Fast-forward to the last weekend in October and a test-'n'-tune day at Montgomery Motorsports Park, a three-hour drive for us from hometown Alpharetta, Georgia. Since we'd already secured two signatures and made two licensing passes at another track the week before --- and run into a minor problem called lack of oil pressure on the second --- track managers Anthony Ohler and Chris Phillips told us, "Change oil pumps (we did), then c'mon down, we'll help you get dialed in and get your Super Pro/Super Comp license. Take all the time you need."

We needed time and more...like plenty of help for us two dragster novices.

Saturday, noon. First pass at MMP, Fran does a wispy burnout, stages and lets go of the button and the car takes off. She has a 6-something tree and runs a 5.71 in the eighth-mile for her third licensing pass on the dragster. She comes back and tells me the car did okay, but something was still not right about it, although the oil pressure gauge read 60 pounds. Okay, I say, let's try it again.

This time she did better in the reaction time department with a .550, but the car goes down there popping and banging and slows way down at the eighth-mile mark. I go back to the trailer and wait and wait and wait ... and finally I round up Chris after I hear over the track walkie-talkies, "That lady in the dragster in down on the top and the car's not goin' nowhere," and we head off to the top end in a golf cart, only to see Fran standing by a dead car. "Won't crank," she said. "It'll spin over, but it won't crank."

We spend the rest of the afternoon thrashing to find out what's wrong. Now here's where we meet a hero with a crew cut and a big tattoo on his right leg.

We have every panel off the car, we've got the carburetor torn apart, Chris has thrown up his hands and said, "I don't know what's wrong," and motored off in his golf cart, and I noticed this guy walking around the car, looking at it in an interesting way. Right off I could tell this guy has been around the block, so to speak, about racecars. He began by asking the right questions --- "What size slicks you running?" and, "I'm interested in knowing more about your front end," and most importantly, "what's wrong?"

Turns out this guy is named Jim; he's wearing an honor guard flattop hair cut, a Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts, and he's here at MMP because he likes racing and has heard there's some Camaro/Mustang/import races today (which there was). He also tells us that he's in town from South Carolina to go to Dixie Speedway in Woodstock, Georgia for a $3,000 roundy-round race that night and is staying over for tomorrow's big NASCAR race in Atlanta.

"I had a sprint car, but I got too busy to race it. Hey," he asks, watching Fran put our carburetor back together, "does your wife do ALL the work on this car?"

Busy is right. Jim (I wish we'd gotten his last name) is the chief maintenance officer at an army base in South Carolina, specializing in Blackhawk and Apache helicopters, and especially specializing in flying all over the state looking for marijuana fields. "Do you know what they look like from the air?" I asked. "Sure, I've seen enough," he said. I nearly saluted him right then and there. I told him I did know what marajana fields look like. Jim spent the better part of two hours with us, leaving only when the sun set below the MMP tree line on his way to Dixie Speedway, a good too three hours away. He left without seeing Mr. Suncoast fire again. He even helped us push it into our enclosed trailer.

Jim had a good mechanics mind and the discipline of a soldier with the presence of an experienced officer, a command kind of guy, and in short time, he was diving in there with us, trying to find out what was plaguing Mr. Suncoast, testing this and that, trying to find out logically what was wrong.

To make another long story short, we poked, prodded, tested, changed, fueled, sprayed, threaded and rethreaded nearly everything we could think of on the car.

Part of what threw us is this alcohol game; we're brand-new to it, having run only 114-octane before, and along with getting alcohol tuned in comes the stories, the "do-this-but-don't-do-that" of an alky system. Gas we can understand --- if the car won't crank, check and find out logically, like Jim the pilot was doing. We worked in the trailer at home that Sunday afternoon until we determined that there was a problem in the ignition system (a manual showed us how to check these things out), and Suncoast's small-block wouldn't fire if its life depended on it. The bad part was brown-trucked on Monday, and we expect it back by next week, all fixed.

Okay, here's where all this rambling takes you --- next time you're faced with a problem like ours, follow a logical path in troubleshooting. Don't automatically assume that because you have a new part on the car that THAT'S where the problem lies. It just may lay in the fact that another part that's been in the car since Day 1 (1989) may have on this day decided to give up the ghost. Do like Jim the pilot did on that day in October when he stopped by to lend a hand to someone (us) in need --- think, don't assume. Follow the steps. Read the books. Look at the schematics. Examine the problem with logic and seek a cure. If "P," then "Q." The printed page is your friend here.

I'm almost tempted to quote Clint Eastwood in that marine movie he made a few years back --- "Overcome. Adapt. Improvise." Fact is I will, except I'll leave out the "Improvise" part. Thanks to a disciplined army pilot and officer, we did "overcome" our problem. Now if we can just "adapt" ourselves to racing alcohol instead of gas ...

Double-A Dale's tech tip can be seen in this month's tech section.