We got home awhile ago. Tomorrow I have to hit the ground runnin’, so I thought I’d do some of my report now.
There is too much to type and there will no doubt be several reports and perspectives on this weekends festivities. so here is my take. There will be additions to the report but this covers some of the weekend.
DragList Nationals III, July 18-19 @ Eddyville Raceway Park.
Our weekend started Thursday getting ready for the trip. Spent the day stripping the trailer of all the accessories & racks, etc. so we could haul Jeff’s camaro to DLN’s III. This was Jeff’s second trip to the DragList annual event with his black ‘95 camaro.(more on that later).
http://media.putfile.com/Track-loader-Trailer
Friday morning I had the usual last minute things to do with customers saying “ya’butt can you do this 1 thing before you leave?” We hit the road Friday around 10am and pointed ourselves manually (no GPS) toward Oskaloosa, IA. Once there, we checked in @ the America’s Best Value Inn. It didn’t take long to spot something familiar at the front desk. There in living color was a hotel brochure with a picture of none other than our very own fellow DragLister Mike Casella & his yellow 1960 707” powered BelAir.
How cool is that. The picture was taken from the inaugural DragList Nationals back in 2006. We have another celeb. in our midst. As an added bonus there’s another another Draglister ‘’Lippy’’ behind the caah.
I should also mention the people at Americas Best did a great job making our stay a good one. They let us sit out front under the carport/entrance and bench race in the rain until 3am. They even opened the conference room Saturday night so we could get out of the sticky humid weather & retuning rain. We used the air conditioned room to continue the bench racing, collect the pics. & video from the track & to cap off a great day. We turned in early, around midnight. HEHEHE
I better get back to Saturday morning. We all headed to the track hoping we would find our buddy Doc camped out in the Roadmaster. But, as we found on Sunday Jim had a little excitement in his ‘hood that put the brakes on his plans.
We set up our pit area beside Paintertom right by the staging lanes & the rest of the group. Toms’ pipe rack is very cool & has a sharp paint job. Wonder where he got that done. .......... NICE JOB Tom, You done goota'!
A run through the lanes with Rock doing the tech duties and Jeff was ready for his first pass.
Jeff pulled into the water box & did a nice tire warm up, eased into the beams & set the Line Lock. Last yellow lit and he was off. He hazed the tires just a bit and was off on a very nice pass, but missed 3rd gear and coasted through for a 9.0x. His best time to date is in the neighborhood of 8.80 so missin’ 3rd he was confident the old time could be eclipsed. (He’s still looking to better my 8.48 from panel truck days back in the 70’s).
He pulls around for lap #2. Does the water box routine and is ready for a good run. He leaves on the last yellow again but bogs bad (real bad) off the line and turns in a mid 9’s time.
Not thinking too much of it I decided to give it a try (My payment for hauling his caah to the track). I warm the tires and pull to the beams. The tree comes down and I drop the clutch. The caah falls on it’s face bad again.
A little background here. Jeff is usually the one that comes out too soft. I’m the one that usually goes the opposite direction and over does the RPM launch. To the point that Jeff’s too low launches usually out 60 ft. my tire boiling 60’s.
So, when it bogged off the line I thought WOW, 5 lb. drop in tire pressure is going to take some gettin’ use to. (We dropped the tire pressure from last year because tire spin was a problem).
To make matters worse I forgot to drop the shift gate down we made for the 6 speed last year & when I shifted to 3rd I hit 5th. (Note: shift gate only works when its’ down). I went though the traps at 10.41. DUH.
I went back around for my second lap determined to find the launch sweet spot . I did the burnout, MADE SURE THE SHIFT GATE WAS DOWN...... , & pulled into the beams until the second bulb lit. Locked the front brakes and got on the go pedal to bring the RPM's up. The tree lit up and I stabbed the gas as I released the line lock. The caah died again and it was halfway through low before the engine realized it was supposed to be making power. Shift light finally glowed and I hit second. Just like the last pass once it was in second it pulled like it should. Another shift light and this time it dropped right into 3rd and continued to pull. By that time the run was over. The news at the time shack was only slightly better this time with a 10.21. Not only was the time way off but I had to keep my foot on the pedal to keep it running. I headed down the return lane in low to keep off idle so it would stay running.
Jeff decided (wisely) to call it a night so we loaded the camaro on the trailer. The Good news is it's still in one piece. For the rest of the night we just enjoyed the festivities.
One bright spot I guess. To date I have never had a .0xx anything reaction time. This weekend on my first run I had a .0209 and backed it up on the second lap with a .0156.
I’m sure Jeff will get to the bottom of the power loss thing and we’ll hit a couple T&T’s to see how it does.
More later.........