Well it’s been a loooong while but I finally made a little time to work on the truck and take it to the track… made a couple test passes, at dragway 42 for Tony Fritz’s fast ford event, and learned some things, after all this time the 520 continues to keep chugging along in the mistress. Borrowed a standard ratio trans from my buddy Scott, slid my nitrous converter in the truck with the intention of bottle feeding the truck some this weekend. They had two quick 8 races on the schedule one of them being FE only, along with a FE only bracket race, and they’re all ford no box class which I also entered. I didn’t believe it at first when they announced my name as qualifying for the fe quick 8… the bump was 10.14. the Transbrake wasn’t working on the truck so I was two footing it and grabbing the sassy button as soon as I could… probably 10-15 ft off the line, I was kinda worried about hurting the trans or twisting off the stock C6 input shaft. Everything survived thankfully and I drove the truck to a Father’s Day cook out Sunday afternoon. So I had 73 nitrous jet in the plate (smallest that comes with the plate system I won at the ford memorial race at US 60 dragway years back,and set the timing to 27 degrees all in and was rewarded with a 10.03 and 135 mph and change, after the second attempt on my 29.5/10.5 tires Friday night. Pulled plugs and everything looked fine and dandy, engine didn’t miss a beat. After some hard negotiating with myself back and forth Saturday morning I decided to pull 3 degrees more timing and bump the plate up to a 82 jet and put the 32/14 big tires on and let her roll the dice and see what shakes out. Finish line rpm was 7100 roughly Friday nite and I though I could do the old engine a favor and get the finish line rpm down a touch since it’s waaay overdue for a refresh. So quick 8 qualifying pass with no Transbrake again and grab the button as soon as I could I was rewarded with a 9.90 and just short of 137 mph. Kinda goofy running down a thunderbolt clone in a 4200 lb hillbilly pickup.. he went 9.84 and tree’d me a little bit but I had almost 2 mph on the car with my truck on the big end lol… wonder what he was thinking when he seen me right next to him, I didn’t get his name but it’s a beautiful burgundy t-bolt car, I assume a clone. I made one N/A pass and it went 10.93 and 122 mph but that was with the timing still pulled out. Pretty pleased with the truck’s performance, driver was suspect though, couldn’t get a green light to save my butt… last three attempts were .023,.024,.024 red… got to put names to some new faces and converse with a few old friends from ford race years gone by so it was a successful ish weekend
Now to get the Booggy box installed and the Transbrake fixed to see what the truck can really do, then probably install some more bars in the cab since I surpassed the 10.00 mark without it being a perfect pass scenario. Anyway, me and the truck are still around, fun event, good people, nice venue, and plenty fast fords, just would love to see more FE’s…. Now back to reality (work)