Rain, Rain, go away.......

And stay away.. Pleeease, Just give us a break!

After waiting all day while the weather teased us time after time, by having the rain stop, and just for effect, a few times the sun even actually came out, giving us hope......

So then filled with hope that we would be racing soon upon each of these many blessed moments; announcements were made, the vacuum trucks hit the track to suck up the wet, and a few times, the jet dryers were actually out there, trying to evaporate the water on the track... And then.... And then...

And then.... it would just start raining all over again. Sometimes a steady spritz or drizzle, and other times a full fledged rainstorm would present itself for our approval or disapproval... Needless to say, very few 10's were awarded to the weather today. A bright sunny day, with fluffy white clouds floating aimlessly on deep blue sky, could have been an easy winner in today's weather contest, but alas, today was no such day.

Eventually the track announcer, educated us (and everyone else at the track) to the reality that there is a point, where the temperature, and dew point coincide and the air wont take any more water, and that is where we are, and there will be no racing today!.

This was about 4:30 or 5:00 PM. So we waited all of the ding dong day. Some good folks, when finally told that we would not run today, and we still expected some of the big name cars to run (Not Stock, or frankly any Sportsman classes) began to consume adult beverages.

So, we will run at about 8:00 AM  and then Heaven only knows when or if we will get more runs tomorrow, since there are a lot of cars, Fuel Dragsters, etc, that people pay big money to see, that need to get qualifying runs completed, that it will be a busy day for them, and not so busy for us.

And the ladder distributed for Stock Eliminator has us with a bye run in the first round...

So, for now, that is all the news...

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

Norwalk Qualifying today

Our first run today was respectable. We ran 9.929 And we had the #1 qualifying position for the moment. But we have two more rounds of qualfying scheduled for today. And anything can happen

Then the rains came.. Nothing new here. Every race we have been to this year, it has rained at some point during the qualifying rounds or the racing.  So here it came again.

We left car out of the trailer since it was a bit dusty, and the rain would address that issue. Then after about an hour and a half, the rain ended. I dried the car completely off, and we started charging the battery.

Then the rain came again..... And the car got wet again..... Darn! I am running our of dry towells....

Finally, about five Oclock we got the call for Stock to report to the staging lanes.

We made our second, and now final qualifying run, due to the rain. And again we ran a repsectable time below 10 seconds. We ran a 9.98.

But, at the end of the day, we were still #1 Stock Qualifier! Again!  Yeay!

Now on to Stock Eliminations tomorrow.


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

David

I am remiss, didn't post anything from Bristol... Now in Norwalk..

Last week was not much fun for me. Don't really know what was happening, but we qualified pretty good, just not number one.. Actually we w ere number 5 behind two blown mustangs which should be in a class of their own... And two 512 cubic inch Challenger Drag Paks.. So, not so bad for a little 345 cubic inch Drag Pak.

We took second place in class, having gotten beat by one of the 512 cubic inch Drag Paks. Then we were eliminated in the the third round of Stock Eliminator, by a pickup truck that we had to give a full four second head start, and we would have beaten him, but the Darg pak just didn't like the air, and we could only muster a 10.09 when we thought we would run 10.05, so he ran closer to his dial, and we went home.

Now we are here in Norwalk. Trailer parked and car unloaded and passed technical check. We do need to move the air sensor off of the motor and to somewhere else....No problem... But just something else to do, because somebody complained ... Guess if you run good, somebody will complain... Imagine that... Nobody complained about anything, when we could run the index...

Well more tomorrow. We get three Qualifying runs Thursday, and run Eliminations of Friday.

On sort of a personal note, we have a new crew member, a young woman (younger than ones I usually date, but a few more years than Mandy. And I do miss the kind of humor Mandy and Chris together added to our racing. But with Chris gone, Mandy has no reason to be with us. And now Marty, a former model,  is part of the team, and is a young lady of intelligence and class, who cares for me for more than my money, And that is something I am not used to having around... She will be with us later in the weekend, and I am looking forward seeing her again. With my travel it has been a couple of days......

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

David

Chicago Results

Not so good..

The car ran great, but we had a few issues that when combined together, helped us make a bad decision.

