Re: National Meet drag racing

From: jon@dakota-truck.net
Date: Mon May 22 2006 - 15:25:34 EDT


Terrible Tom <SilverEightynine@aol.com> wrote:

: jon@dakota-truck.net wrote:
:> For those of you who will be attending the National Meet, you
:> probably already know that we are planning to put in an appearance
:> at Bandimere Speedway on wednesday

: Yep - I'll be in on the drag racing. Never done it before and I'm
: looking forward to trying it out :)

: We'll see what happens...

   On a related subject, there are likely people who are (justifiably)
concerned about thrashing on the vehicle that they are depending on to
bring them hundreds or even thousands of miles back home. For those of
you who are concerned about parts breakage but would still like to
participate, here is a possibility for you to consider:

   Essentially what you can do is to use a throttle stop. Wether you
get fancy and rig something up on the thottle linkage or go Red Green
with it and just duct tape a couple of strips of wood underneath the
accelerator pedal. This makes "full thottle" to be only 3/4 of normal
full throttle, or 50%, whatever you want. Obviously your trap speed and
ETs are going to to be less than usual, but in bracket racing, absolute
numbers mean nothing; the only thing that matters is consistency. As
long as your throttle stop keeps those butterfly valves at the same point
all the time, you will still have your consistency, but the drivetrain
won't be under anywhere near as much stress as it would be during a full-on
quarter mile pass. This doesn't take all of the risk out of it of course,
you still have to keep the vehicle between the lines and out of the
guardrail, but presuming that you drove it to the track without incident,
that shouldn't be a problem. :-)

   I made a reference before to possibly doing the bracket racing
thing with the rental jeep. I'm not sure if that will be able to
happen at the same time as I run the bracket race itself, but if
it does, I will definitely be using a throttle stop.

   Recently, I have been getting these strange, homesick feelings
calling me back to the drag strip :-) so I have been thinking
about trying to get out there more often, but also keeping the
costs down as much as possible. (i.e. no breakage...) So, if I do
start going back to the track regularly, I will likely use a throttle
stop. If I've done some mods or something, I can make a few full
power passes to see what the car is capable of, but then engage the
throttle stop to get it into "bracket race" mode for some time trials.

-- 
                                          -Jon-

.- Jon Steiger --- jon@dakota-truck.net or jon@jonsteiger.com -. | 67 Dodge Coronet, 70 Plymouth Barracuda, 76 Peugeot TSA | | 78 Dodge B100, 90 Dodge Dakota Convertible, 92 Dodge Ram 4x4 | | 96 Dodge Dakota, 96 Suzuki Intruder 1400, 96 Kolb FireFly | | 99 Jeep Cherokee 4x4, 01 Dodge Ram 3500 CTD | `--------------------------------- http://www.jonsteiger.com --'

. . .------------------------------------------------------------------. | Make your plans NOW to attend the National DML Meet in Colorado! | | Date: July 15-23, 2006 - More info: http://meet.dakota-truck.net | `------------------------------------------------------------------'



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