We were up early this morning, and off to the track by 7:15. We had a lot to do; the truck and trailer had to be unloaded, then the truck and trailer had to be moved to the impound area, and the car had to be set up to race before we could run. We got most of the unloading done by 8:30, and then it was time for the driver's meeting. It was hosted by David Freiburger, David Kennedy (current editor of Hot Rod), and Keith Turck (race director for the event). We heard the usual stuff about the sponsors, and thanks for participating, and then they went into a little about the rules that were different this year. One of the things I thought was interesting was that they had set a minimum weight limit on some of the classes, including the street race classes, so that after each pass the participant had to stop by the scale on the return road and get weighed, to make sure they weren't under the minimum for that class. That's a good rule, I think, to keep any super light weight cars out of those classes; an extremely light car wouldn't meet the general intent of those classes anyway.
After about half an hour they turned us loose, and we had an additional half hour to get the truck and trailer into impound. Steve took care of that while I worked on finishing up getting the car ready to race. I'd had the same plugs in the car for quite some time, so I pulled those and installed fresh plugs. I also drained the vent can in the dry sump setup to make sure that it wouldn't start puking oil out the breather on top. Blair Patrick gave me a call about then; he had seen my post about the starter issues and wondered if I had a mid plate in the car. I didn't, and explained to him that the car runs the factory block plate between the bellhousing and block, and that indexes the starter in the correct position. However, the block is aftermarket (Shelby) and so is the flywheel (ATI), so it may be possible that these two items stack up their tolerances somehow and make the starter too close of a fit to the flywheel, causing my starter problems. After hearing all that, Blair suggested that I get TWO starters delivered to the next track, just in case.
When Steve got back from dropping off the truck, I got this picture of my car, Kevin's car, and Joel's car in the pits:
I think that is a great looking trio, even if one doesn't have an FE
They had already called the class cars to the lanes, so I went up there and got into the third group of cars that were going to run. The guy in front of me turned out to be in my class, and also from the Minneapolis area, so we talked for a while about cars in our area. His car was a mid 60s Nova with a small block and a Hilborn injection setup converted to EFI. He was figuring on running mid 10s, and thought he wouldn't be competitive but wanted to run the event and see if he could finish. I told him about all my troubles over the last four years, and he asked me when I was planning to break this year
Jack Miller and his son Scott were also nearby in the staging lanes, so I was over talking to them for a bit. While I was there Brad Dyer came by; Brad won the Modified NA class last year in his Nova, averaging around 9.30 I think, and figured to be competitive again this year. He came over and thought that Jack Miller's car was mine, and wanted to know how many cars I actually had LOL! He wished me luck and took off; he figures to be stiff competition this year.
For quite a while the staging lanes had not been moving, but then suddenly they started our lanes towards the starting line. I was counting the number of starts I had on my starter, and I was up to about 11, with no further issues. I'm going to try to keep track of that this week. Anyway, as we moved forward I got into my race gear, and Steve was waiting for me up near the starting line. Steve does a great job in the staging lanes and at the line, compared to my old trunk monkey, who would flit off at the slightest impulse to get pictures of some Dodge or Plymouth. I've had to push my car through the staging lanes by myself with that old trunk monkey
I had decided for this first pass to use the trans brake, but not really to its full potential. The converter stalls around 5600 RPM on the launch, and for this pass I just wanted to rev it at the line to 4000 or so on the brake, then release the brake and mash the accelerator. Not really a transbrake launch, but over about 3000 RPM its difficult to hold the car on the line with the footbrake technique. I had also decided that I would rev the engine a little higher than yesterday; I had shifted right at 7000 RPM yesterday, and I thought I'd be better off shifting at 7300 or so. I had not reset the shift light; I planned to just delay my shift a moment after the shift light came on, and see how the time came out. I did have the rev limiter on the car set at 7500, which was 300 RPM down from where it had been set last year, in deference to the engine's lower RPM power curve.
After a problem or two on the track, I made it to the front of the line and was motioned into the burnout box. I did a 5000-5500 RPM burnout, shifting from first to second, and spun out of the box to get the water off the tires. I pulled slowly to the line and got staged, pressed the transbrake button and revved to 4000 RPM. The pro tree flashed and I was really late, but of course at Drag Week that doesn't matter, at least in my class. The car left hard, just like yesterday, and felt maybe a bit stronger off the line. Again it went dead straight, which was great news. The shift light came on and just as I made the shift I heard the engine hit the rev limiter; I was too late with the shift. The car ran down the track hard, and I was wondering if I'd hit the rev limiter in the traps, and sure enough probably 75 or 100 feet before the stripe the rev limiter came in. I kept my foot in it though, and then coasted down to the end of the track, and around the return road. Steve had already grabbed my time slip and as I coasted by he opened the door and shouted "8.91!" That was a big surprise; I'd figured that maybe I'd picked up two tenths over yesterday, but not three! MPH was only 149, which I thought was a little low, but probably due to the rev limiter issues. Sixty foot was definitely better than yesterday at 1.32, but that too still needed some work. I still need to learn how to drive this thing to its potential.
