BONNEVILLE 2007
This was a strange year. The SCTA/BNI crew that preps the
courses did their usual trips in June and July and laid out
three (YES, THREE) courses. Jim Lattin, the SCTA prez,
urged the tech guys to find ways to get more runs out of
each day and one of the ideas that came out was a
three-course layout. Two of these courses would be
long/short combo courses and one would be a shorty short
course.
The
combo courses would, when possible, run a long-course car
then a short-course car, then a long-course car, etc. A new
safety patrol position was created to declare the course
clear after each run, obviating the need for the timing
tower to verify this before letting the starter run the
next car.
The
shorty short course would be for cars that only needed
maybe a mile to get up to their best speed -- oddly enough,
there are quite a few of these.
But
rain in July dampened both the salt and racer's spirits. It
began to look like maybe Speed Week wasn't going to happen.
In fact, some not-quite-correct info began to fly around
the internet the week before the meet and I was seriously
considering the wisdom of driving all the way from
Texas.
We
left anyway -- on the advice of friends who were up there,
working on the course. Turns out that the course prep folks
found some relatively dry salt large enough to build two
combo courses on, plus the pits and tech/concession areas.
And, in a matter of days, they did just that! I cannot
emphasize enough how remarkable that was. And how grateful
we racers (those of us who noticed) are that they put out
this effort.
Before
we left Seguin, I took the car down to San Antonio to get a
chassis dyno tune. I was uncertain about the jetting and
wanted to get some baseline for tuning on the salt. The
first shot was kinda fun -- the Mustang went too fast for
his dyno in 4th gear so I had to do the subsequent pulls in
3rd. And the car was way too loud for the other tenants in
the building. Way too loud. But we didn’t get great results
because the engine missed at speed. Tried new plugs
and plug wires but that didn't help.
I
took the car home and made some changes -- changed some
connectors and installed a new MSD box. Took it back the
Saturday before we left (cuz the other tenants didn't open
their businesses on Saturday). No change, still the high
speed miss and no real indication why, other than some
un-discovered electrical gremlin.
But
-- the racing. Racers were able to put their cars in line
on Saturday morning this year. Martha and I got out to the
pits fairly early and hooked up our new towbar rig to the
Mustang. Pulled into line and ended up #2 on the
long-course side of the staging lanes. We have never been
this close to the starting line before mid-to-late
afternoon on the first day. Wow!
After
the driver's meeting, we rushed to the car and I got into
my firesuit and into the car. The car in front of us was
having some sort of difficulty so the line steward had us
push up in front of them. I was the first long-course car
to run on this course! Wow, talk about a
first.
The
salt was pretty sticky on Saturday -- walking around you
would pick up a wad of salt on your shoes like walking in
sticky mud. That made the surface a bit slick, as was
apparent as I ran up in the lower gears. I paid strict
attention to the black lines and where I was on the course
as I tried to build up speed. I also noticed that the
high-speed miss was still there. After I shifted into 4th
gear, I finally felt comfortable enough to take a scan of
the gauges. Eeek! The oil pressure was down to 20 psi! I
threw in the clutch, shut the engine off, and popped the
chute. I had just passed the 2 mile marker -- and had
clocked 173+ in the quarter -- but turned off just past the
3 mile.
We
towed back to the pits and started addressing problems. I
couldn't come to grips with the oil pressure issue so we
took a look at the miss first. A friend of Dave Simard's,
who had made the trip out with him from Massachusetts, came
to the pits to help me diagnose the problem. We inspected
the plugs and discussed jetting and such for a while. Then
he started looking over the electrical system. Started
finding all sorts of potential gremlins, including a loose
nut on the charge wire from the alternator (drives an MSD
box crazy), some suspect connectors, a loose fuse, and so
on. And I thought I'd gone over the car at home. Color me
embarassed.
After
fixing the things he found (thanks to friends who came up
to the salt to help with the car), we started the car up to
see if it ran any better. While it was warming up, I
noticed that the oil pressure gauge would periodically PEG,
then drop back down to 40-60 psi. We shut off and I went in
search of advice. The consensus was to inspect the oil
filter and see what was there. I did and what was there was
bearing material. Even copper flakes -- the layer under the
bearing material!
So
that was our run at the 2007 Speed Week. Not very
impressive (though I can remember when a 173 mph pass would
have made my day) but quite a learning experience. Guess
I'm going to have to keep re-learning the adage that
attention to detail is what separates the runners for the
also-ran.
The
best part of this trip, however, was deciding the next step
just has to be a lakester. I talked with Russ and Eric
Eyres about building a lakester starting next year. It will
run the engine out of the Mustang, eventually. Shooting for
270 mph in D/L. Why not aim high?
Since
we only made one run this year, we spent a lot of time
helping out Jack and Warren Harvey with the SoCal Machine
special, a modified roadster running a 254 cid DeSoto hemi
on nitromethane. Jack set the record in E/FMR back in 2005
at 223 mph. He was hoping that Warren would be able to beat
his record this year and join him in the 200 mph club. It
took a while -- Warren seemed stuck at 217 mph for several
days -- but he finally did it with a qualifying pass at 235
and a backup run to give him the new record at 232. We had
to leave before he made his record runs but we got a call
on the road from Christine when he
qualified.
We
blew the engine in the 973 car last year so it didn't make
the trip to Speed Week this year. However, Aaryn bought a
2003 Focus SVT wreck recently and we are in the process of
putting an engine together using what we can salvage from
the original. We'll have a 6-speed trans this time, which
should let us run the engine near the power peak better
than before. So we should be back with this car in
2008!