Saturday morning, we met at our shop in Redding around 8:30, hooked up the trailer, and left by 9. Our local customers Nick and Jen (Who ran powderpuff this year) met up with us at the shop and caravanned down with us. We stopped for a big breakfast (Nacy's Airport Cafe in Willows) one of the only places that has a parking lot big enough for the truck and trailer. After a great breakfast we got back on the road, and pulled into Sacramento Raceway around 1pm. We drove into our pit area to find Bill Eserini was already there and ready to go so we set our dragster up beside his. We warmed up the car, added transmission fluid because we had a new converter with a higher stall (6,000) and waited to be called to the line.
When we got up to the line, we did our burn out and everything seemed good except for Gene. Gene wanted me to do a rolling burn out, so he walked me out onto the starting line and told me to hit it. He was standing right by the exhaust pipes when I hit it and the concussion from one of the exhaust pipes was right by his ear. He did not break his ear drum, but he lost all equilibrium for the rest of the day and part of Sunday. To put it in perspective, each exhaust pulse leaving the pipe gives 100lbs of down force to the car.
We made our pass and got a 7.44 @133.5mph. We got back to the pits, talked about the run and downloaded the data recorder only to find that the new converter was slipping bad at the top end. We found out that it was not the 6000 stall like we thought, but rather a 6,700. That would explain the poor mph for that et. So the thrash was on to get the new converter out and put the old one back in (which stalls at 5,500).
Jeff Hook, one of our crew members, made a ridiculously good dinner that night and that was it for Saturday.
Sunday morning we got the the track at 8am. Made some minor adjustments to the fuel system, such as we reduced the size of the main jet and took shims out of the high speed. Warmed it up and everything was normal. We waited for the call, got up to the line, did a burn out, and everything was great. We made the run against Chad Davis, and ended up running a 7.406 @171mph. We brought it back to our pit, did the normal maintenance, tweaked the fuel system a little more.
During round one of eliminations, we pulled up to the line against Eserini feeling like we had a really good car. We cut a .025 light and hole-shotted Eserini. About 3/4 down the track the car started running horribly. I didn't lift since this was THE race, and at about 1100ft I saw Eserini pass me. We ran a 8.02 at 140mph. I pulled off the return road, the safety crew asked if I was ok, I said yes, but was frustrated. He commented back, "see you next round". I said what? I lost. He said no, that my win light was on. Andrew Eserini broke out. Eserini ran a 7.46 on a 7.47 dial in.
We got the car back to the pits, did normal maintenance, and noticed the pulley was starting to back out and the crank trigger wasn't even close to the pulley! This was caused by the pulley bolt backing off, which we could not see due to the starter dog being bolted on top of it. Come to find out, when the bolt backed off, the mag (being that it takes 25hp to turn) had walked the distributor drive gear on the crank off its keyway. So not only was the crank trigger a half inch off, the distributor drive gear walked off and turned and the mag was completely out of phase, its amazing it ran at all. We could not put the distributor gear back where it was supposed to go without getting the crank out of the block, and we just didn't have the time. So we were broken and Dave Folts/Tom Schuh got he by.
In conclusion, we wanted to go all the way, we're disappointed that a crank bolt turned into such a failure. But we're pleased with the performance of the car, our second pass was the quickest it has ever ran.
Special thanks to Jeff Hook for cooking and crewing, Ron Pratt & Gene Adams for tuning on the car, And Ralph & Barb for crewing. They all gave me a great race car.