Drag Week Uncensored Part 6: What It’s Really Like To Drive A 6 Second S10 Cross Country!


Drag Week Uncensored Part 6: What It’s Really Like To Drive A 6 Second S10 Cross Country!

In part 5, I ended telling you about the horrible drive to Great Bend, and our complete lack of sleep and therefore multiple near death experiences. Waking up in Great Bend sucked. We had gotten in so late that Daphne was asleep and we got up so early that she was still sleeping. The hotel didn’t have breakfast either, and I saw Larry in the parking lot while talking to some guys but then lost sight of him and wandered around like a lost puppy. If I had a quarter for all the people that said I looked like hell, I would have actually made some money on Drag Week. With nothing quick to eat close to the hotel, the coffee shop next door became the only option. I still didn’t know where Larson was but wandered into the coffee shop and grabbed a Pumpkin muffin and giant chocolate chip cookie. Little known fact: Larry Larson has a very hard time walking away from cookies. Who knew? This is what it’s really like to drive a 6 second S10 cross country.

IF YOU MISSED PART 1, CLICK HERE

IF YOU MISSED PART 2, CLICK HERE

IF YOU MISSED PART 3, CLICK HERE

IF YOU MISSED PART 4, CLICK HERE

IF YOU MISSED PART 5, CLICK HERE

IF YOU MISSED THE ENGINE BUILD, CLICK HERE

So I grab my snacks, after leaving my bags by the trailer and truck, and come back to find Larson loading his bags. Grunts and a couple of words that might have been English, but I’m not really sure, somehow resulted in us getting in the truck. I’m almost done with my muffin at this time, and Larry is looking at me like a freak for eating an orange colored Pumpkin muffin. My diet coke was the only thing keeping this from sounding entirely too yuppy. If I had a frappe or latte or frappachino I am sure he would have kicked me out.  It was cold that morning, in comparison to other mornings on Drag Week, and that made me nervous. With big inch engines like this come big valve springs, and they don’t like cold starts. It sounds funny to say, but cold starts is when you have to watch out for breaking a valve spring. It made me nervous each morning. But, our PAC springs kicked ass, and we never saw a single problem with them throughout the week. Those guys rule over there, and put together a package that worked just right for us. I seem to recall him grabbing a small chunk of the muffin though and eating it as we pulled out of the parking lot.

When you leave the hotel in Great Bend, you turn onto the street that the track is on, so there is no turning. It’s only about 4 miles down the road. Once we turned onto the street, our conversation revolved around gas, and whether we needed any. You see, since we removed the gasoline fuel tank at each track we were doing our best to make sure we only had a gallon or two in the tank when we arrived at the race tracks. Enough to get us there and then to the closest gas station, but nothing more. We had stopped at some point the night before and didn’t fill up because we were almost to Great Bend. Did we have enough? Did we need to stop? Our Aeromotive Dual Phantom setup would suck every last drop out of our tank, so we could run until literally dry. Instead of coming to a decision, we just stopped talking about the gas when I pulled the giant chocolate chip cookie out of the bag, held it up which got Larry’s attention, split it in half, and held out half for him. He grabbed it like Winnie the Pooh grabbing honey and we proceeded the silent conversation of expressions that says “Yummy! Good cookie. You rule. Cookie good. Yummmy!”. You know the one.

Once you pass South Patton Rd in Great Bend the street becomes W. Barton County Road, at that point there is about 2 miles of nothing until you get to the track. Just fields and stuff. No gas stations. Which is of course when we ran out. After leaving the light at Patton Rd. the fuel pressure dipped just once and then we were rolling along fine. For about a half mile we keep it running, and then it dies. On a road with no shoulder and tall grass going into a big ditch. Lots of Drag Weekers wave at us as they go by. Luckily a couple of them stop. Two dudes, who’s names we never got, drove past and turned around to give us a gallon of pump gas from the bed of their El Camino. Thank you thank you thank you.

