Can the '56 Chevy Field Car Run 11s at Samoa Drag Strip? | Roadkill Garage

[Music] this is the episode where we finally perfect my 56 Chevy known as the field car at least I hope so the plan here is to fix it and go on a road trip to a drag strip but let me give you the background on this thing it was really a project car from two different Motor Trend shows Hot Rod Garage and roadkill garage I guess initially Hot Rod Garage had this 56 Chevy and they perfected the chassis on it but the car was garbage it was so Rusty and so on an episode of roadkill garage dich and I swiped the chassis out from under their car and put my body on it subsequently we've hopped the thing up and right now it's got a 500 horsepower 350 Chevy in it I built that on an episode of roadkill it's the so-called Co 350 that happened during the pandemic it's got a t-56 magnum 6speed in it and it has a ford9 in with 488 gears now we've taken it to the drag strip a bunch of times and the quickest it ever ran was on an episode of roadkill where we dragged it behind finegan super stretchy truck all the way to reading drag strip here in California and it went 1138 at 120 mph but the thing was the clutch was flaring every time I bang shifted it you could actually hear in the episode the engine RPM just run up as the thing was shifted well I fixed that with a McLoud clutch the thing grabs hard now and on roadkill garage we took it back to the drag strip to try and perfect the traction unfortunately the throwout bearing fell apart almost immediately and I never got down track with my new clutch I can see the drip coming right out of the center of the bell housing yeah well we already know what it is yep uh yeah there's more fluid coming now it's not the bleeder hose it's a throw up earing this car's done that's what we're going to fix here on this episode we're going to tear it apart and the plan is to drive it from here at Hot Rod Ranch in Loke California all the way up to Samoa dragstrip and if we make that happen it will also fulfill a goal from a past episode of roadkill of me visiting every single operational racetrack in Califor California first thing we need to do is get it up in the air and tear the transmission out of it and find out what went wrong we're going to take the hood off just so we get light down in there as we're working on the trans take it away Steve I think I have to just take the shifter off and then we pick it up and pull the trans it's going to be the lap of luxury I guess that's it yeah don't you have to lower it on to the lock tabs if those worked yeah they don't work no are you serious yeah oh this was our clue at the drag strip that maybe it was the throw up bearing there's brake fluid dripping right here off of the bell housing you holding it yep okay why isn't it sliding into the trans is the question that's what I'm wondering too you know what it's because the drive Shop's too long it's bottoming in the trans that's all you get are you sure I think so that doesn't make any sense okay let me pull this one up and out you can see from the witness Mark that it just rides right there yeah okay we're going to have to get this dry CH shorten by an inch yeah that's no [Music] good okay that's supported enough that I think we can take it apart okay I think I can get the strap across it now okay there we go there now the shifter is below the floor that's out right we're looking at the throw out bearing up in here now I'm going to have to take one hose off of it to clear the transmission out all right I'm going to go down with the Trans get it out of here what we're dealing with here is a hydraulic thrw up bearing it's not like the old school stuff that has a fork that is connected to the clutch pedal and that slides the bearing forward mechanically remember that what this is doing is pressing on the fingers of the clutch pressure plate so that it can engage and disengage the disc what this does is it's a hydraulic cylinder so that when you step on the clutch it pumps fluid in there and it goes but we're worried that it went oh do you see the little piece of ring sticking out right there trash so clearly what happened there is the thing overextended when it tried to come back it folded a little o-ring over itself so that it wouldn't retract so that thing became garbage as a result of us hyperextending it with the clutch pedal okay we're finishing up taking out the bell housing and the clutch to clean it all off cuz it's all coated in brake fluid see this clutch disc I called my guy at McLoud and told him what was going on with the other clutch flaring and he gave me this one that has ceramic pucks instead of a conventional friction material although you can see it still has a sprung Hub the thing about this is that it will grab the hotter it gets whereas an organic material or a typical friction material looking stuff will slip when it gets hot all right let's clean this up and we can just throw it back together all right that saves us some money now we're going to borrow a clutch alignment tool and put the whole thing back together check out this flywheel that I got for this car is aluminum and the thing is the aluminum flywheel is lighter a steel flywheel that's heavier has more like stored energy in it for the launch at the drag strip whereas this doesn't so it makes it more of a hair trigger on the launch but the engine doesn't have to accelerate as much mass and so therefore it literally makes more horsepower cuz it doesn't have that parasitic law okay the next thing we need to do is throw the bell housing back on and I'll show you how we're going to take some measurements to set up that hydraulic throw up bearing now we're going to fix the throwout bearing situation now both the old one and the new one are a piece called hydrx from American American powertrain that's the kit that we use to install this six-speed you can see how this old one is hyperextended versus the new one see how it's much fatter right there than this one is so I'm going to install a new one now let me show you what we need to do here first of all the issue is you've got to have a little bit of clearance between the throwout bearing face and the fingers of the clutch in other words when it's installed this is going to be over the snout or input shaft the transmission it's going to go right here and you don't want like riding all the way up against the fingers like that because it will be spinning all the time and it'll wear out really quickly you want to