Well, we’ve been delinquent in blog updating, but not in racing updates.  I’ll let Em fill you in on the racing side of the equation, but I’m well overdue in telling you about all the updates I did over the winter to the trailer, and the car.

Last winter was all about the car.  I rewired it from front to back, built a new dashboard, replumbed everything, updated nearly everything there was to update.  And it paid off.  We had a great season last year, finishing 8th in the PNSCA and in the top third in the division.

But the trailer was still in need of a lot of work.  While it generally worked for what we were doing, it surely was not a “looker” on the inside.  Storage was unorganized, things didn’t close quite right, and there was enough leftover stuff from the previous owners to fill every nook and cranny.  The Home Depot particle board cabinets were far heavier than they needed to be, a situation not helped at all with the Pacific Northwest’s constantly wet climate.  Maybe in dry SoCal particle board is OK, but where we lived, there had to be a couple hundred pounds of moisture in those cabinets.

So in early March, the trailer was gutted.  Down to the bare walls.  My good friend and PNSCA president Ed Hauter helped with the tough work, and we cleaned out everything, talking almost 800 lbs. of cabinets and junk to the dump.  The walls got three coats of fresh white paint, the side rails were removed and painted, the 120v electrical was completely checked and rewired as necessary, and preparation was made for new cabinets.

After much research, I ended up going with custom made CTech cabinets, some of the nicest out there.  The new cabinets are not only beautiful, they are light.  Even on the pallets, they weighed less than half the particle board cabinets, with almost twice the storage space.  And they work like a dream.  They have fully roller drawers and self-latching everything.  If it’s closed, it’s latched.  What a dream!

With more than a little help from friends and family, the new cabinets were installed.  Then went in new lighting inside and out, a new pit radio, new speakers outside, and a new air conditioner for those hot summer days.  I even put up new decorative trim to hide the electrical, replacing the dented and tired metal with elegantly curved hi strength plastic.  All fresh and white, and beautifully equipped, the trailer was gorgeous, now both inside and out.

Then I loaded all the gear in, each in its own bin, all carefully labeled.  It looks great, with a place for everything and everything in its place.  I was feeling pretty good.  Until, I finally (after a month of work) took it back to the storage place.  On the drive back, I noticed that the marker lights didn’t work.  Hmmm…

Then Em reminded me that they had failed at the end of last season, and I neglected to fix them.  Great…  When I had the trailer completely apart, with all the wiring just sitting there so I could diagnose and fix it, I forgot to fix the trailer lighting.  So I brought it back, tore it apart, and completely rewired the rest of the lights from the back, all around the top, replacing every light with new LED lights, and running new wires for it all.  Finally, at the very end of the job I found it, a wire pinched between the new cabinets and the wall, shorting out everything.

Frustrating, yes, but at least it was now fixed, and it looks great.  The lights work, the cabinets look great, and we were ready to race.  Until I came to load the car…  I had redesigned the layout to allow the car to go in backward, so there would be plenty of room for a golf cart, the quad, whatever at the back.  I even got new ramps and bumpers to make the door work even smoother.  This all, however, created a million problems.

Number one was that the car scraped the floor going in.  So badly one time that it ripped a huge pizza slice shaped tear in my beautiful new floor (see last year’s trailer update).  To get it in and out, I had to jack the front up, and that’s almost impossible to do with one person.  Even when I did get it in, with the help of the winch, I neglected to realize that putting the engine in front of the trailer wheels would make the trailer very (very, very) tongue-heavy.  The truck handled terribly, almost dangerously, even with the fancy air bags in the truck.

It was back the the drawing board.  At Boise we loaded the car in front first (like always) and it went in and out like a dream.  And it rebalanced the trailer.  That was decided.  But with the new cabinets, the car couldn’t go in as far, so there was no room for the quad.  Ugh.  To quote an old SNL sketch with Roseanne Rosannadanna, “if it’s not one thing, it’s another”.  We loaded the quad in the back of the pickup, and bought a used scooter from Em’s boyfriend to use as pit transportation.  It fits behind the car perfectly, and we hated the old, nasty quad.  But of course, the scooter needs repair and tuneups…  I’ll update you on that at a later time.

