| "Da Mule" 0.5152 ET (1/8 mile) New Personal Best 10/23/2009 55.04 MPH (1/8 mile) New Track Record 1/30/2008 Best Pass to Date 4/11//2008 0.715 ET 92.13 MPH! (1/4 mile) Brian at Paradise Raceway, AKA Caveman, did all the decals. Nice job Brian!! 02/07/2009 .058 60 Foot .752 ET 85.22 MPH 4/11/2009 .052 60 Foot .715 ET 92.13 MPH 10/22/2009 This new car actually made its maiden voyage 10/09/2009 at Penrose Raceway. Two passes, neither pass resulted in a full run and the second ended in a spectacular crash that crushed the right rear hub, bent the axle and ripped the wing off in pieces. The original wing was at the spec height of 2.25" from axle center. This rebuild is not. Actually it doesn't even need a wing by rule for the TA/D class it is targeting. Current weight is 93.61 grams 23 grams heavy for this class but only 3.61 grams heavy for A/D. Chassis stiffness and dampening were the initial issues. Not enough of either. Air born track slap caused the crash. That has been corrected in the rebuild with the addition of a third rail. Original construction was a more standard two rail setup. The back half of the car is pretty much a copy of the S/G Vette we've been running that has run so well. Enough so as to discontinue the Mono rail car. This car only weighs in two grams heavier than Da Mule did. I was fairy happy with that. The old car was carbon fiber over stainless steel. This one is stainless over carbon fiber, using rod instead of tube for the carbon. While the axle is a fabricated assembly unlike the one piece in the Vette the majority of parts in this car are Slick 7 instead of WRP. This includes the guide tongue, guide, wheelie support plate, mid plate and front wheels and tires. Wheelies come from DRS but run a .050 axle instead of wire. The initial Kershner tires were damaged beyond repair in the crash so until I can source a new set Pro Track it is. This dyno mule motor is a vanilla ball bearing purple quad small can 20 with a lower timed, 40* Koford arm. Plenty of power to shake it down and not enough to write home about mustering .1165 hp or a little less that 70% of the motor we've been running in the old car. This is the motor we had in the green Nova on the title page that ran that 116 gram car to .554 at 50 mph. 10/23/2009 Oh boy, Huston, we have a launch...and then some. Set the car on the track for a bar height check, check. Easy pull on the trigger...Ops...wired backward. Five minutes latter back on the track at roll out speed...idles straight. Track is already swampy. Credit card off the excess glue, roll some fresh on the virgin rubber and roll out again. Stage...little finger under the track 1.5 ohm controller to limit power and make a half throttle pass half way down the track. Oh yea, that looks good. Prep the track and the car and hook up the blast box...watch the tree come down...gone!!! Straight as an arrow, up on the bar a few feet the just...gone...no hop, skip, shake just smoooooth. In fact, as perfect a pass I've ever seen with a dragster. .1183-60', .3385 split, .5306 ET at 50.13 MPH. A second pass with a bit different glue up told me my first guess was on the money when it went up in smoke on the hit. Okay, I know where I'm at now. Third pass sets a new personal best ET and it isn't even the program motor!! .1158-60', .3284 split and .5152 ET at 51.34 MPH and now we wait for the evening bracket races...two hours later we stage for the back up pass. .5159 at 51.97. How's that for consistent, .0007? I really thought that the old chassis was an exception piece and that its major issue was a lack of down force thus limiting the ET while MPH was more than excellent. It ran smooth and straight, launched exceptionally hard, harder than a good number of Funny Cars. Thing was that it would loose bite ever so slightly about three to four hundred feet out for a short distance, gather itself and go hard the back half eight or nine times out of ten. The one in ten it didn't was usually due to pushing the braid one to many passes, burning it, and loosing enough power to make a sub standard pass. In fact burnt braid was a major pain in that car. Not this one, not even a hint of burn. Leaves on the bar for about 100 feet, sets down easy and arches up the rest of the pass just planted. Lucky or good I have a recipe that just works...at least at this power level with no reason to believe it wont with more, much more. I didn't actually build this car for this project but as a bracket car for the upcoming eight week series at Penrose but it has just replaced Da Mule for the project and the Da Mule goes to the bracket wars with a much softer motor. Thinking out loud the new car at this track leaves harder with less motor, (and less glue) pulls the mid unfluttered and weights about the same. Mid .12** 60 foots were the normal here at home with sub .060's at Major tracks with good bite and more power (current) available. We have a little job to do before we make the trip to a major track though and that is reclaiming the local Hard Body record which now stands at .4796 set by Carl Rodekamp's old 80 gram AA/FD. We still hold the MPH record here at home but maybe, just maybe we can reset that too. 10/30/2009 Sick or not, I should have caught the miss mounted body work that kept the chassis in a bind. One decent pass for the night after a full day of detailing and re-gearing this car shorter still. Disappointing, yes, devistating...only to my ego. Slight improvement in the 60 foot but lifting the tire as the chassis locked up. .1146-60, .3295 split, .5206 ET and 52.29 mph. Not a project best but for this car, yes, fastest pass. Try again next week. |
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