As we were getting ready for our third round run, we noticed one of our rear tires had a cut in it. Not a big cut, but just into the cords. First we spent some time trying to figure out what had caused the cut. Maybe a rock or something else on the track? Maybe something in the wheel well? 

Yep, we found it. Hiding behind the plastic fender liner is a piece of body seam that appears to hit the tire when we pull our wheelies, and the plastic is pushed out of the way, and the metal pokes through.. A small adjustment with pliers, and a hammer, and that silly metal will no longer cut tires.

I knew that we would need new tires next week, so that wasn't a big surprise that it costs another $450 for a pair of new rear shoes. But having a pair of brand new tires, begs the question, will they grip as well as the others? In other words, it raises uncertainty.

And then there was the new weather machine. The previous machine, which was already a bit old, finally died. So we got a new one. Another $400 into the effort. But when it says, or rather, when it predicts that you will run a 10.06, can you trust it? We didn't. We thought it would be more like 10.08 so that is what we dialed in the third round. And guess what we ran? 10.06, so I guess we can trust our new weather machine. And especially after we get a few more runs into it, so it has more data to analyze. Also we ordered, although it hasn't shown up yet, a data cable to connect the weather machine to a computer so we can store the data and further analyze and predict.

So, in the future we are running out of excuses... We are currently scheduled for two more National events; Bristol Tennessee, and Norwalk, Ohio. And I fully expect to win one of those...

From this point forward, we will be running in A/SA. So we can take out some weight, and let the car rip. We have to be careful not go too fast, because we really don't want any more horsepower.... But we can run 9.801 and avoid horsepower. And the car is certainly capable of. doing that all day long. In fact the car is capable of a whole lot more.  But for now, we will stay there or slower...

Here is one of our Qualfying runs.


Oh, and here is a video of our Bye Run.
Until Next Time... Race Safely, and God Bless!

David

In case you wondered about a teardown....

They are not a whole lot of fun.

You get out all of your tools, and then you realize what tools, you forgot to bring. Usually they are the ones that you used last on the car, just before you loaded it into the trailer....

But once you think you have them all, or before you realize that you don't, the tear down begins with an invitation to a party! Yep, a tear down party.

So, here are some pictures of some of the process:

The engine before we tear into it.

Friends and other interested parties stop by

to encourage, or just to look at the whole process.

The intake and plumbing comes off.....

And the Head comes off...I skipped a few steps but once

 the head comes off, we can also pull the valve lifters.

Her, you can see the pistons clearly marked as NHRA legal,

and below you see the headers which are one of the hardest,

most troublesome things to take off. And the two long things

 above the are what holds the valve lifters down.

Everything gets measured. Here the exhaust runners

are being measured to be sure they are not larger than legal.

And, they are not. Intake runners get the same treatment,

and does the combustion chamber which is measured to make

sure it isn't too small. And once again, it isn't! We are legal.

And the engine gets checked for bore and stroke, and piston

dome height, and then the cam lift is measured,

first the exhaust, then the intake lift. And once again we are legal.

Oh, yes, then wheelbase and front overhang, and rear overhang are measured.

Then we have to put it all back together again and hope that it runs as well as it did before we too it all apart.

So, as you might imagine, there is a bit of mild concern as the switch is pressed, and the engine turns over. Will it start? Will it run like before?  Yep! All good.

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

David

We are Baaaaaaackkk....

After the last two pretty weak races, we are now officially back with a Top Qualifiefier spot. So now for 6 out of 8 races, we are Top Stock Qualifier. It may have been done before by other cars, and Larry Hill may have done it in a truck, but no Drag Pak Challenger has kicked the kind  o f butt that we have. And we running  a 5.7 Hemi engine. There are 6.1, and 6.4s now, and they just can't crush their indices like we have.

But next week we be at Bristol, and running in A/SA so we need new vinly letters, and we can dump  a ton of weight next week... Keith re-upped his license so we can run in the nines, and as you might imagine, WE WILL RUN IN THE NINES! So maybe we will be competitive with the big boys, or maybe not. But only time will tell.

As for now, we got a bye in the first round,and we ran a 10.07, so we didn't get any additional horsepower penalty, but we now have a good baseline for our runs in further eliminations. We have a good run tomorrow against a good car with a good driver. But I am confident in my car, and am certainly more than happy with Keith Lynch as the driver. So tomorrow will be what it will be, but I like our chances.