Gas

After pulling into the track, signing the waiver, and getting our wrist bands, we cruised on into the track, turned the corner toward the pits, and were met by Lonnie, Drag Week 2014’s Competition Director, who had a Hot Rod Drag Week Impound sticker in his hand. He pointed at a spot right next to Jeff Lutz and said “It’s your turn. You guys are in Impound today.” On any other day this would have sucked really really bad, but neither Larry or I really cared this morning. We turned around, backed the truck and trailer into our spot and started unloading. The weather wasn’t looking good, so the truth was we had plenty of time to make the switch over from street trim to race trim.

We got the talk from the Hot Rod staff, on what we were allowed to do and not do, which basically came down to nobody else being allowed to touch the truck except Larry and I. Several times during the day we asked the officials about things like sending someone out for gas so that we could actually leave the racetrack at the end of the day. They were cool with that, and also allowed Sherry and Tim to wipe the truck down later in the day since it looked like crap and was all covered in dirt.

Some people think the track at Great Bend isn’t great, and because of the cold it was most certainly a challenge this year. But the truth is it’s smooth, really long, and is capable of holding really high horsepower cars if the track temp is good. It started raining, which was far from good as well, and wasn’t helping the temp any. Once it stopped raining, the breeze was helping it dry and we were looking forward to making a hit or two. While we were switching the truck over to race trim, everyone was talking about the lack of traction after the track dried out, and Lutz, Larson, and I decided we should go take a look. There was plenty of rubber down, but zero stick. I mean zero. Not to sound like a whiny bitch, but with a big tire high horsepower car this is bad. Not just for running quick, but more importantly because it can be incredibly unsafe. With small tire, lower horsepower, car sliding around, we knew this was NOT good. Or no bueno as the case may be.

When we walked over to talk to Lonnie, and express our concerns, he had really good things to tell us. They were watching the track temp, and knew that this wasn’t good. His plan was to let all the daily drivers run, hoping that would put some temp in the track. If they could get the track temp up 15 degrees, he’d open up the lanes for the “Class” cars and we would be good to go. If the temp didn’t come up enough, the they would be making an announcement that the track was not warm enough to be safe and we would call it for the day and head back to Tulsa without times from Great Bend. Clearly we didn’t want this to be the case, but we also didn’t want to run in unsafe conditions.

We went back to working on the truck.

In the meantime, Daphne’s car also needed some help, because during the thrash to get it ready we had a problem with the bendix on the starter bouncing off the flexplate while it was running. On the dyno we actually thought it was a rod knock, but my dad realized it was in fact that starter. With no more shims to get it farther from the flexplate, it was what it was. Daphne found it incredibly annoying, and slightly embarrassing, to have her car constantly making this “ting, ting, ting” noise while running. The TCI Mini Starter we had used on a bunch of other projects turned out to be missing a spacer and that was causing the bendix to bounce back and forth. Trying to find a stock style starter proved difficult, but thanks to a guy at the local O’Reilly Auto Parts who had a couple of broken mini starters are home we thought we had a fix. My dad went and met him at the parts store, got one of these broken starters from him that had extra shims and spacers, and we put our TCI back together which everything and the problem was solved. Happy wife, happy life.

Now that the car was good, and the truck was ready to run, we waited for word on whether the track temp was coming back to where we needed it, and it did. They announced that it was our turn to run and we got in line after a few other Unlimited cars ran. After breaking on the starting line the day before, we were a little nervous pulling up to the starting line, but I knew everything was right and we should be good. Larson and I had a very specific conversation about being smart, not pedaling it, and maybe even just running it to the 1/8th mile so we could get some data and then come back for another run. Sherry and I got him belted in, I checked the air bottle and Fuel Tech FT500, he fired it up, I turned on the loggers, and shut and locked the passenger door. I pulled him into the water pretty shallow because I wanted the tires spinning hard when he left the water, because we knew we needed a nice long straight burnout. Yeah right.