Back in the pits I mulled over making another run, but with the starter issues I was facing I decided that I didn't want to put any more stress on the starter than necessary. I'd had to start the car five or six times in the staging lanes, and it would be just my luck to be one start short of the last race. I sat down next to the trailer and called Summit Racing, and ordered two Powermaster starters to be delivered to the next track. Then Steve and I got to work "streetifying" the car again. Just about the time we were finished, they called the street eliminator classes to the staging lanes. I wanted to see Kevin and Joel run, so Steve and I took off for the grandstands to watch the racing.
Joel and Kevin almost go matched up, but Joel ended up one car ahead. His car is a convertible with no roll bar, so 13.50 is as fast as he can go. So what happened? He ran a 13.40! Too fast of a time slip to turn in.
Kevin ran a little slower today than yesterday, an 11.65 I think. He came back to the pits trying to decide if he wanted to run again and concluded in the end that he didn't want to. For the bracket race in Street Eliminator at the end of the event, they average your time for the week and deduct one tenth, and that is your dial in for the bracket race. Kevin can't run any faster than 11.50 in his car, so he is shooting for an 11.60 average that will let him run right on 11.50 for his dial. He figured he could go faster on one of the next tracks and bring the average down to where he wanted it.
Joel had to hang around and run again, to get a passing ET, so he wasn't ready to leave. Kevin said he didn't need any help getting packed up, so since Steve and I were all packed up we took off. First stop was the gas station across the street to fill up with some street fuel. Getting in and out of the gas station turned out to be problematic; there were a whole bunch of Drag Week cars there, and my Shelby clone has a very poor turning radius with the Fatman Fab front strut conversion. I was lock to lock a bunch of times trying to get in and out of there. But we finally got filled up with premium unleaded, got some ice for the cooler and some water and pop, and got going down the road according to the route provided by Hot Rod.
As usual, the route instructions sucked badly. As an example, they directed us to take one left turn towards two towns, Lebanon and Staunton I think. The route instructions said "turn left towards Lebanon/Staunton". After we made the turn, the road went to a tee with a stop sign a quarter mile away. The signs said Lebanon to the left, and Staunton to the right! We were left to guess which was the right way to go. We ended up going towards Staunton, which turned out to be the right way, but I talked to at least one guy later who made the wrong choice. I'm certain Hot Rod does this intentionally to screw things up for the racers.
Anyway, we managed to get ourselves through the route with only minor issues. There were two checkpoints on the route that we had to document with our cameras; here's a couple shots of the first one:
Fifty miles past the first one, we encountered the second:
Total miles for the route to Indy was 266, so we still had about 170 miles to go when we left the second checkpoint. Along the way I had noticed that the steering wheel was not centered when the car was going straight, and the car had developed a pull to the right. Somewhere in the last 170 miles I shot this photo from the interior of the car while going down the road, and you can see the steering wheel position:
I had noticed this fairly soon after starting the trip, and had concluded that the issue had developed in the gas station parking lot next to the track. The Fatman Fab strut kit for this car has two clamps that hold the steering rack in place, and I have had issues in the past with the rack moving in these clamps. I was pretty sure that was what had happened. Its not a difficult fix; you just have to loosen the clamps and slide the rack back into its proper position, but the fact that the kit is not designed well enough to securely hold the rack in place is irritating. I've said this before; I would never recommend this kit to anyone.
Despite the pull the car was driving down the road fine, so we motored on to our hotel in Indianapolis. The only hiccup in our trip besides the steering was that the oil breather can for the dry sump filled up and started spitting a little oil out of the breather. When we stopped for fuel 80 miles from the hotel we found that problem, and just drained the can, and we were back on the road. The motor didn't skip a beat the whole trip.
Going from St. Louis to Indy results in a one hour time change, so by the time we got in to our hotel it was after 10:00 PM. We decided to work on the steering rack issue at the track tomorrow, but I did take the opportunity tonight to reset the rev limiter and shift light point in the MS3X. I was at Indy once before at Drag Week in 2006, but we were rained out, so I'm looking forward to racing there tomorrow. Hopefully I can run a little faster than I did today. I'll post another update tomorrow night - Jay
