2010
Jim Best and I took the Mustang to Speed Week with the idea
in mind of getting Jim his A license. Piece of cake -- the
car has done over 200 mph before and it was running good so
what could possibly go wrong?
Turns out ... something could go wrong. Not REAL wrong,
just sorta wrong. Started out ok. I did a tuning pass at
185 out to the 3-mile so we could get some datalogger info.
Everything looked fairly good so Jim took a pass to get his
B license at 183.738. I bumped the jets up one size and did
another pass at 192. Jim followed with one at 194 with an
exit speed of 195.034. Then started the fun. For some
reason, the air/fuel ratio wanted to spike lean for long
stretches of time. I figured this was probably sensor error
and tried tuning through the mean of these readings. Long
and short of it was, the best run was 196.751 exit speed.
Never could break 200.
What's more, the car was pretty dicey at speed. I got blown
off course twice. That is, I drifted to the left and, at
some point, decided to go off-course rather than give it
any more steering input. Just felt like one more inch on
the steering wheel and I would be off-course going
backwards. Strange, since the wind wasn't that strong and
the car had handled much better than this in 2008.
Found out the cause of, probably, all of this a couple of
weeks after the meet. The fellow who does photography at
the meet (Larry Ledwick), and sells prints of
your car at speed, sent me an email with several
pictures of my car at the 2-mile on the long course. The
hood was gaped open in front like some piscatory
monster, the front fascia was bent back in the wind, and
all of a sudden I could understand the lean spiking in
the AFR! And, probably, why it was so hard to handle at
speed. I later figured the car was at about 190 mph at
this point on this particular run. You'd think I would
have noticed something funny with the hood flapping like
that.
Very interesting. And a big thanks to Larry for finding
this in his photos, for tracking me down, and sending me
these pictures. Turns out that we already had these
pictures -- Jim and I had each bought a print of the car
from Larry but hadn't really looked closely at it! Things
like that make me feel like an idiot.
If you've been to Bonneville, you know that you can meet
some really spectacular people there. We've become friends
with folks from all over the country, sharing our interest
in cars and speed. Often, these new friends will end up
helping you out -- everything from pushing the car up in
line to getting under it in the pits and fabricating a salt
shield for the fuel pump. Once in a while, you get to
reciprocate. This year, I got to give a friend from years
past a ride in the Mustang. He's building his own car to
run but has to actually work for a living in the same shop
so it is taking some time. His licenses had long since
elapsed. So, this year Kiwi Paul made a couple of passes on
the special course in the Mustang. Nothing really fast but
enough to remember what it's like. Ask him, sometime, why
it took TWO passes to renew his D license!
UPDATE 2011: A couple of things have happened to convince
me to retire 972 D/PRO. First of all, my good friend and
racing buddy, Jim Best, died in a crash of his light sports
plane in October of last year. This happened right off the
runway at the airpark where we live. A big shock to all of
us here and to anyone who met Jim at Bonneville or El
Mirage. He was one of a kind, the nicest man you would ever
hope to meet, and never to be replaced. God speed Jim.
In addition, my lakester chassis is done. Russ Eyers
fabricated the chassis at his shop in Valley Center, CA. My
longtime friend Terry Hart and I went out there in April to
pick it up and it is living in my hangar now. My plan had
been for Jim and Terry and some car-club friends and me to
construct a body, install the engine from the Mustang,
plumb and wire the car in hopes of getting some shakedown
runs at Speed Week 2011. With the loss of Jim, I felt like
this was not going to be possible. Russ and Eric Eyers
pointed out to me that the car doesn't need the full body
to run at first; enough simple paneling to keep the salt
off my toes would suffice for this year. So I'm pumped up
again to start putting it together. It will be sorta ugly
but it should be a runner. Probably not going to be ready
until 2012, however. What with work and prepping the Focus
for August.