Well its 2:48am. According to NHRA’s website its 8 days, 6 hours and 10 minutes until the 57th annual U.S. Nationals begin. We all know its sooner than that. I’m not just talking about the multiple days to get pitted leading up to. From what I have seen, heard, and am now finally experiencing… “The Big Go” is more like a season. Indy is all the buzz this time of year. Some of us have been working since last years Indy to make this year! Growing up, Indy was special to me just because it was 1 of 2 national events that were with in a couple hours drive and we could go watch the pros. Even years later when my father started running divisional races and even a national I still did not realize that the US nationals was quite simply the most prestigious drag race in the world. Only since becoming interested in class racing have I realized this. As I am always saying, I love all forms of motor-sports and all types of cars. I got in to the sport compact deal in my late teens and never looked back. I still love all of the cars and racing that you can see at a NHRA race. However, I believe at the Bowling Green divisional race in maybe 03 I saw the Stock/Super Stock classification guide for my first time. In it I saw that the platform that I was very familiar with on the track and the street was included. I have wanted to run a DSM (Diamond Star Motrors, a Mitsubishi/Chrysler partnership that brought us the Eclipse, Talon, and Laser) since that day. In those days I had given up slightly… OK… A noticeably larger salary to start working in the engine business. To say I no longer had spare money for my own toys was an understatement, and when I eventually had the money I went the fast street car route versus building a stock turbo Mitsubishi because my small part time work customer base wouldn’t relate to class racing. I always had a hard time focusing on that project because there was no competitive racing. Just a few local loud mouths with setups not really matched for any specific racing. So in 08 I decided I would get serious about joining the class racing ranks. I thought it would be simple to throw this little project together and I could probably build 2 of them for what I would part out my big turbo set up for. Wrong. Economy, personal life (for now Ill spare you the details of unexpected single-ness, booze, partying, women and all that)… And of course even in the little fwd classes.. It is not easy to prepare a stock eliminator car with all of the rules.. Some of which are useful, and some I am utterly disgusted with how much time, money, and thought I have put in to making a legal car that goes A to B in one piece.
Unlike my normal antics… I am going to skip a lot of details from the last 2 years and the first
car I was building for the class. A little bit of the third life crisis (the aforementioned booze and women), little bit of this and that. I would of liked to had my blog up and running for most of the last year but I am a one man show trying to build a car, work a full time job, a couple other hustles, and another thing that has slowed my personal race program up is I am in the process of hopefully going legit with my side work, and opening my own engine machine shop by the end of this year! Every extremity I have crossed, nothing official yet. Back to the point. Some of you may be facebook friends with me and followed my close calls and last minute thrashes. Long story almost short. I finally got my car to a divisional race and tech-ed in in Stanton a few weeks ago. The car was not quite ready to go down the track so I didn’t, but I got tech-ed and got my grade point to get on the list for Indy! Looks like that was a bad $1200 investment since the field doesn’t seem like it will fill up and I could of just got my grade point at this weekend’s race in Bowling Green. But in racing, you have to do whatever it takes.
This brings me to where I am now. In the rush to get a new head on the car so I could take the car to Stanton and drive it through tech, I did not CC the chambers. I did tonight. And i’m close on 3 and under on 1 chamber. I have one more day left at my day job this week so I don’t think i’m going to be able to do fix the head in time to make it to Bowling Green this weekend. Hopefully I will have it all buttoned up and ready to test locally this weekend and head for Indy Sunday or Monday! I know one thing.. I will be glad to have this under my belt. Today was my 31st birthday. I still have not celebrated my 30th. I told myself I would not celebrate a birthday till I met my racing goals. So hopefully in a couple weeks i’ll get to celebrate 2 birthday’s, qualifying at Indy, and who knows, maybe a shop opening? Thanks for reading! Ill be doing my version of live from “trying to make it to Indy”, and if I succeed “Indy”. Time for a 3 hour nap!
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What it started as
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Cleaner than where it started.. Still doesn’t look like a race car hahah.
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First time I I could see I could enter a National Event :)
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One of the many wheel/slick combos that did not work for the rules
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Gotta feed the people that help ya.. As long as they do the grilling too haha.
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Huge advantage being able to drive this thing on the street.
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At the day job. Thanks Cristy!
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The bad one! To sink or not to sink? That is the question!
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At Phil’s fams house before tearing it all back apart to CC the head.
