Gone Drag Racing

[Lord ReDhAwK]

Savage.  I live 1 mile behind Bristol Motor Speedway.  Next time your in town give me a holler.  I'd love to meetcha.

ReDhAwK

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

We won't be back to Bristol until the National Event next year. I'll try to start posting a little something about some of the trips.

[crazyivan]

Anyone watch PINKS. Local strip around here is Delmar, DE

   LET EM ROLL!

[rpm]

I'll try to start posting a little something about some of the trips.

Heck yeah! You ought to blog it.

[Steve]

Sure sound slike fun.... 9.97.... man that's getting down the road... with that mph your 60 times must be stellar.
Will you get as far as Phoenix?

[Grayeagle]

Sounds like a blast
Lotta rules in class racin. And teardowns when you win.

Always liked brackets .. pretty much anything goes as long as you got the safety gear.
Much more laid back. Can work with a motor/car to get the most out of it.
Can be competitive without having the latest tricks or bein stuck with a class-mandated rule.
ie: How many pounds do the Hemi's have to add these days I wonder?

I am also struggling with .200's in reaction times with the Vette
.. gonna have to do a coupla things to cut that down a bit.
I posted an .01 ..once .. and a few in the .0X's ..just not consistent enough to suit me.
(3 .0X's out of 4 days at the track, I need to work on that

I am sure I can dial into the Vette to get consistent .0X's ..
..it's got short wheelbase, great weight txfer (when it hooks) ..an such.

Thinkin 4.10's, 3k converter, sticky tires will help a lot

-Frank

[Roscoroo]

Virgil ,id go with a lenco in it and a tall deck merlin . I'd have to step it up to top comp though   

the pain in top comp is when you break something its gets way $$$$ expensive... I even took the mainline/camline out of this one.


Yes the 5/10ths tree is a pain ,my rt avg .020's -.030's on it even after practicing for hours ... now on the pro tree  my avg rt is .004-.010 with the rare red once or twice a season.

Greyeagle you just need to bench race the tree at the track and/or get a Real practice tree,,,you will eventually get into a RT that you can work with , consistancy with the tree and your 60 foot, thats the secret in bracket racing. sandbagging helps too 
   


 

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

Sure sound slike fun.... 9.97.... man that's getting down the road... with that mph your 60 times must be stellar.
Will you get as far as Phoenix?

We just can't justify going any further West than maybe Texas. It costs a ton to go. It's $250 per car to enter. These days it takes $600 in diesel to get to a CLOSE track, we spent over $1K in diesel to go to Florida in March. I paid $157.50 for gas for the cars this weekend, but since we were out early I have plenty left. We take 2-4 people, so we spend $150 or so on food. It costs about $75 to change the oil, we do that every 20 passes. We get about 35 passes on a set of $350 slicks. A national event only pays $1800 to win. Bonus contingency money depends on who makes the parts you run. We're eligible for up to about $15K. After the 4th round, you get about $100 for winning a round. This weekend there were 64 cars, we've been to races with at least twice that many cars.

The record for AA/SA is held by a friend of mine, Bobby DeArmond. He runs the same combination we do, except he uses iron cylinder heads . You can often see him in Phoenix. He's been as fast as 9.74 at just over 135 MPH. You can also catch the Sorenson brothers out there, with the same combination. Bobby's Camaro is blue now, the Sorenson brothers Camaro is green with flames. Clark Holroyd does my carburetors, his 396 powered A/SA Nova is usually at most of the West coast races.

Actually, the 60' times don't look that great, since we usually trip the 60' clocks with those 9" slicks, around 1.45 to 1.47 seconds. We broke a front shock at Orlando and the car went up so high it stayed on the back wheels until it was 330' down track. I'm hoping my new engines will take the orange car well into the 9.7 zone. We'll see what the future brings for the white car.

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

Sounds like a blast
Lotta rules in class racin. And teardowns when you win.

Always liked brackets .. pretty much anything goes as long as you got the safety gear.
Much more laid back. Can work with a motor/car to get the most out of it.
Can be competitive without having the latest tricks or bein stuck with a class-mandated rule.
ie: How many pounds do the Hemi's have to add these days I wonder?

I am also struggling with .200's in reaction times with the Vette
.. gonna have to do a coupla things to cut that down a bit.
I posted an .01 ..once .. and a few in the .0X's ..just not consistent enough to suit me.
(3 .0X's out of 4 days at the track, I need to work on that

I am sure I can dial into the Vette to get consistent .0X's ..
..it's got short wheelbase, great weight txfer (when it hooks) ..an such.