Larson leaves the water, driving past me in a cloud of smoke, and proceeds to get sideways at which point he pedals it. The truck is spinning the tires like it’s on ice, and after pedaling it the first time he’s back in it and smoking them even further, at which point he is sideways again, but in the opposite direction. The bad one. Toward the wall. For those of you not in the know, this is the point where your brain and your gut have to keep from talking and you need to be smart. Lifting at this point is BAD. Way no bueno in fact, because once the tires slow down they hook and shoot you straight into the wall. At this point you need to get the car as close to straight as you can and feather out of the throttle so that when it does hook it is not going towards the wall. Larry does it right, but not without getting my heart racing and the crowd losing their minds. At this point almost all the Unlimited cars had run, and none had broken into the 6’s.

So Larson backs up the truck, attempting to end up in his own tracks, which would have required some seriously crooked action on the starting line. I check the truck for leaks, give him the thumbs up, and step back. It’s cold. He brings the truck up on boost, which seems to take less time than it had the day before, and lets go of the button. When we were in the pits making our switch from street to race trim, we changed the boost curve a little bit, and I was hoping the truck would move out clean and not hit the boost too hard when we started pouring the coals to it. But Larson was just running a test hit, so if it did go out and try to light the tires, we would have data, come back and make an adjustment, and then make another pass.

Yeah right.

Larson lets go of the button, the truck leaves nice, and then starts moving toward the centerline a bit. It did the same thing on the first 1/8th mile hit at Tulsa that resulted in a 6.99 pass, and like before Larry pulled it back toward the middle of the lane. Then the boost came on, and at about 300 feet it tried to spin the tires after the shift. Larry pedaled it quick, got it in the middle and it hiked the front tires way up in the air and move left. Another pedal job just before the 1/8th mile got it sort of settled down, but pulled the motor down at the shift and he legged it out the back door. Two pedal jobs and it still ran 6.928 a 182.77 mph. It was entertaining, and the crowd lost their minds. Meanwhile, I’m standing on the starting line shaking my head saying something along the lines of “F’ing Larson!” and laughing like a little kid. We were nothing if not spectacular.

Pulling into the pits, smiling from ear to ear, Larson looked like the proverbial Cheshire Cat. When I asked him what the hell he was thinking, he went into a full play by play of the burnout, and run, laughing the entire time. So much for a checkout run. LOL

We set about getting the truck back in the air, to cool down, and got ready for the switch over to street trim. Groundhog day.

Then the real drama started. Doug Cline and Jeff Lutz were embroiled in a battle royale at Great Bend, and after running a 7.20 or something, Lutz was back in the lanes following a run from Doug Cline that had him in second. Lutz went out and ran a 7.03 at 202 while Doug was getting his chutes wadded up and into the trunk of the Camaro, so he knew he was now in second. Doug came back from his run and turned the corner into the end of the staging lanes like he was autocrossing the Camaro and came pulling into the lanes with only minutes to spare. Several of us immediately came running to help get the car ready for another run as Lutz sat at the end of the track getting his chutes packed up and into the trunk of the Chevy Bel Air. This was going to be tight.

Lonnie came over to tell us we had 5 minutes, as the lanes were now closed, right when Lutz pulled up next to the staging lanes and his Impound Pit. He was not IN the lanes, and wouldn’t be allowed another run. All eyes were on Doug Cline. He had been having issues earlier with a transbrake button on his steering wheel, and had to change his routine on the starting line using another transbrake button installed just for backing up on the street. Would he be able to calm himself down on the starting line and make the number? I had started my stopwatch on my iPhone at the same time Lonnie did so we knew exactly how much time we had. While Dustin, Larry and I packed chutes, Doug and crew packed the intercooler full of ice, got more fuel in the tank, and changed the tuneup. The clock was counting down. We had two minutes to be in the water box and running. While trying to keep Doug calm we pushed the car forward to the water. Belted in and ready, we pushed him into the water with 37 seconds to spare. I told him to take a breath, be calm, and go kick some ass. The car cranked slow, and you could have heard a pin drop. It fired. He pulled further into the water and started to spin the tires, but no burnout. He wanted more water, backed up again, and hammered it. Big burnout.

