Mark’s work occasionally schedules him to work weekends
as part of major maintenance projects so we knew in advance he would be
busy the last two weekends. James & I had to work out how to get the
exhaust outside the enclosed engine compartment. After a lot of thought
we decided that there was no perfect place so we just cut a hole in the
top and piped it out. If a better solution presents its self we can always
patch the fiberglass panel.
Additionally I’ve been putting our liner air sander to a lot of work on the Bondo body filler along the side of the car. Lot of other things got worked on but lets get to the race weekend....
Saturday we headed up to El Mirage Lake about 10:00 planning to get in line for inspection before noon when they open. While driving through Fontana on I-15 one of the racing trailer’s tires decided that it had done all of the racing it was going to do and quit the team. We put on the spare tire and all told it slowed us down an hour.
We unloaded the car and put it in line ASAP but it wasn’t until after 3 PM that were inspected. This time the inspection went real fast, with no issues at all (except that we had to prove that the sheep skin seat cover was real sheep skin). At 5:00 pm James did the course walk while I worked on the carburetors. The sunset was spectacular so we pushed out car to shoot a few pictures. We were camped next the SCTA’s official videographer who commented that it was such a cool shot, too bad the car was so ugly. Give it a few more months & we’ll have the paint on it.
Sunday James & I went down to set up the timing equipment & didn’t get back to work on our car until after the first cars were running. Long before our time to run, KC Leggit became the fourth person to drive over 300 MPH on the dirt. With our points from last meet, we were 67th to run. Just as I was getting suited up, Patrick Vigeant, Mark’s brother, showed up to give us a hand.
We designed the cockpit to be just big enough to fit Mark & just tall enough to fit James & I. There isn’t even a half inch to spare. With only 2 cars in front of us in line a roadster spun-out and we had to wait. Normally this only takes a few minutes to be running again, but the motorcyclist in front of us took off his helmet and got off of his bike. He strolled back to me and said "It’ll be a few minutes, their looking for the guys that set up the timing lights". James grabbed the Starter’s FM radio and called the Timing Tower to see if we were needed down there, but everything was fine all they had to do we realign the photo sensors. With the track back up and running James pushed me off to start my run.
The motor ran well, the transmission shifted fine and the clutch springs did their job this time. Once through the lights, I shut it off pushed on the brake and turned off, slick as you please. The nearest patrol said that everything looked and sounded good but he didn’t know how fast the run was. As a team we figured that the car should go between 125 and 135 MPH in this configuration. James finally showed up in the push truck and said that the timing tower reported 132 MPH. Not to shabby. We pushed back to the pits to prep for the next run that James was going to make. The winds were picking up speed and we knew that they might have to shut down the course if they got too bad. With James suited and strapped into the car and only 2 cars in front of us, the fat lady sang. With winds gusting over 30 MPH it’s not safe to run so we packed up and went home.
The next race is July 15th.