The 72 Demon Follies....
So with the new front end alignment settings, I took the car back for another Footbrake Friday event on 10/28. Weather was perfect - in the low-mid 50's and sunny. DA's from 350 to -150! This oughta be good - no more pulling to the left!! I had rotated the slicks so figured I should heat them a tad more than usual before the first run. Track photographer is outstanding and got me this pic.
Well, that was about all that was good on the first run as in the RH lane, somewhere before the 1/8 mile point, the car decided it wanted to rub some paint off on the RH wall. It steered itself to the right and refused to come back! So I had to lift to keep it off the wall. Off to the pits we go. I re-centered the preload side to side on the CalTracs since I had them biased to keep the car from going left. I thought let's try that first before any other changes. The next 2 passes set my personal bests - both 11.14's at about 118. While not perfectly stable going down the track, I didn't want to make any more changes. Here are the 2 slips:
Yippee - some new bests! Always happy to see those and the car seemed "ok" going down the track. So rather than keep running time runs, I just waited for eliminations. They didn't start those until about 7:30pm and the temp was falling fast - down to about 49 when I went up for round 1. Took the LH lane, had an .049 light to his .311 (his was a 12 sec car) and basically had him covered at the top of 1st gear. But soon thereafter, the car wanted to drift toward the center stripe and would not come back so I had to lift. Saw that I still had him covered and went back on the throttle and car got squirrely and lifted again, this time for good and just let him go. By the time I got back to the trailer, it was covered in dew as were my lawn chairs - very damp.
My conclusion is my car may not have liked the dew on the track but it clearly doesn't take much to upset it going down the track. Things MUST change for next year!! I cannot race a car that I can't reliably get down the track in my lane. This front suspension WILL get revised and reworked to get some proper caster and then address this toe-in/toe-out issue. Not sure which upper control arms I'll get but you can bet they'll be adjustable.
So I'm done racing for this year. Had a lot of fun with the car at the track as well as on the street. Got it down to 11.14 @ 118 in the cool fall air and with some (hopefully) new shoes for it too next year (I won't tell you how old those slicks are!), perhaps we can get some 11.0's at some point. I have to say to anyone that will listen is if you're building an engine, a 408 (or I'm sure a stroked 340 too) is a great way to go. These things will make you grin from ear-to-ear every time you drive the car!!
Over the winter, I'll work to get the suspension right and hopefully be back next year for some more racing and good times.
So with the new front end alignment settings, I took the car back for another Footbrake Friday event on 10/28. Weather was perfect - in the low-mid 50's and sunny. DA's from 350 to -150! This oughta be good - no more pulling to the left!! I had rotated the slicks so figured I should heat them a tad more than usual before the first run. Track photographer is outstanding and got me this pic.
Well, that was about all that was good on the first run as in the RH lane, somewhere before the 1/8 mile point, the car decided it wanted to rub some paint off on the RH wall. It steered itself to the right and refused to come back! So I had to lift to keep it off the wall. Off to the pits we go. I re-centered the preload side to side on the CalTracs since I had them biased to keep the car from going left. I thought let's try that first before any other changes. The next 2 passes set my personal bests - both 11.14's at about 118. While not perfectly stable going down the track, I didn't want to make any more changes. Here are the 2 slips:
Yippee - some new bests! Always happy to see those and the car seemed "ok" going down the track. So rather than keep running time runs, I just waited for eliminations. They didn't start those until about 7:30pm and the temp was falling fast - down to about 49 when I went up for round 1. Took the LH lane, had an .049 light to his .311 (his was a 12 sec car) and basically had him covered at the top of 1st gear. But soon thereafter, the car wanted to drift toward the center stripe and would not come back so I had to lift. Saw that I still had him covered and went back on the throttle and car got squirrely and lifted again, this time for good and just let him go. By the time I got back to the trailer, it was covered in dew as were my lawn chairs - very damp.
My conclusion is my car may not have liked the dew on the track but it clearly doesn't take much to upset it going down the track. Things MUST change for next year!! I cannot race a car that I can't reliably get down the track in my lane. This front suspension WILL get revised and reworked to get some proper caster and then address this toe-in/toe-out issue. Not sure which upper control arms I'll get but you can bet they'll be adjustable.
So I'm done racing for this year. Had a lot of fun with the car at the track as well as on the street. Got it down to 11.14 @ 118 in the cool fall air and with some (hopefully) new shoes for it too next year (I won't tell you how old those slicks are!), perhaps we can get some 11.0's at some point. I have to say to anyone that will listen is if you're building an engine, a 408 (or I'm sure a stroked 340 too) is a great way to go. These things will make you grin from ear-to-ear every time you drive the car!!
Over the winter, I'll work to get the suspension right and hopefully be back next year for some more racing and good times.
