Drag Week 2024

[TireSmoker]

We made it! Left the house a out 715 this morning, got to Scotts an hour later, a few minutes spent loading up some stuff and hit the road.

Tech inspection was kinda laughable. Literally headlights, turn signals, tail/brake lights, (trailer and vehicle) and the horn. Dude kinda looked at my cage for maybe 10-15 secondsI think guys going 9s get a little bit more rigorous inspection.

We ended up pitting near Pete Chongris from Thompson with with blown BB camaro. Mike Trimboli came down today too.

I made 2 passes, several hours apart, and went 10.69 and 10.66 respectively. Just test n tune passes, they dont count. Interestingly, no burnout on the first pass. Went through the water, tried to start my burnout twice and they didnt break loose. I went to the and it left great. I did a burnout on the 2nd pass. The 60ft time is the same down to the hundreth. Two different lanes.

[TireSmoker]

Here the test n tune timeslips.

[wxo]

Look what I found in an article about Drag Week from Motortrend.com.

[TireSmoker]

Thats awesome!! Ill write up more later, or checkout my posts on facebook.

[MostMint]

https://www.motortrend.com/events/hot-r ... 4-results/

[TireSmoker]

With todays pass of 10.06 @ 134 (!!!) , im now 31 for the 32 car bracket race on friday!

We had a reallly good drive today and combined with the 10.06, made up for all the suck that happened Monday night with the axle failure, the terrible pass at Indy, the throttle cable, the radiator hose.. It was a true turning point.

The other super under rated part of this trip, people are sitting in their yard or near intersections. When we see them, i give em a big turbo blast. Its so fun.

This car just rocks. Its a really good drag car that i can get away with driving on the street. The seats, with a couple generic seat pads do not get uncomfortable. Thats been a pleasant surprise. I even put my little bluetooth speaker on the dash and had some music for the drive.

It has been an amazing experience so far. Its hard at times, you have to setup/teardown in the pits everyday, loading/unloading the car. And fixing stuff.

But im pretty sure ill do it again.

[MostMint]

For reference, rules for Drag Week are located here:

https://www.motortrend.com/uploads/2022 ... -FINAL.pdf

Interesting that only Street Eliminator (Tiresmoker's class) and stick shift class have the eliminations on the last day.

[TireSmoker]

So with the 10.06 pass on Wednesday at US131, that was the pivot point of our week. The drive on Wednesday was the best one by far, as it basically stuck to two-lane state highways. Mike Trimboli even drove up and met us in Sturgis, MI and joined the drive for a couple hours. I led the way, along with our pal Biff in his orange Malibu wagon, and Pete's Camaro. We caught up to other Drag Weekers, and more caught up to us from behind, eventually in maybe 10-15 car group. We pulled off gas, and it was cool watching the other cars go by.

We arrived at Milan on Thursday morning to another fog delay. The sky was such that it was the first time in the trip I was a little worried about rain. But eventually the fog burned off. We didn't even setup the pop-up at first. And we didn't need to since, I managed to click off a 10.04 @ 134 on the first pass!!

Now I was pumped, running two 10.0x on back to back days. I was also figuring out the .500 Pro Tree. After the rearend, and the 12.03 at Indy, things were really turning around. We hit the road, and it was again, a little heavy on the 4-lane stuff. But at least we were getting back into Ohio, and this would be the last drive of the week.

So we got to National Trail on Friday morning, and I'm now the #19 qualifier for the 32 car field. I just needed a safe pass to both finish Drag Week and make the field. Because of the bracket race, they ran us first in the day. This meant we were running in better morning air, than the usual hot sun mid-day air. So, I squeezed out of the throttle on my first pass and went 10.33 @ 127. I told Scott to turn in that ticket, but got in line to make another pass. While it probably didn't matter, I should've had him wait. I made a second pass at full send and went 10.007 @ 134 !! My third 10.0, three days in row, three tracks in a row! AND I have .02 and .06 lights respectively. I was super pumped for the bracket race now. I ended up being the #17 qualifier.

My Final Average for Drag Week was 10.58, which gave me a 10.48 dial-in. Thats the rules, I can't change that.

I got paired up with the #1 qualifier, an early 70s Camaro who ran 10.0x all week. He red-lit against me, although I didn't realize it. I got off early, but still went 10.2x @ 115.

2nd round I got paired up with a 60s Road Runner with a Hellcat Swap dialed at 10.70. He left first, and again I got a red-light win. This time, I knew it, so I knew I had a free pass to play with. I still went 10.2x @ 115. These both would've been bad break-out losses.

