We took the hood off one time on Sat. morning after the first pass and never took it off again!
I would like to thank Mr. Houston Hawkins and his wife Marva, for taking over the driving and handling of the car on Sunday. I was just too beat and exhausted to drive. I really enjoyed seeing the car go down the track. I could get use to this! My grandson, Jeremy (19 years old), wants to drive and I may just give up the seat to him.
Houston pointed out some issues with the car, namely the wheelie bars being too low, the timing may be off a little, the converter is very much in need of more stall and we are still trying to find the correct starting line RPM and shift point. Each time we changed something Sunday, the car got quicker, our MPH went up and the 60′ came down. Houston ran and 9.24 @ 143.28 MPH on his last run. Almost a tenth quicker and 2 MPH faster than I was.
Houston had nothing but good things to say about the way the car handled, the power of the engine and how good everything worked. As I said before, I am very happy! That was a lot of work. Now we can concentrate on becoming consistent. With consistency comes winning!
I shot some real nice photos of the car and I have a video clip that I am trying to edit. The video uncut version has a lot of ground, guardrail, sky and other junk in it.
June 20, 2009 – Everyone is happy except me!
The car, off the trailer, ran a 9.336 @ 141.11 MPH, and that was the best run of the day! I expected at least a 8.99 at over 150.00 MPH, but that never happened. The car went straight and everything worked, but there is not enough power to go where I want it to be. At least not right now.
Track surface temps. were rumored to be over 130 degrees, and my weather station said the temp. was 103 degrees at 45% humidity.(we can take about 7-8 degrees off of that number, just because my weather station always reads high, and still get about 95 degrees). My tires only had 4 runs and I had 9 PSI in them. This was at 1:13 pm, and it got hotter into the afternoon.
I did compete in Top Doorslammer because the track relaxed the rules to allow all the cars that ran at least 9.50 in time trials, and paid to be in the class, to compete. I lost in the 2nd round when I had a red light (-.027).
After losing and getting back to my pit, I felt very dizzy and had to get into the truck with the A/C and some water. The heat had gotten to me.
Tomorrow, Houston Hawkins will drive “Mr. Skip” in Super-Pro for the Father’s Day Race. (“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!”)