We worked like dogs three long days in a row to get the car all put together and ready to fire. She started right up and sounded great! Unfortunately, the oil drained out sparkly, dark and burned. It appears that the torque converter didn't have enough space to move around and it tried pushing the crank out the front of the block. We pulled the pan and inspected things to find a smoked, burned and peeled rear main bearing thrust surface along with a purple crank. It probably made the tranny pump suffer as well. Nice. A stupid, expensive mistake.

Everything from the motor plate back was the same as before - except for the crank flange. I'm guessing that the converter snout doesn't locate in the new crank flange the way it did before. Or the flange is longer. Something changed and we didn't allow enough space for it.

So, after a week off, we will pull the motor, tear it down, put new bearings in it and maybe a new crank. We may take the tranny to our expert tranny guy for inspection. Then we'll put it back together and find a good weekend to test and upgrade my license. Hopefully, we can get that done before the event at Medford at the end of May. We want to go to Medford, but not with an untested car and a driver not licensed for "Advanced ET".

A HUGE THANKS to buddies and crew Rich Dormer and Gary Powell for all their effort in getting parts designed and built, and things fit together. Also to Bob Thayer from London's Automotive in Corvallis for putting in extra hours to get the new rear gears put together for us. Joe Miller from Ashcroft Motorcycles in Salem did a super job on the body work, new red paint and graphics.

It's a bummer that we aren't up at the track this weekend since we won the Tulip Festival the last two years. However, as I got out of bed this morning, it was heavily snowing and actually sticking! Freeway traffic cams up in the Woodburn area show black skies and wet pavement and the forecast for the weekend is gloomy. We probably won't miss any racing.

Photos to come...

The new chassis is home and we're putting things together. All the parts and pieces are here, we just need time to assemble the motor and all of the systems on the car. There's only a few weeks left until the first race! Pictured above, Rich Dormer (left), and Gary Powell put things where they belong. A huge THANKS is due these guys for all the time they've put into helping me get things figured out. We've spent quite a few evenings in the machine shop making fancy pieces, evenings and afternoons bolting things together and plenty of head scratching along the way.

Since the tires are closer to the body, and the chassis is WAY closer to the ground this time around, we needed a new custom stand to hold the car up while we warm it. Gary designed a new contraption for us and cut all the pieces for it. Rich will fuse it all together this week and we'll be able to leave the jackstands at home from now on.

The body is off being beautified at Joe Miller's paint shop. We're going with the same color red as before but with the graphics painted on and not done in vinyl this time.

Bob Thayer at London's Automotive in Corvallis is assembling the trick new Moser 9" rear end to go in the fabricated housing.

The crank and cam are in the new Dart block, and the ring end gaps are done. Assembly will continue and hopefully, we won't hit any snags along the way. If we do, we probably won't make the Tulip Festival at Woodburn on the 19th and 20th of April. We've won the event the last 2 years in a row, so it would be a shame not to show up!

I'll update the schedule this week!

The time has come to step up the program a bit. The old motor is worn and tired. The chassis will only cert to 7.50 ET and we've been detuning for several years now to keep from going too quick for our britches. Time for new britches! Take a last look at the Chili Pepper's old, slow back half. The car is at Gary Eickmann's chassis shop and he's already whacked it in half to prepare for replacing everything from the motor back.

The engine has always set high and level in the car which required a whopping 59 pounds of worthless ballast on the nose. The new configuration will see the motor much lower and "dumped" down in the front. This should eliminate the need for any nose weight at all. A new body on the backhalf, new seat, wheelie bar, motor plate, 9" fabricated rear end with aluminum center section, a few more inches of wheelbase...lots of changes.

A brand new Dart Little "M" engine block and new 3.625" stroke crankshaft are sitting here. The new motor will be 388" and is being built with 100% nitro in mind. Custom Ross pistons are on the way as well. The top ring has been moved down .315" from the crown, they'll have custom valve pockets so that piston to valve clearance will never be an issue, the dome is just right for the compression we want, teflon buttons instead of spirolocks, hard anodized coating, and taper-wall pins. The price of the pistons wasn't that much more than the off-the-shelf SRP's we had been using. The SRP's also required a couple of flycuts to make them fit.

