As some local CEGers recall, back this spring I (and Mike Shotwell) raced my Contour at PIR. One of the guys who came along was a friend of mine, Pat.
Pat just let me know that he is taking his SVT Cobra to PIR this Saturday night, testing out a newly broken in upgraded clutch. He killed his stock clutch by doing just three passes at Woodburn this past spring, but with a dying clutch and no prior practice with that car he still ran a 12.02 ET.
Might anyone else want to come watch him break into the 11s? I'm not sure I'll race my Contour, I've not yet completed upgrades since the last time, but I WILL have it along in case I need to let Marty race it as a bribe to get him to take pix of Pat's car. (Is that too subtle?)
Damn, I really wish I could come down. I was there last weekend, but I was really busy anyway. My dad is running for sheriff of Clark County.
I should be down in the next couple of weeks. Maybe you can coerce him to come out again?
Pat's pretty eager, he wants chances to practice and experiment, so I figure he'll want to be there about as soon as the gates open at 6 pm.
And I wonder when all the Ferraris will be cleared out.
And Mike, if Pat doesn't break anything this time, coaxing him out again will be easy. If he hits 11.8 tonight, I can send him e-mails saying 11.7... 11.7... 11.7...
PM sent. Pat wants to check in with you. He's already made an appointment to have his clutch adjusted.
So how did you guys do? Best times for the night? Do share!
Mike: there was a very unusual turnout of cars running. A Ferrari, a new Porsche, a G35 and a new Benz were dragging. No/few diesel trucks. A 4x4 Toy truck with mudders all around, throwing chunks of rubber doing burnouts. A couple late 1930's Chevys. A small block Cougar kicked out of running for not having enough of a roll cage and no competition license after a 9.9 ET on a 150 shot, and it's driven on the street. Qbert's buddy with the Focus (FOCI) now has his turbo and torsen in, he could not hook up in 1st with street tires, but still was doing like 14.2 @ 100 mph. I talked with him for a few minutes about BFG drag radials, he's thinking about them also. Lots of mid 15 to low 16 modded NA Civics. A 67 Cuda small block 8 running mid-high 15s. An old blown '38 gasser, an early 70s Challenger (440 six pack?), a 64 or 65 Dodge with giant slicks and nitrous. Saw a few wheelies. A recent GTO without Texas Realtor there to take pix. A couple of 4 wheel ATVs running on model airplane fuel. And more than a few attractive women in attendance.
I didn't put any upgrades in since last time, so I let my Contour sit. And so spent half the night muttering to myself "I coulda run with that..."
Pat had fun doing burnouts with his new line lock, his tires were damn sticky, he had nice starts, but Pat's shifts were a struggle for him all night. It seemed like he almost needed to double clutch, his new Centerforce was not letting go. So something was off and his best ET was 12.40 with a bunch of 12.58s with traps between 108 and 115. He was majorly bummed.
The co-worker of Pat's who showed up with a Z06 with slight mods and street tires did a couple runs in the 11.9s (where Pat wanted to be, at least) and a lot of runs in the low/mid 12s. By 9 to 10 pm, they did a few runs matched up together. (That's them in the third picture above. THANK YOU, MARTY.) On the first, the Vette red lighted but the Cobra was gaining on the gap by mid track. On another run, the Vette won by just over a car length, a fun race to watch, they both started well, no missed shifts and evenly matched all the way down the track. Then the Vette got bounced for noise.
We spotted Marty when he arrived by all the antennae. You should see the new badge he has below his rear SVT badge. He got approval to take pictures close to the start, INSIDE the fence keeping spectators back from the track.
Pat has an appointment to have his clutch adjustment corrected Thursday 8/10/06 at that shop in Vancouver close to where St Johns Rd. intersects w/ Minehaha, and he'll be eager to test if that fixed the issue.
I've been too busy to DIY and too cheap to hire out changing my ES insert front roll mount to a fully poly'd mount. With the insert I still got some hop trying to launch at 4K rpm. I want to check if with the xcal2 I can set the IMRC to open at a slightly lower RPM level: Would it then be possible/desirable to launch at say 3500 (or 3300?) to hook up and still keep the secondaries open and avoid bogging down? I'd love to try that with drag radials...
And, it just so happens that I didn't have anything going on Saturday night yet anyway. I guess I do now! I should be able to make it. What time were you gonna get there? It'll have to be a while before dusk/dark hits so I can get some good low-ISO shots in.