Despite all the setbacks, we have a wonderful new trailer, it works wonderfully for our needs, and it looks downright professional.  Maybe it won’t make the car work any better, but we sure like it more, and that can’t hurt.

Getting from where we are all the way to Medford, Oregon for the NHRA Division 6 season ending race is no easy task for us.  It’s over an 8 hour drive from Woodinville, even longer when towing the trailer.  And getting there from Pullman (where Em is these days) is even worse.  The drive would be in excess of 10 hours each way, quite a bit more than makes sense for a weekend.  And the flights all seem to involve a layover in Seattle or Portland for several hours.

If you add all this to the fact that the Medford race is on Friday and Saturday, and not the usual weekend schedule, and it makes for an interesting travel dilemma.  But we worked it out.  I schlepped the trailer down on Tuesday, so that Em’s brother Stephen and I could move him into his dorm room at Southern Oregon University on Wednesday.  SOU is just 20 miles from the track, so that worked out well.  Then I set up the trailer on Thursday, and picked Em up at the airport after midnight.  A quick five hour nap and we were back at the track ready for our Friday test sessions.

Friday went well.  We got three time runs in, and ran only two-thousandths off the number (8.898) in our last test.  We were ready and armed for Saturday’s eliminations.  So we left the track early, grabbed some Mexican food for dinner and hit the hay by 9:00.

Saturday dawned as a beautiful day, if you didn’t count all the smoke from the nearby forest fires.  We got one test run in the morning, but we blew it.  We were a bit nonchalant, and forgot to turn the CO2 bottle on, resulting in a wasted run.  But that’s OK, we had great numbers from the day before, we were armed for bear.

We lined up in round one against one of the heavy hitters.  Steve Williams (no relation) is a VP of K&N, the big automotive filter company, and was 8th in the world last year.  But we were confident, the car was running great, Em was on her game with great lights, we had good numbers, we were ready.  Until we actually ran.

For reasons we couldn’t understand, we ran a 9.01 — way off the mark.  We were baffled.  And the data didn’t help.  For some reason, the car lost a huge amount of time to 60 feet, Em’s light was a relatively slow .037, and there was a weird blip in the RPMs right off the line.  We spent an hour trying to figure it out.

Until we gave up and tried to load the car in the trailer.  First gear was gone.  We had blown the transmission’s planetary gears.  Ugh.  So we loaded up (in second gear), packed up the car for the trip home, and booked Em an early flight home.

We went to say “congrats” to Steve Williams as he lined up for second round.  He said, “I was really surprised to see your car fall back so quickly in that round, I had looked at your time trial numbers and was expecting you to be right there.”  How cool is that.  Respect from a guy who’s competing for the national title.

That made our weekend and capped our year.  Sure we’d blown a transmission, but we’ve got plenty of time to fix that.  And we have accomplished so much this year: 8th in our association, well into the top 1/2 in NHRA Division 6, and we’re currently in the 35th percentile out of almost 1300 cars in the world.  Not too shabby for our first full year of racing.

So even though our season ended with a whimper, we have a lot to be proud of and a lot to look forward to next year.  Look out Division 6!

Bremerton Raceway is always a favorite track of ours and that’s where we were this weekend. Since we don’t spend much time at Pacific Raceways, we consider Bremerton Raceway our home track. The people are friendly, the atmosphere is laid back, and most of all it’s familiar. The only thing better is a Pacific Northwest Super Comp Association race there. The two combined makes for a wonderful weekend everytime.