I also have a set of BME forged aluminum rods on order. These are good for 1800 HP and will live pratically forever! BME recommends sending the rods in for inspection after 200 passes. They'll be resized if needed and then returned for hundreds more runs. I'm convinced that FORGED, not billet is the key to long rod life with aluminum.

I had hoped to do this upgrade a step at a time over the course of a couple of seasons. But it just didn't want to happen that way. The motor needed replacing NOW. The current cert runs out soon and running even less nitro with a new stronger motor wouldn't be much fun. The bump for the Pro Nostalgia "A" field was in the 7.30's late in the 2007 season and we barely qualified at two events. We did end up winning them both however. We just need more speed to make sure we're in the show and keep having fun.

We'll start at 80% nitro next season and slowly work it up from there. There will be things to tweak along the way as we move The Chili Pepper to FULL TILT for 2008.

Things went well for us at Woodburn's Hot Rod Nationals event. We ran back to back 7.59's in qualifying, and although slower than we'd hoped for, consistency was there...for a while! We won the Pro Nostalgia B-field to get 2 event wins and a runner-up for our 2007 record so far. Not bad for 4 trips to the track! We came out of the 2005 and 2006 season with 2 wins and a runner-up each as well, so we're consistent there too.

The first round on Sunday netted a win with a 7.60 on our 7.57 dial-in. After red-lighting last weekend in Bremerton, I had slowed things down a bit mechanically at the line. My lights weren't stellar, but giving away round wins or event wins with breakouts and red lights must stop!

The air got better later in the day and we pushed our dial-in down a little figuring it would go a little quicker. My opponent red-lit and since I saw the win light come on while heading down-track, I decided to stay in it and see what it would do. 7.495! Ouch. So much for consistency.

We seem to be having an issue with the new rings seating on cylinder #4 & 6 and are getting a bunch of oil in those cylinders. The poor seal is also letting a lot of fuel by and into the oil.

I had been helping Marlin Fosmark over the weekend with his first nitro fix...27% took him from 8.50's to very consistent laps of 8.05, 8.06, and 8.11. Little did I know, we'd meet in the final round. He dialed 7.99 (the max allowed by the organization rules) and had been cutting good lights all weekend.

My light was pretty awful, but I was ready to play the game at the top end if I had to. He got to leave first and as I pulled along side at about half track, he began to violently fishtail. I could see the whole side of his car several times. When I saw him fall out of view, I knew he had lifted. I dumped it at 1000' and hit a 7.57 to take the win. Thank goodness I backed out of it...the 1000' ET was .03 better than the 7.495 in the second round! I would have gone way too quick and given it away. Been there, done that.

Thanks a bunch to Rich Dormer, Gary Powell, Barb Elder and Jeanie Vial for the help. It seemed like I spent quite a bit of time yacking to customers and passers by and goofing off in general. My crew always had things under control and moving right along. The Chili Pepper is always ready for the call thanks to them!

Be sure to check out the on-board video taken from The Chili Pepper Cam.

Our streak of bad luck at Bremerton continues. We've ruined engines, spun bearings, broke output shafts and now red lit in the first round at the historic old strip. We have won events there but usually not without mishap.

On our first qualifying lap, the mag came loose in the block. The ignition timing ended up retarded 20 degrees and our ET was pretty lousy.

On the second qualifier, I nailed it as the tree lit yellow. I felt and heard a loud "POP!" as though something broke. I lifted figuring I was blowing oil all over the track. As I pulled the car over to the side I revved the motor a couple of times and although the motor seemed fine, the car wasn't moving. We took her back to the pits figuring we'd snapped a tranny again. We fired it up on jack stands and all gears were fine. The axles were intact, we counted all the teeth on the ring gear, inspected the chassis for broken frame rails...we looked at everything and could find nothing wrong.

It was getting late in the day and I wanted to go try another lap just to see if things were really fine. It was a little nerve wracking thinking that something was probably broken and I was going to go make a full pass. However, anything less than full-tilt and we still wouldn't know. I figured if something were really wrong, it would act strange on the burnout. Roasting the hides went well, so I stood on it for a single and she turned a 7.47. It didn't count for a qualifier, but at least we knew it was ok. The mystery remains as to what happened. Was the driver hallucinating? The starter and several other folks said they heard the "POP!" too, so I know I'm not nuts. Besides that, I FELT it. It was pretty violent. Oh well.

