Drag Week Uncensored Part 8: What It’s Really Like To Drive A 6 Second S10 Cross Country!


Drag Week Uncensored Part 8: What It’s Really Like To Drive A 6 Second S10 Cross Country!

Holy Crap!!!! Isn’t this week ever going to end?! Why is it that while you can’t seem to remember your own name after a drag week like this, or what you ate for your last meal,  somehow every ache and pain and late night adventure is burned into your memory? 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 PART 6, CLICK HERE

IF YOU MISSED PART 7, CLICK HERE

IF YOU MISSED THE ENGINE BUILD, CLICK HERE

After a grueling week, with incredible ups and downs, the weather would ultimately keep us from running on Friday. They ended up being able to complete the Daily Driver class runs and bracket race, but all the other classes were set to run Saturday morning. If everything worked out alright with the schedule, we were going into the Drag Week Shootout on Saturday afternoon, and that would mean we could get a few runs in and hopefully lay down a real number. We shall see.

Our buddy Tim and I meet up in the parking lot, and instead of partaking in the Best Western breakfast, decide we are going to hit Braum’s across the parking lot. While waiting for our breakfast burritos, and talking about the week’s adventures, we mention Larson and wonder where he’s at. Well, his Spidey Sense must have been working great that morning because he came walking around the corner in front of Braum’s about 3 seconds later. He’s like a ninja you know.

So we sit and talk for a bit, eat our breakfast, and drag our wore out asses out of the chairs and back over to the parking lot so we can head to the track. The Best Western is only a couple of exits away from the track, and while old, is a Larson favorite since they let him park the Chevy II out front under cover every time he’s in town. We actually call it the Larson’s Best Western.

The short drive down the freeway is a weird one. On the one hand I’m excited to be going to the track, as I’m ready to make a couple hits in this thing, but at the same time the lack of sleep and constant thrash have me anxious. I don’t like being anxious. But once we get to the track, start getting our stuff out of the trailer, and get the few remaining parts ready to install, I start getting excited again.

You’ll remember that yesterday we had to change the race doors out for the street doors before leaving the race track so that no water would get inside it. Well, those had to come back off and get set aside and the race doors put back on. A few other odds and ends and we were good to go. Of course, since I’m sort of a freak about organization, I’m also trying to make sure that the toolbox has exactly what we’ll need in it when we come back from a run and that we’ll be able to turn this thing around quickly. After all, the shootout later is going to be a round robin sort of affair and we’ll need to be on our game to make each round.

Once they call us to the lanes, Larry fires up the truck and heads that way. There are about a hundred of us trying to pile into or on Daphne’s wagon in order to hitch a ride, and we get up there in time to stand around and wait. All week we have been running this thing with 5.5 lbs of air in the Hoosiers. We’re not running beadlocks on the truck, and instead are running an inner liner for more sidewall control. I check the tires, keeping them between 5.75 and 6 lbs until we get close to the front of the lanes. It’s being in the lanes that makes me the most nervous, and I’m pacing around like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. I hate putting someone else in the car. Always have. When Turk and Freiburger and I ran the Camaro at Bonneville, it made me a wreck strapping someone else in. I just don’t like the feeling it gives me. We’re getting close, so Larry suits up, putting on his fire suit, shoes, and boots. He’s a freak about safety equipment, which I love, because I’m the same way.

A group of us are pushing him up through the lanes when we get to the front and it’s time to get belted in. Our DJ Safety gear is top notch, and the lap and lower restraint belts are already set, so it doesn’t take much time for Larry to be all in and ready to go. He puts on his Nomex head sock, helmet and HANS device, and I help him make sure the shoulder belts are on the HANS correctly. I confirm that the CO2 bottle is on and tell him that it is. A little tug gets them set, and Larry puts on his gloves. Now it’s time to get cinched in, and Larry shoves himself back in the seat and pulls each shoulder belt tight. Rocking back and forth, he pulls them even tighter. If your belts aren’t tight enough to be a bit uncomfortable, then you don’t have them tight enough.