Mike and Mom Come to Cheer

We are nearing the end of our racing season and this weekend was the PNSCA races #8 and #9. Going into the weekend, we were 7th in points and had a 7 race streak of first round wins. Not a bad place to be! Friday night was spent testing our new launch RPM. We lowered it about 1000 RPM to compensate for the excessive hiking of the front end at the line. With the help of a digital camcorder and some extra eyes, we determined it was lifting the front end just enough. Confident we had fixed the problem, we packed up for a good night’s sleep.

Em and Mike Clean Up

Saturday morning my mom and brother came out to watch us race. It’s always a treat when we get fans and Chris and I couldn’t have been more thrilled. Our time trials were wonderful and we felt ready for the race. I had a preference for the left lane this weekend due to the large bumps in the shut down area of the right lane. With a hardtail car it makes it quite difficult to stop the car without bottoming out or flooding the engine. So, for safety (and sanity) reasons, I opted for the left lane whenever possible. In first round I beat Tom Gresham with a .022 light and a perfect 8.900. Couldn’t ask for anything better! And we extended our first round win streak to eight consecutive races.

Second round I beat Rod Lee with a .013 light and a 8.899. Even though we broke out, he broke out worse… leaving me the win! Now, this is the first time we have made it to third round without a bye or no-show, so Chris and I were thrilled! Coincidentally, this happened to be the semi-final round! I paired up with Bob Woodruff, the points leader, and unfortunately broke out with an 8.888 and a nasty .043 light. I have to admit, I was nervous! Even though we didn’t make it to the finals, we moved up to fifth in the points and we even got our first ever payout!

Getting Ready to Beat Rod Lee

Sunday wasn’t quite as exciting as Saturday. We really had trouble running the number on Sunday and couldn’t quite seem to get a hold of it. Our time trials were all off and my lights were horrible. I think Chris and I both had things on our mind that day and I knew I was dreading the drive back to school that evening. It just goes to show you how important the psychological aspect of drag racing is. If you aren’t there 100% it is nearly impossible to win. We lost in first round with a really slow 8.92. I wasn’t anywhere near where I needed to be on the light either.

We may have ended our streak, but we definitely had a wonderful weekend nonetheless. That first win keeps getting closer and closer!  And we are solidly in the top 10, back in seventh place, only a few points out of fifth.

We have two more races left: a PNSCA Race in Woodburn, Oregon – September 12/13 and a Divisional in Medford, Oregon – September 25/16. Hope to see some of you out there!

EMDUB

There’s an old saying: there are million ways to lose in drag racing.  It’s been true for us, we’re finding all kinds of ways to lose, at least in round two.

We’ve had a remarkable run of success, especially for a team that’s been racing for less than two years.  We haven’t lost in round one in the last seven races, since early May, and that’s wonderful.  But the only way we’ve made it past round two is via a bye or a no-show.  And we have found a lot of different ways to keep that ugly streak alive.

For a couple of months we have struggled with a terrible stumble when the throttle is floored at the line.  Instead of smoothly going up to the RPM we want to leave the line at, the engine would gasp, stumble, and burp, then get up to speed.  The graph here shows you a good run, in green, and the stumble, blatantly visible in red; the vertical line is the green “go” light.  In a sport where hundredths of seconds are a lifetime, clearly a delay like this is a problem.

Green is a good run, red is not

But as you can also see from the graph, in the worst cases the engine would never even make it to the desired RPM before it was time to go.  So the whole run would be messed up, far too slow, and we’d lose in a big way.  Ugh.

The real killer of this problem is that it wasn’t consistent.  One time we’d get a great run, the next it would stumble badly.  As I stood at the line, I could hear it gag, and know we were in trouble.  Then we’d look at the data, and see clearly the issue — we love the Racepak V300SD data recorder, it shows these problems in glaring clarity.  No guessing why we ran so badly, just look at the graph.

We fought the issue for months.  We tried bigger accelerator pump squirters, bigger and smaller air bleeds (both idle and intermediate), even changing the way Em hit the gas.  Nothing worked consistently.  At the Seattle national event, we had it badly on the first time run.  I called Patrick at Pro Systems, our carburetor guru, and discussed several options.  But debugging problems at a 2000 mile distance is hard.