3rd round -- I down to the Elite 8 round!! I was paired up with an S550 Mustang dialed at 10.61. We both had .1x lights, but mine was slightly better. BUTTT... for the first time ever, my car spun, I pedaled it, it spun again, and my race was done. I tried running him down but was too far behind. I think I went 10.86 @ 134. My usual 1.5x 60 foot was a 2.0. And that was the end of Drag Week for me.

I had an AMAZING time and will absolutely do it again. I *love* racing this car, its fast, it hooks...

There were 155 cars entered into Street Machine Eliminator, I was in the 32 fastest, and made it to the final 8 in the bracket race. I put a lot of time, effort, and money into this, and I'm pretty proud of the result!

[TireSmoker]

Checkpoint pics and other random pics..

[TireSmoker]

More pics..

[TireSmoker]

Live Feed runs:

Monday (Nat'l Trail): https://youtu.be/8If1UfgOOO8?t=17538 (10.41)

Tuesday (Indy): https://youtu.be/zHQGJ1L2r0I?t=13719 (12.03)
I'm pretty sure the starting-line fail on run #2 was edited out of the livestream.

Wednesday (US 131): https://youtu.be/m_Y7mt3waNY?t=10853 (10.06)
(need to find 10.85 pass, run #1)

Thursday (Milan): https://youtu.be/U0N5zuzyDzg?t=12214 (10.04)

Friday (Natl'l Trail):
https://youtu.be/g1eTRSv8c_w?t=564 (10.33)
https://youtu.be/g1eTRSv8c_w?t=1402 (10.00)

https://youtu.be/g1eTRSv8c_w?t=12085 (round 1)
https://youtu.be/g1eTRSv8c_w?t=15979 (round 2)
https://youtu.be/g1eTRSv8c_w?t=19893 (round 3)


bonus: our buddy Biff vs. Pete on day 1
https://youtu.be/8If1UfgOOO8?t=17294

[Fred32v]

spent the morning watching your videos, just like I was there.
Congratulations on having a fine time!

[TireSmoker]

Holy cow, I went through this thread and realized I missed the MOST IMPORTANT part of Drag Week, the Monday Night Miracle in Lewisberg. I made a long post about it on Facebook, and probably just meant to copy it over here... which I'm doing now.

So after dinner Monday night, we soldiered on towards Indy. We were cruising along great after the sun went down in the cooler temps. Around 8pm, in a town called Lewisville, IN (pop 342), disaster struck. I caught a whiff of gear oil. Very distinctive smell. Then we heard new clunks. We pulled over to check. I put in park, but it kept rolling. Scott peaked under while I putn it back in gear. Driveshaft spinning, car not moving.
We. Are. Done. after day 1, with a busted axle. We could accept that, but how the hell do we get out of here? We really thought we were gonna be sleeping in the car till morning.

Robert, an older local saw us and asked if we needed help. We said we needed to find a Uhaul truck and trailer. Its 830-9pm, its dark , nothing would be open anyway. But he offers to drive me to another local guys place, who worked for uhual, but not a rental place. It was a nice try, but failed. Even if it had worked out, it was gonna be a mess trying to get my broken car home, then getting my truck/trailer which at is parked at National Trail Raceway in Ohio.

In the mean time, another guy shows up, Beau, who called his friend AJ and he showed up in a nicely patina'd 55 Chevy truck. After talking about our broken axle, AJ offered to pull my car back to his house/shop, right around the corner. (with a modern truck). We get the car there and get it up on his lift.

Keep in mind, its now 930ish on a monday night. Drag Week is our vacation, hes gotta work in the morning! He doesnt know us from anyone, but he's a racer too, and invited us into his shop. His young son is out there with us as well. And then he started tearing into it. Im OK at most automotive stuff, but i have no experience with rear axle setup.

We find out its just the pinion bearing. Thats fixable! It gets better. AJ has a buddy Jack, with 40 years of rear axle experience. They both knew the Ford 8.8 that my car has inside and out. He calls Jack, giving him the numbers from my broken pieces. Jack says he'll get the parts and be over.
We removed/cleaned/scraped everything while we waited for Jack to arrive with parts. When he got there, they both dug into installing the new pinion bearing and setting up the gear backlash. You could tell theyve done this before. And their back and forth was pretty entertaining.

Our Drag Week is going to be saved! And we will be able to drive another 45 minutes to our hotel instead sleeping in a drag car.
AJ had asked us just one favor, to roll the car out to the street before we started it, because it was now almost 1am. Of course!!
THANK YOU SO MUCH! We made to to Day 2, finished, and start Day 3 in a few hours.

[TireSmoker]

Found this pic on Dragzine.com, from Milan on Thursday.

And you can see my car in the background -- that was the 10.06 pass that turned our week around.