Down the track again and again......

Finally.... The Mega Maniac (aka The Drooze Mobile) got going in the right direction..

Not that we didn't have things going in the right direction at times in the past, but this time we came away with a lot more confidence, and a pretty good feeling.

It didn't start out great though..... We ran our first qualifying round, and the car wouldn't shift.... This was a "not so good" feeling on the first day. We began to wonder of the gremlins were still following us or not. It is an electronic shift transmission. First we checked the wiring, and it all seemed good as we used a metal and a continuity tester and everything seemed good in the wiring. .... So we started checking other things, and even got under the car and removed the pan on the transmission, so we could remove the first to second, and second to third shift solenoids.... Everything there looked good. So, back under the car to put them back. And we began to check all of the wiring again, and found a semi-broken wire. We fixed that and we were no longer..... shiftless!

Oh, did I mention that we weren't burning out coil packs? We weren't! And that was a happy state of mind when we realized that the coiling burning problem was gone.

So, we skipped the second round of qualifying while we solved the tranny issues, and planned to run in the later qualifying run for those who hadn't yet had two runs... A good plan, but the rains came and the third round of Stock Qualifying was cancelled.

No problem, since we were already qualified. But it would have been nice to get a good run and get logs from it.

Rain stopped, so we talked about our concerns over the soft starts we were having, since a good hard start is better/quicker. We had some questions about our torque converter, and ATI was there, so we went over and bought a new converter. And we came back, put the car up in air on jack stands, and climbed under to remove the transmission completely and take out the torque converter. After about a half hour the rains came back, not too hard, so we tried to keep working under the car. But then the skies opened, so we had to get out from under, and wait for the rain to stop. After a few minutes, it stopped and we got out some dry pads to get back under the car. Then while putting the transmission back in place, after putting the new torque converter in, the rains came again and they we really hard, and lasted a lot longer. We talked about waiting for morning, but ultimately decided that we were already wet and cold, and the forecast for the next morning was even colder, plus we would run pretty early, so we got back under the car to finish.

We were short six bolts because we made a small, but necessary, change. So we went to Walmart (after all, that was the only place open at 11:30 at night) and looked for bolts that were big enough. In one bolt assortment, that cost $5.95, we found four of the bolts that we needed. These were the most important, and we figured that we might get the other bolts from one of the other racers. So first thing in the morning, we finished bolting things up, and were ready to run Class.

First round of class, we were up against a pretty nice car, a Corvette who had actually run a bit faster than we expected to run. Keith Lynch, our driver and Crew Cheif, got a very nice start and held on to win the first round of Class. Cooooool! We actually beat another car! The second round of Class, we had a bye due to a coin toss we won. Luck, it seemed had come our way. So the finals of class was our car again another new Challenger. We knew he was fast, and we haven't gotten four runs on this engine and electronics, so we didn't expect to win. Keith once again got a great start, and we were ahead for a bit, but then the faster car passed up. He could have let up on the accelerator, still beaten us handily, and not have affected the horsepower for the 5.7 Challenger, but he didn't.

He ran full out and as a result, for the third time, this car has shown no respect for the other Drag Pak owners and without a good reason, gotten added horspower to our combo.. And THIS comes after this particular owner had called when we ran a good time previously (the only good run we had ever had) and begged us NOT to do what he has now done three times.... Too bad, pretty soon we will only be able race against supercharged Mustangs, and Crate Motor Mustangs who know how win and still keep the indexes safe. But apparently, he just doesn't care, and only wanted us to protect the index, so he could blow it up...

But enough moaning.

We then waited for Sunday morning to run in eliminator class, where you dial a number and try to run closer to it, than your opponent does to his number. We had no clue what to dial, so we picked a time 10.60, which was faster than we had run yet with these new electronics. And guess what? We ran quicker than 10.60, and so did the other guy, but we ran further under our number, so he got the win.

OK, no big deal. We just don't know what the car will do yet. But now, for the first time, we are building on the weekend, and will be at another race in two weeks where we will have a lot better idea of what our car will do. We know for sure that we should be much faster than we currently are. So now, all we have to do is to figure our what is slowing us, and fix it.

But, we got more good runs down the track, with logs, in the this weeked, than in a total of all our previous efforts. We got a number of previous runs, but never complete runs with logs.. So it was good, and go forward from here.

David

Not so fast Batman....

Here we go again..

Our ECU Vendor had done his thing, and tested things good. This was after a seveal hundred mile jaunt to take the car to him, and then return home.

Encouraged, we took the car to a local track to see what it was going to do.

But, what it did, was it toasted another coil pack.
It is now going back into the box from which it came, and going back to the vendor who has tried his best, but has no idea why our car is doing this, since no other car that has his system is installed in it, is doing it. So after thousands of dollars in expenses to get into the Nationals at Indy, travel, and housing for the event, and then frying a total of 8 coil packs at $40 each, and not even be able to compete even though we qualified 15th out of over a hundred entrants, we
will get our money back for the unit, and move along.

So, on to the next ECU. We ordered it, and expect it within a day or so. After looking over the software for this newest ECU, I am encouraged that it looks very logical and quite flexible. So after a weekend off to attend a clambake at the Old Firehouse Winery in Geneva on the Lake, we will hit it hard again next week.

If you have noticed, or wondered why I don't call out the ECU vendors by name, it is only because I believe that everyone is trying their best. And I can't really fault them for that. So I won't trash any of them. But once we are running good with a new system, I definitely will make that system known.

