to 3700 chip, I lost .020 in reaction time across the board, which is no problem in S/Pro
Bars are in bottom hole, with 1/16th clearance (no Preload)
Shocks on stiffest.
I started in top hole with no pre-load, and shocks on softest.
I talked to the super stock Dart guys at our divisional, and this is what worked for them.
I adjusted slowly to this point, making time trials till I got to this point, and this is as good as it gets.
We have pic after pic of rear tires. It hits the tires nice, then moves foward nice, then it just lifts up off the tire and it spins.
Depending on the spin or not, dictates what the 60' is. All the other increments are fine and equal.
That is why the Reaction times are consistant, because it leaves great every time. It is just the spin out after launch that is throwing everything off.
Hope I got it all.
 
Bajavan; i have a 69 dart with the exact same problem as you word for word.The old super stocks with a snubber worked great,but i just thought an upgrade to cal-tracs and slit mono leafs would be better.A fellow drag racer at the track suggested to put an adjustable snubber back on to see if that would help. I my just do that.
It kind of defeats the purpose of the cal-tracs but if it will work i would be more than willing to do it.I have tried from 7psi to 12psi with no better results.The thing that i have not tried is adjusting the cal-tracs with my weight in the drivers seat. Thats next.My 60 fts are also slower than they should be. Just too much hopping off the line.
What are your thoughts on the use of a snubber? If you figure out the problem will you please contact me. I will do the same for you.
I dont race enough to do to many changes to my car. I changed to many things at once. My car went 10:59-127mph with a 1.511 60 ft.
Also tried from 1-9 on the rear shocks, with no great results.
Good luck with your car i hope you get it figured out. Its a beautiful car by the way. I love the 13.5s under it.
keep in touch,Rick.
 
Without video it's kinda hard to tell what is going on, but it sounds like it is porpoising. You might want to try slowing down the front end lift. Do you have an adjustable front shock, or something other than the calvert 90/10 to try? Some cheap Competition Engineering adjustable shocks might help (not the best shock, but cheap and effective). The Calvert 90/10 shocks are great for some cars, but for others they just don't work well because they are VERY loose.

Also, how much Rear shock is showing with the car at rest? The other thing to check is to make sure you are not topping out the rear shock on launch. For what it's worth, my car has about 1.5 inches of rear shock showing (almost fully compressed) at rest.

Good luck sorting out your cal tracks, it took me the better part of a year to get mine to work well....but it still has not been able to beat my best 60' time from my stock (NOT super stock) springs, CE shocks and a pinion snubber. The only thing my Caltracs have done for me is give me a consistent launch, even in poor conditions....which apparently, they WON'T do for you...lol...so, who knows. Best of luck.
 
my 2cents is with flyfish's opinion. it seems like you are over extending the rear shocks. a leaf spring car needs all the extention it can get. you only need 1" of compression for a leaf drag car, the rest needs to be extention. hooking up and then losing traction right away is a symptom of the body pulling the slicks off the track. also check to see if the spring perches welds arn't breaking or the perch isn't bending. sometimes they will need a gusset on the front and back. you also might consider putting the tubes back in. i'm not a fan of a snubber and don't see any reasong to use one for traction but it can be used for a safety device but keep it off the floor.
 
Thanks guys:
@troubles brewing.It is not hopping, I did seriously consider putting my SS springs back in, but I went with a 9" ford diff. and my adjustable snubber went with my 8 3/4. Besides I would have to make something for it.
As for the SS springs verses Cal Tracs, the more I read on the net, the more negative I reead, and most say the SS springs worked better!
@flyfish: I had about 1-1 1/2" showing at rest. When this all started I thought the shocks were bottoming out when it settled down, so I lengthened the shock mount about 3" to where the shocks are less then 1/2 way open. I can un-bolt them, and extend them about 6" which I figured was enough extention.
From everything I read, and talking with the Dart divisional racers, the shocks should be on hardest. That makes sense, because they hold the tires down to the ground so there is no deflection back up.
@shingler As you can see above, it did this when the shocks were at 1". The perches are gusseted and beefed, so there is no issue there.The guy who moved the springs inboard, did a bad job welding the drivers side, and it cracked. I lost a race because of that last year, so they are all beefed up now.
As for tubes, that one keeps nagging at me. I was running tubes with the SS springs.But what holds me back, is 2 of my friends having the same issue had ran tubes and it made no differnce.
I plan to call Cal trac latter today and talk about the shocks.
Thanks guys, this is the positive input I was looking for.This all helps.
The Summit series finals are at our track this year. I have always qualified in the top 5, and 3 times I have made it to the 3rd round when something messed up, either with the other 2 cars I ran, or with the lights last year in this car.
 
