I arrived home at 11:45 pm last night after a harried and hectic, yet totally enjoyable weekend in northern Nevada. We left Friday afternoon at 4:30 pm with the Charger in tow. I had just installed the new driveshaft, trans tail housing and electronic speedo earlier in the day, and all the other details could be addressed once we arrived. We rolled into Ely, NV at 3am to our glorious Motel 6 accomodations, at which they so graciously "left the light on for us." Registration opened at 8:30 and tech ended at noon, so we needed to finish up some details. First and foremost was the discovery made at 3:15 am thet the rules required arm restraints in the 125mph class, and we had missed that completely up to that point. After some discussion and debates, including the possibility of having to drive to Reno to get some from Summit, we decided to make our own. A pair fo dog leashed and collars ended up fitting the bill perfectly, and if you didn't know any better, they looked the same as everyone else except without the padding. Second up was the speedo that still didn't work. I had just installed a new electronig 160mph Autometer speedo but it would not read at all. It powered up, but no signal. I had to tear the dash apart again to finally find the signal wire had come loose. A quick reconnect and we were on our way to calibrate. Finally, we got through registration and passed tech at noon, so we had the rest of the day to socialize, and eventually work on the alignment, adjust tire pressures, and go over course notes. We even found a guy on the pit crew of one of the 150 class racers who would put his rental car on our trailer and drive our truck down to the finish line. That saved us over 300 miles of back tracking after the race. For the first time, unlike last time, we were not in a mad rush every second prior to race day.


...or so we thought...


Race day arrived at 6am, and we were ready. We caravaned out with our police escort to the staging area where we were sorted out to go down to the starting grid. We would be 52nd to leave. Our turn came around, and we rapidly got up to our target speed, and with 9.5 miles, we had brough our average speed up to 125 mph as planned. We then bumped the speed up to 130 to bank some time for the windy section called the narrows, where we wanted to be able to slow down to about 95 to make the corners without drama. We had passed flag stations 1 and 2 (out of 9) when it happened. A red flag 28 miles into the race. That means pull over and stop as fast as safely possible. Red flags are oly pulled when there is a wreck thar requires clearing off the road or medical attention. We turned on the emergency radios and listened in. After 1/2 hour of simply "stand by" we were instructed to procede at the posted speed limit to flag station 3 and await further instructions. In this situation, the race is either called off, or restarted from stations 3 and 6. In the case of the racers restarting from 3, all our progress up to 3 is thrown out and we essentially start over again with the remaining 59.88 miles of the 90 mile race. Sounds good but when all your notes are for manipulating a moving average starting at 0 and progressing over 90 miles, the notes now mean precisely squat. ...and thats the better of the 2 scenarios. The racers restarting from 6 had to throw out everything from 3 to 6 and try and get the moving average they had from 0 to 3 to work with the new average from 6 to finish and come out on target. The stick with that is that most guys didn't know exactly where they were at 3, much less reestablishing a new average for the remaining 28 miles of the course that would allow them to get through the narrows at a reduced speed and back on track before the finish. Everyones notes are progressive, and having to figure out a restart means all your target times are useless.

Back to the situation at hand. After 1.5 hours we were ready to restart. I had been burning up a ball point pen madly recalculating by hand all of my new times for waypoints. I also realized that although my new and improved notes for this race told me where and what all the turns were, I didn't use enough fixed reference points, like mile markers to check my time against. I was forced to use things like rumble strip start and end points for reference.

The flag fell and we were off again and up to nearly 140 right off the bat to build our cushion back into the average before we hit the narrows. Upon entry to the narrows we had banked 1:12, so we slowed all the way down to 90 for the 5 mile section of tight turns. My "accelerate to 125" mark was the beginning of the next rumble strip... ...which no longer existed. by the time we saw the next waypoint we were over a minute behind and only had 11 miles to go. We put it at 138 (we can only do 140 or we'll be DQ'd) for the duration and still came in about 40 seconds late. To put this in perspective, last time we were 4 seconds back and came in 13th. Positions 1-4 were less than 1 second off.

After the race, we started looking for the guy with my truck, and we learned a bit of info... It was his driver that wrecked at 165mph. Tread separation of the left front caused them to veer off the road and tumble end over end for nearly 300 feet. Both driver and navigator were ok, but still had to be taken in for observation. We stayed around and helped him get the car recovered after the race.

End result: 9th place. All but 2 of our class were caught in the restart, so it was really just a crap shoot. Winner was 1.5 seconds off, 2nd and 3rd were 2 seconds off, 4th was 8 seconds off, everyone else was over 30.



Here's a few shots of the Mustang. It left the road just to the left of where the tail pipe is blocking your view of the road. It cleared the barbed wire fence the jackets are hanging from. It was a real "R" Mustang with huge amounts of custom fab done, including setting the engine back in the chassis, etc... The owner/driver owns a performance shop for this type of racing and has been doing this race and many like it for 15+ years.

