My esteemed Trunk Monkey Jerico GTX and I made it to drag week with the coop. I saw that squirrel was here but I didn't get a chance to talk to him. Tony's here with his small block Mopar pickup. We saw Dale and Boone and Rachel and talked to them for a while.
I did some test and tune at Stanton last night and had a fuel delivery issue that kept the car from running well.
It was going lean about the time I hit third gear and was off by 15 mph. We tried fiddling with a bunch of things and changed the plugs and messed with the fuel pressure regulator, but nothing helped. I was actually contemplating whether or not I should throw in the towel, because I didn't want to hurt the motor by running it lean and if it can't make a clean pass there'd be no reason to continue.
This morning we found that the inlet screen on the fuel pump had gone into the rotors and chewed them up.
So I replaced the pump today. Hopefully that solves it.
I got the car through tech. One of the NHRA tech inspectors didn't believe that my cage was legal because it didn't have down bars protruding through the rear of the cab and down into the trunk. I showed him the sticker that certifies it is legal and I showed him the paperwork certifying it and explained to him it was designed to be legal and was fully approved. He wasn't buying it so he brought another inspector over and eventually they passed it. Thankfully!
I wasn't able to make a pass today, by the time I got into the staging lanes they were closed. So tomorrow morning, my first pass of the event will be a test. If the fuel pump swap doesn't solve it, I really don't know what I will try next.
Here's a picture of the car in the tech line.