Herbold Racing!

I know I haven’t posted a blog entry for many weeks now! But today’s entry is going to be a whopper making up for that, so you’ll forgive me!

Last Friday was a huge day for me. But before I get to that, I’m going to catch you all up on what I have been doing over the past few weeks. Since my last entry on August 3rd only three things have happened.

The first thing was that I returned the allegedly defective 5" tachometer back to Summit Racing and ordered a replacement. The replacement is not going to be the same model - I’m bumping up to a more expensive model with the lit needle. That way it’ll be easier to see where the needle is when watching playbacks from the video camera. Summit Racing just sent me an email saying that they got the shipment and I’m waiting to hear more from them to figure out what the next step is going to be. In the meantime, I mounted the smaller tachometer that came with the car when I bought it, back on the dash so I could move on with my plans!

The second thing that happened was that I went to the Cool Country Cruise that occurred on route 66 in Williams, Arizona. I was invited by my friends Jerad and Erik - they brought their cars there. Erik’s Boss Mustang won best Ford! I enjoyed the show, but what really killed me was that I forgot to bring my camera. There were a ton of Mopars there, but it seemed like every 5th car was a Bel Air!

The final thing that happened was that Jerad and his family came over to my place for a little get together. While he was here we put on the transmission blanket - that was the last thing we figured we had to do before the car would pass technical inspection at the track. And now we get to the good part of this blog entry…

Friday, August 22nd 2008, will be a day I’ll never forget for as long as I live. I had loaded up the Duster onto my trailer the day before. The whole day Friday I had a bear of a time concentrating on work! I kept watching the clock. Tick tick tick tick… it was driving me mad. As soon as it displayed 4:00 PM, I disappeared faster than a ninja on crack. I got home and loaded up basically my entire garage onto my truck - anything I figured there was the remotest possibility that I would need it. Floor jacks, jack stands, motor oil, tranny fluid, wires, tools, rags, funnels, multimeter, and so on. I also grabbed my jacket, helmet, and gloves. My wife packed up the chairs, cameras, food, and drinks into our van. I hooked my truck up to the trailer and drove it to the track with my wife following me there with the kids. My aunt and uncle met us there as well as Jerad and Erik and Gary. Jerad’s family also went. So I had a pretty big cheering section that night in the stands.

It was "Friday Night Challenge" at the strip but only maybe 15 cars were there, and only 5 of those had slicks. So we pretty much had the entire track to ourselves. The weather was 95 degrees, track elevation is 1480 feet, barometer read 29.77, and relative humidity was at 27 percent.

After we unloaded the car in the pits, Jerad, Gary, and Erik did their thing and ran the motor. Jerad set the tachometer up to light up the shift light at 5000 RPM. Gary, a long time racer, determined that I needed new spark plugs. The one thing that I did not have. But we figured that the car would be okay for racing anyway. We needed to heat up the car to check the fluid levels so Jerad got in the passenger side (there is no seat there, he sat directly on the floor) and I drove the car down the return lane all the way to the end. At that point, Jerad got out of the car and instructed me to practice a couple of launches and a couple of burnouts. After that, we drove back down and stopped by the technical inspection area. The car passed with flying colors! I was ecstatic… I was actually going to get to race tonight!

My wife offered me dinner - I postponed that… I didn’t want to risk getting so nervous to start chucking up digested burger pieces. But really, I wasn’t that nervous. I didn’t really feel any butterflies in my stomach, but I did feel excited and really anxious to get on the strip to do my first pass. So I put my jacket on and drove into staging lane 8.

There was pretty much no waiting time at all, the track was ready to let me go. So Jerad signaled me through the water box but I went too far and had to reverse back down a little bit. Burnout time! I put the car into second gear, pressed the brakes as hard as I could, and held down the line lock button. Then I released the brake and then hammered the gas pedal. The car roared to life hitting 5000 RPM very quickly - and so I shifted into third. The tires were smoking and the car did not move at all - I was surprised at how well the sticky track held my front tires. The car was sliding all over the place when I practiced my burnouts at the top of the return lane. Anyway, then I let go of the line lock button and due to inexperience, let go of the gas pedal too quickly. That stalled the motor. There was so much smoke going through that I thought I had destroyed the car! Jerad signaled to me that everything was okay - telling me to start the car! Feeling better, I fired the car back up, and revved the motor a couple of times to clean out the carburetor.

Jerad motioned me forward to the spot where the first staging light would come on. Then I inched forward until the second staging light came on. At this point, inexperience reared its ugly head again and a fleeting thought ran through my head… "what gear am I in?" Of course I was in first gear, but looked over anyway. By the time I looked back the tree had already counted down to the last amber light. GO! I release the brake and push on the gas pedal. In the blink of an eye I’m moving faster in the car that I’ve ever taken it. I see the needle moving very quickly towards 5000 RPM so I decide to shift. Damn that beast called inexperience, I threw the shifter back too much and ended up in third gear. Halfway down the track at around 4500 RPM in third gear, I started hearing and feeling loud popping sounds. I let go of the gas a little bit and realized the car was just backfiring so I push the gas pedal a little more. Throughout that whole run I don’t think I ever got the gas pedal down more than 80 or 90 percent. I see a green light go on at some point on the track and I realized that was it… I’ve crossed the stripe. How much time went by? If you asked me right then I would have sworn no more than 5 seconds! I let go and let the car slow down all the way to the end of the track and turn into the return lane.

Halfway down the return lane, I roll down the windows and grab my time slip - then I continue on back down to the pits where my cheering section is waiting for me. I kill the ignition and fuel pump but leave the water pump running. Then I opened the door and stepped out of the car a man reborn.

My crew was telling me that the reason the car was backfiring and having a hard time getting beyond 4500 RPM in 3rd gear was because of fuel starvation. The old Holley Blue fuel pump just wasn’t putting out enough fuel. The pump needs to be replaced, but we can continue racing the way it is now - the car is just not going to show it’s true potential.

My second pass was the best pass of the night, performed with the least amount of mistakes. The biggest mistake I made was not holding down the brake hard enough while foot braking it. The car lurched forward a bit and I ended up deep staging. I launched the car at around 1900 RPM and was able to shift through all the gears, ending up with the quickest ET for the night.

For my third pass, I again did not press the brakes hard enough while foot braking it - the car crawled forwards. But I managed to launch at 2800 RPM. But the real kicker is this - for some reason my brain signals misfired when I saw the green light on the tree go on… it sent a signal to my arm to shift. So as I was launching I shifted into second gear. Argh! Then at 5000 RPM I shifted into third and this time I pushed the gas all the way down to the floor. The backfiring was pretty bad but I managed to get the car to it’s fastest MPH of the night - 107.132 MPH.

I was going to do a fourth pass but an altered car making its run ended up in the dirt at the end of the track. Poor guy must have lost his brakes. So we decided it was time to go home. I couldn’t really sleep that night - I kept doing runs in my head all night long with a permanent grin on my face.