Being qualified 8th, we got to run the fastest qualifier Butch Hamilton. I got a nice clean tree and left first -.028 early. CRAP! My first red light of the year. Gave it away. I legged it out anyway and it would have been a close race. Butch ran .01 off his dial-in. I got a few interesting on-board videos and I'll be posting them to the Fuel Injection Enterprises website to join those from The Oldies event eventually.

As is always the case, Rich Dormer and Gary Powell kept the Pepper popping all weekend. We stayed at the track in Gary's camp trailer and had a great time. The three of us were spoiled rotten by Gary's lady Jeanie. She did the shopping, the cooking, the cleaning and put up with all the snoring.

It's been a while since I've posted an update!

We did some transmission and safety upgrades in May and didn't have the car back together in time for the Medford event unfortunately. The Fire & Thunder event at Woodburn rained out, so that brings us right up to the Oldies But Goodies.

I had the torque converter rebuilt and slightly tightened in May along with new beefy planetaries for the tranny. I should have added nose weight to the car to compensate for a harder leave due to the converter change - but I didn't. Plus, when we put the wheelie bar on before the first round of qualifying, we put the retaining pin the wrong hole...the bar was too high! The car sat in a low spot in the pits and it looked fine. All of this contributed to a major wheelie and aborted pass. The car popped up too high immediately and I wasn't headed straight.

We took care of all this for the 2nd lap and for some reason, the car just didn't run as quick as usual. It should have been a 7.50 pass and we turned in a 7.78 lap to earn us an 11th qualifying spot in the short "B" field.

We made it through the first round with another 7.70ish pass. It seemed like that is where it wanted to run. I noticed lots of aluminum on the #6 spark plug and knew something was wrong. No smoke, so away we went for the final round. Our opponent dialed a 7.69 and this seemed appropriate for us too, so I made it a "heads-up" race by dialing the same. I nailed the light with a an .007 reaction time and lifted way early at the top end. I couldn't see or hear my opponent and I didn't want to break out and give it away. Too late...even after lifting I ran a 7.64 and broke out! RATS! Judging by the incrementals, it would have been a 7.54 lap. The car couldn't make up its mind.

Leaking down the cylinders revealed 98% leakage on the middle two cylinders on the even bank. Swapping air again. A big thanks to Rich Dormer, Gary Powell, and Barb Elder for helping me pull things apart. We found the top ring land lifted on #4 and #6 pistons. It never did show any signs of running lean. I can only suspect that it got too hot at the line or maybe the severely blown head gasket on these two caused the carnage. We are running an alcohol piston with almost no material on the top ring land where the exhaust valve reliefs are cut into the piston crown. For nitro abuse, we really should be running a blower piston with the rings moved down and more meat on the crown.

Replacements for the two damaged pistons are being flycut at Hanson Auto Machine, new rings and new head gaskets are sitting here ready to go. The heads are up at Louthan Competition getting freshened up. We'll plan to be at Bremerton for sure.

Although it poured rain on Saturday and washed out qualifying, Pro Nostalgia found dry pavement and even some sun on Sunday. Due to the threatening weather, not many cars showed at Woodburn for the Tulip Festival Drag Race. That meant there was plenty of time for a qualifying attempt at 11am. Most of the Pro Nostalgia field had been tweaked and souped-up over the winter and without a practice pass, teams had no idea what their car would do on the track.

It's a good thing we didn't touch The Chili Pepper all winter long! When I dropped the hammer on our qualifying pass, we instantly spun the tires. It was like I was sitting in the water box! Somehow, as before at Bremerton with the broken drivetrain, I managed to lift in time to keep from even hitting the new rev limiter. I must have a quick foot! Speaking of rev limiter, that's the only change to the car from '06. She'll never rev higher than 8300 RPM now. We only see 6800 RPM at the top end, so that's more than enough head room for us.

Our practice pass was junk as I idled down the track after my "up in smoke" display. That's ok...when in doubt, dial 7.50! We are usually tweaking the percentage of nitro to very nearly hit a low 7.50 on each pass. We have lots of good data on how to do that. The biggest bummer is that without a decent pass, we were put in the "B" field while the bump was well above where we usually run. The purse is the only real difference - the winnings are a bit smaller in the "B" field. Due to a slightly short field and a bunch of breakage however, there were only a couple of rounds to run in the B's.

