Cascade Crew

[Kage87Z]

13.02 @ 106.78!

Well, last night was certainly eventful.

My first run was my fastest ever: 13.28 @ 105.55 MPH. A major step on my goal to 110 MPH.

Great run just off the trailer, very encouraging. So I start to hot lap it.

And, that’s when I start to, I dunno… over shift? Miss a shift?

Four out of five runs where I pop the shifter into a nonexistent 4th gear and the car dying on 1 of those 5 runs.

I have no real clue as to why my brain insisted on sticking the car into a gear that doesn’t exist. Great launches. Pretty good lights. Click, click, click into neutral? WTF is up with that?

The last time I did that, I dumped the alternator belt. Fortunately, the belt was kind enough to stay in the engine compartment, undamaged.

I knew the jig was up when I saw the “GEN” light come on. I knew I’d lost my water pump and I knew that I had seconds to get that thing off the track and shut it off.

So, I did that.

Fortunately, I’d decided to get some walkie talkies, so I was able to call the cavalry in and my friend Tom brought my tools out and we out the belt back on. I’d lost some coolant… but not much. I ran back to Blue, to check the systems.

Everything looked good. No signs of a blown head gasket or coolant leaks. Engine ran fine… idled fine.

But a little hot.

The “hot” part resulted in some weird behavior on the car. Not able to find any problem, I fired it back up and took it out on another run.

I had a great light… shift at the right time… and it died.

WHOOPS! Major mechanical failure, I’m thinking. Broken timing chain? Loss of power source for the distributor? EMP from a thermonuclear device blowing up my MSD 6A box and Mallory distributor?

All of this flashes through my brain in the blink of an eye. And all of it was wrong.

I took my foot out of it, and the engine catches immediately. I proceed to plod down the strip (They apparently sent the truck after me, but I didn’t see it) and again, drive back to Blue.

I again check the engine out… and again, nothing. But the heat is apparently an issue. So, I wait a few minutes and then head back out. I get off a great run and get back into the groove. Two runs later, I’m on it again, and it breaks up but didn’t die.

So I knock off the hot laps and wait 25 minutes between runs. Meanwhile, they run a small bracket thing… which caused a delay while we wait to run.

So, I sit there in line. I close my eyes and go over the shifts. Take off. One click (into 2nd.) One click (into 3rd) NO MORE FRICKING CLICKS! (I could get a ratchet shifter, but I’m not becoming a permanent race car.)

So, I get up there and going through the pre-programming (so to speak) fire off my best run of my life that night, 13.02 @ 106.78.

Thirteen O two… 3 hundredths out of the twelves. The problem? It was TOO LOUD.

The “Noised” me. I got the dreaded “N” on my windshield. I came in at 93.7 decibels. I was racing Dale in his 69 small block (A much more refined restoration) I have to run a single. So, I run the single, and comeback under the noise limit (which goes on at 10 pm) at 87.3 decibels at a 14.23 @ 103.12.

Weird, isn’t it? I’ve run a 13.22 @ 105.55 and here I’m over a second slower and I run a 103.

Anyway, we run again, and we’re noised out.

I’m going to change the outlets on the exhaust system so that they point out the sides, instead of straight down. Perhaps. I’ll add the supertrapp mufflers to quiet it down.

The goal here is to get past 110. Right now I’m 3.7 MPH away.

So… how do I get there? After we trailered up and we’re coming home… the thought occurred to me: progressive carburetor linkage makes the car much more streetable. But “streetable” isn’t what we want. What we want is brutal.

Get rid of the “progressive” aspect of the linkage and bring both carbs in at once on the line. That should get us to where we want to go.

[DBL_TKE]

I saw that run, congrats. One thing I noticed though is that you aren't doing too well on your burnouts. There's still water on your tires when you get to the line.

[Kage87Z]

Yup.

I need to move my line lock button to get better on that. I'm taking 2 or 3 weeks off to tweak the car and right now, I stuck the button on the dash as a short term fix. So, in the interim, I'm gonna move it to the shifter and have my hand on the shifter and the button at the same time.

I think being able to shift to second during the burnout will help that.

[izcain]

What transmission do you have in the car?

[Kage87Z]