Dial-A-Winner

We had a blast in Ashcroft this last weekend at the Langley Loafers "old time drags"  and actually managed to dial in the car a tad without too much hectic thrashing to distract us. We had a test & tune afternoon on Friday which was good to try a few new tweaking tricks before race day. The track prep was nothing short of outstanding with six second cars in the line-up to motivate the vht slingers. This translated into great traction for the first time ever with our Hurst pie crust slicks and a steady line-up of weekend warriors exploding their 12 bolt chevy rear-ends. At one point there was a line up of cars getting pushed off of the starting line. Weather was descent for the most part but insanely windy from every direction which reaked havok on everybody's dial-in.

 Two seats in a race car just makes sense. Welcome to the office.

 We ever so slowly ground through the weekend into eliminations on Sunday, where a class created for us (I'd like to think) was created, known as "straight axle". The class was small but we still managed to muscle our "Chubby Cobra" through the ranks. The finals found us paired off with an early '60s ghost ship Chevy van that just seemed to appear out of nowhere Sunday afternoon. an .086 light and half fender lead put us in the victory circle, taking our first win in the new car. Yeah us!! I suck at posting video but you can watch the victory run here.

J-Hook

Guess which straps are ours.

Weather looks like crap this weekend in Ashcroft but since we're kinda stupid and eager to race we'll drive over eight hours to find out for ourselves instead of listening to trained meteorologists. Buncha krak heads if you ask me...them not us.

Successful Thrash

 We had another great session racing at the dessert drag strip in Osoyoos last weekend. We conquered a few of our defects and made the car go it's fastest to date. As mentioned earlier, we were very traction limited with our 10" pie crust slicks so we decided to give them one more try with appropriate air pressure and nothing less than John Force style burnouts. Alas, we still managed to spin like crazy at the line. We brought our old M/T wrinkle wall slicks in case this was still a problem and we mounted them up for some test passes. The difference was staggering with a 3/10 increase in our 60' times and almost a half second faster in the 1/8th. Technology is stupid!!

 We managed to pull off a best 60' of 1.66 and a best e.t. of 7.43 @ 92 mph. We ended up putting down around 16 passes over the weekend, taking advantage of time only passes whenever possible. Our charging system seems to be back on line thanks to our new 105 amp alternator and super skookum 3 1/2 horse gas powered charging station that Chris cobbled together. We're still battling high temperatures and a shortage of reverse but the car is really coming into it's own. The driver is also getting a lot more comfortable behind the wheel cutting several back to back good lights. Don't get me wrong, it's still a scary beast that owns us every time we breath her back to life. The fact that we named this car after a mythical wild creature that drains the life force from it's prey becomes more prevalent every time I get behind the wheel.

The next race is June 8-10 in Ashcroft for the Langley Loafers old time drags including the straight axle shootout. I guarantee it'll be a ridiculous time for one and all.

Race Ready

Well we've been tweaking and tuning in anticipation for some of our bigger nostalgia meets this year and hopefully we'll be able to get all the bugs out before we trailer the car over eight hours to Ashcroft and Mission this Summer. We've taken a step back in time with our induction combo by reuniting "old reliable" and the the original intake and carb set-up that we put together for this motor. It's Mopar's M-1 single plane intake coupled with a 950 Holley double pumper that we've massaged with black magic and pixie dust. (Not just reserved for automatic transmissions) The combo always did us proud and also happens to fit under our hood. We also stepped up our charging system mith a modern GM mini alternator that seems to be well up to the task. Our trusty 5.38 gears are once again moth balled in favor of some 4.10s that should be pretty close to perfect in the quarter with our 30" tires. We repaired a small oil leak in our oil pan spacer and did a hot lash on the valves. Let's race bitches!!

We'll package up the entourage this Saturday for another trek down to Osoyoos for some traction-free eighth mile action. Our higher gear ratio may actually help us with our tire spin issue but we decided to bring our 29/10.5/15 M/T slicks in the back of the truck just in case.

Go Fast!!

Going to Spokane and dealing with a bushel of quirks that needed to be sorted out followed by a spun bearing felt like a right of passage. Earning our wings if you will. The next step was to sort out our issues and install our 11 second motor so we can see how things handle at speed. 

