Paul Vasko's new Dmax RailCar makes its Debut Technical info Thread!

[MarkBroviak]

This thread is a technical inside look at what we are doing and how we are doing it with this new project of Paul's! I hope you guys enjoy it!


This is Paul Vasko's RailCar that weights roughly 2600lbs with him in it and 11/14/21 he went [email protected] coasting from the 1/8th on his first time to the track with it and his first full 1/8th pass. It has the old liquid motor from my ProMod that set the allison record last year. It is rocking the Rick D'Lance/ProFab custom light weight Stainless Header manifold and pedestal setup which is an absolute work of art and function! It is an LBZ with Oval Cast 17.5:1 pistons with with a 4L80 transmission setup with our PMT 488/96 SS V-band 1.0housing and some spray. It was supposed to go in his Chevelle streetcar but he found this rail for sale and decided to go this route with the project! This was his first time to the track with it to get his feet wet on a 500hp tune in it. I tune it and we are using the dsp5 switch for staging limiter and burnout mode. He let off at the 1/8th and coasted to this time which means it is going to be really fun when we turn it up and run it out the back. This car has a ton of potential in it and he is already ahead of his goals with it so can't wait to see where it goes next season!

Paul Vasko first 1/8th hit in his new Duramax railcar! [email protected] on 500hp tune. - YouTube

 

[MarkBroviak]

Ok, so to dig into the data on this machine! This car is rocking 3.25 gears with 33x14.5x15 Hoosiers on a hardtail chassis. The 4L80E trany is a 2.482 1st gear 1.482 2nd gear and 1.0 3rd gear. He is leaving in 2nd gear and the converter lockup and shifts are done on a timer off the transbrake release. Converter lockup on the first pass was started at 32mph and locked up solid by 67mph with the 2-3 shift happening at 90mph. Well this was the breakin tune to get him comfortable with the car and to get everything sorted out with it and see what or where we needed to go with things on it. The base tune is roughly 500hp range(1200us on 100% over injectors on a single 12mmcp3) and I had the fuel limiter at 4600rpms... Well it was on the DSP5 staging limiter(I will explain this more in depth later) at 2950rpms and roughly 1 second after he let off the button is was pinned on the limiter and sat there for a solid 2.5seconds before it dropped into 3rd and start fueling hard again til he lifted at 127mph and 4600rpms in 3rd. This means that for the 2.5seconds while sitting on the limiter it was injecting enough to sit against the limiter so my best guess is 400-450hp range. The mph and et at the weight says it averaged roughly 650-770hp so the 500hp tune is probably making closer to 850hp peak power. Now since this is running on a factory LBZ ecm we decided to use the AEM CD5 Carbon dash standalone logger assembly to log everything and give him a display for reference on everything which works really nice! It is a cheaper alternative to the big standalone systems like Bosch and Motec. With this setup we are able to read some of the Can-Network info from the factory ecm and add a bunch of external stuff sensors to log egt's, boost, drive, intake temps, lift pump pressure and so on. The dash also has a GPS unit built in to give us actual grounds speed, elevation and other data. Here is a screen shot of it. Important take away data from first past is boost was 53psi drive 59 peak, egt's 1100* and with no intercooler intake temps only got up to 255* at the big end which isn't too horrible honestly. This thing is going to fly when we get it dialed in!!! Stay tuned for more info!

 

[unfinished business]

Awesome thread Mark! Like you said, this build is an open book. So, feel free to ask any and all questions. Your description and the log explains so much. Now I know why the car took off when it shifted to 3rd gear.

 

[Yngdmax92]

so your using the dsp5 switch with a position being staging limitier, so foot to floor and just turn knob to go ?

 

[JoshH]

so your using the dsp5 switch with a position being staging limitier, so foot to floor and just turn knob to go ?

I'm guessing he has the DSP switch wired through a relay so that when the trans brake or stage button is held down, it switches to the staging tune by opening or closing the relay (depending on how it is wired), and when the button is released, it switches to the tune he wants to race on. When I had the dumpster going, that's how I did it. Made it easy to hold the accelerator to the floor and hold the trans brake button, as soon as you let go of the button, everything goes.

 

[MarkBroviak]

so your using the dsp5 switch with a position being staging limitier, so foot to floor and just turn knob to go ?

Basically yes, he has a burnout mode in one position and staging limiter in next then 3 power levels to choose from and it is wired into or controlled by the trans brake(more complicated than that but easiest way to explain it).

 

[MarkBroviak]

After this weekend's event in Bowling Green, I will give an in-depth update on what we are doing with this project as it really escalated this season!