Still one of my all time favorite body styles. That race is still on my bucket list. What running gear are you running? Very cool rig!!!!

Thanks for posting! And Im glad to hear the mustang occupants were OK!

Silver State is on my Bucket List too, that sounds like a blast!

GREAT story Dan... We missed you at PAO, but what you did was sooo much more way cooler...


Glad you had fun and the car performed well..

Fly-by at 130 mph

Great read. Thanks for posting.
I have been reading about this race and been facinated for years.
Too bad about the R car .......... I saw a couple of those when they rolled out.
I deliver new cars in the upper midwest and they were definitely the bull stud of the domestic new car world when they were released.
Your chariot isn't what I'd consider typical for this kind of deal and that's probably why it strikes me as so cool !
Awesome stuff.

You have done what so many of us dream about at night. Good read, glad everyone made it alright!

I would love to run my car in that race one day. Although I think you guys would out run me pretty easily.

How is your car setup? Big block/Small Block? What Transmission? Gear ratio, suspenion... you know... all the details.

Thats so cool Dan......I would love to do something like that!

Man that looks like a blast............kudos to ya!

To those who asked, the only differences between it now and in the drag race setup are the rear axle, torque converter and rolling stock. I ditched the Dana 60 with 4.10's and spool for an 8 3/4 with 2.76's and an open diff. All new gears, axles and bearings, backlash set at .012" to allow for the extra heat from sustained speed and an extra pint of lube to keep things happy and cool. The trans is a 727 T-flite with a reverse manual VB in it. The converter is a custom built Coan 10" with 3000 stall, but only 1.5% slip after that. It runs cool as a cucumber, never over 180 even when doing 140 mph into a 30 mph headwind for 1/2 hour. I have a separate pump and cooler that I can turn on of the temps got too high, but I have not needed it yet. Suspension is stock in the front and Caltracs and monoleaves in the rear. I definitelty need a bigger front sway bar in the front and likely stiffer torsion bars, as the car has a strong tendency to oversteer as is. The rolling stock is a set of 17x8 Cragar "Soft Eight" steels with Goodyear Eagle GT 235/55-ZR17 on the rear and 225/45-ZR17 on the front. Engine is unchanged from drag race setup. 496" 440source stroker in the original 440 block, solid flat cam running .597/.607 lift and 259° duration putting out just shy of 600HP @ 5800 and 600 ft-lb from 3100 - 5000. With the Holley 1000HP, it gets about 3 MPG around town, but 10 - 11mpg at 125 mph. I turn 4850 at 140mph. Overdrive would be nice, but there is gobs of power on tap if you want to accelerate. We ran most of the race at 38% - 44% throttle doing 125 - 140.

I can dig into more details if anyone wants, but that's the basic setup. We'll be running in the 140 class in May, and will be adding an air dam with splitter, heavier front sway bar and torsion bars and then lowering the car about 2" in the rear and 3" in the front with a pair of the Magnumforce drop spindles and a little bar adjustment. I've already got the tubular upper arms to get some more caster in the front to hopefully tighten up the high speed wander.

In car footage at 135 mph

Are you done with drag racing?

By no means! I'm in the process of swapping the rear axle and converter back so I can run ANRA at Famoso next month.

I will tell you this, however, this type of racing is VERY addictive, and there are about 6 - 7 good events throughout the year.

So ... who was top-dog in the "USA" cars ? ... Gottlieb still right-up-there ??

R.J.'s record was passed up, and I don't know if he still runs. The current record now stands at 207.7801 mph set by Chuck Shafer and his navigator Gary Bockman at the May 2000 event. Ironically, Chuck died a few years ago at 5mph in a tractor roll-over accident.

There was an attempt made for the record at this event by a group from Norway, but overheating issues and a 30mph head/cross wind squelched it. They still finished with an average of nearly 190, but a far cry from the record. The car had the power and good credentials, but it was not to be.

WHAT is scarey to me ... is the way I hear the wind blows and the sand goes onto the road. Do they have enough spotters to cover that ?

As far as your rear end gearing?... I would consider an 8 1/4 ... and a 2.21 ratio !

Wow Dan..... that is just too cool in too many ways

Quote:

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R.J.'s record was passed up, and I don't know if he still runs. The current record now stands at 207.7801 mph set by Chuck Shafer and his navigator Gary Bockman at the May 2000 event. Ironically, Chuck died a few years ago at 5mph in a tractor roll-over accident.

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Yes, very sad indeed. He had recently finished a new car to attempt resetting/breaking his own record, his widow sold it to a good friend of mine who will be preparing it for a run to do what Chuck never had the chance to do. It's a car built specifically for the Silver State event, full tilt NASCAR chasis, W8 R3 small block, Petty fiberglass Intrepid body, several setups for the induction, one of which is a fuel injetion system with a Procharger, should make well over 1,000 sustainable HP for the run. It looks like I'll be riding shotgun as the Navigator.....Now THAT is a scarey prospect!

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