Hot Rod/Comp Cams Drag Week - Thursday

By Brian Lohnes

Miles Covered: 1400
Tickets issued: 0 (reported)
Competitors dropped out: 5

It’s alive, it broke again, and cruising by Moonlight

The thing that wouldn’t die – There is a fine line between a hobby and a mental illness. Luckily for us, Carl Scott and Troy Green both need an asylum bed.

The tandem of Scott and Green, along with help from Tommy Kreisler, his brother Jerry Henderon, and one of Jerry’s buddies, pulled off one of the greatest fix jobs in the history of organized drag racing.

If you will remember yesterday’s notes, the Nova was left pretty much for dead in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The motor had melted an unknown number of pistons and Scott’s chances of finishing the event were nearly dashed.

A set of eight pistons was located in Louisville, Ky., however, and Kreisler hopped in his Mustang, made the 200-mile round trip and returned with the new set of slugs.

Back at the ranch, Scott, Green, and Henderson began tearing into the motor to find out how bad the damage was. It was bad – very bad.

“We had six melted pistons, one on the way out and one good one left,” Scott said. “I have to let everyone know that this was not a motor problem, it was a nitrous system problem. The motor itself was not the reason for this problem, it was a fuel solenoid.”

Luckily, the SRP pistons that Kreisler grabbed were a perfect match for the ones already in the motor. By the time he returned from his mission of mercy the rest of the group had the rods and defunct pistons removed from the motor.

They worked as hard and fast as they could, which included filing the rings with a die grinder because none of the guys had a file with them. They departed Bowling Green just past midnight, with the motor sounding strong.

Just about nine hours later, at 9:35, Scott, Henderson and Kreisler rolled into National Trail Raceway to a standing ovation and screams from the pits. The crowd quickly converged on the pair as they emerged from the Nova. These guys have to be the ultimate Drag Weekers.

No one has ever accused Scott of being slow on his feet. When asked how he thought the car would run with the hastily completed rebuild, he said, “I hope it runs faster. It should, because that motor had not been freshened in three years.”

“Once we knew that someone had the pistons there was absolutely no question that this would be fixed,” Kreisler added.The team does acknowledge that they have one valve that is seeping a little, but the bottom line is that they, along with the help of their friends, pulled a rabbit, nay, a whale out of a hat with their effort over the last 24 hours.

If they win this brutal contest they will have more than earned it! To completely field strip and rebuild a motor in the middle of the night is one thing. To do it and then drive eight hours on it is completely another.

Burcham’s prancing pony – No one will ever be able to accuse Justin Burcham of being unfamiliar with any part of his car.

We have seen nearly every piece of the drive train lying on the ground outside of and around the vehicle so far this week. Burcham’s 2005 Mustang is pushing the limits of research and development.

“I’ve stumped Ford’s tech line a couple of times,” Burcham said. “If you can build it, Burcham can break it. This isn’t my first rodeo and we run this car very hard, so we have gotten used to wrenching on it.”

They have certainly wrenched on it this week. At KCIR the crew had to replace the front crank seal, no small feat on the 4.6 liter, three valve, modular Ford motor.

At Bowling Green they had major issues with the shifter and transmission. That prevented them from making a clean pass and their average suffered for it.

Today they have pulled it apart once again and put a brand new transmission in the car. With less than 15 minutes left to make a pass, the team was still at it.

The team staged the car with less than 5 minutes remaining and ran a blistering and team-best 10.61 at 130.03 mph.It was very nice to see a team that works so hard really step up their performance.

Send lawyers, guns and money – Well, keep the lawyers and the guns but send the money.

Perry Smith of Comp Cams had a very interesting experience while trying to get the company’s rig into the grounds at Beech Bend.

For a couple of years now, track owner Dallas Jones has been wrangling with a former county Judge, turned lawyer, who lives on the edge of the track property. This dispute has been so heated that Jones spent a couple of days in jail several years ago over a piece of land just four hundredths of a mile long, far less than 100 yards.

“I was trying to get the rig into the track. There is only one way that the truck will fit in there and it is through that piece of land,” Smith said. “I got the rig in there and then a couple of guys approached me. One of the guys had a hunting rifle and they succeeded in intimidating me out of there.”

