Norwalk, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and the Rest of it...

The Good:

We improved with every qualifying round. We even held the Top Qualifying spot for the night, went out the next day on our final qualifying run, we actually improved our time.

The Bad:

Charley Horse, Charley Bob Downing in his J/S new Mustang ran almost at teh end of Stock qualifyirs, and took the Top Stock Qualifyier spot away from us.

The Ugly:

Our first round elimination run was against a car that was slower than us, and that usually means that we can run them down, and either cause them to break out, or we can nose them out.

We dialed a 10.31, having run a 10.33 the previous day. And everyone was saying that the track was about 1 or 2 thousands quicker today. We had to rely on other people's opinions of the conditions because our weather machine broke. Oh well, others know what the weather looks like, and they had already run confirming their estimates.

We got beat to the line and didn't even run our dial. So we lost and were eliminated in the first round.

The Rest of it.

Somewhere along the line, probably in one of our runs in Indianapolis a couple of weeks ago, we lost some horsepower.

In Norwalk, before our last qualifying run, we pull coil packs, and checked plugs and saw that one cylinder seems to running extremely rich. The other 7 look just fine. We expected that it could be a compromised coil pack. If that was true we reasoned, then the plug wouldn't fire and burn up the carbon, which was the condition we observed. So we changed the coil pack. Then we ran, and it proved that it really didnt make much difference.

So finally, after running since the middle of last year witout ever pulling the engine, or even the heads, it looks like time to pull it all apart, and see what is wrong. We also will probably put our EGT sensors back on the car. I will have to go down to Dayton and pick up the electronics for it, order a replacement part that I expect it needs, and we will reinstall the monitoring unit.

We also will make a couple of other changes that we believe will be good for performance, but we have been saving them for "when we need them." Now, after two consecutive bad outings, we need them. So the game is on, and we will put all of our secret weapons into the car, and see what happens.

We probably won't run the car again, unless it is a test and tune, until the Nationals at Bristol Tennessee in the middle of June. So we will also get our tranny freshened up, and balance out our suspension. .

Until Next Time... Race Safely, and God Bless!

David