We turn the corner, after the car in front of us does a burnout, and Larry fires up the truck. I check the CO2 bottle one more time, check that the data logger is running on the Fuel Tech FT500, shut the door and lock it, and trot towards the water.

At Tulsa, because of the live broadcast that Hot Rod is doing, they have a big speedbump thing going across the staging area behind the water for cables to be run. It’s so close to catching our already beat up air dam, that I cringe every time he pulls over it.

Larry rolls towards the water, I stop him about 12 inches before he rolls through it, and he waits for the sign to start his burnout. I’m so nervous I can hardly stand it. Larry stands on it, and the tires immediately stand up proud and tall and he’s shifting through the Rossler Turbo 400’s gears and blazing the tires well past the starting line. If you didn’t know Larry until this year, let me let you in on a little secret. He likes doing burnouts. Long ones too. And then he backs up at the speed of sound. Or at least in the Chevy II. In the truck he’s still getting his groove down, so his backup speeds aren’t quite up to the Larson norm yet.

Larson Reynolds S10 DRD Photos 003

Larry backs up, with no direction from me or anyone else, and pulls the truck within a few feet of the beams. I check underneath for leaks, look up and give him the thumbs up that we are good to go. And Larry proceeds to pull forward to stage the truck himself. Nothing pisses me off more that the guys in stock bodied cars that need someone to guide them into the beams. If you can’t tell where the front of you car is by now, then you should try some other kind of racing.

But I digress. Larry lights the top bulb, and then the bottom, and puts it on the chip. The bullhorns are popping and banging as the truck builds boost, and Larson lets go of the button once it reaches 10lbs and away we go. Like almost every pass on the truck so far, keeping in mind that this ¼ mile pass will make 3 total, it has left hard drifted ever so slightly to the right, and then comes back to the middle of the lane right at the 1-2 shift. It’s got the front end IN THE AIR, and is pissed off as it passes the 330 and makes it’s way toward the 1/8th mile, but it’s not clean and Larry shuts it off early and runs 6.703 at only 136.86 mph. Yeah, you read that right. 6.70 with a 3 at only 136.86 mph. We are all jumping up and down at the ET, knowing that he shut it off early, before realizing just how low the MPH is, and then we start rushing back to the pits to make sure everything is okay.

Since we can’t win Drag Week, thanks to our failed run in Noble, we are content with the 6.70 run as we decide to take a look at the entire truck and get it ready for the first round of the Drag Week Shootout. The truck’s service procedure requires several squirrel cage fans that we got from Summit to cool down everything, so we get it in the air, get the fans under it, and start prepping to get everything else ready and rolling. It turns out the reason the truck had a problem was a connector that we had not properly tightened down that killed power. We fixed that and knew we would be good to go.

Checking the tune, we found that we were still a little lean, and needed to add fuel across the board, and specifically on a couple of cylinders. There wasn’t globs of aluminum on the plugs or anything, but a couple of ground straps on the plugs were rounded off and the cadmium was burnt on the edges of the threads, so we were definitely hotter than we wanted to be. More fuel would get us where we needed to be. Unfortunately in one of our thrashes some of the injector plugs got switched around, and now that we wanted to add fuel to specific cylinders we were going to need to sort that out. Out came the multimeter so we could trace each pair and make sure we had them all on correctly. Turns out we only had two wrong, but once we got that sorted we were ready to make adjustments.

Because our MSD PowerGrid allowed so much control over timing, boost, and traction control, we had been letting it takes it’s cue from the Fuel Tech FT500 and had set things pretty conservatively. Although we had started putting the boost to this thing earlier in the runs, we hadn’t really pushed it yet. For the first round of the shootout we decided to put more boost in it early, and give it a little more maximum boost as well. Still not leaning on this thing heavily, but giving it some more stones to get moving down the track.