 

[MarkBroviak]

Wow, I'm truly sorry everyone that I dropped the ball on this thread! So, in 2022 we tweaked on the setup and everything picking away at it trying to see how fast it would actually go. We ending up getting it to go [email protected] on the LBZ Ecm on my original promod's street motor(liquid block and heads), single 14mmCp3, and a single S488/96T6 with nitrious. That pass we staged at 4krpms 26.5psi boost 30psi drive 720*egts and when he let go of the button it went 1.12 60ft 3.106 to the 330ft and [email protected] and he let off and coasted to a [email protected]. Peak boost was 72.5psi(Peak IAT was 117*) and peak drive was 98psi while peak egt at the end of the run was 1580*. With that run we were done for the year and making plans for the up coming season and knew that big changes were needed to meet Paul's goals. Car needed front halfed to go any faster and the street motor with Oval Race cast pistons was to be replaced with a filled block Wagler stroker motor built by Matt Hatfield. For fuel he went with 500%S&S injectors and dual 12mm reverse rotation pumps and a Stainless Diesel GT55 102mm and more nitrous also. He also went to a carbon fiber body on it which looks amazing! For engine management Paul went with the S&S built Motec system to control everything setup by Andre from S&S. With Andre's help and guidance I picked up the Motec fairly quickly for never having played with one before. He also swapped the 4L80 for a M&M Turbo400 with a Neal Chance lockup converter. Once it was all together we took it to Wagler's to get the system figured out and did some 60ft and 330ft hits to get ready for UCC. At UCC first hit off the trailer was a [email protected] without the wheelie bar so we weren't getting crazy with it out of the hole but still went 1.145 60ft and 2.947 330ft. Car was a bracket car and did everything we asked of it. The next race was Bowling Green and we had the wheelie bar installed and we were ready to really get after it. During testing we were able to go 1.09 60ft 2.827 330ft and [email protected]! We then knew we had a hotrod! During qualifing it went [email protected]! First round of eliminations the car went 4.08@180mph! For the finals we managed to win the race event with an [email protected] and it did a 1.040 60ft 2.707 330ft. You might be looking at this info and wondering why it only went .02 faster but the mph dropped 4mph. The data!!! So we have several safety measures built into the Motec system to help keep us from doing something really dumb and breaking stuff. Well when we got down to the 4.20 range we started to tickle the egt limiter and therefor it was pulling fuel out to keep the egt's in check. The more power we threw at it the quicker it was hitting the limiter. The finals pass it hit the egt limiter at 400ft out and yanked 1200hp worth out of it. In the car Paul said it felt like he let off the throttle so he looked down to make sure we still had oil pressure and all was good on the dash so he stayed in it til the strip. We got the win because our competition was broken but the big picture was that we needed to come up with a game plan to move forward because Paul wanted to run PDRA/NHRA Top Dragster classes and they are 1/4mile events and we couldn't go full power to the 1/8th. We had to make a decision on what to do to fix these issues with the car. Stay tuned!

 

[2004LB7]

So when do we make a 1/16 mile drag racing list?

 

[MarkBroviak]

Ok, so lets dig into the data for 4.06 pass because it is interesting to say the least. The car was on the brake at 4550rpms and was shifting at 6400rpms so it only dropped to 5100rpms on the 1-2shift and 4600rpms on the 2-3shift. Timing is 12*at 4500rpms and go to 27* at 6400rpms. IAT was a peak of 153* at the end of the run. On that pass peak boost was when it locked the converter and it hit 105psi boost at 100-150psi drive pressure depending on load and rpms. It also pulled 3G's on the lockup. Egt's tickled 2000* which is why it yanked the fuel out of it in second gear! Speaking of fueling we left the line on 314mg and ramped up to 440mg at 1sec into the run(97mph) but because of the egt's it started yanking fuel out at the 3second mark 163mph(went from 440mg to 270mg at 180mph) and the g's dropped to .7 when it did this. This brings us to the next phase of the car build so that we can achieve our goals... Stay tuned for the next stage of this project because it going to be a wild step forward!

 

[MarkBroviak]

So when do we make a 1/16 mile drag racing list?

2400+Hp brings us a whole different list of things to figure out lol!

 

[1FastBrick]

I am curious what you can do to keep the EGT's in check enough to get a longer run out of it.

 

[2004LB7]

More air....

Do they make intercoolers for the exhaust?

 

[PureHybrid]

I know what Gale would do... More nitrous!

 

[JoshH]

I know what Gale would do... More nitrous!

I'm not sure I disagree with that method. Nitrous has its benefits.

 

[PureHybrid]

I'm not sure I disagree with that method. Nitrous has its benefits.

Yes. But I suppose it depends on how much he's already spraying

 

[MarkBroviak]

Yes. But I suppose it depends on how much he's already spraying

Correct! We are already spraying somewhere around 5-6lbs in 4seconds.... We are running and air fuel ratio from 25:1 all the way up to 50:1 during the pass. The next phase of this build is going to be a LOT different to try to allow us to manage the heat at this high of a hp without injecting water. I can tell you we are going from 4" to 5" plumbing and the water to air intercooler is going from a 2000hp to a 4000hp core setup and we are also switching it from single nozzle kits to direct port nitrous setup. We are also going from manifold to long tube headers which should help also.

 

[JoshH]

More is always better, right?

 

[PureHybrid]

More timing! Gotta keep that heat on the pistons haha

 

[PureHybrid]

Correct! We are already spraying somewhere around 5-6lbs in 4seconds.... We are running and air fuel ratio from 25:1 all the way up to 50:1 during the pass. The next phase of this build is going to be a LOT different to try to allow us to manage the heat at this high of a hp without injecting water. I can tell you we are going from 4" to 5" plumbing and the water to air intercooler is going from a 2000hp to a 4000hp core setup and we are also switching it from single nozzle kits to direct port nitrous setup. We are also going from manifold to long tube headers which should help also.

Sounds like a lot, but I have zero clue. How much are the guys spraying that run the blue S&S sponsored car?

I wouldn't have guessed it would run that hot at that AFR