After months of trying to get there, Friday finally got here. I arrived in time to get one of the parking spots behind the tower, on the grass, that had not been reserved yet (not ten minutes passed before the cones were all around me). The orange cones were everywhere!
I decided to drive, and Outlaw was my pit crew. Things went downhill from there. The first pass was bad because I did not press the T-brake button and the car rolled through the lights. The second pass was much better, but I had a horrible light, .156 RT, and just as I crossed about the 1000′ line, there was a big “pop”, but everything was good after that. That was the start of our weekend troubles.
We looked at everything under the hood but did not change anything. In the first round of Super Pro Money, I lost to Bubba, in his 5.28 sec. green Camaro. The car did not run the number and I had a bad light. The engine seemed to be holding back. I thought it may be the power valve in the carburetor. We put the car up for the night, still not making our minds up about running on Saturday.
We decided to run on Saturday and I decided to let Outlaw drive (we will talk about that later).
First thing Saturday morning, I replaced the power valve with a plug and increased the front jet by 8 steps, up to 100. We have 102 in the back but I don’t have any 102 jets.
Outlaw made the first qualifying pass for Top Doorslammer and had a 5.73 @ 120 MPH, but the engine was missing and popping going down the track. At least we qualified!
Outlaw decided to check the ignition system, which included cleaning the rotor, cap and checking all the wires. The MSD wires should read approximately 40-50 ohms/ft. Number 1 wire was open (zero continuity). We went to several racers trying to find a spark plug wire. Pat Rauch, another Top Doorslammer driver, had a extra set of wires and gave us one.
We made our 2nd time trial and this one was worse than the first pass. Outlaw decided to change all of the plug wires. Pat gave us the complete set of spark plug wires and we were ready for the 1st round. (Thanks Pat, we really appreciate the help!)
I will give you one guess on who we ran in the first round! Pat Rauch was our opponent! We both had a good laugh and wished each other the best before the race.
After all that work, the engine still did not perform correct and we decided to change all the plugs.
We found 2 cracked plugs. I had an old set of spark plugs, from years ago, a set of Autolite’s that had been in the trailer for years after running in my 555 for almost a year. They were kind of rusty, but cleaned up good and we set the gas. We put them in and went and asked for a time trial. By now it was after the 2nd round and they let us make a solo time trial. The car ran, 8.786 sec. @ 152.41 MPH, the best MPH we had ever run in the 1/4. The 1/8 time was 5.591 @ 123.27 MPH. That was probably due to those 100/102 jets in the 1250 Carb. We were super happy!
When we changed the plugs, we found 2 cracked plugs and that was the reason for the loss of power and all the popping. We had been running on 6 cylinders!
I came home and purchased two new sets of wires, a new set of plugs and a new rotor and cap, just in case.