MoparStyle Racing – Sponsor Report
April 12-15-2012 Atlanta Dragway, Commerce, GA
At the Florida race, the motor home's inverter crapped out and it took a lot of money, begging, and legwork to get it finished in time to load up the cars in time for the Atlanta race.
Big Red Ram isn't quite ready yet, so we bought the tired black Coronet (couple hundred passes on the motor) for Dallas and the Texas Whale for me. We left at 9:15AM on Wednesday the 11th and arrived at the track at 2:30am Thursday. In the morning I started the generator and it shut off 5 minutes later giving an error code 36. Whipped out the manual and it said it was a fuel issue. We knew it wasn't a filter as we change the filters after every race (the generator has 4200 hours on it), so we replaced the fuel pump with a spare we had. That didn't work so we spent hours trying new grounds and other tests/fixes — then resigned ourselves that the $695 control board is shot. Called Cummins, and they laughed about coming to the track to repair — and that maybe they could fit us in this week. We resigned ourselves that it was another week in the dark, and without heat and AC. Thursday night it got to 37 outside and 42 in the motor home. Anyway — we just sucked it up and worked through it, with the help of Doug Duell powering the chargers for the cars' batteries and allowing me to put the coffee maker in his trailer.
Friday we were suppose to have two time trials and two qualifying passes. The track got way behind with accidents, oil downs and a couple of True Street cars hosing down the track with Antifreeze. We got in a pair of Time Trials. My car ran 9.61 and 9.63 — so it looked like the 9.50 index was out and that I'd have to slow down to the 9.75 index. Dallas was pretty close to the 9.75 index with his car. There were 16 NSS cars. In the first round of qualifying Dallas did a 9.756 and was Top Qualifier. I completely screwed up the launch and was off 1/10 on the 60' — doing a 9.800. That was all she wrote for Friday.
Saturday we were suppose to do the last qualifying and at least one elimination. However they were so far behind from Friday that we instead were scheduled for the last two Qualifying passes. Everything went so smooth with the track that they gave us a bonus 4th. I managed a 9.760 — which got me 5th. Dallas didn't improve his 9.756 and was 2nd or third. However my car was spraying oil badly under the hood since the first run of the morning. Most of it was coming from the timing cover — which had the electric water pump and elephant ears ahead of it. We'd tighten the cover bolts after every round and permatexted the seams — but high RPMs would start to blow the oil again.
Sunday I had someone that wasn't close to running his number. However, one drop of oil was seen after my light burnout and another spotted hanging when they looked under to see if it was me. I was backed out, and my competitor was 3/10 too slow. ARRRRRGH! Dallas one against Bud Cochran — who also ran a c/fx car. The cars were al slow Sunday — so everyone was pulling out whatever they could. Dallas was able to remove the passenger seat and a few other pounds here and there. In the next round Dallas took out Doug Poskevitch — who was the points leader. That helped a lot of us. In the Semis Dallas lost when Kurt Neighbor had a better RT.
My mental calculations has Dallas in first with Doug Duell, Kurt Neighbor, and Doug Poskevitch within 50 points. I should be a couple 100 behind in 5th.
My car is the last one down the track in the below video.
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