It was surprisingly early in 2016 when the announcement for the dates and tracks were released by Hot Rod for Drag Week. Like Ray, I was intrigued by the opportunity to not only move US131 from my "Tracks I've visited" list to my "Tracks I've raced at list", but also the opportunity to add the two Ohio tracks to that list as well. The downside was the 2000 mile tow to the starting facility, but since I had an early entry, I knew I was going.

I received the early invitation on Feb. 27th, and the announcement was made that registration would open at 9AM. Saturday March 5th, while Boone and I would be at the March meet, as a point of reference, open registration for 2015 wasn't until April 26th, so things were happening quick.

With a week to go before the March Meet, I decided perhaps I should try to figure out why the trans-brake had quit on the Valiant. This was especially important considering I was entered in D Gas, a four tenths pro tree, 10.60 index class, and I certainly wasn't going to hit that tree on the foot brake.

I dropped the pan, and had my son push the button. It didn't take long to figure out that the solenoid wasn't getting power. Once I began investigating the wiring, it became clear that I had lost power to quite a few different areas, so I removed the passenger seat to allow me to look at all my spaghetti wiring under the dash. About an hour in, I discovered the single fuse holder I had used to splice a hot wire from the working race car wiring to the long dead factory wiring. It had previously hung down for easy access, but when Aaron was re-wiring the ignition box in Indy during DW15, he had wire tied it up out of the way. I pulled the cover and found a blown 20 amp fuse, replaced it with a 25, and we had a working trans-brake once again.
"So", my son shook his head, "This car has been sitting in the backyard for five months, two of those on jack stands...because you had a blown fuse?"
"Well, sometimes diagnosing the problem is the biggest hurdle!" I tried to rationalize.