When we got everything set and were told to pull to the lanes for Round 1 of the shootout, the Hot Rod staff told us we were running car number 14, Norm Tannahill, which sucked. Norm is part of the crew that includes Bubba (Danny) Morrison, Vince Rasch, and Tom Hogshead, and we have always loved those guys. In fact, we met them on the first Drag Week when Bubba was running his Impala. This sucked

Norm of course took it in stride, and told us to run a big number so that he could at least say he was lined up with Larson when he ran the record. We laughed and said we would do our best. It was at this point that Norm did the coolest thing. He asked us what we needed him to do in staging to make it as easy on us as possible so that he wouldn’t screw us up. What a dude. I told him to light the bottom bulb, wait for Larry to light the bottom bulb, and then after Larry got fully staged and on the chip to wait a heart beat and pull into the stage beam. He agreed.

Larson Reynolds S10 DRD Photos 002

Tire pressures are right, Larson is in the car, everything is ready and he fires it and pulls towards the water. Norm does his burnout right after Larry, and I can see the smile on his face inside the car. I give Larry the thumbs up that everything is good, and he pulls to the line. Norm is already in the prestage beam, and Larry lights the bottom bulb. Then Larry lights the top bulb and puts it on the chip which results in the normal popping and banging. Norm waits just a little longer than Larry wanted, so Larry steps off the throttle as Norm lights the top bulb. Larry is instantly back in the throttle, the boost comes up and the light comes down. Larry leaves a little sooner than I’m thinking is good, but the truck leaves like a champ.

As it passes the 60 foot timers and gets happy in the middle, you can hear the tires trying to rip the rubber off the awesome surface of Tulsa Raceway Park, and it shifts into second and gets even nastier sounding. Not a soul is talking. Brian has shut up on the mic as he just can’t believe what he’s watching. The truck snags third gear, goes through the middle clean, and is at about 1000 feet when it starts to nose over just slightly. Because the speed of sound is so slow, I can’t tell this from the starting line, but I see Larry pull the chutes at about 1200 feet or so and then go through the lights. Why did he pull the chutes early I’m thinking. And then the scoreboards light up.

6.16

Larson Reynolds S10 DRD Photos 001

 

6.16?! Are you kidding me! We had figured this would be a 6.30s run. Holy hell batman! It was then that Brian started talking again. We were all jumping up and down, and crying like little girls. We just became the quickest street legal car, errr truck, in history. Wait! The quickest truck in Drag Racing history period!

We’re all kissing and hugging and making our way back to the pits and just can’t believe it. Brian and the guys are talking about it on the PA and live broadcast and I call Brian on the phone and talk about the run and everything that just happened. It was insane. And Larry was stuck at the top end on the return road with a truck that wasn’t running. Rutt roh Rarry.

Daphne drove me down there, where Larry and I hugged and cried because he hadn’t even been to the timing booth yet, and I helped push the truck towards the pits. Luckily all that was wrong was another stupid plug we didn’t tighten. All good.

We celebrated, jumped up and down, signed autographs, and then finally started working on the truck. We needed to get it turned around for round 2 where we had a bye run. Wow, we had just run 6.16, at only 218 mph. And Larry told me he pulled the chutes because it layed over a little and that the truck was fully pulling on the chutes when he went through the lights at the finish line. Holy crap, 5’s here we come!

And then I realized that we had the slew rate and max driveshaft rpm in our MSD PowerGrid Traction Control module set for a max driveshaft speed that should have resulted in approximately a 6.20 run. Looking at the data from the Racepak and MSD PowerGrid we determined that thankfully Larry left with only about 7.5 lbs of boost thanks to the slight hiccup, and that the truck did get into some traction control at the 1-2 shift and then pulled a little timing and recovered fine until about 1000 feet where it came up against our maximum driveshaft speed setting. Crap, we had left some on the table for realsies.

Our excitement and celebration meant that we were a little slow getting the truck turned around, and thought that we had longer to make it to round 2 than we did. Ultimately we decided we weren’t going to make it although the truck was technically ready with 3 minutes to spare. But we still had to put the front end on it and all that, so we just told the staff we would be ready to run whenever they had a brake to see if we could go 5’s.

