Firebird day 2 & 3 with video of the Mustang

It"s Saturday night so I'm a day behind . I'm going to try and catch up in tonight's  blog . Friday is first round of eliminations for race one this weekend and after a good day qualifying Thursday , Friday didn't go so well . Dave  had his first round in the morning and left the starting line a little early and got the big red light by 8 thousands of  second . But that's the kind of racing we do . Most of the time it's hundreds or thousands of a second that decide if you win or put it in the trailer . My first round came at about noon and having run 7.44 twice in qualifying the day before in vary similar weather conditions I felt we couldn't go faster than 7.43 so that's what I dialed in at ( "Dial-In

Car "A" has been timed at 17.78, 17.74 and 17.76 seconds for the quarter-mile, and the driver feels that a "dial-in" (or guessed time during a race) of 17.75 is appropriate. Meanwhile, the driver of car "B" has recorded elapsed times of 15.27, 15.22 and 15.26 on the same track and he has opted for a "dial-in" of 15.25. Accordingly, car "A" will get a 2.5 second headstart over car "B" when the "Christmas Tree" counts down to each car's starting green lights. ) So  I leave the starting line with a .015 reaction time to my opponents .035 light which gives me a .20 advantage ,( huge in the racing we do ) get to the top end , don't see the other car so I lean on the brakes to keep from  going under my 7.43 dial in . I think I won , then I get the bad news . I ran 7.403 and my dial in  was  7.430  so that's .027 under my  dail  in so I lose because I broke out (When a  driver go quicker than his/her predetermined "dial-in" it is a "break-out"  In the case of both vehicles making their runs under their dial-ins, the win goes to the driver who breaks out the least.) So not such a good start to my come but that's racing . Sometimes you do  everything right and still lose . That's why they call it Drag Racing  . Sometimes it's racing and sometimes its a Drag . Now we're done with race one and it's Saturday and on with race two . We both get two qualifying today and eliminations start Sunday morning . Now Dave's dragster has still been all over the place in 60 feet and yesterday before Q2 we added 30 pounds to the weight box in the front of the car in an effort to keep the front from popping up on a good tracks because you want the car to move forward not upward . Upward is wasted motion and if it goes up on one run and drives straight out on the next it will change the 60ft times . We also installed a MSD 2 step to control the starting line rpm . The problem here is we only get a few runs to figure it out . It's 10am as we head up for Q1 and we take our best guess .  Not so good 8.979  we're way to slow . We only  have one more pass to get this thing figured out .  We head back to prep my car for Q1 . IT's just past noon everything is ready so we head on up . We should run pretty close to yesterdays time the weather is unchanged the the track conditions are still good . I do my burn out back up and stage the car , Sweet .004 on the reaction timer and a 7.438 on the score board not bad for an old guy . Now time to get work on Dave's only as usual NHRA has screwed us again and instead of Q for Dave's car it's round one , not good . We have a run in our log book from yesterday that the weather is pretty much the same as it is now and we ran 8.899 so we're going to use that setting and hope we're close . Well that went like crap 8.989 way to slow and a not so great .065 light and we're fist round runner up two days in a row. That sucks .With the new setup in the car we're going need a few laps  to figure this thing out . Not getting that second run today really messed us up . I decided to skip Q2 since I don't think we can learn anything . It's hotter out and we're going to slow down so sense in beating on my car . So I'm out guys . Thanks again Kenny Speed