With 69% in the tank, she turned a 7.61 on the first lap...more than a bit off. Good thing I didn't have to work too hard for it as our opponent lit the red bulb against my .024 light. We left the fuel alone and decided just to change the shoe polish instead of seeking a real 7.50. We had lost quite bit of ET in the first 60' however, and I was sure that if she hooked good, we'd get a 7.55 with the tuneup we had in it and the great 600' air.

Our next opponent broke at the line...good thing because we ran a 7.545 on our 7.55 dial. Really close, but .005 too quick. My light wasn't great either. Once again, the monkey behind the wheel pretty much just needed to keep it off the guard rail and the event was ours. We went back and made another lap at the end of the day and hit a 7.57 which tracked pretty well with the weather. The sun had been out for a couple of hours and the corrected altitude had increased.

Even though the driver had an easy time of it, the crew worked just as hard as ever to turn the car around for 4 passes on Sunday. After a long winter of crawling around at the normal speed of life, a few trips down the strip at over 175 MPH and 3G's had my blood pumping! Speaking of G forces, we hit a new best ever 60' time (1.07). That is better than our best ever pass at Bremerton last year (a 7.40 pass). We're making more torque than ever, but horsepower is a bit off and our pull to the finish line is weaker than I feel it should be.

Crew Chief Rich Dormer, Crewman/Tow Dude Gary Powell and their assistants Barb and Jeanie kept the pistons popping all day. Thanks for all the hard work! It was the first race that our 10 month old baby girl (SpeedBaby) has attended. She loved it.

The next event for us is Medford on the 1st of June. We plan to put new brakes on the car and replace a bunch of the safety stuff that will expire in May. Also, the tranny will come out and get a new heavy duty planetary and input shaft. While that is happening, the 3 year old converter will be tightened slightly and the sprague eliminated. My tranny guy says a worn and slipping sprague is why my reaction times are inconsistent (and mostly slow) from three years ago when I was hitting nearly perfect lights on every pass. We'll take care of these things and then hit 'em even harder for the rest of the season.

I know, it's been forever since I've posted an update here. Things are slowing down now, so maybe I can dig up all those photos from the 2006 season that I keep saying I'll post here...and actually do it!

We managed to break out in the final round against Butch Hamilton at Woodburn's Fall Classic. The car was running fantastic and performance picked up more than we expected at the end of the afternoon. I should have lifted, but Butch has a few more MPH than The Chili Pepper and he has a way of sneaking up on you right at the finish line. Oh well.

No complaints for 2006, we had a terrific year! Two event wins and a runner-up out of only 5 trips to the track. We didn't even get any test sessions in at the beginning of the season. We dusted our stuff off, showed up and started winning at the Tulip Festival and kept chugging along. Incidentally, we scored two event wins and a runner-up finish in 2005 too...at least we're consistent!

Nothing definite as far as changes for 2007. I'm not sure the money is there to upgrade the chassis or do anything too fancy. We'll probably run it again next year with a few updates and maybe try to hit a new track or two.

A great big huge thank you to my crew guys Rich Dormer and Gary Powell. Besides keeping things running and in top shape at the track, these guys also put their extensive fabrication skills to use when we need to build or fix something. Whether we're in the machine shop with all the fancy equipment, or at the track with nothing but a hose-clamp, duct tape and pliers, these guys come through every time.

Thanks also to our many visitors and well wishers this season. We appreciate your support!

Sorry for the lack of timely updates here. We broke the output shaft in our transmission in the first round on Sunday at Bremerton's annual nostalgia event. We scrambled all week to get it fixed for Woodburn's Hot Rod Nationals. Web updates take a back seat to repairs! It was all worth it as we went on to win at the Hot Rod Nats a week after our disaster.

First Bremerton...we dumped an 80% nitro mix in her on Saturday and qualified 8th with a 7.40 for the fast-eight Pro Nostalgia field. I cut things back to 71% on Sunday and dialed a 7.50 for the first round against Butch Hamilton. The burnout was normal, I staged the car and mashed her flat as the tree turned yellow. I felt a big "POP!" and lifted immediately. The car barely rolled 10' past the line before stopping with the engine still idling. With no rev limiter, we were lucky to not have tested the diaper! Everything with the motor was just fine thanks to a quick right foot.