While trying to adjust the level in the float bowls, I asked our friend Rick Dearinger for help.  He discovered that the rear bowl just kept filling, and flooding the engine.  Sometimes.  We took out the needle valve to check it.  And there it was, a chunk of rubber blocking the valve from closing.  Sometimes.

Simple Hole, Complex Problem

The real kicker was that I recognized the piece of rubber.  It came from the fuel line I had installed to solve another problem, the engine was stalling at the end of the track under hard braking.  That rubber line connected the two float bowl vents, and it needed a vent hole cut in it.  I was sure I had cut a nice clean hole.  And yet the little piece we found was a dangler from that cut hole.  Ugh.

But wonderfully, removing that little piece of rubber completely solved the problem, and it ran consistently, and perfectly ever since.  Thanks Rick!  We fixed the problem just in time to get a great second test run in at the Seattle national event.  Then, as Em noted, we went out and beat Rick in round one.  Sorry, Rick…

Leaking CO2 System

We were so excited that we had won a round in a national event, we missed the fact that we had a leak in the CO2 system.  We had noticed it before the first round, but we needed to rush to the staging lanes and we had enough for round one.  Unfortunately, there was not enough for round two.  But we were so giddy, and rushed, for round two, we didn’t fill it.  So we found another way to lose — no CO2, no throttle stop, and no shifting.  Ugh.  And our losing in round two streak was intact.

Then we went on to Mission, British Columbia for both a Pacific Northwest Super Comp Association race and the Canadian National Open event.  We showed up for testing on Friday, and made some wonderful passes.  We are getting a handle on tuning the car.

We still had the nagging CO2 leak, but constant vigilance and topping off the bottle kept it at bay.  These kind of leaks can be tough to find, usually you listen for a hissing.  At the track, where it’s more than a tad noisy, this can be hard.  I recently had some quiet time at home, found it, and fixed it.  I also bought some bubble leak detection fluid, so that I can find and fix these at the track.

But in the true spirit of “if it’s not one thing…”, we had another problem at Mission.  The dreaded red light.  We had all red lights in our first several passes.  Usually I just write this off as something Em can fix:, settle her nerves, add more time in the delay box, something.

Another Red Light in Mission

But this time it was serious.  These were not just red by a few thousandths of a second, but red by a lot, like several hundreths of a second.  Sure we could add that much delay to the box, but there was something else wrong.  We’ve never seen red like this.

While we worked to figure out what the issue might be, we had racing to do. We ran the PNSCA race on Saturday just putting a whole lot in the box and hoping.  It worked in round one, but we lost in round two with a red light to our good friend Ed Hauter.  Again, the round two jinx got us.

After much discussion with friends, we determined that the car was hopping out of the staging beams.  There are infrared beams across the track that control the start and measure the times all down the track.  At the starting line they are just an inch or so off the ground, down track they’re five inches off the ground.

The way you determine when you’re “staged” (ready to race) is by blocking those beams with your front tires.  That also is how they start the clocks, when you leave that beam.  Normally, you leave the beam by rolling forward.  After careful observation, I was able to see that the car was actually doing a small wheelie (lifting the front wheels) out of the beams.  That’s much faster, and was what was triggering our red lights.

Just Right Lift

Normally you want just a little lift (see the picture).  The left wheel will always come up higher, the torque of the engine twists the frame, so you want to look at the right wheel.  This picture is perfect, just a tiny bit of lift on the right front.  But the Mission track was stickier, the car was running great, and that right front was coming up several inches.  Enough to leave the beams, enough to make a red light.

The only way we could think of to solve this was to add weight to the front of the car.  But we didn’t have the time or equipment to do that in the pits.  So on Sunday for the Canadian National Open, Em put .050 (aka “a ton”) in the delay box and we went up for first round.  And it worked.  We had a perfect 8.900 pass and Em had a .005 light.  Of course, this was really a .055 light with the delay…  But we won, qualified #1 in the field, and went on to round 2.

