Friends help

In our hours of need, racing friends step in to show the way.

12/9/03

t was a catastrophic weekend of racing, but we learned anyway.

Let's see: our motorhome fell into a septic tank (that was the week before, but it still felt like the same cluster-flub that plagued us all Thanksgiving '03 weekend), and it took most of the evening to get it out. Then, the following weekend at Huntsville (Alabama) Dragway's annual Turkey Trots bracket race, Fran locked the trans brake up not once but twice, coming to a skidding halt just past the track's starting line. One other time, she staged against an opponent, went down on the gas pedal and her dragster burped once and died. It insulted us one last time when a water line broke on the first round of Sunday's eliminations, spewing liquid all over the track and burning her butt with hot water. Luckily she managed to control her errant mount before it hit Huntsville's left-hand wall, but it was close.

And our dragster learning curve continues. Pay attention now, because we have lessons we learned that we can pass on to you.

In last month's installment of our continuing story, "Fran and Dale Get A Dragster (Oh, My!)," we brought you up to speed on what to do and what not to do when encountering a tuning problem (No. 1 rule, don't assume anything, and No. 2, read, read and re-read your tech manuals to diagnose the problem). This time we carry our diagnoses even further, bringing in friends to solve the various problems and ending on a note that we, and you, should recognize --- if there is a problem with the race car, fix it in the most orderly and productive way, and if that means spending more money on it to get the right part, get it.

Some background: earlier in the summer of 2003, we traded Fran's venerable "Lady In Red" '71 Nova for an '89 Suncoast dragster. The car was solid and not torn up, but we quickly learned that the previous owners used some cheaper, "get-by" parts to go racing in it, while Fran's Nova carried nothing but the best from our various sponsors and manufacturers. One of those "cheaper" parts included an item that should not have been on the car, a coil that was mismatched to the ignition system.

We have always used MSD ignition parts on all of our bracket cars. When Fran's engine lost fire on a licensing pass at Montgomery (Alabama) Motorsports Park in October, we couldn't figure out what was wrong ... until we consulted our MSD ignition manual and learned there is a simple test to determine why there was no fire. (Disconnect your distributor wire harness, take a jumper wire and hook to the two distributor wires, ground your coil wire to the frame, and when you pull the jumper wire off, you should get a spark. No, spark, no fire.) We learned through that simple test that either our MSD 7 AL 2 or our coil was bad. We sent both for repair to MSD's El Paso, Texas repair shop, where it was determined that the coil was bad.

But in a subsequent conversation with MSD's Todd Ryden, we learned that the "Blaster 2" coil was incompatible with the 7 AL 2 box. "You should be running our 'Pro Power' coil," he said. So we did. Lack of spark problem solved.

It's now a week later and we're at Huntsville Dragway for the Turkey Trots, which is scheduled for the following week. Huntsville promoter George Howard said we could come a week early and test, then leave our motorhome and trailer there and race the Trots the following week. Cool.

What was not so cool was that we parked in the wrong place. Huntsville's Alex Young and Perry Braselton had us pull beside the track's restrooms, where Fran promptly came to a stop with the motorhome's rear wheels right over Huntville's septic tank, caving it in and nearly rolling the motorhome and connected trailer over. It took three hours of jacking up and disconnecting this and that to get it all out of the six-foot-deep hole and onto harder ground. George, Alex and Perry saved the motorhome and the day.