Super Crew dude Gary Powell appeared on Monday to help me unload and yank the motor and transmission. Crew chief Rich Dormer joined us as we made the trek to tranny expert Don Kalina's shop for the autopsy. The output shaft had sheared clean from the back of the planetary basket. The input shaft was also twisted a spline or two. Mike Boertje supplied a nice planetary for our use and Don had the new input shaft shipped "overnight". Everything arrived, Rich and I put her all back together and test fired it Friday in the driveway before loading up for the action at Woodburn.

We decided to run the same 71% that we mixed up for Bremerton for the purposes of a 7.50. We qualified 11th with a 7.506 and backed that up with a 7.510 later in the day. We dialed a 7.50 in the first round against John Cauchi. For some mysterious reason, the car decided to let loose with a 7.44 ET. Most all of the gain happened in the first 60', so the starting line must have been in really good shape for that run. Lucky for us, John's car was also eager to reach the other end and he broke out by considerably more than us.

We remixed our fuel to 67% to slow us down a bit so that we could continue to dial 7.50 throughout the day. Due to a slightly short field, there was a bye for the second round and we got it. An all out pass with the weaker mix and the 96 degree afternoon heat yielded a 7.54.

Final round time...Greg McCollum was our opponent. I caught and passed him at half track and managed to stayed ahead of him and hit on another 7.54 to take home the win.

A huge thanks to Chief Rich Dormer for all his toiling and hard work throughout the weekend. Our regular partner Gary Powell had to be out of town so we were really busy. We missed ya Gary!

I haven't seen the final standings yet, but I'm pretty sure we made the invitational in September.

Someday, I will actually have time to post photos from the various races this season here. I have pics...time is just precious lately. In response to numerous requests, I'll also gleen the hard drive for the very best baby pictures of late as well. The Spudlet is getting cuter everyday...she gets it from her Mom.

We attended Champion Raceway's Hot Rod Gasser Nationals last weekend in Medford to run the 7.60 index class. Not many cars turned out as there was a race going on at Boise and many were still shy from watching it rain at Seattle the entire previous weekend at the Good Guys event. It was mid-high 80's and humid all weekend. Showers Saturday night, but not a drop during racing hours.

Friday night was a test-n-tune and since it's the only track around here that runs at night, I was eager to make some night passes! We were told they would close the lanes at 10:15 or so and be done before the 11pm cut-off. We warmed the car at about 8:30pm (I wanted it dark!) and she sounded sweet. Topped her off and went up to the line, waited our turn and....crank, crank, crank...nothing. Went back to the pits to figure it out all embarrassed.

There appeared to be no fire at all and I thought my old transformer had died. Turns out the timing had slipped! The mag clamp stud in the injector is very short and doesn't have very much thread engagement in the nut holding the clamp down. The mag was a spiffy new 5.2 amp Super Mag IV I built for myself out of an old rusty clunker I got cheap. It was the first time out with it. It has considerably more resistance than my previous mag and what was sufficient holding things before suddenly didn't cut it. They closed the lanes early due to a shortage of cars and we didn't get any passes in Friday night. Bummer!

Instead of our usual 70-76% nitro, we started out at 63% for qualifying on Saturday. 7.72 with a crappy 60' time in 2700' corrected air was the result.

I took the data from 5 previous passes at the last event, normalized them for altitude and extrapolated the percentage that would net us a 7.61 on paper in what I expected to be 3100' air by the next lap. The resulting 71% nitro and 3030' air resulted in a 7.596. DAMN...missed the index by only .004!!

The atmosphere was still deteriorating and I was tired of mixing fuel. I just left things alone and the final qualifier netted a 7.63 in 3460' air. The starting line wasn't quite as sticky as we were down 2 hundredths in the first 60'. We qualified #2.

First round on Sunday...I lunged deeper into the beams than normal by accident. I set the transbrake, lifted my foot off the footbrake and the top bulb went out! ARGH! When I saw that, I should have pressed the button harder to slow me down on the tree, but I had about 1/2 second to think before things lit up. -.013 RED LIGHT. I kept her to the wood anyway and turned in a 7.66. Our opponent Dewayne Sanders went on to win the event.

The moral of the story (if there is one) is that you can have the machinery all figured out and things running really sweet on race day, but you still have to drive the danged thing. One little slip up from the regular, consistent routine and it all goes out the window. A four hour drive home was long enough to come to that conclusion.

