It's Monday morning and I'm back home in Tucson. We left Wendover yesterday morning and arrived home late last night after an 800 mile drive hauling the car on a trailer. We lost 3 hours getting our trailed fender re-welded in Boulder City, Nevada. The vibration had cracked a weld but Sparc Welding worked us into their schedule and we were back on the road.
On Friday afternoon I was in the Short Course staging line ready to run, 4 cars back when the course was closed due to high wind. My crew, Wayne Luddington and Chuck Huber towed me back to our pit and we secured things by taking the canopies off of the Easy-Ups, etc. and left for a quick bite to eat at the Salt Flats Cafe.
It had rained a little overnight so we had to dry off the car and get things ready. A throttle sticking problem was discovered but quickly fixed by Wayne and Chuck so they towed me over to the Short Course staging line and we waited, gradually moving up. I suited up, got into the driver's seat and fired up the engine to warm it up. Once at the starting line I pulled on my helmet, tightened my belts, and started the engine once again. The starter stooped down to see me through the windshield, gave the "visor down" motion with his hand and indicated that I could go when I was ready.
I shifted into 1st gear, let out the clutch and felt it bite hard and the car moved off down the course. Since this was only a shakedown pass for a "new car", I had planned to take it very easy at first. Also, since it was going to be only a test session, I had enter the car in the 150 Club class rather than run in B/GMS so I had to keep my speed under 159.999 mph or be disqualified. I shifted into 2nd at only about 5k rpm and still had hard acceleration so I just shifted into 5th gear and let the tach needle climb up to about 4800 rpm. I had marked my tach at 5633 rpm which should have been 150 mph so I thought I was going around 130-140 mph and I held it at that speed through the Quarter. Once through the timing lights I let off the throttle slowly and let the speed drop, eventually shifting into 4th and then 3rd, applying brakes very lightly and then I saw a turn-off and drove over to the return road. Since to chase truck was not going to arrive for a while, I drove back down the return road to get air flowing through the radiator to cool the engine. (since I was in the 150 Club it was legal to drive my car as well as be towed) The coolant temperature was 180F so things looked normal so I drove a half mile back towards the starting line on the return road and stopped.
Wayne and Chuck arrived, they hooked up the tow rope and we headed back to our pit. On the way back we stopped at the timing tower to get our timing slip. A fellow ran out, handed it to Chuck, exclaiming "A perfect run!". We looked at the numbers, 157.45852 mph- much faster that I had planned or thought I was going. Somehow I must have used some wrong data to generate my RPM vs Speed spreadsheet. After getting back to our pit we had a look under the rear bodywork- no oil or water leaks, the coolant level was normal and everything looked fine and capable of making another run.
A serious look at the weather prediction for that afternoon showed increasing winds and rain showers which discouraged us from trying another run; also, if I ran 3 mph faster I'd be disqualified so we decided to pack up and call it a day.
We had done what we had planned on doing.
