FE Power Forums > The Road to Drag Week 2016

Drag Week 2016, Day 4

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jayb:
Our hotel was pretty close to the track, so we took off for Indy at 7:30 on Thursday morning.  Naturally, the directions to the track took us to a closed road, so we had to improvise, but made it into the track by ten to eight or so.  While we were working on getting the car ready to race, I noticed a 69 Torino a few spots away in the pits.  Turned out it was owned by Jim Kitchen and equipped with one of my intake adapters!  Jim has intake adapter #29, and I was delighted to see that he was getting the advantages of the adapter.  He had been dealing with some lifter problems, and was replacing some of the lifters at Indy.  He had the intake off, and the center cover of the adapter off, but did not have to break the water jacket, replace intake gaskets, or pull the distributor to get this done.  It just made my day, maybe my week, to see my product helping out another racer.  Here's a picture of Jim's car apart during the repair:




An hour later, the car was driving around the pits.  No way that car was back together that fast if he had to do the whole FE intake swap, and now the car could stay in the event. 

Once my car was ready to race we drove into the staging lanes, and as luck would have it parked right next to Doug Smith; here's a picture of the two cars:




Again we had some oildowns and a crash at the track while we were waiting in the staging lanes, so we were stuck there for a couple hours, but finally I got to the line.  Again the car went dead straight, but my launch was poor, and my 1.36 60 foot time left me with a 9.12 for the ET, at 149.6 if I recall correctly.  But it was good enough to solidify my hold on second place.  Again, Steve and I were interested in just getting going, so I handed in that time slip and we got the car into street trim.  We were out of the track by 12:30. 

The road trip was the easiest one we'd had to deal with.  It was at least 50% freeway driving, and a lot of other four lane roads as well.  The checkpoints were also easy to find, although the second checkpoint was going to be on a closed road for some kind of a parade, according to an announcement on Hot Rod's web site.  We made it through to that one before the parade started, apparently, because we had no issues.  Here are the checkpoint pictures:





I found out later that our second checkpoint picture was the wrong one; there was a Foy's Halloween store across the street, behind us from the view in that picture, that we were supposed to take the picture of.  Hopefully I won't get disqualified for taking the wrong picture LOL!

We were into the hotel by 8:30.  The car ran well, and the engine sounded great the whole way.  I'm typing this on Friday morning, so all we have to do to finish is get to the track and make a pass.  I may pull the valve covers to check the lash and the cam timing again, just to see if I can find the tenth I lost after the cam change.  Racing doesn't start until 1:30 today, so there's plenty of time.  I'll try to put together the final day blog post either tonight, or sometime on Sunday.  Once again thanks for all the interest from the forum on this event.  It was a tough week, but in the end it has been a lot of fun - Jay

cobracammer:
Good luck Jay!!!  I've had it on all week at my desk at work watching live   ;D

Lenz:

--- Quote from: cobracammer on September 16, 2016, 10:22:03 AM ---Good luck Jay!!!  I've had it on all week at my desk at work watching live   ;D

--- End quote ---

2x on that.  I suspect there's been a slight loss in productivity nation-wide, they may not trace it to drag week but I'll bet they could ::).  Well done Jay-

sixty3:
glad you posted what time race starts today! Here I am looking on youtube for the link and becoming frustrated over lunch break.  Hopefully I will get to see more action today.

Good luck to you and Doug.
Kevin

Dumpling:
That top picture screams out for a rev kit to go with the adapter.

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