Of course, that .005 was too close, so Em put .060 in the box, figuring a .015 light would be great.  And, if you’ve read this far, you can guess the next chapter of this story.  The weather was sweltering, the track was slipperier, and the front end didn’t hop up quite as much as it had all weekend.  So her otherwise good .020 light turned into a glacial .080 light with the delay, and we lost in round two.  Yet again…

Emily, Jason, Jack, Jenna, Chris

Home again, with a chance to fix things, I had a great talk with our old friend Jack Beckman and he gave me several solutions to the wheelie problem, without adding weight.  As Jack said “why would you take a wonderfully light car and add weight to it?”  We already have trouble with the car bouncing on rough tracks and return roads, why make it worse?  And adding weight is a crap-shoot.  How much is enough?  How do you tune it?  It’s a very clumsy tool.

Instead, Jack gave us two other ways to solve the problem, both easier and more tunable than adding weight.  But I’ll save the details for the next blog.  When we’ve actually fixed it.  And maybe won a round two…

We’re headed into the next race in Bremerton (our local track) next weekend, the 15th and 16th with many things fixed, and a renewed determination to fix our round two jinx.  Hope to see you there.

The past couple of weekends have been great experiences for me and Chris. We have had 9 races so far this season and have won a round in 7 of those races. Also, we haven’t lost in first round in 7 races in a row! Not only have we had luck on the line, but we have gone to our first National event and even raced out of the country! No wonder drag racing season in my favorite time of the year!

Chris and I were determined to make it to a National event this year. Seattle is only a little more than an hour drive from our home, so it seemed like the perfect event. Parking was quite the run-around. Chris parked the trailer in line on Sunday and went back to the track on Wednesday to move it into a pit. Although it took a lot of energy on Chris’s part, it seemed to work well for the crowd of people looking for a pit. We pitted with Chuck Linne and Rick and Gladys Dearinger, some of our friends from the Pacific Northwest Super Comp Association. Thursday was tech and racing started on Friday!

Our first test pass was plagued by that horrible stumble that we’ve had for months now. Chris spent time on the phone with the carb guy in Michigan trying to figure it out. I was convinced there had to be something else wrong, but had no idea where to start. Rick came over to see what was going on and imparted some wisdom on our poor souls. He found small piece of rubber stuck in the needle valve. This rubber prevented the valve from closing and consequently flooded the engine on the line. However, since it was rubber, sometimes the debris itself closed off the valve. This is why our problem was so inconsistent and extraordinarily hard to track down. Rick fixed our horrible problem and we haven’t had a single stumble since!

Staging Against Ty in Round Two

Our other time run was smooth and provided some great data. Chris and I were quite nervous for our first round at such a big event. We got up at the crack of dawn and headed to the track to get ready on Saturday. When we arrived we found out that Super Comp wouldn’t be racing until 5pm. We arrived at the track at 7:30am and had friends coming to watch around 10, as we assumed that’s when we would be racing. We told everyone to stay home for a couple of hours and Chris and I sat back for a long day. When first round FINALLY came around, we accidentally paired up with our good friend Rick. I tried really hard to avoid lining up next to him, but unfortunately it didn’t play out like I had hoped.

But, the cards were in my favor that round and I beat Rick on a wonderful pass, with a .003 reaction time. Our second pass obviously did not have the same luck. We were paired up against Ty Anderson and I had another great reaction time off the line(.010). However, it could tell immediately off the launch that something was wrong. About a two seconds into the run I reached down to see if it had shifted or not and as I thought, it had not. I shifted the car into second gear, but unfortunately I heard the rev limiter hit and knew I had to get out of the run. Chris and I got back to the pits to find out that we had a pretty serious CO2 leak. Without CO2 the car won’t go on the stop and won’t shift. Although we only made it to second round, we couldn’t have been more pleased with our progress.  We won a round at our first national event!

