Conspicuously absent from Zmax Dragway was our nitro-junkie hero, Brian Kohlmann. His pass at Darlington Tuesday did not go so well. He ended up blowing a head gasket. Not knowing about the gasket issue at first, he did drive the car to the hotel in Charlotte. After noticing water on the windshield, he pulled over and diagnosed the problem. He made it the rest of the way to the hotel by adding water as needed. A whole gang of helpers converged on the car to fix the ailing hemi. Unfortunately when they got the car apart they found that he had torched the head. There was no way to fix it in time, so Brian bummed a ride with a local back to Atlanta to get his truck and trailer. After spending the night in the trailer waiting for the staff at Atlanta dragway to unlock the gate, he drove back to Charlotte, loaded up the nitro coupe and headed for home. You would think he would be bummed, but Brian doesn’t show it. He just bounces back with fresh determination and optimism about the next shot. It's kinda like this: with our gasoline burning race cars, we know we're going to be changing plugs and changing oil with frequency, may be tearing down the motor to freshen it up every year or 2, or three. So when it's time to do that we don't sweat it. Well, running nitromethane, Brian knows that he's going to be changing out rings, bearings, pistons, rods, welding on the block and heads, etc. on a regular basis. It's just an expected part of the process. So he just jumps in and gets it done without drama, and continues to work on the tune to get the car quicker and more reliable.
Brian figured out that the reason the car laid down at the big end of the track at Atlanta, and the reason that it blew the head gasket at Darlington, was because of his new big fuel pump in the mechanical injection system. He had upped the pump size because of a prior lack of fuel. But when the hemi got to singing its high rpm song, that big pump was pushing more fuel than the bypass could handle, and that made for too much nitro for the amount of air available. Later, to solve the issue, Brian added a second bypass, and increased the blower speed by 25%. That seems to be what the hemi wanted and it has been running very strong.