That's our last race until Bremerton in early August. The little Spudette is due to arrive in just a couple of weeks so I'll miss the next two events and there isn't anything happening in mid-late July around here. Out of the last 7 events, we've won 3 of them and runnered-up at a 4th, so I'm still feeling very lucky. A super big thanks to Rich Dormer and Gary Powell for keeping the pepper popping all weekend long.

I do have photos of the last two events and when things settle down a litte, I'll post them here!

Things went real well at our first outing of the year at Woodburn's Tulip Festival drag race. The two day event saw terrific weather; clear skies and cool temps that yielded a 300' corrected elevation on Saturday and around 900' in the afternoon on Sunday. We were ready for action on Saturday morning after fixing a few minor last minute things. Since we ran a 7.500 on 76% last year, I chose a 73% mix shooting for a low 7.50 but not something that would make us go too quick for our britches.

Pretty much the only thing different from last year are some new Hoosiers that are 2" taller than before. I forgot to account for this on the wheelie bar! It was WAY too high...much more than the 1" one would expect. There was no more adjustment possible and I decided we'd just have to try it that way. On our first qualifying attempt, the front wheels went very high and the car shot to the left pretty hard. With no front wheels touching after 100' and the wall growing nearer, I had to lift. It's been awhile since I've been forced to abort a pass!

With only one qualifying attempt left we decided to put the bar on, pull the lower pin, stand on it and drill a new hole. Crew chief Rich Dormer made a correction to the tire pressures to compensate for the drift at the starting line. We headed up to the line and let 'er fly. On less nitro than last year, we found a 7.41! Apparently, the taller tires are lugging things more and waking up the nitro even more than before. We qualified 5th for the 8 car Pro Nostalgia field.

In order to not outrun our cert tag, I estimated that dropping the juice down to 65% would still find us in the mid 7.50's. I remixed everything first thing Sunday morning and we met up with Butch Hamilton in the first round. Last year, we runnered up against Butch when the car streaked to the stripe 2 tenths quicker than our dial-in in the final round. I was determined that wouldn't happen this time. Just as I crossed the finish line, he blew by me. We barely got the win.

We met up with Dewayne Sanders for round two in what might have been the closest race of the weekend in Pro Nostalgia. I dialed a 7.52 and got to leave first. My light was just a wee bit better than Dewayne's and The Chili Pepper was just little bit closer to the dial-in at 7.55. It was too close to tell at the finish line...a great race.

Todd Miller, our opponent for the final round, broke the front main web out of his engine block on the previous lap. He couldn't make the call and we were declared the winner of the event. Since a "bye" run in the final round isn't any fun for anybody, Rick New (who lost in the semi-finals) volunteered to run in the other lane. He made a great pass and got to the other end first. The Chili Pepper ran another 7.55 on our 7.52 dial-in. It usually gets a little quicker in the final round, but it didn't this time. Rick only ran a tenth off his dial and left me at the starting line by a couple of hundredths. Even though we lost the lap, we still won the event. Not pretty, but a win is a win!

As usual, we had the classiest tow rig in the place with Gary Powell's '41 Chevy pulling us around. I'm really lucky to have an awesome crew! Rich and Gary provided expert support as usual and we were joined by Chris Dafoe and Jeff and Shane Mueller on Saturday. Jeanie and Barb came out as well for their first drag race and it sounds like they'll be back.

Pictures coming soon!

Finally, an update! Lots of fuel system and magneto work not to mention fence projects and other things have kept me hopp'in. I've updated the schedule for this season (at the left) and the car specs for 2006.

The new puke-tank is almost done. We fashioned it from a 2 liter beer keg I found on Ebay cheap. It's pretty unique. The motor is back together, the new Hoosiers are here, new shields are in place, and we have a fancy new custom pilot chute from our friend Marc Bradford. The new drum of nitro is ready for pickup and there are still a bunch of other details to take care of, but if the weather holds out, we are planning to test at Woodburn on the 15th. The first race is the following weekend.

Only two months to go before "The Belly Dweller" emerges into the world. She's been doing gymnastics lately in there! We'll have more sonogram pictures of her in another couple of weeks. Here's a shot of the Spudlet's head in 3D at 18 1/2 weeks. Here's a shot at 13 weeks: Wave to the Spudlet.

