The Gremlin ended Drag Week rolling the beams in the final round of the Shootout, after reeling off passes of 9.14,9.12, and 9.08.
A couple of weeks later, he ended up with his first 8 second pass, and promptly melted a piston.
Luckily, he had two spare Venolias that came with the 440, so a quick, down and dirty piston swap had him ready for the Mopar race at Tulsa in November. At that event, he was running two cars, helping two other people with theirs, and trying to sell parts in the swap meet. This resulted in him running out of gas in the middle of a nitrous pass, and torching more than just one piston!!
He's been working hard on getting his 70 AMX set up with a new 6.0 Chassis, 572 Hemi, and Lenco, so money for the Gremlin has been scarce, but he finished the year Number #1 on "The List-Tulsa style", which is a group that races on a list format, but at Tulsa Raceway Park. They were planning a huge Top 8 shootout for the first of April, so Dale felt compelled to at least make an effort to show up. The stock block, stock crank, Eagle rod 440 came out, and was treated to a set of low dollar, dish Icon pistons. The Indy SR heads were also a little roughed up, so he pulled a set of Indy-1s out of the corner, and also backed the 639 lift Howards solid cam four degrees from where it was previously.
"Livin' in a powder keg and givin' off sparks"
4 Street cars, 5 Race engines
