Draglist.com Drag Racing

Well, we're back from vacation, so before I get back to the grind I thought I'd do a rundown of the events of July 13-14 B4 I completely forget what happened. (Geezer thing).

Our Draglist week began with the Pratt's stoppin' by on their DragList National Tour. Then Mike, Margie & Vicki took a couple days out of their voyage to kick back, do some vinyle stuff & attend the pre-DragList BBQ Wed. night. You've seen those pics. & stories.

Thursday we started takin' the attachments off the track loader trailer so we could haul Jeff's caah to Eddyville. I hosed it off with the pressure washer and got ready to install the wench we bought a few days before. Surprise, surprise, there were a couple parts missin. So, I ran back to Morris and exchanged it for another unit. Got home and fabbed a temporary mount (Since it will revert back to a track loader trailer on Monday). NOTE: The box said 6,000 cap. so I grabbed it. I should have read the part about 1 way operation and did I mention it was S-L-O-W ??
It was gettin' late so we called it a day. Cheryl had to work until 11 am Friday so we thought we'd have time to get the rest done then. Friday mornin', Jeff got his caah ready (Longer stud bolts & a new pair of slicks) & I put together some makeshift ramp extensions so the Camaro's ft. end would clear the trailer.

OPPS, Time out. "Could you do a couple construction signs for me B4 you leave?". Got those knocked out. S.O.P. is ... I fax the invoice to let them know they are done & ready for pick-up. What's this......... there's a sheet of paper in the bottom tray of the fax machine. I wasn't expectin' any payments from Rapid or Lippy so you can imagine my dismay when I discovered it was a "is there any way you can get this done for the weekend?" fax from the stock car guys a few doors down the alley from us. ....... yea' sure no problem. So, now the thrash is on. Our plan to load the caah & pick Cheryl up @ work by 11am has come & gone. We got the stock car guys satisfied & continued to load the camaro. We load the caah. The wench works, but it's waaay slow. We strap da' caah down & I get to thinkin', if these straps loosen up at all they will unhook & we'll have a "Billy Mac" story to tell. So, we run to the Hardware store and get some H.D. spring loaded thingys. No place to hook 'em so I drill holes in the trailer so we can get this deal on the road. Finally, around 2pm or so we are on the road. I was surprised how well the Camaro pulled. That lil' track loader along with all the attachments is heavier than I thought. The trailer sits a good 1'' to 1.5" higher with the caah on there. Once we picked up Cheryl we did a quick drive-thru and then headed for Iowa hoping to get there in time for the evening festivities. As it turned out we got there in time to find the gang @ Sisters' in Downtown Oskaloosa. BTW: Doc, we never did find the time to get a belt for the P.U. It's still runnin' fine, so I guess we didn't need it Ann E. Way.
More later.

Oh, I should mention. We dropped Jeff's slicks & a trailer tire off in Morris to be picked up later = 2 trips to Morris. I headed over there, since I had to get the wench deal exchanged Ann E. Way. I paid for the tire stuff, loaded the slicks & then grabbed the trailer tire. WHAT, it was flat. Still had the pc. of plastic stuck in the tread cours', this set us back another 1/2hour as I waited for them to fix it for real this time. I wonder if this is a tire chain. I wonder if they have a store in Kansas near Lippy.
Once I finally got back, we inflated the smaller tire to get the run out dialed in. We had time for one small lil' burnout to warm the tires some & to see if we had tire clearance issues. All seemed O.K.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Back at the ranch we made the final adjustments on the 5-6-R lockout deal we fabbed for Jeff's 6 spd.


This is what it looks like when Jeff drives on the street.

When he needs to use 5th, 6th or reverse he flips it out of the way.

This is with the shifter in 1st. You can see how little the shifter has to move to the right to hit 3rd. During normal street driving there's a spring to snap the shifter to the 3-4 position. But, when your bangin' gears the spring is purdy much useless. If you miss by 1/4" or so you hit 5th. It's been tested & proven that 2nd to 5th is not really a good thing. We had to make a wedge for the shifter so the lock out deal had a flat surface to bang against. Udder' wise it popped up when it got hit. We also had to add an alignment pin to hold it square with the shifter. Any miss alignment & it would slip into 5th or just hang up. We finally got it all workin' o.k.

This last pic. is with the shifter in 3rd. The dark part of the lockout deal is a series of plastic shims to fine tune for 3rd.

We didn't have much time to make it purdy, but it hits 3rd every time now. I think Jeff has tranny swap plans in his future. This top loader 6 spd. is just NOT designed for fast shifts.

More Later.....

Everything went smoothly huh? Great report.

Well sorta'. We're both just learnin'. We decided T&T is all that's in our future for awhile til' we get some runs under our belts.

