It's ugly!!! ...but it'll work.

Craigslist... $200

When it rains it pours...

Unfortunately we had a mishap with the wall Friday which shut down our racing glory hopes for the weekend. With the engine repaired and the blower tuned up, we knew the car would make a bit more power so we stepped the tune-up back in anticipation of the power. Well... even stepping back from our 5.80 tuneup, we had a lot more than a 5.80 tuneup in it.  At launch, the car got up on the tire and stayed on the tire until our timing curve kicked in and the car kicked out. I'm fine, the car, not so much.

A broken blower, a broken motor and now a broken car, all in a matter of months. When it rains it pours!

It's OK, chin up and we'll be back out to a track near you soon.

THANKS S&S

Dave, Rick, George and Jeff at S&S Machine in San Leandro worked thier asses off to get the bullet back together in time for the race this weekend. We got it yesterday, are dropping it in today and hope to be racing tonight!

NO TIME! NO TIME! 

Off to go get this sucker in and make trouble for Outlaw 8.5.

New sponsors!

Afromaro Racing Team is proud to welcome aboard ATI Procharger and Dad's Custom Tanks!

Both of these companies have been unofficially helping us for a while now so we thought it would make sense to get things official and get these guys some press.

Dave W. and Procharger have been awesome to work with and are there when you need help with service, repairs and tech.

Donny at Dad's Custom Intercooler Tanks & Fuel Cells has been here with us since day 1 and has always filled our intercooling tank needs. Donny has decided to make his support official as well. Thanks Donny!

Down but not out...

After the first race we had a small problem with clearances on the new blower setup. As a result we hurt the crank real bad, destroyed the main caps, hurt the lifters and killed the brand new GRP rods.

OUCH!!!

As a result, we missed the June race where it took a 6.07 to win the race and a 6.003 to re-set the record. For those of you paying attention, we were able shake down a few 5.80's (minus 20 degrees of timing) the previous night and in qualifying before we realized the motor was eating itself. It hurts to know you have the tools but not the luck... that's racing.

 After the blower mishap, the new gear drive and a wedding, this season is turning out to be an expensive one be we haven't quit yet. We've got the block repaired, the lifters replaced, the crank is due to be repaired by the end of this week, and new rods are only a few days away.

#1 Qualifier at season opener... Hooray!

First race, new car, and it looks like we just might be competitive...

But... we hurt the motor before I could get to elims... Boo!

While it wasn't easy getting there, this weekend we attended the WCHRA season opener in Outlaw 8.5. Our trouble started last month when we broke our blower shaking down the car. With the help of Procharger and Chris Alston's Chassisworks, we were able to get new blower and gear drive in hand by the end of last week.

With little time to spare, we got the blower and gear drive on the car and worked to modify our existing fuel, cooling and charging systems. In the end, we ended up ditching the radiator for intercooler water, ditching the alternator and fabbing a new bracket for the fuel pump drive. Cool... everything is set except the fact that the car will not start. After three days of pulling everything apart and putting it back together MULTIPLE times, we thought we tracked down the problem to a bad crank trigger pickup. We get to the track for TNT and run into even more problems with the car and trace it down to bad plugs and wires.

Off to the races...


Our first qualifying hit left us as the only team in the class able to get down in the 5's on the new Goodyear tire. Sweet! Number one qualifier and class record holder... if we could back it up. Back in the pits, we looked at the data and saw this graph. Two problems here, (1) something ate about 10 pounds of my boost and (2) there is huge flat / bad spot right smack dab in the middle of the run. Fixing the flat spot in the launch curve was mission #1. Looking at the data in the BS3, I was pretty sure we could smooth it out a bit and also add a bit of power down low. I made some changes to the tune-up and thought I had problem number one solved and moved on to the boost issue. Well, try as I did, I was unable to find any significant sources of boost lost and qual  2 was coming up quick.

The next pass wasn't so good. Off the hit, the car bogged and lugged really hard to a 1.77 60' which was more than 3 tenths off our best, almost 3 tenths off our last pass and more than 3 tenths behind Mark Washington in the other lane. Then, about 2 seconds in, the car took off like it hit a stage of nitrous, caught up to the other lane by about the 330 mark and then really fell off at about 3.90 in. As I was rolling through the top, lights started going off, I had about 5 PSI oil pressure and the weekend was done.

Our guess is that we hurt the motor when the last blower seized and stalled the engine at about 7000 RPM and whatever bogged down the motor in our second qual run, finally broke loose cause a serious internal leak. Motor is out and hopefully the damage isn't too bad as we've got to go racing in just over a month for the WCHRA June race.

Wish us luck!

What's that goofy looking red thing?