Did you scale the car? Have you tried staggering the preload? It looks in that latest pic like the left side is a hair higher both front and rear. In terms of shocks - I don't think stiffer is what it wants. If it sticks and then bounces I'd raise tire pressure, add a hair more preload on the right rear, and soften the shocks - one change at a time. If you can get into a rental it might be easier to sort. Two runs on a changing track isn;t going to help much if you don't already have the baseline.
 
Cool, since you are not topping out the rear shocks, I would try to slow down the front end rise with different front shocks (get something stiffer).
 
Thanks everybody. I called and talked to John Calvert for about 45 min. Very polite and gave me a bunch of info which I will share after some inspection:
3 points of intrest
1 shocks with transbrake should be on softests #1
2 My bias tires can go down to 10 lbs
3 check front alignment @ 3 points. ride height, 2" raised, 4 inch raised.It should maintain 1/4" of tow, so that the car will be stable at 10 psi in the traps.
He said to set the shocks on #1, add 1/4 turn pre-load,bottom hole top hole not that big of a deal.
Then don't mess with the bars, then experiment with tire pressure, rear shock adjustments (going to firmer) and launch RPM's
Running or not running tubes should go to the back burner. Something I could try later if I want, but not a big issue at this point.
More later, and thanks for all your help.
 
I would follow John's advise....glad you had a chance to talk to him. He was a huge help to me.

Set the shocks to the softest setting, if the car hops out of the water box click the shocks one setting harder untill the hopping stops.

I never could get my 60fts completly dialed untill I pulled my tubes....
 
keep plugging away, you'll get it soon enough. a leaf car seems to always want 4"-6" of body raise in the rear. check out that black cuda above, that looks like 6" easy.
 
Yes, the Cuda looks cool, but the front end is way over extended, and looks goofy.
I am sure it is a much lighter car. Mine weighs 3450 with me in it. I didn't go for lightness.But was surprised how heavy it is.
If I don't get these to work, it will be ladder bar and coil overs for me.
 
bajavan said:
Yes, the Cuda looks cool, but the front end is way over extended, and looks goofy.
I am sure it is a much lighter car. Mine weighs 3450 with me in it. I didn't go for lightness.But was surprised how heavy it is.
If I don't get these to work, it will be ladder bar and coil overs for me.
Click to expand...

LOL... Yeah it looks goofy, that's it!!!! LMAO

It works 100 times better than your car!

You're within 100# of the cuda, it's a full interior car.

I date a really hot supermodel, she looks great. She doesn't put out, is that useful? I'll take a little goofy and functions like a MFer, than really pretty and isn't worth crap!

Like I said, it's the chassis and tuning because I've seen video of the car launching. I know where I would focus my attention and it's likely not even on your radar. I won't say anything else because I don't know anything.

I'll continue to read this because it's like that car/train/titanic wreck you just can't look away from.
 
@crackbacked
All I did was ask for help,as I said, I don't need people kicking their chest out, telling me how wonderful theirs work. For every car that is working with Cal Tracs, there are 2 that don't.Even when they do work, they aren't completly satisfied.
People struggle with these things, and that is that.
As I said, I am glad yours work for you, and your car is so much better then mine. That really helps.
 
bajavan said:
For every car that is working with Cal Tracs, there are 2 that don't.Even when they do work, they aren't completly satisfied.
Click to expand...

That's BS... 1 out of 3 success rate and many of the successes aren't satisfied, how do they stay in business... Most that find they don't work, don't do what's needed to make them work, plain and simple! Welcome to that club.

What may work for a SS sprung car isn't necessarily going to work on a cal trac car.

The bars aren't some kind of magic bean.

Sorry, a car that run 10.60-10.70 and 60's in the mid 1.50's isn't a good working chassis. PERIOD.

Funny that the people at calvert were worthless not long ago.

I hope you get it sorted out. :cheers:
 
the black cuda's suspension is working correctly. the front end needs to be worked on to keep the wheels from leaning like that. correcting that probably would cause the car to lower it's et some and the wheels not to getting upset apon landing. yes it's working really very good but it's not 100% yet.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
-

Back
Top