Unfortunately we will be without a lot of good friends tomorrow. John Mcloud and his 6.1 Challenger are gone from the competition, as is Dennis Breeden and his 6.1 Challenger, and for some unknown reason Larry Hill's cuda ran faster than it has all weekend and broke out. It seems also that Irving Johns is out. And Randy Warford we are once again the LAST CHALLENGER STANDING!  And although we will miss the camaraderie and fellowship of all of those friends tomorrow, we will do what we can do, and when it all ends, we will go home and ready for next week at Bristol Tennessee. And yes, next week we will be running in A/SA not any longer able to run in B/SA... Of well, B/Stock Automatic cars rejoice. For a minute or two, you have seen the last of of us. We are now back where we started. We began running in A/SA with a 6.1 Hemi. And we went down to F/SA with a 5.7. Then we, due to nothing we had done, got bumped up to C/SA. A coupe of folks who will remain nameless, went out and broke the index for no good reason. In one case, another 5.7 ran against us when we were running poorly, had us beaten badly, and still broke the index. He didn't want to win, apparently he wanted to insult us. And he did. He broke the index a total of 3 times, for no good reason.

But I would bet that he doesn't want to run us again. And if I were him, I wouldn't either, because we will show you what pay back looks like. We ha vent run against a 6.4 Hemi yet. But as for 6.1s and 5.7s, there isn't one that scares us us. And frankly there is only one that would even make a good race with us,and that is Doug Duell and his Drag Pak prototype. But I hope we don't meet, because Doug is a real gentleman, and he has earned his success. Someday we may eventually race, but maybe by then, we will have a sponsor and the 6.4 engine. Regardless, it will be a good race, and Doug is a good friend.

Well, let's get through tomorrow.. We race about noon, and since we have no heads up races, it will be a good day of racing. And I hope we do as well as we are able.

God Bless, and Safe Racing my friends.

David

Top Stock Qualifier again, but not without a steep price....

In our last two races, we knew we had some issues with the car. And we addressed them. I won't repeat it, because I chronicled it before.

Our first run today we 10.28 seconds.  We were Top Stock Qualifier at .96 under our index.

We were one of the first cars out, and we knew the burnout was weak on that run. We also knew that we might have slipped a bit starting out. But overall, the car felt pretty good on that first qualifying run. And we were pleased to be back at the top of the stack.

The second qualifying round we were a bit late getting to the staging lanes, and a lot of cars ran ahead of us. We were particularly interesting on one of the new Mustangs. He is one of only a handful of cars that could unseat us from the Top Stock Qualifying position.

And sure enough, he went a full second under his index, putting him ahead if us.

We had a quick strategy meeting, and determined we would push a bit more than last time, and recapture the Top position.

Well, we did it. Boy, did we ever do it! We ran a 10.049 that put us 1.201 under our index. We tried to run slower, using all the tricks that you use. But we just missed, so although we got the top spot, and the only way anyone is going to beat us, they will have to pay the same price that we paid.

Running faster than 1.20 under the index means that on Tuesday, you get horsepower, meaning that we can no longer run in B/SA, our next race, we will be in A/SA...And no longer allowed to run in B.

The worst thing is that you also get torn down. And we were invited to that party today. We had to disconnect almost everything. Remove the intake manifold and throttle body. We had to remove the valve cover on one side, remove the rocker shafts on one side. remove the header on one side, and then remove the head. Our head was then measured every way possible, the combustion chamber was cc'd. The intake runner was cc'd. The exhaust runner was cc'd. The valves were measured, The bore and stroke of the engine were measured. The cam lift was measured, first the exhaust, and then the intake. And the throttle body was measured. The wheelbase was measured. The front and rear overhang were both measured. We were examined every way possible to make sure that our engine was legal.... Then, nearly eight hours after starting the tear down ordeal, the engine was finally back together, after we had been judged to be legal. But we still get penalized on Tuesday...

Oh well, sunburned (And yes, I had sun block with me, but I was too busy to remember that and put some one. I even had taken off my hat as I was sweating so bad So I am really fried.) , and so tired, that I can hardly even think. But we are now back in our hotel rooms, and settling down for a good night's sleep.

