I was scheduled to load up on Friday afternoon and anticipated an enjoyable weekend of racing at Tri State Raceway in Earlville. The day was fairly warm, but tolerable. By early afternoon, I had fueled up the tow truck, hooked up the trailer and was ready to load by 4:30. Everything was going as planned except my good buddy Joe at INS – who is always there to help me load – was working overtime. I have unloaded by myself on one occasion, but it is impossible for me to load by myself, so I waited for Joe to finish working.
We loaded the INS Dragster and we headed for Earlville. We left for the track around 8 p.m., and with almost a two hour tow ahead of us, realized there wouldn’t be much leisure time once we were at the track. I arrived around 10 p.m., had a little conversation with a friend and fellow racer, had a beverage and called it a night. I was up early the next morning as I knew there would be plenty to do prior to racing. The morning came quickly. There never seems like a lot to do until you actually have to start doing it.
Fortunately, I do as much preparation at home prior to leaving as possible — fill the fuel tank, charge the batteries, fill with water, empty overflow tanks, and prime the oil pump. Even with all that, you still have to put the nose on the car (easy), set up the weather station inside and out, pay, get teched, and warm up the car.
Most of the time is spent expelling air from the rear tires as I always load with 9# air in the rear tires and race with 6#. Trust me, it takes a long time to remove 3# air. We were ready for our first run around 10 a.m. and the first pass netted us a 7.71 which was expected since the humidity and water grains were already climbing.
Everything went fine except for some oil on the rear wing and the parachute. It was a little slimy cleaning up but not too bad. No sooner had I fueled the car, checked tires, and put the charger on, than they called us back to the staging lanes. I waited as long as I could (until the third call), then got in line. I was not able to enter my weather data due to lack of time. Making a good time run then entering the weather data 1/2 hour later is not supposed to be how this works as things can change drastically in a half hour.
Needless to say, I was not happy. Once in the staging lanes, I started to calm down. We made our second time run with only a slight delay and things seemed to go well. No more oil on the back of the car and we ran a 7.73. I returned to my pit stall, fueled the car, charged the battery and finally had enough time to enter the weather data from both runs. It had really gotten quite warm by now so I figured the car would slow down some on the next run.
Sometime later we headed for the staging lanes for round three of practice. Just as it was about my turn to enter on to the track, we were all given the dreaded “Take your helmet off…it’s going to be awhile” signal. Unfortunately, one of my fellow racers had a really sickening problem “oiling the track”. In this case, the sound was that of a blown motor. Not good!
After a 45 minute cleanup, we got the “good to go” signal. The only concern so far was that the track official was looking under the car for an oil leak, since after my burnout, there seemed to be a few drops of oil on the track. They were mopping up in front of me as I backed up. I had noticed in the previous run that the rear seal in the transmission was leaking a little. I never noticed any significant amount of oil, and the official never stopped me from making my run.
Unfortunately, all of this took a little extra time which for some reason broke my concentration. I staged immediately lighting both bulbs, and, somehow managed to catch the edge of the go pedal and had a terrible light, terrible 60′ time and basically screwed everything up. The info on this run was useless. So with that, it’s back to the trailer and get ready for first round of racing.
It was time for a quick sandwich, get something cold to drink, and head for the staging lanes when called. It had continued to get even warmer and the humidity had gotten worse. Selecting a run number “dial in” was just a plain guess. I chose a 7.74 for my dial and hoped for the best. Around 1 p.m. we were called to staging lanes for our first round of racing, and of course I was hoping for the best. Two of the last three trips here had seen us going home early. I certainly wanted to avoid that again. As it came my turn to roll into the water box, something didn’t feel right. I started my burnout which I quickly aborted, dropped the transmission into first gear and went to pull forward hoping my gut feeling was incorrect. Well, all I can say is “here we go again”.
The official starter stepped in front of me and instructed me to back up and pointed to the underside of the car. I backed up, turned toward my pit stall and tried to pull forward, but with very little movement. With a little help I made it back to my pit stall, and of course once there I discovered the seal was leaking much worse. My weekend was over because of a $20.00 seal. What makes matters even worse? I have an extra seal at home, but who would think a brand new seal would leak!
