After tech on Sunday I had brought the coop up to the staging lanes to make a test pass, but when I got there they told me it was too late. The staging lanes had just closed. Missed it by a few minutes, but it might as well have been hours, either way I was destined to make the first official day of drag week competition nothing more than a test of a car that had not yet made a clean pass down the drag strip.


My buddy Jeff has several different modes that he operates in. One of them is happy, fun loving, outgoing Jeff. Another one is let's go, get it done, hurry up Jeff. And then there is introverted, completive Jeff. Last but not least is cranky Jeff.
So when he told me Monday morning he had not slepped one minute all night, I was thinking "this is going to be hell day". But when he actually brought me a cup of coffee while I was getting ready, I knew it was going to be a good day!


As we were driving in to the track Monday morning and Jeff wanted me to drop him off at the gate I said that he should just call the courier and have them come into the pit area. That way he wouldn't have to walk, he wouldn't have to get wet if it rained, and he could help get things ready while we were waiting for the courier. Jeff would have none of that. He was walking down to the gate to meet the courier because that's the way it had been set up. I continued to urge him to call and change the arrangements slightly. It's a courier I said, they get paid to go where they're told. They don't care if they have to drive an extra 3/4 of a mile. They do this stuff all the time. Jeff said "That's the difference between you and me. You expect people to do stuff just because you ask him to. I don't operate that way. I told them we're meeting at the gate, I'm not going to ask them to drive into the track.". Okay, so maybe he was a little cranky from the stress and with having been awake for 24 hours straight. I'll get busy on the unpacking myself and Jeff can walk to the gate to get his papers signed.

The trailer was total chaos. I didn't even know where to start gathering stuff to carry in the trunk of the coop and I was only guesstimating how much crap we could carry. So I just started going through the cabinets and everything and grabbing what I thought we'd need. Half the stuff I was thinking was there wasn't.

In case I had to make several hits to get the car to run properly, I wanted to get an early start, and as soon as I saw anybody getting into the staging lanes I rolled the coop in as well. The playing around I have done with the clutch tamer at Stanton really paid off. The launch on that first pass was nearly perfect. Also I had looked up my notes and figured out where my shock settings were supposed to be. Upon checking them on Sunday, they were about 15 clicks to stiff. Correcting that is what solved the rear wheel hop at launch. Words cannot express how jubilant I was after that pass on Monday morning, after all that we had been through and as many times as I considered dropping out, this beautiful run down the drag strip happened! Jeff was as happy as I was! I knew it was going to be a great day and a good week, and I was certain that before the week was over I would have the coop running in the nines.

Love the daily updates. You sure you toe arent married? Which one of you is telling the truth. Im going with Jeff. He knows how to spell COUPE, Call your car the "Henhouse" if its a COOP.LOL

Ksj, coop is voice to text in action. My fingers are to big and the screen is too small to fix everything. . Am I contradicting Jeff? Hope not, I think he's doing a great job. I was just trying to fill in some detail.

Your coupe was the very first drag week car shown in the MAK tv youtube video from day 1 as well. Such an awesome hot rod!

Nick, from the time I started the build, you've been the hot rods #1 fan. That motivates me to keep moving forward!

You have an awesome car Joel...and one helluva trunk monkey! Love the story!

One of the first real hot rods I ever saw and loved from the internet was Jimmy White's '32 Coupe with a 392, open headers, and 6 Strombergs. Your car is on another level entirely, it's just perfect!

Nick, that's cool because I was influenced by Jimmy White's hot rod as well. I loved the noisy Hemi, the multiple carburetors, and the raw, no frills, rough around the edges look that says it's all business. But I knew I could improve upon it in many ways.

I saw his car in person back in 2019 at the street drags in Santa Barbara. Your coupe is so much more nicely built! What's your eventual ET goal with it?

Waiting on more updates from Jeff but it looks like he is busy working on Mustangs in his shop.

I know he's working on another chapter. Not sure when it will be ready.

My immediate goal for the coup is to get it into the 970s. Long-term I'd like to see a 950 out of it.

– Mark Twain
"Stay away from negative people. They have a problem for every solution."


i know this is WAY off topic, but i just noticed it Joel. [i'm blind in one eye, and can't see out of the other. ]

but this describes a guy around here we call "happy bob", perfectly !


"now back to our regularly scheduled program"................

Out of a "Street" car, any street car, that is a hell of a goal...Its been my goal as well...I hit 9.89 so far...There is more in mine, but is there that much more in yours? I have never seen an NA G1 Hemi run 9's in anything before. I am super impressed....How many cubes is it?

Drag, it is 060 over with a 5/8 stroker so it's 468 cubes. The car went 137 at Charlotte in 2018 in not the best air. If you look up 137 on the calculator, that would be 9.70s if the chassis is optimized. And that's without any serious dyno tuning, no experimenting with cams, and I have a couple of other intake manifolds I can test as well, one of them is a short runner eight carb and the other is a dual quad tunnel ram. I think it's got 950s in it. The big question mark is the nut behind the wheel. Can he, will he devote enough time and energy to optimize the car?

I have to admit, and I totally blame drag week, I am jaded. After hanging around a bunch of hardcore racers who run eights, sevens, and even sixes in their streetcars, my 10-second streetcar seems ashamedly slow.

The Hemi Coupe got its picture in the PRI newsletter! I was hoping the picture like this would surface.

Pretty cool Joel! Where's Jeff been hiding?

now THAT is a picture Joel !
out of curiosity, what rate springs do you run on the front coil overs, and what are shock settings set at ?
TIA !

Awesome picture!

YES!

GREAT picture !
Love the coupe.

Mark

That's a killer pic!!! You're definitely going to get into the 9's in short order too, like you said you've got the mph for it for sure.

Random question, what do leaf spring people do for extra load carrying capacity when on Drag Week with a trunk full of garbage? I saw you put spring rubbers in your coils, are there any other tricks?