 Tomorrow is another day. Let's just see if there is any brave soul out there who is will to pay the same price we did. There still is one qualifying run tomorrow. So there is still a chance.......

Otherwise, we will just stay on top of the Ladder and get a bye run at some point.

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

David

Chicago, Chicago and more threat of rain.

Does a big black storm cloud follow us? Or do we follow it? Who knows for sure, but it is Friday, and the forecast is for more rain today.

I got here fairly late yesterday, as I was attending my Grandson David's 8 Grade Graduation. He is excited to now be going into High School next year. And he reminds me regularly that it is only about a year and a half before he is 16 and can drive. So it won't be long before before he hits the track too. And if he can drive a real car as well as he drove his Junior dragster before he outgre it, he will do OK. So, after all 270 eight graders were recognized, some many times over, and sitting for a couple of hours in a very hot, very crowded gymnasium, I hit the road, and finally got to the track. Keith and Tonya had already parked and met me with my my credentials. I used to live in Chicagoland back in the 70's. And I have always lliked Chicago.

You can never be sure what will happen when the weather comes in to a race like this. You might get lucky and get all of your qualifying runs in, or you might not do more than get one run., and even that is questionable at times.

Sometimes, if the weather is a big issue,  they just take the fastest qualifier in each Class and name them as theClass Winner.

But we are here, and the Mega Maniac sounds like it wants to kick up it's heels. It is hard to say what has given it a whole new growl, deeper, and with a pip more pop than we are used to hearing. But it sounds pretty good, and now we just have to figure out if it will run as good as it sounds.

We got all checked out and Teched in yesterday. So our only tasks this morning will be to fuel up, charge teh battery, and get the car weighed to make sure that the car didn't go on a diet like Keith did. He is down to about 160 pounds, and we might have to make up some of the weight he lost. That  is no real problem, as our weight box is almost empty right now. But we have to convince him that he is light enough, or we will need to put an elephant in the trunk to compensate for his weight loss. But he is a real role model, excercising discipline and good eating judgment. And as a result, of seeinghim do so well,  I am also working on getting rid of the last 15-20 pounds that will get me back closer to my "ideal weight".

It looks like there will be a lot of cars in B/SA. We are the only Drag Pak in B/SA, but there are about 4 or 5 in A/SA and most of them are the newer 6.4 Hemis,  so it looks like folks would probably prefer B/SA, if they don't think they can run with the new Drag Paks. And since we have no idea how the car will run, that could be a good choice for tehm... Or it might just be the case of racing against us being the lesser of two evils. You can wither run a little 5.7 Hemi in B/SA, or face a slew of 6.4 Hemis in A/SA. But I think Doug Duell will be here in A/SA with his 6.1 Hemi, and Iu saw John McCloud's 6.1 in A/SA too, so it isn't an all 6.4 show.

The more cars in B/SA, the better. At least that is what we hope, and it is all predicated on the plan for the  car to run as good, or better than it has done before. I like our chances. And after class runs, with teh possiblity of a lot of heads up runs in Stock Eliminator with the other B/SA cars, it should be a good weekend, if the rains hold off.

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


David

The Mega Maniac roars again...or does it?

The entire drive train layed quietly in piles, stacks and boxes all around the shop. From the engine to the transmission to the rear end, everything was apart for inspection. And now many parts were cowering, in fear that they were all used up and due for replacement. And for many, their fears  were well founded.

The crank was redone. Thank you Ohio Crankshaft! A new cam that had been waiting for it's turn is now installed. The pistons got a treatment, a legal one, and are now ready to produce power. The engine is going back together.. The transmission is now back together, with all new internals.. A new torque converter converter also goes in.  Like the cam, the torque convrtor was our spare, a bit better than what was in the car, but we were running so well, we just didn't need them. Until now. finally the rear end is also tightened up and all back together.

Everything then went back into to car. The rear end goes back under the car. The engine is back in place. The torque converter and transmission go back under.. The drive shaft is home again..

But will it run? Will it once gain breath fire, and roar thunder through the cutom Pete Z headers...

HELL YES!

It sounds absolutely great! And it moves forward and back.

The Mega Maniac is back.

But what will it do now? Who knows? But we will find out soon!

See you in Chicago!

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