The 2006 Race Season is just around the corner.
3/8/06
With temperatures getting less frigid every day up here in Iowa, more and more racers are in the garage getting ready for the 2006 race season. Racers on website bulletin boards are talking about tracks opening up down South. The overall pace is picking up substantially among racers.
This is my favorite time of the year. The harshness of winter up North is giving way to warmer sunshine and the days are longer so it is actually light out when I get home from work. That makes it a lot easier to go to the garage to work on everything. The only thing that has really become noticeable to me is the higher cost of about EVERYTHING that has to do with racing. That part isn’t my favorite, but I guess cutting some corners on daily expenses is a common thing for racers to do so they can still race.
What are you doing to prepare for the upcoming season? If you have some interesting plans or changes tell me about it. Send me an email or some photos of the “new look.” I’ll try to use as many as I can next month. It is a great way to thank sponsors and friends who have helped you out. Send them to my email address at the end of this month’s Dead-On.
I am very busy getting things organized, ordered and installed back into Project 4-Link. The other project car, the Back-2-Basics dragster is at my son’s (Andy) garage getting ready. Project 4-Link was running great last September, but we parked it when we developed a transmission leak with only two weeks to go. I wasn’t even going to touch the engine, but now I am glad I did. I disassembled everything and when I had the crankshaft magnafluxed we found a huge crack (3” long) on the #5/#6 journal. According to the machinist at AEM, I was lucky I didn’t pick the crank up off the track the last weekend! So then the search for the crankshaft started. Hey, it isn’t a Chevy so not everyone has them. My first call went to Indy Cylinder Heads and they were out. Several other calls ended up with no crankshafts to be found. I pretty much hit the panic mode and was about ready to call my buddy up and beg, borrow or rent one of his 540-inch Chevies.
Indy Cylinder Head to the rescue! I made one last call to Russ at Indy Cylinder Head and he told me he had just struck a deal with Callies and the 4.500” crankshaft I needed was supposed to arrive later that week. I called that Friday and it was ready to ship. Russ sent the crankshaft and I put another “dent” in the old credit card in the name of drag racing. I just got it balanced at AEM in Waterloo, IA, and after some cleanup I will reassemble it. I will have a mid-month feature on some of the great products and some tips to share on assembly and inspection of parts.
The Back-2-Basics 500-inch engine was inspected and everything looked perfect. We are having the heads freshened, new Comp Cams aluminum rocker arms installed, and it should be ready to get back out there and win some races.
The chassis on my Project 4-Link had to undergo some serious work in the last month or so. If you remember, I had the right front A-arm break off at the end of a run. Thank goodness I was just turning off when it broke off. Since the company that built the chassis is no longer in business, I had to find a fabricator that was up to the task of building a front end and steering setup on an existing chassis. I called all over the place but found a small shop about 70 miles away, Performance Fabrications, that said they could do it. Jim Pearson, the owner, did a marvelous job of fitting the chassis with a more conventional three-arm front end, fixing a broken midplate tab and fabricating a trick new Shogun trans-cooler tank mount. I was lucky to get it to him before he left to be a part of a new two-car IHRA Pro Stock team based out of Chicago.
Both cars are at home in the garages and detail work is starting. New dashes, upgrading some wiring, and Andy is getting a vacuum pump installed. We are switching both cars over to our reliable King Demon RS on alcohol for the upcoming season. With IHRA coming back to Division 5 we are going to give the Quick Rod class a whirl again. It’s been a few years for me and it will be Andy’s first season of Pro-light 8.90 racing. Should be fun…. Especially if we could meet up in the FINAL ROUND!!!
NHRA is getting a little more interesting in my opinion.
I have been watching the NHRA TV coverage this season with some new interest. With three women now in a financial position to run all the events, could NHRA have its first female professional World Champ since Shirley??