David

Car is good again...

The car was taken to our ECU vendor today, and he made it well. Not sure what the problem was, but whatever it was, it is good now.

We will be trying something new now. We are taking the car to a "local" track Wednesday and make some test runs. Then if all goes well we will actually go to a National race with a tested good car.

We know there are a couple of things we still want to do to car, including putting our new fuel rails on the car. We had been using a very used pair sent by the rails vendor last year, and now nearly a year later, we got the rails we had ordered and paid for back then. As fuel rails go, they are no more functional that the used rails, so it really was only a matter of being persistent and getting what we had paid for. But now the new rails look like they have a couple of fitting locations that my make our plan to relocate our fuel access line to further in front and make it so that you can do fuel checks without removing the hood. We also have decided to move the fuel pressure gauge to between both fuel rails rather than behind the driver side rail, at the beginning of the fuel return line. Not a really big deal, just something that can't hurt and may make our fuel pressure reading more accurate.

So, we are really excited about actually making some runs cheap, and making sure we know what our car can do.

One other secret squirrel change, and we should be finally ready to make some noise, in a good way with the Mega maniac when we get to the next race.

David

Back from Indy... Tired and disappointed again

We got back from Indy on Monday evening.

Keith and Tonya Lynch and Linda McIntosh and I all made it home safe.. So, that is good news..

We are taking a brief time off today doing laundry and catching up with mail and paying bills, while we consider our coil pack problem... I will travel down to the Dayton area tomorrow (about 3.5 hour drive) and we will go over the process that we think will show us exactly what is causing the problem... Then maybe we can get a couple of runs done at a local track.

I am convinced that the problem is something very simple. So tomorrow will tell.

David Wertman

Friday Night Report

Nothing but bad news and people who should know something, scratching their heads and shrugging their shoulders....

We are still trying to figure out why we are burning up coil packs...

More grounds should fix it,we were told... We put in more grounds --- we even put grounds on grounds, and that didn't work...

Maybe it is the 16 volt battery causing the problem... We put in a 12 volt battery and although it took a few seconds more, we got the same result...

So although we qualified number 15 out of over a hundred cars, we are unlikely to get more than one run tomorrow before we toast coil packs again, and we are out of spare coil packs..and Indianapolis is out of the too... we took the last 3 out of O'Reilly's warehouse today.

So what is the problem? Nobody has a clue...(And the problem is ABSOLUTELY NOT the fault of DIY Autotune, or the Mega Squirt as we switched to another ECU last week. Jerry at DIY always gave us good advice that we didn't/couldn't follow as we always chasing a schedule that too tight to allow testing before hauling the car off to a National event. Had we had more testing time,the Mega Squirt would have worked out just fine. But I felt it was better now to try something that others were all having great success with... So much for that decision...)

We will run tomorrow, for at least one run.

And then the next question is what is the future for Mega Maniac???? Is this the time to throw in the towel on the project? How long can I keep borrowing money to keep the car running? Do I even have the heart to keep going??

It is late, and I am more than just tired, I am so tired mentally and physically that I just know that I am not thinking clearly. And my emotions are on razor's edge. I really, really wanted to make this thing finally work to vindicate Chris' and my efforts..... So I won;t even try to answer any of those questions tonight. I will just go to sleep for 5-6 hours and we will go to the track, and try to make that one run

Goodnight all..

David

Qualified in Indy

Well, we have good news, and not so good news....

We made two runs today. On the first run, we were only about .650 under, which wasn't enough to qualify, and we toasted two coil packs, and blew up the computer, due to an undetermined "probably" electrical problem...

But being as how we are too dumb to quit, we got a loaner computer, bought all new coil packs at $30 each X 8, and did a few other things to isolate the possibility of something causing the coil packs to fry, like maybe our alternator was putting out too much juice.... and consequently blow up the computer... So, then we ran a second run (and we managed to turn "logging on" in the computer, so we could see what was happening, after we ran.)

We even minimized the amount of time we ran the car in the staging lanes, and we did a lot of pushing of the car. But we didn't want to take a chance on burning something out before the run. And we expected that if we started the car fewer times, we reduced the the electrical load on the coil packs.

Our time in the second run was a lot better than the first run, and we qualified 15th at over one second under the index.

But on the return road, the car started acting up, and we toasted the same two coil packs (new ones in the same position as ones that cooked before.) So we put all of our spare coil packs on the engine, and were checking things without even starting the car, and suddenly one coil pack started cooking and smoking...

So now we are waiting for someone to check the coil pack wiring and then we have to find another computer, and ..... who knows what... But because we are already qualified, we really don't have to do anything until Saturday... And who knows, (didn't I just say that...), we may get things moving back in a good direction....

In the meantime, I managed to get more sun today, without any sun screen, than I really should have, so I am pretty well toasted myself... But on the good side, a company here, Goodridge Fittings, had a great barbecue with chicken, ribs, and baked beans and it was free... Way to go Goodridge....Thanks!

And I probably should also make note that these days when I speak of "WE", I am making reference to Keith, and Tonya Lynch me, and my lady friend Linda McIntosh as the New Hemi Racing Team.

Others have contributed in the past, certainly above all, it was my son Chris, who did the most to make our car successful, and it is in his memory and a hope and desire that I can see the car achieve the kind of success that Chris and I dreamed and schemed of having that I continue. But also my deepest thanks to Jay and Mandie, for their past help with the Drag pak #24 project. Without them, the road would have been even harder and loaner.