Had a close call tonight on the drag strip. I built a car for some local grudge racers and I have been tuning it and driving it for them the last few weeks. I cant give out times, but its pretty quick. Its an older tube chassis Nova with a 383 and two guns on it. I had the first stage wired through the ignition box to delay .1 from the release of the transbrake last week and it made a bunch of nice passes with only a little wheelie. Well, with a little prodding from Denny Savage, I decided to take the delay away, and add a little fuel pressure for the better air we had this week.

Did the burnout and staged up the car and it left freaking hard and was riding a nice low wheelie (front tires 12ish inches off of the ground) so I grabbed the second nitrous kit .95 into the run. While the front tires were in the air it was drifting to the right a little and by the time it set the front tires down, 1.4 seconds into the run, it was out of the groove. Between the front end hitting the ground and being out of the groove it started spinning the tires bad and made a hard left turn for the wall. I was in the left lane so the wall looked pretty big out of the front window and I am thinking to myself, "well, I guess I am going to find out what it feels like to hit the wall". I had the wheel cranked all the way to the right and luckily the car came around and turned towards the middle of the track and slid sideways for a while. Just before the sliding stopped it swung back to the left and I was able to give it a little throttle and drive out of it. It is kinda funny how many things go through your head when you are sliding down the track sideways trying to gather the car back up! The guys that own the car were on the starting line and they said the crowd went nuts, lol.

The next pass we decided to take a little power out of it by using the launch retard function in the 7531 MSD box and the car dead hooked and started driving up into a big wheelie. I thought I caught it quick enough and could just bail out of the throttle but it came down hard anyways and banged the oil pan off of the track. Luckily I had talked them into letting me build headers for the car that come out of the bottom of the fenders so those didnt get hurt. I am going to put it up on the lift tomorrow and see if there is anything else hurt. I am trying to get the car to run without wheelie bars because it might get us a few more races with the car (people think its slow if it doesnt have wheelie bars), but going mid 1.teens in 60ft with no wheelie bars and a big tired slick car is proving to be a challenge Going to hang 30 pounds in the nose and try again next week!

Sounds like a wild ride!

Kevin, If you didn't want to post times you maybe shouldn't have posted 60 ft. time. Some of us secret agents can put a number on it with the 60 times. Just kidding, good job saving the car, hope it's not hurt too bad. See you in the SEC Championship.....ROLL TIDE. Lee

When the wheels go too high, "shift, don't lift"!!!!!!

I think I would have had to change my undies after that one!!
NICE SAVE!!

Wow, I was getting all tense just reading that, lol. It's kind of funny because a situation that is scary and could end up disasterous ends up turning into a fun ride, lol.

Glad the cars safe though....oh yea, and you too...

lets go to the replay !

i have had some expierences with a car that wheel stood bad u would be amazed what 25-30 lbs in the front bumper will do lol

Yeah I think that taking the power away from it with the Launch retard helped it hook better and it started up into a huge wheelie. I was asking around to see if anybody got it on video but nobody said that they did, darn it.

I just got the car up on the lift and the oil pan is crushed pretty good. I had been telling them that we needed to change it because it was the lowest thing in the car and now we have to change it!! Everything else in the front suspension looks good, but the car was pulling a little to the left so I think it may have moved the upper control arms in their adjustment slots a little (its an old Mustang 2 style front end with horizontal slots and vertical bolts that hold the adjustment).

As for giving away the 60ft numbers, oh well It was only going mid 1.20s last week. With the better air and getting after the spray sooner it came alive! I just hope that this stock GM block hangs on until we can win a few races!

Kevin, Glad there wasn't a lot of damage. On another note, what did you ever do with the blue Cutlass in your avatar? Are you just a hired gun now? If so, it's much less expensive driving someone else's stuff, isn't it? Lee

My blue Cutlass is still at TRZ. I go down and work on it every once and a while and they have used it for some different measurements. We were kinda waiting until the 25.3 spec came out, and now that it has, TRZ is crazy busy so they have not had any time to work on it themselves. Now that I have my own shop I cant wait to get it back up here I have just about everything but a motor, ignition and fuel system sitting in my garage so if I can come up with one of those I can go have some fun in the 275 Radial classes down here!

I have been driving other people's cars for years and yeah its alot cheaper than building one yourself. It is always nice to actually get paid some to go racing

Here are a couple of videos from a few years ago me driving a friend of mine's Vega. There was some good money on the line for both of these runs and I got paid real well for a few seconds of "work"

http://videos.streetfire.net/video/Fast ... _67703.htm

http://videos.streetfire.net/video/Fast ... _71140.htm

After last night's wild rides we will have our own camera out there videoing the action. I have been bugging the guys that own the car to bring a camera so I could see how the chassis was reacting, but they didnt see the point, until last night.

Kevin, Both videos of the Vega were good, nice job on the tree both passes. I saw something in both videos that I hate. Toolbags that do burnouts past the tree. Unless it's a ProMod, Fueler, Funny Car,etc., there is no reason for that. In my opinion, guys that do that are showing off and looking for attention. Funny how both guys you raced did it and then got their a$$es handed to them, good job. Lee
.

I think the same thing about the big burnouts. With this new car I usually roll the front tires through the beams, but back right up. The car doenst have line lock and I do a high gear burnout that gets the forward momentum of the car going pretty good so its actually kinda hard to get it stopped before the beams. Plus that puts a little rubber down for the hit

Whats the reason for no times. I'm not saying its stupid that you don't post them, I'm just wondering why.

N/T grudge runs for $$$$ and lots of it!!