Some goals met, and a little dissapoinment

I just got back from the Divisional at Bowling Green Kentucky.

We put the new engine in the car, and needed to get some runs on it before Indianapolis this coming week.

With a new engine, you have several questions including the obvious one, will it run? Other questions include, how fast will it run? Is it as fast as we expected,or do we still need to do "things" to make it faster? And what kind of settings are normal for this engine. Oil pressure reading, and even water temperature vary from engine to engine. So it is neccesary to know what is "normal" for this engine.

Well the good news is that we ended up as the number 2 qualifier, and if we hadnt been a little careful to avoid running too fast and getting horspower the week before Indy, we easily could have been #1.

We were, however #1 among all of the Dodge Challengers (6 total including us)  running at this race.

We got the track early to run the Test 'N Tune, again hoping to see how fast we could go, and getting some runs on the engine. But our last run in the test session (Test session runs dont count against you in the NHRA no matter how fast you go...)  when we were going to let it all out, we ran down the track with nice start. But when the car shifted into third gear, the engine rpm went high as if there there wasnt any load on it, and then went down fast.

Keith shut it down and coasted to the end of the track. I immeiately knew something was wrong during the run, by the fact that the time was slow, and the speed was way down. So I hurried in golf cart to turn off from teh track to see if we needed to tow the car back.

Before I got there, the MegaManiac was already apparenlty easily, motoring towards me, past me, and back into our pit.

Keith confirmed what had happened, and we put the car up on jackstands, drained teh transmission fluid, expecting to see all kinds of nasty things in the fluid. The fluid was clear..

We then pulled the pan off of the transmission, and saw that the filter was completly clogged with some black ugly looking material. The fuid was clear, and the black stuff was not anywhere else in the transmission.

We replaced the filter, and put the same fluid back into it, with another quart of new ATF.

Our first qualifying run was going to tell us whether the clogged filter, or something else. Keith took it easy and after the car shifted correctly into third gear, we knew it good. A strange issue, and one that concerned us, but turned out OK.

We had a first roung against a good driver and car, and in an attempt to make sure we got a quick start, we got a little too quick, and red lighted.

We were all dissapointed, because we though we had a pretty good chance to go some rounds, bu that is racing; red by .006 is pretty close to 0....

But, we did the runs on the car, and confirmed to ourselves and others, that we are a force to be reckoned with.
So, the car is in the trailer, and the trailer is sitting #42 in line to get into Indianapolis, and will be pitted tomorrow morning.

We have a couple more  tweeks to make, and think we have a pretty good chance to run very well there.

God Bless and Race Safely

David