Thinkin 4.10's, 3k converter, sticky tires will help a lot

-Frank

We run two classes with the orange car, A/SA at 8 pounds per HP, and AA/SA at 7.5 pounds per HP, we have a 427/425 with aluminum heads that is factored at 435HP, we have a 427/430 (ZL-1) that is factored at 445HP, and I'm building a 427/425 with iron heads, factored at 425HP. Some of the Hemi cars are under factored, like the "NASCAR" Hemi (it's not really legal, but they let them race), and some are factored fairly, like the "Street Hemi". The "NASCAR" Hemi has 14:1 compression, a huge cam, and an 850 carburetor, yet is factored at 430HP, less than our ZL-1. It never was sold in a street car, but NHRA let's it run. The "Street Hemi" is factored at 453HP.

The only cure for bad reaction times is a practice tree AND plenty of seat time. So long as the car leaves consistently, you just learn to adjust what you react to. On a 0.500 Sportsman tree, it's hard not to go red in a car that reacts fast, like the little stick car.

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

Virgil ,id go with a lenco in it and a tall deck merlin . I'd have to step it up to top comp though   

the pain in top comp is when you break something its gets way $$$$ expensive... I even took the mainline/camline out of this one.


Yes the 5/10ths tree is a pain ,my rt avg .020's -.030's on it even after practicing for hours ... now on the pro tree  my avg rt is .004-.010 with the rare red once or twice a season.

Greyeagle you just need to bench race the tree at the track and/or get a Real practice tree,,,you will eventually get into a RT that you can work with , consistancy with the tree and your 60 foot, thats the secret in bracket racing. sandbagging helps too 
   


 

We're considering Super Stock, once we get what we have really working. Driving two similar cars at most races makes you drive better. The ideal situation would be to have two each in Stock and Super Stock, that's what the most successful guys are doing. Fletcher, Biondo, Helms, and Bertozzi all have two or more cars, they're all friends of ours, and all champions.

Competition Eliminator, AKA Comp, is WAY beyond our budget. He'd have to be able to pay me to do EVERYTHING myself AND it'd have to be a full time job for me. Even the "econo" classes, like Econo Dragster and Econo Altered are way beyond our budget. I could have us both running both Stock and Super Stock for less than it'd cost to run a really good competitive Comp operation. I can easily build an engine for one of the Stock Eliminator cars from scratch, starting with no parts on hand, for what it costs to buy a set of fairly competitive HEADS for a Comp engine. And I'm not really good enough to build a truly competitive Comp engine, yet. We'd have to buy one. Figure $50K for an engine that CAN win.

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

Heck yeah! You ought to blog it.

I don't know. I'm not really sure it'd be all that interesting to an outsider, 3 or 4 10 second passes a day isn't that much to write about, especially since ideally, they'd all be pretty much the same. It's sort of a visual thing anyway. I'm not sure what anyone would want to hear about.

[alskahawk]

We left Murfreesboro Thursday morning about an hour after I posted. We got back to Murfreesboro about 2 hours after I posted today.


The rig is a 32 foot Feightliner/ShowHauler toterhome (looks like the tractor from an 18 wheeler, but it has a 32 foot box that is a lot like a "motorhome" inside) pulling a a 34 foot Pace "stacker" (it has a drive on rack that lifts one car up, and the other car is parked under it)two car trailer. Both are white, with no lettering, except the loft over the cab says "ShowHauler" on the front.

 Ah I actually went through on Saturday. Kool!

 

[DiabloTX]

I don't know. I'm not really sure it'd be all that interesting to an outsider, 3 or 4 10 second passes a day isn't that much to write about, especially since ideally, they'd all be pretty much the same. It's sort of a visual thing anyway. I'm not sure what anyone would want to hear about.

That's one of the things I find so paradoxical about drag racing; never has so much time and money been focused on such a thing to have it expended in such short of time.

[Grayeagle]

Yassir .. seat time rules.

Practice trees are something I never used .. I just went to the races a lot

The last pass I made with the Duster was Oct 1991 .. that was the last bracket race I was in with that car, the first pass was March, 1976.
Lotta passes between those two dates and 4 times at the Bracketfinals when I could get a good year an make every race
(TDY's sucked, and PCS's, ..and got out of the service, and job changes .. etc

To say I was 'familiar' with the car would be a bit of an understatement
I even drove it to work and back most days.
It was fun to drive

It will be awhile before I am dialed into the Vette .. but .. it has a lot of promise.
Very do-able.

-Frank (next year I plan to be runnin once a month, and rampin up from there)