Larson Reynolds S10 DRD Photos 004

That attempt started like every other, and the truck left well. In fact even more aggressive than previous runs, but when the truck went to shift into 3rd gear it couldn’t. We had neglected to check the adjustment on our Precision Products shifter, the baddest shifter known to man by the way, after driving cross country and pulling some stuff apart in the pits, and the pin did not release allowing it to shift into high gear. Our fault, and because it wouldn’t shift Larry rode the rev limiter for a hundred feet and lifted. Early numbers say that run would have been a ….

You’ll have to wait. I’m not telling, because we are doing everything we can to get the truck ready for our next event, and 5 second ETs. Where will we be? When will it be? Wait for the final installment and I’ll tell you that and more juicy details as we wrap up Drag Week 2014. Was their carnage on that run? Did we hurt anything? Was it time to drink beer? All these questions will be answered tomorrow as we finish up telling you what it’s really like to drive a 6 second S10 cross country.


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16 thoughts on “Drag Week Uncensored Part 8: What It’s Really Like To Drive A 6 Second S10 Cross Country!

  1. Casper

    Thanks for expressing that 6.16 for us Chad… watching it happen on live feed we thought for sure you were disappointed…

  2. Luther Hopp

    Although already knew that a 6.16 had been run it has been amazing to read this journal of thrash and go. Could hardly wait for today’s installment have been going in and out of Bangshift all morning waiting for this. Thank goodness I am the boss or my boss would have been unhappy. Congratulations to all who were involved and can hardly wait to see what is next for the quickest street legal rocket on the planet. To under 6, and beyond!!!!

  3. doug gregory

    This sucks. I want to see a timeslip showing the incremental times of the 6.16 pass. Plotting the acceleration curve will give an estimate as to what that pass would have been if the DS speed hadn’t been exceeded and the chute deployed. If he’d ran a 5.xx would Tulsa had let him run another knowing the chassis is not currently certed for it….?

  4. C1BAD66

    Chad, your writing style is the teats!

    I don’t remember if it was Friday or Saturday, but your pseudo “break dance” looking under the truck at the line freaked me (and others?) out.

    I said to myself, “Crap, is he gonna have Larry abort the run over a coupla drips like an over-zealous track worker?”

    You and Larry bunked together and the gals did the same? That hadda go over like a turd in the punch bowl…

    ‘You guys goin’ to ‘Vegas for Larry’s 1st 5? Of course, you know the altitude could be the wrench in the gear works…

    Do well, guys!

  5. RockJustRock

    So, is having a vehicle that goes two tenths quicker than programmed on an early chute a problem? Hopefully it can be remedied before LL tries Top Sportsman with it. And another cliffhanger ending, even with the record in the books. At least we know the next race is booked though. Norwalk? Tulsa? Las Vegas?

  6. Wolf

    Chad, awesome story as usual. But I have to wonder if you wrote it THAT day, and still sleep deprived, unless they have the tree upside down in Tulsa for pre-stage and stage bulbs…?

  7. jeff

    Congrats Chad, when you first mentioned 5’s before DW I thought you were smoking too much hippie stick, guess you and that Larson guy know what yer doin!

  8. jerry z

    Really Chad? You have to make us wait yet another day for the Truck’s future plans!

    Great write up again.

  9. greg

    I wish i had the money to go to vegas in november and lay some bets down on “the real evil twin” since its painted like the nova! Lets get some guesses goin here on what you think the s-10 will run in vegas if they make it! Im guessin a 5.84,so what does any body else think?

  10. RockJustRock

    Actually I think it’s “The Evil Little Bastard” and SCSN Vegas is pure speculation on my part.

  11. Tedly

    It took me a bit to actually catch up on these installments, but it was worth it. Good to read so much of your goofball style lately Chad!

  12. Roger Sausage

    Love the truck and it’s performance has been nothing short of awesome for a clean sheet build debuting at it’s first event…however, quickest drag truck period? That’ll be Freddy Fagestrom from Sweden who’s gone 6.0

    Great job with these journals, real interesting read.

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