So... the whole thing IMHO was pretty fun. A TON of people pulled together to make this happen in very short order. Jake, Ray (the producer, and Rich (PINKS) called beginning of one week, and I brought one of my spyders to Jake's that weekend. His guys busted their tails for a couple of weeks, nearly 24/7 and got it together for the race. You wouldn't believe the teamwork. Chris from Tangerine Racing flew out to Jake's and built the header on the car. People were overnighting parts from Italy, Germany, Belgium, you name it... Rancho built a KILLER box (spooled) in about a weeks time, the cryo guys worked straight through a few nights and froze a bunch of parts, Hoosier gave us a bunch of tires, M&H gave us some more tires, etc, etc...
It was REALLY amazing to see everyone pull toget5her like they did.
Rich and Ray set a bunch of guidelines for the cars and Jake followed them to a T. Unfortunately, at the driver's meeting Rich said to hell with the rules, have fun. I think the car would have been built much differently had that been the case from day 1.
The 1st run shown on TV was actually the car's first run too. Not counting the 1/8 mile pass Mike made on the freeway... 2 cars in front of a state trooper. Surprised the guy let him go, but all was OK.
We had some interesting challenges along the way, actually up until about 5 min. before the shooting... Suspension/alignment changes, seat mods, bracket fabrication, NOS changes, etc, etc... all in the parking lot using Jakes mobile tools.
************************SPOILER****************************************
If you plan to watch it and don't want it ruined, then don't read on.
So... last minute we had a crazy voltage drop across the line lock switch and we wound up having to re-route it to a toggle switch that was already on the dash. AND on the first pass the switch didn't get flipped. You could see the ass of the car wagging from about 1/8 mile on. We didn't know what was going on, but knew mid 13s were TERRIBLE!
Mike was shaking when he came of the return road. Jake pointed to the switch and Mike just smiled...
2nd pass was the hardest launch of them all. Turned low 12s, but quite frankly we still should have been MUCH faster. Clutch was not holding up, and then the 3rd pass on NOS just fried it...
Oil cooler fans were also on a manual switch and NOT running after 4 or 5 laps, hence the 380 degree oil temps!!! (not kidding)
Car gradually got slower until we blew it on pass 7 or 8.
In hindsight, I think one of the mistakes was not having a charging system. They (Clay/Rich) wouldn't allow us any charging time in between runs, and on the last burnout we were at 9v. Not an expert in fuel injected TIV or the management system, but I doubt they like 9v... BUT,Jake's autocross guys run 40+ min. on the same Optima battery taht was used, with no charging system, and the battery holds up. I guess the fans, management, 2 sets of telemetry, etc really took a draw!!
So, on the last burnout we spit a push rod and a valve kissed the top of one of those beautiful 103.5mm Nikies. Mike made a pass on 3 cyl at something like 18s. LOL It was done...
