As most of probably already know, Chris "Drooze" Wertman, my son, only child, and best friend recently passed away as the result of smoke inhalation during a house fire. He is missed by his friends and family which included his Mother Linda Snowball, Step Father Francis, sons David, and Max, daughter Isabella, and me, his father.

The blog will go on... only because Chris would have wanted it to go on and to help other Dodge challenger Drag Pak owners.....

The car is currently under major rework. We are now more than ever dedicated to the Dream the Chris and I shared that this car, Drag Pak #24 would be a record holder, and we think we are now very close.

For those of you who are tired of stuggling with windows, the polycarbonate door windows, know this, there are options...

Here are the issues as I see them after at least 5 track outings;

1. First the intelligent door modules have to "relearn" how to put the window down on door open, up on door close, etc, etc., after every time you totally turn of power to them. This is especially awkward, and can get a bit anxious in the staging lanes....

2. The polycarbonate windows are not curved like the glass. So when a window is being put "up", somebody needs to push the poly window in at the top to get it into the rubber molding. This means you need someone along in the staging lanes, and right up to burnout, simply to push the window in at the top...

These two issues, are quite simply inconvenient. There are many better things to be thinking about in the staging lanes.

So here is one path that you can consider to address both issues.

1. Remove connections to the smart door modules. Or don't wire them in, in the first place. We had them working, saw the problems, and removed them. We added two switches into the stock switch positions on the drivers door. These are "reversing toggle switches", DPDT On - Off - On . The switch has three pairs of connecting lugs. The power and ground go to two center lugs, this leaves the two out lugs on each end open. You connect one side of teh switch to the two pins in the motor connector that are heaviest - at the back of the plug. You connect the two wires other side of the switch to opposite wire on the motor pins. One way, the switch will put hte window up, and one way it will go down. The switch, quite simply, having +12v, and ground to teh center lugs, reverses the +12v, and ground so that one way you send the +12v to "pin 1", and ground to pin 2, and pushed the other way, sends +12v to pin 2, and ground to pin 1.

It is really simpler than it looks, and you can even wire in the passenger door switch with a third DPDT reversing switch.

If you have questions about this, just email me, david@newhemiracing.com

Now, for the issue of having to push in the polycarbonate windows at the top..... replace them with glass. Simple enough, isn't it? Why wouldn't you just replace them with glass? You might think they look cool. If so, and you don't hate pushing them in at teh top eaqch the window goes up, so be it... You might think the glass is too expensive. I got both windows at slighly less than $100 per window. You might think that the polcarbonate is so much lighter than the glass, that you can't afford the extra weight. I didn't get a chance to weigh them, but my sense of the relative weight, is that the glass weighs 3-5 pounds more each. It might be less, or even more, but frankly, the weight is an acceptable loss due to the gained benefit of having the glass window close without a push from the outside.

Credits: I would never have thought of replacing the cool polycarbonate windows, if not for Doug Duel, whose Drag Pak clone has glass windows (even though Doug has the poly carbonates ones too...) and said when he weighed the poly windows and glass windows, there wasnt that much differences, and the glass windows work better. Thanks Doug.

Well, that is all for today, but keep tuned in, there is more to come.

David
The New Hemi Guy