Met with them yesterday and they are a great bunch. They were so happy to be here even with all the break downs.

They're going to try and fix it for Cordova. They really wanted to get in the 7's.

Bummer... I was hoping for "The Fying Finn" to stay in one piece for the whole event.

When we were waiting in line to get in yesterday morning a very pleasant blond with a slight accent came up to great us and handed up this postcard.

These Finn's are awesome.

I saw a pass a Cordova, it looked awsome. I told Jeff, they make it look easy. I know it's not.
Sorry to hear they are out.

If I remember correctly, then long time ago, VIP has gone 7.8 something with the smaller engine. After all the trouble to get the car over there, it would be like the icing on the cake, to take that 7.x timeslip. Good luck and hope you can make that final run. Women in the sauna said, that they found brewer heads and are going after them?

dang, was looking forward to seeing them tomorrow

I just watched the Tuesday recap, love the cow horn lol! Hope you are able to get that beast fixed.

Thanks guys for your support!
Having troubles with the connection, so I'll try to give a short brief of what has happened.

On saturday night we tested at Cordova, run an easy 8.0 and decided to raise boost some. Everything went worse, no power. One valve lash was zero and when removing the rockers the stem came up and up...

After removing the header we saw the valve plate in the exhaust manifold.., so we tore it apart. There was a local racer Anthony Layne that had a machined shop and he promised to try to repair the head on sunday.

Got the car teched without the head and then the head repaired, and engine reassembled. At night it was running again. The piston for small scars too, but we were actually lucky since it was a complete full run with the broken valve. The turbo was hurt too, but nothing we could do about it at that point except to turn thee turbine down in a lathe to get it "balanced".

So, on sunday the hopes weren't that high. To our surprise it run 8.08 with a mild set up, 60 ft was 1.27 and we started putting the car back to street condition, mufflers on and street tires & pacing the U-haul. Then the direction to Gateway. After the first day we were third in our class.

Had some heat problems, the bigger fan quit working and the temps were high and we had to stop every now and then. At 8.30 pm we arrived at gateway hotel and everything seemed good. Some things were on order on tuesday before making a run, so we knew that we might have a long day.

Something snapped in our drivers, Jannes leg and he couldn't work on the car much, but we still got everyhting done and went to the line up. There Janne got something in his eye and it hurt a lot, the medical personal tried to help him with no success and ordered him to hospital. Janne still made the run, 8.07, but after that left to hospital.

I started to put the car back togetherand got it done and then waiting..., at some point Janne got back, he had a wound in his iris, got some treatment but was supposed to be practically blind for the next two days... It was already quite late and we were among the few still at the track when we left towards Byron me driving at # 2 spot... After about 30 miles of driving a sudden noice from the engine...

It was quite obvious that the race was over. We towed the car off the highway to a gas station and started to call for help. Tepen family that has helped us here borrowed their trailer and we got another car there to tow the U-Haul.

Teared the engine apart when we got to Tepens, and this time the damage was worse, one piston was dead. We had another set of heads, but they were at Cordova and a bit different style, that's why we didn't just replace the head the last time the valve dropped.

Anyway, in the morning our friends started the trip to cordova to get our trailer and the parts that we had left to Tapens closed trailer. Meanwhile in the jungle, we pulled the other head off, and there was also some piston damage. Also disassembled the intake and there ws more metal pieces..., and the other side turbo was also hurt.

So, we started to take the pistons up, four pistons. Two only required minor tweaking, but two were replaced, luckily we had spares. Except that they hadn't been pin fitted..., but again we found a great machine shop that got that done while waiting. Thanks Performance Automotive at Bethalto!

The guys came back at night with the other heads, mocked them up and figured that fitting them might be doable, so we would give it a try. Once again Performance Automotive helped us finding a cut to length push rod set, it's comps .080" wall but it's better than nothing.

This far we have gotten one of the turbos repaired, the heads and the intake are on. The pushrods were ordered to Layne's to Cordova and he'll build them for us for tomorrow morning. They are 11.5" long... Seems that we can get the car back together tonight except for the pushrods, we'll drive to Cordova and get the pushrods in the morning, install them and try to get down the track!

So, the drag week has been rather eventful so far..., anyway we are very satisfied with the performance and everything has been great despite of the draw backs. Don't know how hard we are going to push it tomorrow if we get the things done, but even to get it running would be a win!

At this point I understand that we were caught pretty much with our pants down, badly prepared, because of delays and bad machine work we weren't able to practically test at all before shipping the car. What the car and engine wants is still a question mark, but still it run decently.

Our "professor", Saku, calculated that in he last run we had about 1480 hp in use, and there wasn't much boost yet. The launch was at 13 psi and a slow raise to 17 psi. Now I think I know how we should prepare to this event, and depending of the funds I would really like to come back and show that we CAN make it!

Tepen family, whom we found through internet only a couple of weeks before leaving, has been essential in our succeeding this far, can't thank them enough!

cool stuff, human being wise, even if the car didn't cooperate. I'm thinking about still going out to cordova tomorrow but won't able to be there till 2:30 at the best. Would be awesome to see the car run!

Thanks for the update: Great effort!

x2... That's an amazing story unfolding right here on Moparts.

What a thrash. Best of luck, or should I say effort, hard work, and determination.
Doug

Those are some serious challenges, even if you weren't halfway around the world from home Major props for sticking through it.

You've done a hell of a job, pat your yourselves on your back, most would have called it much sooner.

I have to commend these guys, traveling half way around the world to a country they copy their, our, hobby to compete against us, knowing thier support base is a ocean away and there in a country that most people speak English only Congrats to you guys
Good luck, I hope it goes a lot better from now on

Sorry for your luck. I was rooting for you guys..

They just made a run..Amazing the work and drive to complete this thing

Killer effort guys, to come back and run a 9.08- Just WOW! Think about setting up a patreon page to help fund next years effort.

Any run is a win for them now. Glad it's running.