In spite of a mysterious engine problem that caused crankcase blow-by to increase with every pass, The Chili Pepper continued to churn out consistent low 7.60 passes all weekend...until the final round when it "exceeded expectations". As soon as I lifted the throttle after the finish line on each pass, the breathers would expel a small amount of oil into the hot rear zoomie tube. Of course, this caused a smoke-geyser and justifiably, concern from track officials and Chili Pepper well-wishers.

We qualified with a 7.606 and turned in a nearly identical pass later that day by adjusting the nitro percentage to compensate for the changing weather. We decided to start developing our tuning skills to achieve consistent 7.60 laps at will. The smoking began on the second qualifier and I'm pretty sure the increased blow-by is a sign of some damaged pistons or cylinder walls. We leaked the motor down Saturday night and could find nothing wrong with it however.

A decent light and being just .01 closer to our dial-in got us by Dave Reed in the first round. In the second round, Rick New was .01 closer on his prediction, but my reaction time made all the difference and we made it through. The smoke started coming out of the zoomies right at about 1000' on that pass but I decided to stay in it. I figured the worst that would happen was that our tired old parts would scramble themselves. Since I have a lower restraint (diaper) on the car and it was the last race...I kept it mashed. Not only did things stay together, but they looked healthy at the other end. The ET and MPH on the pass indicate that power is not dropping off.

We decided we needed to do something about the smoke and oil. Instead of putting the breather output into the exhaust as we've always done without incident, we got creative with tie-wraps and duct tape and fabricated a different setup in a few minutes. We used a one gallon plastic jug and secured it up in front of the motor near the fuel tank. We turned the breathers around and faced them forward and attached some old hose we scavenged. I wrapped a large towel around the top of the jug, added duct tape and tie-wraps and headed off to the lanes for the final round against Butch Hamilton and his blown FED.

It turns out Butch damaged his motor on the burnout, but I had no way to know. I staged last and cut loose with an .002 light. She was pulling hard and plenty healthy and I looked over near the end but didn't see him. He usually runs 190+ MPH to my usual 177. I knew if I lifted as a strategy to ensure not breaking out, he could possibly blast by me right at the stripe. I kept it to the metal and suffered no smoke or mess in the shutdown area at all. Unfortunately, she ran .03 under our prediction and we gave the win to our buddy Butch. Three years ago, we met in the final at the Oldies event and I got him - so we're even now!

Back in the pits, we found the motor had barfed a large amount of oil into the jug. There's something not right in the engine, but we'll figure it out this winter. I've pretty much decided NOT to pursue a back-half chassis upgrade this winter. We will compete once again next year in Pro Nostalgia and the 7.60 index classes and try to hit more of those since we do really well at that. I do have some changes planned for next year. However, after our best season ever with TWO event wins and a final round appearance out of only SIX trips to the track (including testing), it seems silly to dump a bunch of money into the car and start over on the learning curve. Also, without that "7.50 or slower" cert tag keeping us honest, we'd be running more nitro and probably be seeing more damage to our humble components.

I must give a huge thanks to my good friends and crew Rich Dormer and Gary Powell. Without their help between rounds and our collective heads throughout the season, The Chili Pepper would not have done nearly as well as it did. I also would not have had nearly as much fun...THANK YOU!

Once the fuel injection work gets caught up, I'll perform an autopsy on the engine and we'll see where all the hot air is coming from. Check back often for updates and reports on changes to the car for next year. Thanks for visiting and for all the friendly notes throughout the summer!

Sorry for the delay in updating! A trip to the salt flats in Utah the morning after the race and a couple of hot projects kept me away. The car ran pretty good at the Hot Rod Nationals at Woodburn. We got a bonus extra qualifier on Friday evening and managed a 7.61 in the heat with 68% nitro. We didn't want to get squeezed out of the top 8 field so we juiced it up on Saturday morning. I knew that would be our best chance at a good number as the air later in the day wouldn't be worth a darn. We poured 76% in her (the most ever) and ran a 7.500 @ 177.93...a new best ever MPH. This qualified us 5th in the field. We fell back to the tried and true tuneup and 68% for the final qualifier knowing it would put out a low 7.60-something and that is where we planned to race it on Sunday. Sure enough, a 7.62 was the result and we were set for Sunday.