Another Red Light in Mission

This past weekend we headed up to Mission, BC for an Association race and the Canadian National Open. Chris and I have never been to Mission, so we were excited for the chance to get up there. We did some testing on Friday evening and had an Association race on Saturday morning. We had a bunch of problems with red lights but were confident we could tackle the problem.  We made it through first round on a lucky double red light — we were the least red. In second round we lost on another red light to Ed Hauter. On Sunday we made it through round one by with a perfect 8.900 and a 0.005 reaction time, and qualified number 1!  But because we were being so cautious about red lights, we lost in second round on a holeshot. We finally determined that the red light problem was caused by the car hopping out of the staging beams on the line. But you’ll have to wait for Chris’s blog to hear about that one!

We have three more races left this season: Association races in Bremerton and Woodburn, as well as the Medford Divisional. Hope to see some of you out there!

This summer has been by far the busiest summer the Williams family has had in a long time. It’s been quite an adventure keeping up with everything. We go from one trip to another with barely a chance to sleep. I, personally, have been living out a suitcase since May. I have makeshift homes all across the Northwest and have quickly learned that I am the self-proclaimed worst packer in the world. It’s been tough at times, but honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way!

I realize I left you all hanging on the Spokane Divisional in June. After a great weekend right before, we went into the divisional with confidence. After a Boise Divisional fiasco, we were really hoping to have a good weekend. Our time trials landed us with more than enough runs for data and a good handle on the track. After my time spent focusing on mental preparation, I was ready to put it to the test.

Are You Lookin At Me?

I found that most of my issues seem to be calming myself down right after I’m strapped in and keeping my focus on the lights at the starting line. I am beginning to understand and predict my nerves, which has helped me control them. But honestly, focusing on the lights has been a struggle for me. I’ve never thought of myself as someone that had trouble focusing, but it’s really an issue at the line for me. I have so many things running through my mind that I actually forget to focus on the light. I can regularly have stunning lights, but my consistency is solely based on how focused I am at the light.

It has taken me a long to figure this out and I’m currently in the process of figuring out how to harness my attention at the line. For instance, at the divisional I was having great lights until second round when we had a problem at the line with the carburetor. I heard the problem and lost all focus, resulting in a terrible light. This is one of the reasons this sport is so appealing. It is so complicated and keeps you on your toes constantly. Even the best racer needs to constantly be checking himself to make sure he’s staying focused. This is definitely not a simple sport.

Back to the divisional – We were paired up with Chuck Linne in the first round. I had a great light and a fantastic number in the box.  We won fair and square even after he red lit. Chris and I couldn’t believe that we had won a round at a divisional. This was icing on the cake for the wonderful time we had spent in Spokane. We were not quite so lucky second round. We had Emmitt McKillop for this round and all was looking good until I went to step on the pedal. We have had stumbling problems with our carburetor for most of the year, but were sure we had figured it out. However, on this particular run the carb stumbled for over a second before it got up on the chip. I was so freaked out by the stumble I pretty much missed the light. Since we didn’t leave at the right RPM there was no way we were going to catch Emmitt, nevermind how late I was on the tree. We ended the divisional frustrated with the carb but overwhelmingly pleased with our performance.

His name was NOT flipper.

Right after the divisional Chris and I headed home to Woodinville to pack up for our family vacation. The Williams family headed off to spend 10 relaxing days in the French Polynesia. It was a once in a lifetime vacation and was time with my family I will treasure forever. Needless to say though, it took plenty of time away from drag racing! Now we are back on track – at the track. This weekend we are doing our first national event! The Seattle Nationals run Friday through Sunday in Kent, WA. This is a wonderful experience for us to dip our toes into the National racing pool. As well as the fact that it is close enough for us to sleep in our own beds at night. I’ll be sure to keep you all updated with our progress at the race!

EMDUB