have about 150,000 clearance between the fingers and this do hickey now the way we're going to measure that is I'm going to put a straight edge across here and I'm going to use a dial Caliper the stick end of it to measure from these fingers to this face now remember that the transmission bolts to this face so let me show you what we're going to measure over on the transmission that surface on the bell housing that I just showed you is this one right here so we're going to put the throw up bearing over the bearing retainer here on the transmission and now I need to measure from this surface to this surface and then I take that measurement in here subtract it from this one and it's going to tell me the distance from here to that clutch finger and to adjust it I have little spacers that are going to go right behind it right here and once again I'm shooting for 150,000 we've got it set up with these shims now so that the clearance from the throt to the fingers is 150,000 it's actually 155 and that's what they recommend is 150 so we think we're good we're ready to throw it back [Music] together ding went to stop okay keep going well if you go back that way maybe you can angle wait wait wait ah yeah didam it what I'm installing here is the pressure line to the throwout bearing from the master cylinder on the firewall okay whoa there you go that was a little scary there now you can push it inward yes you can David put a couple of Rags under there to soop up that oil okay stick is in the hole keep going wait I think that's going to go in right there can we uh muffle it in no we need like that [Music] yes well this is entertaining remember the problem where the drive shafts seemed to be bottomed in the transmission and I thought that it was too long well we got to investigating like looking at witness marks and measuring depths and splines and stuff like that as it turns out I bent this Yol it's twisted from drag strip launches I actually feel kind of proud of this to tell you the truth it's gnarly I think what we're going to have to do is throw the drive shaft back in as is it'll probably survive for Highway cruising and somewhere on our trip we're going to figure out how to get like a bit or chrom yolk or something like that on here got it yeah the drive shaft's in we're going to change the oil and top up the transmission a few other little knickknacks and we'll be ready to hit the road the next thing I have to do is bleed the throw out bearing the bearing itself comes pre-bled and of course bleeding means getting all the air out of the hydraulic system and all I have to do is get in there and press the pedal about halfway a whole bunch of times and it'll get the air out of this line everything's back together and it's time to test it out we're going to try the clutch and make sure it works properly in case it doesn't I'm going to lift the car off the ground a little bit so it doesn't drive through the wall if something's wrong [Music] turning okay that works it seems like it works yeah I was able to kill it with the brakes so okay just a few more things to do and we're out but here we [Music] go feels like the clutch drags a little bit now okay as a reminder the best pass ever with this car was at reading drag striping California it was 1138 at 120 later on the car ran 121 we are 23 ft above sea level here so You' think the air would be really good and it' be fast but it is humid and water grains can slow you down because water in the Air does not burn honestly I only really care about getting it all the way down the track clean let's go [Music] that's the way you get some heat in the Slicks right there all right I don't know how to hook it with this new clutch we'll see if I can do [Music] it it's moving pretty good had a little bit of a bog off the line but what's our time going to be 11:54 okay that's not bad all right I granny shifted in but we made it all the way down yeah [Music] F this yeah dropped down to about 12:34 so I think we may be running low on time time have a little bit of a discussion with David and see what he wants to do how do you miss fourth gear that thing went like 9,000 RPM but man I was bang shifting before that ah wow that was bad I hate not having a rev limiter how do you miss [Music] [Applause] fourth how do you miss fourth gear man that's sounding pretty tough now well okay Rand 1175 that wasn't as good as his first rundown the track I'm not sure why David might have a better idea than I do I didn't really see anything obvious going on there my mile an hour was down based on the tack I spun it off the line that time hey but you know what the field car is running at Samoa drag strip and that was our goal and man did we fight for it and it seems like the ignition is working all right I've been super excited just making pass after pass the clutch seems to be dragging just a little bit that's my excuse as to why I'm missing shifts it's not disengaging all the way I'm going to have to go back to Granny shifting it's running about what I expected I think I'm into mids I'm just so stoked that I've made a pass at Samoa and the car is running clean it's all I needed wow what a [Music] week prob 11.7 I can tell by the tack that my mile an hour is slowing down it's making less horsepower it's hot and uh the temperature is rising here and the humidity is going to keep it for making as much power as it did when I was running down in the desert the ignition just cut out that is weird still doing it and it just died and I think I broke something in the back well what do you think well you got a pretty strong headwind at you're fighting for one thing and the bogged off the line it probably wanted another 500 RPM it's weird I launched it 3800 it's all the clutch release yeah so what's my best of the day 11:54 okay I mean that's not bad 1138 11:54 the ignition is still skipping a beat it is it is something is still happening okay well I mean we pretty much uh eliminated everything but the battery so all right I'm calling it good Steve I've beat up the field car like I never have before and it gave back

Channel: MotorTrend Channel

Views: 193,289

Keywords: motortrend, motor trend, motor trend channel, automotive, auto, '56 Chevy Field Car, 1956 Chevy, 1956 Chevy Bel Air, Chevy Bel Air, '56 Chevy Bel Air, Samoa Drag Strip in California, Samoa Drag Strip, Drag Race, Drag Strip, David Freiburger, Steve Dulcich

Id: qHXbGi6it9k

Length: 15min 0sec (900 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 10 2024