It turns out Rick New was a little more "set" than I was. We both ran pretty close on the dial ins in the first round, but he cut an .005 light compared to my .029 and we were done for the day. So far this season, we've either won the event, or gone out in the first round. We're 2 and 2 for the year. A big thanks to the expert Chili Pepper Crew for their efforts and to Jeff and Shane Mueller for coming out and visiting us. Thanks also to everyone who stopped by to say hello!

We were planning to hit the Good Guys race at Seattle and then the Funny Car Classic invitational at Woodburn to end our season. I leaked down the motor the other night, and it appears that the head gaskets are blown between the middle two cylinders again. I am not going to have time to tear down and fix it right away. We may skip Seattle now and try fixing it for Woodburn. Or...we could leave it alone and run it anyway. Or we could call our season finished. I'll be discussing our predicament with my hombres Rich Dormer and Gary Powell and come up with a plan. I'm not ready to be done yet! Flow bench projects, business tasks, the building of a barn here at home and some other things may dictate an abbreviated season. We could always haul down for the CHRR in October or the Fuel Finals in November!

Tune in later for an update on the plan...

One Hot Chili Pepper picked up its second win of the 2005 season. We managed to qualify 8th in the fast field of Pro Nostalgia entries with a 7.55 ET at Bremerton Raceway's oldies event. We were fighting problems with melting spark plugs all during qualifying on Saturday. Cylinder #3 melted the ground strap off the plug. A strange thing since the air fuel mixture overall appeared to be right on the money. As anyone would do, I richened it up a step anyway. I'd just replaced 2 pistons from other problems and didn't want to do that again! On the next qualifying effort, #3 pulled a repeat melting performance and was now also joined by #5. How can you richen the mixture and get leaner? The nozzles were clean and clear.

I woke up at 3 am in the motel bed thinking on it and it came to me...our system pressure was running right about 127 psi with the 72 main jet. When I richened it by going to the 70 jet, this increased the system pressure to 134 psi. I had reached "terminal flow" on the nozzle in cylinder #3 at 127 psi and it would not flow any more fuel regardless of pressure. When the pressure was increased by richening the mixture, that same pressure was achieved at an even lower RPM and now the nozzle for #5 then reached terminal flow at the new slightly higher overall pressure. Since we were running 72% nitro, the specific gravity was heavier than anything we had run before in that air. The "richer" we tried to run, the leaner some of the cylinders would get due to the flow limitations of some of the nozzles. We were hitting the ceiling on our nozzles for that big of a load. Most people would assume you could run a #20AS nozzle at 134 psi just fine. But most people who do it are squirting a liquid with a specific gravity of .792 through it (methanol), not 1.040 (72% nitro). It makes a big difference!

The solution was to knock the nitro down to 68% and rejet to suit. This now called for a 78 main jet and it lowered the pressure by over 15 psi. In addition, the slightly lower specific gravity helped the flow bottleneck as well. Of course, we didn't have passes to back any of this speculation up before eliminations! I remixed the fuel load, put everything in place and hoped for the best. We ran a 7.55 on our 7.54 dial in for the win in the first round. All the plugs looked perfect. BINGO!

So, it looks like 68% nitro is the most juice we can run with the Hilborn #20AS nozzles at 2000' corrected altitude. We need some slightly bigger nozzles in order to run more than that. I just happened to have acquired a set of #30 nozzles a week ago. Maybe we'll give those a try before the season is over.

The car seemed to be more sensitive to the changing air conditions than it has in the past. Maybe because we aren't running it as rich as we usually do. In the second round, we ran a 7.63 on our 7.55 dial (a good light saved me), and in the final round, a 7.66 on our 7.62 prediction. The air started out at 1400' and ended up 2600' by the end of the day. In addition to the event win, it looks like my .013 light from the first round may win the "Best Reaction Time" award as well. No official word on that yet.

Gary Powell was my hero for the weekend. He pulled crew chief and tow duty. Plus, he drove us all the way home on Sunday night. Chris Dafoe gave us a hand on Saturday in the lanes and between rounds, and Paul Hart helped out on Sunday. Thanks very much for all the help guys! Unfortunately, Gary and I were so busy over the two days of action that neither of us pulled our camera out the whole time. I don't have a single picture of the event. If anyone out there took some shots and can email them to me for display here on the website, I'd appreciate it!

There's a hundred things to do before next weekend's Hot Rod Nationals at Woodburn. I better quit typing and go get started!

For all the photos and verbage generated during the 2003, 2001, and 2000 season, check out the Track Reports