Dale's second pass sounded weird, and only netted a 13.35-101. He pulled back in.
"Missed second, overtached it and had to lift", he said. The shifter in the Satellite is factory in the floor with console, but it was originally a four speed car, and the automatic shifter is pretty loose.
"Where's Boone"?
"I sent him to your house, so he is limping it over there".
"He didn't load all the stuff he normally carries, my car is going to be stacked to the roof"!
"Well", I laughed, "It's only 7 miles"!
"Fine, you have to load it".
He headed off for another pass. Mom and Dad had left, Darren and Yoko were making a parts run. I loaded up my stuff, and then took a walk through the pits. I spotted a black 4th gen Camaro with Canadian plates. They had the back up on jackstands, and were just pulling the 3rd member out of the nine inch. They rolled it out on the ground and a crowd peered at the 6 or 7 missing ring gear teeth.
"Small pinion"? I asked.
"Yeah, we've got gears coming from Lester Gears here in town, we just need to get them set up".
Dale had just set mine up before we left, as I had switched from 4.30's to 3.89's, and I had ordered extra bearings just in case.
"I'm calling my buddies shop right now, they should be able to fix you up", said another bystander. I decided not to volunteer until I talked to Dale, it sounded like they may have it under control.
It was getting late, and people were clearing out, but with Day 5 at Topeka scheduled for the afternoon, the sense of urgency wasn't as pronounced as the days before.
Dale's 3rd pass was solid, and he was happy with the numbers 12.67-107.15. By this time he had resigned himself to the fact that he wasn't going to make the quick 32, the last couple of qualifying sheets had him steady at 38-40, otherwise I know he would have jetted up the spray and went for 12.4's.
"Well, I don't think 6 or 7 Daily Drivers faster than me are gonna go out before Topeka, so there's no use beating on it at this point". Dale lamented as we packed up.
"There's one", I added, pointing to the pretty Factory 5 33 Ford with the big "Drag Week 2011" sticker on the door.
"What happened to him"? Dale asked. "Figured that would be one of the last cars to have trouble".
"Broke something".
The BangShift.com truck had went and picked up a U-haul trailer to help the guy out, and they were getting ready to load the little coupe up. I've been pulling my racecars and hotrods for 25 years on open trailers, and the first thing you learn is long ramps, especially if the car sits low. U-haul trailers have notoriously short ramps, Factory 5 cars sit rediculously low. It was one of those moments you know something bad is going to happen, and you simply can't react fast enough to do anything about it, especially when 6 burly guys think they need a running start to load a 2500 lb. car.
It hit the trailer at good speed until the edge of the trailer slammed into the bottom of the body about 8 inches back of the leading edge of the doors, it had enough velocity and grunt behind it to slide another 6-8 inches up the trailer lifting the front wheels completely into the air.
Just a very unfortunate situation, that we have probably all been in involved in at one time or another, where well-meaning helpers get overzealous and stuff gets tore up, but I felt sick for the owner, broke car, not going to finish Drag Week, and now some body work and paint was going to figure into the week's expenses.