Bugorama #73 Race Report
By Friday the motor was back together with a fresh valve job. All we had to do is fire it up and load it in the trailer. We decided to fire up early in the day and make sure everything was ok. Gene Adams and Ron Pratt came to the shop and we pulled it outside to try and start it up. No go. The starter was not turning the motor fast enough for the crank trigger to pick up a signal. So out comes the spare starter and with some swapping of parts we were good to go. It started right up and didn’t take long to dial in the idle. One concern was that the oil pressure was lower than we wanted. After shutting it down and doing the blow down (getting the nitro out of the motor), we discussed the oil pressure. We decided to take a look at the oil pressure bypass “can”. We leaked it down and felt it was working like it should. So now what? Well cant risk low oil pressure so the call was made to take apart the pump. With that, we found a crack in the pump housing that was letting engine oil bleed back to the savage oil. Problem found, now what? Well it’s Friday and race day is Saturday and Sunday. Thank God I have another dragster in the shop with that style pump. With Ron’s help, we pulled the other pump, took it apart, and combined parts to get it back on the front engine dragster. We then turned the motor over with no spark plugs and got 112 psi. Good to go. By now Tyler Lowe had come by to help load all the parts, tools, fluids, etc that it takes to run this thing and we loaded her up.
8am Saturday morning we get to the shop to hook up the truck to the trailer. Some asshole which I told Friday to move his Bronco was still there and blocking my exit. No problem, I own a fork lift so I moved it for him. Off we went. No problems down I5 at all. Pulled in the gate and was welcomed by the BOR staff. I could hear the shouts. Pony Tail Express is here. We found our spot and unloaded the car and all the stuff it takes to maintain this car. Once we were unloaded we fired it up and sat there while it idled on Methanol. A quick glance at the oil pressure told us it was way too high. The mechanical gauge goes to 180 and it pegged it and stuck there. The electrical gauge is set for 150 and it was reading 167. So now what? We started playing with the bypass and starting taking shims out until the electrical gauge was reading 120. Ok we are good now, lets run this thing. We had bumped up the fuel pressure to 170 thinking it would take it. Well we were wrong. It put out number two cylinder at the hit and ran an 8 sec quarter mile on three cylinders. Back to the pits we go for some decision-making. By the time we checked out the car and did the maintenance, we missed 2nd round of qualifying.
Sunday morning we made the call to go back to our tune up that we had in Redding when we ran 7.25 @180mph. I pulled up to the line and made a single pass in the right lane. Burn out was good and thought we had a good pass coming up. The light came down but I was too early and red lit. Luckily it was just qualifying. We ran a 7.46 not what we were looking for but not bad. Data was looked over and we saw again number two cylinder went out about half-track Gene and I looked over the car and saw that we weren’t getting full throttle. The linkage had come loose. So with some fast wrenching we got that fixed. Now, what to dial in? We thought, now that we had full throttle, it’s got to run a 7.2. So a dial of 7.25 was put on the car. Gene leaned the motor out just a touch more and up to the lanes we went.
The Eserini’s had lane choice but they didn’t care what lane they were in so I took the right lane. This is a bracket race and they had dialed in a 7.7. That means they get a head start. I keeping telling myself “don’t push the tree, no red light, don’t give the race away”. We pulled the cars up just behind the burn out box and waited for the national anthem. Once it was over, the signal to fire up was given. Our motors roared to life and we did a side-by-side burn out. The crowd was on their feet. I pulled up let Andrew Eserini stage first. Then I inched the car forward. I knew Andrew would get a head start based on dial ins. My tree came down and off I went. I did not see Andrew at all. “What the hell? He should have been out on me.” I ran my race with no sign of Andrew. I pulled off and stopped. Bill Esserni came up to me and I shouted “What happened, you should have been ahead of me at the start.” He replied that they thought it was a heads up race. I said, “I like winning but not like this. Lets have a rematch.” So back to the pits we went. Come to find out, the car put out number two cylinder again and we only ran a 7.4 again. So once the maintenance was done I went over to Eserini to see how they were doing. Bill told me he couldn’t run because his transmission blew. So we got the win. Not how I wanted it, but it is what it is. I have broken a few times and given the win away too.
We decided to do a single run for the crowd and see if we can get this car back to a 7.2. We leaned out number two cylinder, thinking this is it. We ran at 3 o’clock and with no better luck. Number two went out again. So this was the topic of conversation all the way home.
Looking back, we didn’t get the number we were hoping for, but we did get the win and we did wow the crowd, so all in all it was a good weekend.