In darkness, Smith backed the rig out of the small space he was in, maneuvered it deftly through an opening so small it appeared the truck was going to scrape it on the way in.

“We barely got the truck into the track, the truck had maybe two or three inches on either side of it,” he said.

There’s a moon out tonight – Strange things start happening when you spend long periods on the highways of this country.

Yesterday's ride was the longest and hardest of the entire trip. Travel times ranged from seven to nine hours and much of the drive was made after darkness fell on Illinois and Ohio.

Mike Linburg, his son, Dustin Hasse, and Dave Korth were all rolling along the highway quietly last night. Korth decided to shoot a couple of photos of the group with his new digital camera. He got more than he bargained for.

Without outing the “mooner,” Korth ended up as the “moonee” and he took it all in stride.

“When was the last time I was mooned?” he said. “This has been such an awesome week with some really awesome people. We had some bad luck when we lost the transmission in Kansas City but we got that fixed and we are back out here.”

“I am out here with my brother and we are having a really good time. This is just a great all around experience.”

Atwell at it again – Steve Atwell must be about ready for this week to end, one way or the other.

It was another tough day on the highway for the Michigan native. It took him over three hours to make the checkpoint (which was a “quaint” old gas station). Reports from the road stated that he was stopping the car at nearly every gas station to work on it.

Steve is actually driving back to his house tonight. Not to quit, but to swap the cam out of the Hemi because it took a bunch of abuse from those two broken lifters.

It is legal to stop at your house if you live near the route as long as you make the checkpoints and make at least one run at each track.

We sure hope that Atwell can make a strong pass tomorrow and give Jay Brown and his 515-inch, FE motor-equipped 1969 Mustang Mach 1. Brown currently leads his class by a shade less than two tenths of a second.

It’s going to be a nail biter – This thing is far from over and the last day of racing at U.S. 131 Raceway in Martin, Michigan will be hot and heavy.

Currently Tom Fauglid and his 1986 Monte Carlo SS lead the 12.00 second Daily Driver index class with an amazing average of 12.001.

David Swenson is in second with an average of 12.031, so he is right there with Fauglid. In reality, anyone in the top five of this class has a legitimate shot to win this class tomorrow.

Eric “the transmission man” Neifert and his red 1968 Camaro lead the Naturally Aspirated Small Block class by two tenths of a second over Omar Phelps’ 1990 Corvette. Omar may have a surprise up his sleeve for tomorrow. We’ll keep you posted.

Jay Brown has a hammerlock on the Naturally Aspirated Big Block class. Assuming the wheels don’t come off the wagon, we’ll expect to see his Mach 1 in the winners’ circle.

John Cunningham’s brutally-fast 1966 Nova Wagon is leading the Small Block Power Adder class by more than a second over Jim Neuenfeldt’s 2003 Chevy truck. Cunningham is oing to pull out all the stops tomorrow in an attempt to run below his current 8.824, 155.87 blast.

In the Big Block Power Adder class we may have an unexpected guest tomorrow in the form of Steve Morris and his big, bad Caprice wagon. That’s a rumor, however - we’ll believe it when we see it.

Carl Scott in the now world famous red Nova has an average of 8.589 at 157.233 mph. Phil Cooper is in the second position with an 8.708, 155.630 average.

Scott has said all week long that if he gets a good pass out of the car early on in the day, he will uncork it and really make some hay fly. As of right now, that car has never activated the second stage of nitrous.

We’re afraid, too.

It’s a family affair – As family members initiate most people into the drag racing community, it should not surprise us that family members field many of the cars in competition.

Brothers David and Dennis Korth have been living large all week long, except when the transmission in their 1964 Sport Fury blew up. Fortunately, that was all squared away days ago.

Tommy Kreisler (the hero of Bowling Green) and his brother are running their Mustang.

Mike Linberg is touring around with his son in their (soon to be his) hopped up SRT-4 Neon.

Seymour Pederson is traveling in the slant six powered Valiant with his daughter.

Brian Rock takes the cake, though. He is running his beautiful 1965 GTO this week with his brother and his young son Dean. Dean is a great kid and will have some really kick-butt war stories to share with the kiddies in his pre-school when they return to California.

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