Saturday, we got the caah unloaded. That was a story in it's self.
(note to self) need to upgrade wench).
Jeff went up to the line first. He did a real small burnout and pulled up to the lights. He left the same as with the street tires & bogged a little runnin' a 9.57.
Next up I took a shot @ it. I did a little longer burnout, & decided to step up the RPM at the lights a little. As you can see by this blurry pic. we had some traction issues. I think I was runnin' against Jer on that run. I was slow out of the gate and most of the way through low, but once the slicks hooked it pulled fairly well.


I ran a 9.11 on that pass. The caah had gone a best 9.06 to date @ 66 on street tires, so we thought it would do better later. Mike & I compared the slicks to Jeff's street tires and found the slicks had about 9" more runout. Maybe that would be a bad thing. Maybe that 8:48 record of mine would stand after all. I really hoped Jeff could catch the ol' panel truck, but 1/2 second would be too much to ask for (At least for now).

We hadn't dropped the tire pressure. It was @ 28 lbs. We didn't know how the caah would handle the extra traction, so we thought we'd ease into it with high tire pressure first. For Jeff's second run we dropped the tire pressure to 24lbs. Jeff ran a 9.31. At this point we both were wondering if we could even break into the 8's. I can see Jeff is already thinkin' what changes are in his future so he can knock off dad's record.
He got back to the pits and and we decided to drop the tire pressure some more & leave a little harder. We dropped the tire pressure to 18lbs. and headed back to staging.

This would be my 2nd & last pass. I warm the tires and head up to the beams. This is a solo pass. I left the line no bogg, no excess tire spin {I don't think}. Just as I passed the finish line I saw an 8 something flash on the board. Cool. Jeff's caah got into the 8's. Jeff was happy and couldn't get on the cell phone fast enough to let me know what it ran.
Very cool. Best pass ever for the Camaro.

Well now Jeff is pumped & ready to give it a try his own self.
He pulls up behind Randy. "The Rapid/Mike showdown". After the unfortunate rear end break on Randy's vette, I know it's weighing on Jeff's mind that he's got a little 10 bolt under the Camaro. After the track was prepped Jeff pulls into a dry water box & does a "sorta" burnout. He pulls to the lights, hits the go peddle and is gone. Shiftin' as fast as that 6 spd will allow he crosses the traps @ 8.98. Now he IS pumped. He just got his first 8 second pass. That purdy' much made his weekend, and now the "what can I do to this thing to make it faster" wheels are turnin'.

After Randy made that blistering 4.12 pass at the end of the evening, Jeff pulled into the box for 1 last burnout & pass. Jeff pulls to the lights and is starting to feel a little bit more comfortable in the role of drag racer. He's got a little more experience (I think this is his 9th or 10th pass ever down a drag strip) and the night air and track conditions are good. Off he goes and to my surprise he clicks off a new personal best of 8.83.
Purdy cool.

He's got the rev. limiter set at 6,300 and the shift light is @ 5,500. He said, I don't want to make payments on a broken caah. At first he said he wouldn't race it at all until it was paid off, but he couldn't resist goin' to the DLN's. I respected his decision to take it easy on the Camaro. I have an "After the weekend" story to tell about the Camaro later.......

Little bad news for Jeff. The week after Eddyville, Jeff was drivin' the Camaro to Joliet. He was following a car, in front of the car was a tanker. A hose fell off the tanker causing the car in front of Jeff to slam on the brakes & swerve. Jeff missed the car but ran over the hose. It didn't look like it hurt anything, but now he says the caah runs bad after it warms up. This was right before we went on vacation, so we haven't had time to look it over. He started it up this morning. It sounds fine cold, but it's when it warms up is when he says it runs bad. I wondered if the hose could have damaged a sensor on the exhaust. He checked and said the lead wire is still hooked to the sensor. I wonder if the hose (Metal end) hit a sensor if it could have damaged it? I told him he should maybe just run it down to "Dave's Place" auto repair and have him scan it to see if that shows anything, rather than play parts swapper. Hopefully it's something simple. It ran fine until the tanker deal. Just glad he saved it and missed the caah in front of him.

It sounds like you've done a great job, at setting the hook. Jeff's got the fever now. Nice report, sorry about the hose. Just glad he's alright.

Yea', it was buggin' him all week on vacation. I'm just glad it wasn't worse. Whatever broke can be fixed.

Great stuff. I've been busy paying for my three weeks off by catching up at work. I will try to pull out the camera and upload our photos this weekend. bp

Excellent write, ProZ. Thanks for doing it. Looks like Jeff's Camaro is coming along great. Thank goodness he is OK after that near-mishap. I look forward to meeting him and seeing that car run next year! WC1

Thanks for the cool reports Pro,,,I hadn't seen any of this thread until now!!!