2. Purchases

A. Buy one Optima or racing battery, from Barnett Performance or whoever;
B. Get rid of current water system and go with braided steel line to the radiator, then buy proper AN
fittings to plumb it, from Barnett Performance or whoever;
C. Buy a tach, from Auto Meter or Barnett Performance, then mount accordingly;
D. Go to Sears and buy a portable vacuum cleaner, to suck water out of engine (alcohol promotes milking of engine oil; this is a trick we learned from racer and friend Robbie Callahan);
E. Buy at least five oil filters, plus buy cases of motor oil, and keep seven quarts in trailer and filter in trailer.

3. Check dragster

A. Check converter size and stall and fix accordingly, either by purchase or converter freshening up (we don't know the stall speed of our present converter);
B. Check starting line rpm leave and adjust accordingly, via MSD chips;
C. Find out if we have the proper slicks (who knows, maybe they're the wrong size or compound);
D. Check all nuts and bolts for proper tightening (and do this every race).

4. Fixes

A. Freshen up transmission (who knows how many runs it has on it now);
B. Change motor oil only after the car returns from updates from Tommy Harris;
C. Finish painting red places on dragster frame (I missed a few this past summer);
D. Fix "donut" dragster cushion (we bought a used one from Robbie Callahan).

That's it for now. Maybe by early spring, Mr. Suncoast will be ready and able to do battle in the deep South bracket wars. We hope our fixes will help.

Wife Fran poses with her Mr. Suncoast '89 Suncoast dragster while friends, from left, Randall Roop, Fuzzy Garland, Al Baker, Joe Tatun and Artie "the Preacher" Fulcher look on.

By the way, Fran DID make her first winning round in the dragster. It happened on Saturday at the Trots, first round. She was lined up against a slower car. She let go on the crossover, but then the car launched a few feet and skidded to a stop, the results of tire shake reactivating the trans brake button (That will be fixed, too.). Meanwhile, the guy in the other lane was rolling to a stop, the results of one of his axles breaking. She saw what was going on, got back into the throttle and crossed the finish line first, with a 58-mph pass, while he went through at 14 mph.

Oh, well, a win's a win. At least that saved us some $$ in the buy-back department. Adios, amigos.

Double-A Dale's Tech Tip for this month

You'll notice in the above story that I mention a dragster "donut" cushion. That is yet another piece of equipment we found that all dragster racers need for towing in an enclosed trailer. The donut in question is a small garbage can-sized piece of rubber that is sandwiched together over a cloth "bladder" inside, and it sits on the floor of our enclosed trailer with the dragster resting on it.

What it does is prevents the long dragster from flexing in the trailer while on the road (and believe me, there are plenty of highways and byways in Alabama and Georgia that are plenty rough). They can cost upwards of $200 from parts houses and chassis shops, but we bought ours from friend Robbie Callahan for a lot less.

You want to place the donut directly under a crossbar on the frame, preferably around the roll cage, where it is compressed enough to prevent the car from flexing up and down when towing. We know of one friend who towed without one, and he had to have his dragster frame re-welded in several places because it cracked in two. We figure that the money we laid out for our donut is a lot cheaper than having a chassis man like our Tommy Harris of Fabrication Concepts re-weld a cracked chassis.

How do you place it under your dragster when the dragster is positioned in the trailer for towing? Again, this is where friends helped. At our last race of the 2003 season, the Turkey Trots at Huntsville Dragway, Joe Tatum and Doug Richardson --- no weightlifters, either --- merely lifted up the front end while we slid the donut under Mr. Suncoast's roll cage. A small jack can do the same job just as easy.