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Gary Hart's land-speed Studebaker
Can you say 233mph MegaSquirt'd Monster?(scroll down for pics and IN CAR VIDEO)
Big Block 515 with twin Garrett turbos
So the background story is in early 2005 I sold a PCB2.2 MS-I unit to a guy in Missouri planning to use it on a boat, I'm not sure exactly what happened to that but I got a call/email a while later from Mike Collison, a cohort of Gary Hart's, after they had purchased the ECU from the original owner and wanted to talk to me about using it on this twin-turbo'd beast instead. With low-impedance injectors being a must for this horsepower level I had Mike send the ECU back my way and I upgraded the unit with the flyback board to allow for this (this was all before the new PCBv3 came out, which is fine with low or hi-z injectors) and I then got it back to him. It was a while later that I heard back from the guys there, but it turns out they had been staying very busy... Last dyno session, with a 'roughed in' tune and very low boost (no boost control yet, wastegates were wide open!) the 'stude made 800hp on a DynoJet at 4000rpm just screwing around, and this motor is built for 7500rpm and plenty of boost. At this point the car will break the wheels loose at over 160mph- without breaking a sweat! This is also using the mechanical advance distributor for timing and a MegaSquirt PCB2.2 with flyback board for fuel injection. That was before Dieselgeek got ahold of it... Since then Scott Clark (Dieselgeek) and his partner in crime Mike Higginson have completely rewired the car, removed the relay board (in the box on top of the valve cover in the above pic) as there were heat concerns with it's location, and loaded the MSnS-E firmware. After the MegaSquirt-I PCBv3.0 board was released we upgraded Gary to this board running the same code and configuration for no reason other than we could, though it's a good move with the improved design of the v3.0 PCB. Then, after fighting with some weak ground issues (which were resolved) this year (2007) which resulted in a suspected damaged power supply we swapped in a PCBv3.57 SMT MegaSquirt-I EMS while out on the salt. So at this point as of 8/2007 Gary is again running the latest/greatest mainboard available, still running the MS1 Extra code version 029t controlling his EFI. Horsepower estimates when the boost is raised a bit is 1100-1200whp on a Dynojet, and that's staying conservative with the boost and tune. The motor should be good for 1500+whp, but this isn't drag racing for 6 seconds and shutting it down. This is all about WOT runs for 90 seconds straight, and he has to pull two of them for it to count, at over 245mph each. How many people can call 1200 whp conservative anyways? See the links below for the results of Gary's trips to Bonneville Speed Week 2006/2007.....
Here's more pictures, click the thumbnail for large versions...
Here are a few pics from Speed Week 2006 (more at the links at bottom of page)
Finally... the video of Gary's first 'warmup' run at SpeedWeek 2006. If you can consider 227mph a warmup! We reviewed the MegaSquirt datalogs after the run and found Gary never got into the throttle more than 29%!!! This thing is truly a beast at an estimated 1200whp and 1400ftlbs of torque. On a nice safe tune ;). Click here to see the 227mph 'warmup' run (24 MB download)
So what happened next? Well, on Gary's next run he made it to 233mph, but something wasn't right. He got back and reported to his 'crew' (that would be Scott Clark, Mike Higginson, Mike and Richard Collison and I) that it seemed to be surging and hesitating up top. We reviewed the datalogs and found that Gary actually did end up punching the throttle at the top of 5th gear, boost shot to 17.7 psi, and RPMs immediately dropped off. What the heck? I'll tell you what.... the datalogs also showed his coolant temp sensor never reached operating temp, it maxed out at 152 and it should have been up around 210. It was working fine, though it was reading the AIR temperature that was in the coolant passages after the water drained out! During further investigation we found that the lower coolant hose had popped off most likely at the end of the previous run, and this 233mph pass had been run COMPLETELY DRY! Not good. The motor tightened up when the temps shot up and choked the power down as the internals were stressed way beyond the design specs. At this point the motor turns over, with a pretty bad sounding clunk. Gary will do the autopsy soon enough but this ended his fun at the 'Flats this year. It's too bad. This car has 250mph in it EASY. In fact I'd guess it's got 270 or maybe more in it as long as it will stay stuck to the ground! So while Gary qualified for his record on his first run beating the previously held record, you have to 'back it up' in order to take the record, and we couldn't make that happen with the engine damage.
Here's the time slip from the 'coolant free' pass in 2006...
For more details and a ton of pics of SpeedWeek 2006 and 2007 check out these links:
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