[NataSS Inc]

What a f***** week. Here is a quick run down of events. I could write a 4 page essay on everything that happened but this about sums it up.

-14 hour drive, arrive in Battle mountain
-pass tech inspection first time through
-sheer 2 HS rocker arms and trash the widnage tray in the valve cover on practice run but was still able to run 150mph on 7 holes.
-With ALOT of help from other competitors, come up with 2 factory rocker arms and pedistol. Do field surgery on an LS1 in hotel parking lot. Car runs great.
-Jim Macklaviane (sp) from GM high tech performance does a photo shoot on Mine and Bills car for future magazine article.
-Wife gets to navigate for a friend in a faster class.
-Car runs flawlessly over first leg of race.
-Run into a rain storm at 140mph on the race slicks, had to drop car to under 80mph just to keep it on the road.
-once out of the rain we lost a TON of time. Had to keep the car at 150mph over the rest of run.
-rain caused 3 other cars to slow down. next thing you know, you have a 63 galaxie, 65 dart, 96 vette and myself doing 150mph fender to fender passing each other and going through corners in a pack. That was a fooking BLAST!
-cross the finish line at about 149mph but still 5mph slow overall.
-pull into turnaround point, rear end pinion seal is completely out of the rear end and is puking all of its fluid onto the ground. After alot of direction and help from others we get the seal back into the rear end and are ready to make the return run
-the #8 studebaker comes off the road at over 180mph and the race is called and scored after only the first leg.
-since we didnt get the return run to make up the lost speed we ended up taking 6th out of 9 in the 130 class.
-Wife ends up taking 2nd place with Craig Homechick in the 145mph class. And is making sure to rub my nose in it.

[NataSS Inc]

One of the studs sheered and thats what caused the rocker to come off. I called harland about it today and they want to charge me for replacements. LOL, get fucked! the guy even admited that the first batch of bolts they used werent as strong as the second ones. It was OBVIOUSLY what caused the problem and they want me to pay for replacements. These will be coming out of the car and I will be going to Jesels.

Here is a link to the site that has a few pictures but 5 or 6 of them have all the HS rocker arm pics.
http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=4286380569

I didnt take alot of pics because I was to busy on the car and needed to focus on driving. My buddy that went with me is a photo journalist and took over 30 rolls of film and 2 hours of broadcast quality vid on his 4K dollar video camera. He also got fly by vid of the studebaker about 2 minutes before it crashed at 198mph (thing sounded like a rifle shot going by). It was hard to believe that last year I was navigating in that car at the same speed. And he also got fly by of Todd Carpenters UNL. class 95 camaro at 219mph. He was about 30ft from the road when they went by. To give you an idea of how fast that camaro is, they seperated the UNL class cars by 3 minutes. By the time the studebaker hit the first speed trap where brandon got the vid (about 50 miles into the run) Carpenter was only 28 seconds behind the stude (IMG:http://www.frrax.com/rrforum/style_emoticons/default/blink.gif)


Believe it or not, what caused the studebaker to come off the road was CRICKETS. Yup, crickets. "Mormon Crickets" as they are called infest the entire area. MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS of them. in the mornings and evenings it is especially bad. entire sections of road covered in crickets as big around as your thumb. He was in a corner above 180mph and hit a patch of them causing him to go sideways and right off the road. No amount of down force would have saved him (he did walk away). Not like he needed it though, the car has a top fuel looking spoiler on the back of it.