As some here will know, I've particpated in four of the Hot Rod Magazine Drag Week events going back to the inaugural contest in 2005. Those same folks will know that the results have been all over the map to say least. I arrived at KCIR in Kansas City in '05 with a brand new engine combination which ran poorly with a best of an 11.40@114 and fragged a roller lifter killing the engine about 30 miles outside of KC after the first day of competition. We loaded up the car on a another competitor's truck and trailer and drove directly to each of the subsequent tracks and had blast doing that.
We came back in '06 with a rebuilt 820 HP engine from Dougan's Racing and a Lentech AOD that replaced the T56 I had in it in '05. With the engine dyno tested and tuned a bit our fortunes turned around and we were lucky enough to win one of the coveted jackets in BB/NA averaging 10.80's and 125 MPH. My good buddy Brain Rock also won SB/NA that year so the trip out from Cali to Eastern Iowa was more than worth the time and expense.
In 07' I'd made the switch to EFI and we'd hoped to make big progress, but a new too tight converter slowed the 60 ft. times. Despite that, ET's and an MPH improved to 10.50"s and low 130's. We finished a distant second to Steve Hoch's beautiful Corvette.
Time and money kept us away from DW for the next three years, but over that time a focus on the chassis tuning and modest updates to the car had dropped ET's down to the 10.0x's at 135 or so MPH. The plan was to go to DW 11 with a well sorted car and have fun knowing that last years' BB/NA winner was running 9.50's.
Less than three months before we were to drive out to Topeka for DW 11 another roller lifter started to die and that began a huge thrash as what seemed like a simple hone and fluff became an almost completly new engine with far bigger aspirations. Last second preparations and some big mistakes on my part (vitually no sleep for three days before leaving) had us arriving in Kansas with maybe 500 ft. of drving on the car, no track tuning at all and some cooling, electircal and mechanical issues all of which compelled me to pull the plug cloase to midnight after the first day of competiton in Topeka.
We'd run 9.70's at over 140 at Sunday's TnT on the full street trim, but by the next day our attempt to run at race weight with the small gas tank, open headers and just a driver's seat coupled with some 'tuning' slowed us to 10.20 @ 134. We experienced electircal issues, alternator and battery failure and finally over-heating before we hung it up.
So now,over the next 9 months this project series will document all the things that need to fixed, improved, tuned, corrected and tested so we can Get it Right the Second Time. It will be warts and all, mistakes and screw-ups, wins and losses, carnage and craftsmanship, with what we hope is an opportunity to learn from the collective wisdom here on Bang Shift as well as leverage the expertise and cutting edge technology of the extended community of sponsors, partners and contributors to Bang Shift. We'll include bad phtography, laughable video and my usual bad wrting and miserbale spelling.
The goal is weekly updates and as much back and forth as people want and I can have time for in between.
Wish us luck! We'll need it.
We came back in '06 with a rebuilt 820 HP engine from Dougan's Racing and a Lentech AOD that replaced the T56 I had in it in '05. With the engine dyno tested and tuned a bit our fortunes turned around and we were lucky enough to win one of the coveted jackets in BB/NA averaging 10.80's and 125 MPH. My good buddy Brain Rock also won SB/NA that year so the trip out from Cali to Eastern Iowa was more than worth the time and expense.
In 07' I'd made the switch to EFI and we'd hoped to make big progress, but a new too tight converter slowed the 60 ft. times. Despite that, ET's and an MPH improved to 10.50"s and low 130's. We finished a distant second to Steve Hoch's beautiful Corvette.
Time and money kept us away from DW for the next three years, but over that time a focus on the chassis tuning and modest updates to the car had dropped ET's down to the 10.0x's at 135 or so MPH. The plan was to go to DW 11 with a well sorted car and have fun knowing that last years' BB/NA winner was running 9.50's.
Less than three months before we were to drive out to Topeka for DW 11 another roller lifter started to die and that began a huge thrash as what seemed like a simple hone and fluff became an almost completly new engine with far bigger aspirations. Last second preparations and some big mistakes on my part (vitually no sleep for three days before leaving) had us arriving in Kansas with maybe 500 ft. of drving on the car, no track tuning at all and some cooling, electircal and mechanical issues all of which compelled me to pull the plug cloase to midnight after the first day of competiton in Topeka.
We'd run 9.70's at over 140 at Sunday's TnT on the full street trim, but by the next day our attempt to run at race weight with the small gas tank, open headers and just a driver's seat coupled with some 'tuning' slowed us to 10.20 @ 134. We experienced electircal issues, alternator and battery failure and finally over-heating before we hung it up.
So now,over the next 9 months this project series will document all the things that need to fixed, improved, tuned, corrected and tested so we can Get it Right the Second Time. It will be warts and all, mistakes and screw-ups, wins and losses, carnage and craftsmanship, with what we hope is an opportunity to learn from the collective wisdom here on Bang Shift as well as leverage the expertise and cutting edge technology of the extended community of sponsors, partners and contributors to Bang Shift. We'll include bad phtography, laughable video and my usual bad wrting and miserbale spelling.
The goal is weekly updates and as much back and forth as people want and I can have time for in between.
Wish us luck! We'll need it.
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