So we ventured to sunny Osoyoos last weekend for yet another flog but this time we felt a bit more prepared. Old reliable has a familiar sound that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. They only race on Sunday but we arrived Saturday night and volunteered a bit to get the track ready. The track officials then let us do a few test passes while they made sure all of the electronics were working for race day. 
Osoyoos has always been traction limited for us (and everyone else) and when we used to race the black wagon we didn't usually hook up until about 1:00 in the afternoon. Our pie crust slicks are a thing of beauty but are no match for an un-prepped airport/drag strip. Needless to say our first passes were slick and scary, spinning the hides well past the 60' mark yielding times from 8.72 down to 8.2 in the little eighth. Lack of charging and overheating were still giving us issues so we concocted a game plan for Sunday to push the car into staging and coast back to a down hill position to cool down for the next pass which worked like a charm.
We managed to widdle our 60' times down to as low as 1.88 and a best e.t. of 7.76 despite still never being able to hook up all day long. We managed to punch our way through the first round of eliminations as well but as we rolled in for round two we couldn't get the beast to run from lack of volts. Disqualified, with our tails between our legs we got a jump and leaned in for a time only pass. With a 7.77 dial in still pasted on the window I ran a 7.771, just .001 off my number. Insult to injury or a sign of good things to come? You be the judge.
We'll use our old wrinkle wall M/T slicks next time we're in Osoyoos and we plan to swap out the 2x4 low rise dual plane intake for our tested and true single four and 950 cfm Holley. The to-do list is becoming increasingly smaller and with a little tweaking we should be up for some half descent competition.
More pics and video to come as soon as they get sent to me.

Test & Tune

We headed down to Spokane Raceway last Saturday for a little T&T with the altered. We did our best to keep it low key knowing that the day would be plagued with issues and we were right. From the get-go our new water pump was having interference issues and popping fuses causing our water temp to sky rocket. Our tach wasn't working so shifting was a guessing game, fortunately we do have a rev limiter. We breezed through tech which was a relief and we were whisked into the staging lanes and into the burnout box before I really had a chance to psyche myself out. The whole driving process is completely different than our black wagon which we can pretty much drive blindfolded. The line lock and push button controls are both on the left side which will take some getting used to. The car spun it's tires o.k. but had problems making tire speed which translates into less smoke and even less sticky. The launch was fairly unspectacular and it was clear that the 5.38 gears were way too much for this combo of tall tires and low output motor. Shifting went well considering I was just listening to the roar of the engine and the car tracked quite straight.

Our first pass was 14.9 and the car was running super hot due to water pump issues. We cooled it down and went again. We managed to drop to a 14.45 followed by a 14.30. A decision was made to fatten up the mixture which resulted in a sluggish black smoky pass in the low 15s. We cooled things down again and heard some curios sounds emanating from the heart of our old 440. With a little boost we made her fire up but a lack of oil pressure put us on the trailer.

I know it may sound like a discouraging day but we were really happy to see it go down the track at whatever speed. Building a race car of this magnitude from scratch in our home garages has a sharp learning curve. A unanimous decision was made to poach the race engine from our black car and stab it in El Chupacabra. By Early Sunday afternoon Chris had the motor from our black car on a stand with new bearings ordered. In my world I got the old "black-up" motor in the altered stripped and within four bolts of coming out of the hole. We will run the same low deck dual quad on "old reliable" so we can keep our Max Wedge scoop in place. This combo with some 4.10 gears that we'll install should put the car deep in the 11s. Our next race is in Osoyoos on May 6 for some 1/8 mile action.

El Chupacabra I

El Chupacabra (the 1st) is a legendary mythical creature described as a heavy set gargoyle looking creature about the size of a small bear. These vampiric furry lizards have been reported marauding parts of the southern States, Mexico and Chile. They generally target small livestock and drain the blood from said animals with the use of their sharp teeth. Directly translated, El Chupacabra means "goat sucker" which is apparently one of it's favorite snacks. Also reported to have leathery green scales and a row of spines running the length of it's back leading some eye witnesses to suspect an extra terrestrial origin. Come on now...that's ridiculous.