That turned out to be the least of our problems.

Friday's Turkey Trots race was "colded" out, so the $5,000 race (for a free entry fee) was carried over to Saturday. We found that Mr. Suncoast still carried some mighty big problems. That's where more friends came to our rescue.

Despite the changes in the ignition department, Mr. Suncoast still refused to stay lit when it came time to leave Huntsville's starting line. Fran would stage at idle, set the trans brake and let go at the first flash of Christmas Tree yellow, and it would give an anemic cough and die on the line. We set the floats on our Demon alcohol carburetor, jetted it up to 168-square jets and still the same thing --- a slight bomp, and the car would go dead.

In jumps friend Steve "Fuzzy" Garland, a Ford racer and a professional mechanic. He tightened the adjustment nuts on the carb's accelerator pumps and Fran goes up again to make a time run. Bomp!, goes the dragster. "It ain't the carburetor," Fuzzy says. So with help from him and racers Robbie Callahan, Joe Rampley and Fuzzy and Randall Roop's crew of "Ford Thunder" racers (Hey, at this point, I don't care if help comes from the U.S. Army), we tear the body panels off Mr. Suncoast and dive into it all.

We find this: that when we rewired the dragster back in August, we had inadvertently connected the wires from the 7 AL 2 unit to the MSD distributor. Oh, the car would run, all right, but it still had that bomp! on the starting line, and it would pop and bang out of the headers at idle. We thought that was the price you pay for running alcohol in the cold (November) season. We were wrong. We set the wiring right and Rampley suggested we retard the timing to 34 degrees. Fran went out and made another time run and Suncoast responded to a 5.62, fully a tenth and a half from its previous best in our hands. She went out in the first and second rounds due to bad lights, but she lost with a 5.621 elapsed time off a 5.62 dial.

We were set. Or so we thought.

I did some strong praying at Artie Fulcher's Racers 'N' Christ Sunday church service, then repeated the long talk of the day before with Fran about her driving skills with a new, unfamiliar car ("Remember what [Drag Racing School professor] Frank Hawley said about racing, that you only have to be good for 10 or 15 seconds."), and we were ready for Sunday's eliminations.

I wish I had taken a photo of her leaving the starting line for first round. The dragster does a good burnout, and boy, does it sound strong! It sounds right! Healthy! There's even a wisp of smoke off the tires. Hot dog! She's ready.

She has to cross over on a Camaro. The tree comes down, I see her hand snatch off the trans brake button and the car is not popping or banging, it's actually staying lit and we're ready for a race!

Wrong! She leaves the starting line and a big spray of water envelops the back end of the dragster. Fran heads for the left-hand wall, corrects and coasts to a stop at half-track. The whole starting line and 50 feet past is splattered in water (not antifreeze, by the way). Perry tows her back with the track's four-wheeler. We're through for the day.

What happened was the metal line from the engine's water pump to the radiator came loose. That piece, a product that was all the vogue 10 years ago and came with the dragster, had broken its seal and lost the two set screws that kept one piece mated with the other. Bad engineering, I say to myself later. It will be replaced.

The fact is, thanks to our friends and the knowledge they passed on to us at this year's Turkey Trots, we have learned a lot about the care and feeding of a small-block-powered rear-engine dragster. We have learned to read our product manuals front and back and make sure the Mr. Suncoast is carrying the right, and compatible, parts. We have learned to follow the advice of those who have gone on before us --- the proper timing, the proper jetting and setting of our alcohol carburetor, the proper way to trace a problem down and get it right. Our advice is to ask those questions, look, listen and learn, and read, read and read. People like us can still make a little money doing this bracket racing game. When we got up that Monday morning after a weekend of Thanksgiving racing, we put together a list of things we need to do to Mr. Suncoast over the winter's downtime. Here it is. See if any of it corresponds with the problems you've been having with your own race car.

Fran's dragster needs:

1. Tommy Harris (our "Fabrication Concepts" chassis man in Douglasville, GA)

A. Straighten and narrow the front end (the front end now "flops" in reverse);
B. Get rid of stock batteries and relocate an Optima to the front (never race with OEM batteries);
C. Attach the engine in front directly to the dragster frame, via Heim joints, etc. (for stability);
D. Maybe get rid of rear-end push bar;
E. Make new body panel (one was dented in the tow back to the pits);
F. Find out why the dragster rolls so slowly; maybe brakes bound up;
G. Fix dashboard so it won't rattle and move (it does now);
H. Affix tachometer to car (surprisingly, it came with no tach, and a tach helps in tuning a car in).