I wish I could tell everyone that the car ran great and we won the race again but no such luck this time around. We got to the track in Numidia, Pennsylvania on Friday, unloaded the car and displayed it for all the spectators and racers to see, there was a great crowd. We got a lot of attention and talked to a ton of people.
Saturday morning dawned a beautiful day and we warmed up the engine and tranny to get ready to try our brand new combination. We had lightened the car, removed the front and rear wings to improve aerodynamics, reprogrammed the nitrous controller to eliminate “all” the diesel smoke and installed the new “Big” fuel pump that had shown on the dyno to make an easy 200 more horsepower than the old one. As they say in Texas, we were loaded for BEAR!
At 9:30 AM Emily pulled the car into the burnout box and hit the throttle, WOW! Copious smoke poured off the rear tires as the turbos spooled instantly with no smoke, except the tires. This was looking good! She backed up and staged the car and it instantly got on the converter stalling to 4800RPM’s with the turbos pumping out a solid 40 pounds of boost. The tree flashed and Emily was on her way to the quickest pass of her life, 1.12 60 ft, 3.17 to the 330 mark, then disaster struck. As the car shifted from low to high gear the fuel pump drive gave up and the motor went silent, Emily coasted through the eighth mile with a 4.94 @ 134MPH…………….
The good news, if there was any, is that the Numidia PA track is at an altitude of 5300 feet. This usually dictates very poor performance from any internal combustion powered vehicle and it did slow some of the vehicles up to one half of a second. If this was true with our car then we are looking at 6 second potential at sea level. Like with most racers, we know what it takes to run a certain ET, a 1.12 60ft time combined with a 3.17 would indicate a mid 4.80 eighth mile and further math indicates the imaginary quarter mile ET to be a sub 7.50 pass. This gives us hope for the six second zone by the end of this year.