I’m standing on the starting line crossing my fingers and willing Doug to stay calm. He would later tell us that he was talking himself through the different trans brake, hearing Larson’s instructions in his head, as he staged, put it on the chip, and waited for the boost. Reaching down to feel for the new button, he hit it. Early. Crap. That “mistake” may have been exactly what he needed as the car left with a few pounds less boost than planned, and drove through the middle like a champ. It was the longest 6.89 seconds of his life, and he crossed the finish line at 211 mph. The final run of the day at Great Bend was epic, and Doug Cline and Jeff Lutz were so close that brains throughout the pits were now burning trying to do the math. It was awesome.

We went back to the pits, congratulated Doug, and finished getting the truck ready for the road. We found a broken bolt head on the ground near the truck, and looked to see what it may have been from. Not finding it right before pulling the truck off the jacks, we let it go and decided to load up and hit the road. It was late, but we had a caravan going this time as the girls decided they would cruise with us tonight. After all, they hadn’t seen us much so far this week. That wouldn’t last long, as we found ourselves in the parking lot of a Walgreens an hour or so later, tightening up a crank position sensor bracket that had come loose. Or so we thought. We would find the location of the lost bolt head the next morning in Tulsa.

This is what it’s like to drive a 6 second S10 cross country.

Our ride sucked that night again. The truck was doing fine, and we were rolling along well, only running out of gas once or twice, but when I pulled into a gas station only an hour or two from Tulsa, everything seemed good. Until I went to restart the truck. It wouldn’t start. I flood cleared it and it fired, but smoked bad and didn’t sound right before dying. I tried again and it cranked like it had one dead hole. The gas station was closed, and the lights were all out in the pump area. Thankfully the local PD showed up and used their spot lights to light the engine up while we pulled the valve covers to check it out. A broken rocker arm, which made no sense to us, was found and replaced and we hit the road again after lashing the valves.

We were trying not to fall asleep again as we went by the airport in Tulsa and I knew where we were and just how close to the hotel. And then I heard the noise. Larry didn’t hear it because he was sleeping, but he woke up when I swerved off the road around some cones and onto the shoulder. He looked at me like WTF? and I told him I had heard a noise. I thought it was an alternator belt whining as it came off, but when I had looked down right before shutting off the truck it had great oil pressure, the temp was good, and the voltage looked right. We checked it and found no issue. Then Larry asked if it was a chirp rather than a whine or squeak. Yes it was! Crap, that’s a lifter. He fired it up and tiptoed the two exits to the hotel and we heard no noise. He asked again if I was sure I heard it and I said yes emphatically. The next morning we would have to pull the covers and check it out. Until then, it was time for sleep. We were going to get three hours! Woot woot!


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10 thoughts on “Drag Week Uncensored Part 6: What It’s Really Like To Drive A 6 Second S10 Cross Country!

  1. Jeff Oppenheim

    Glad we could help getting some gas to next stop. That was one of the highlights of my trip. not sure how to post pics but have a pic of you guys pouring the gas in the truck having a good time.

      1. Wolf

        that picture is epic. After all the hell they’ve been through, they’re both still laughing and smiling. Dragweek FTW!

    1. 65RHDeer

      To “pedal it” means to get off the throttle and then back into it.
      To “get out of it” means to get off the throttle and not get back into it.
      We need a BS dictionary!

  2. Wild Bill

    Great writing, not ever competing in drag week I feel I have after reading your trials and tribulations. Had it not been for a fail in my business I would be there in a second. Back to punching a clock but at least once a day I think about my up and coming first drag week it keeps me going. Please finish the story!!!!!

  3. Wild Bill

    p.s I was on my honeymoon while you were on the road I was watching it the whole time the best part she is cool with a drag week first anniversary

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