The summer is about to turn into autumn,
there is only a few degrees plus at night
and most racers has already started to take their cars apart.
Suddenly Rod N Kustom advised they had an aditional bonus date booked at the track Kjula in Eskilstuna.
If it was in a desperate attempt to strech the summer or if it just was a result of the sucsessful previous races in yet to be told...
One thing is for scertain though, they managed by all means.
It was cold, foggy at night but nearly perfect conditions daytime.
The concrete track offered great traction. Alot better than I had expected.
We loaded the truck right after getting home from work friday evening and went straight to the track to be in place early saturday morning without having to quee or stress. Elmer and I shared a dome tent while Fille sneeked himselfe a bed in Graphicline's camper
There was only some 5+ degrees celcius at night and we had only one can of VP CSP fuel left.
Instead of buying more fuel we had installed two water heaters in the car. Now we could get 50 degrees C watertemp in 50 minutes without even starting the car. All we had to do was to warmen up the transmission. Fabulous.
The expectations for the first morning run was limited to see that the engine were running ok. Especially since the track were really cold. Only 68 timeslips had ben produced, and none by cars using big as tyres.
I fealt that I left the line ok. Not fantastic, nor bad but surely ok. It was clearly more power on higher gears, but as I almost had reached rev limit on third gear and everything was as most fun, it was time to pull the shout and brake. As I stopped at the end of the track I started to colect the shout, stop and save the log and so on. After a good run the phone usually starts to ring like mad before I even stop, but no sound from it now made me just feel like I did a warmup run. Minutes later Elmer finally called. He asked how fast I think I went.
-Good speed but just another low ten, I'd suppose.
-Nine nintyone and twohundredfortyeight, he yelled back.
Wow. It took me a couple of seconds to realize what he had said, and what we had done.
I mean, was it for real? Had we really done it? Swedens first nine second pass in a FWD car. Ever?
After a while other cars came to the end of the track and congratulated me. I suppose it wasnt until then I really belived it.
I was pretty sure of that I would be able to improve or at least repeat that time, 'cos I knew I could get the car off the line better.
Next run was seriously alot more exiting. I could almost feel people around me just hoping that I could repeat the previous run. Expectations were at its top notch. Anything slower than 9,91 would be a disapointment now.
We didnt speak about it to keep my nervs cool, but we were all thinking the same thing.
I kept my nervs cool alright. 0,14sec reaction time with pro-tree, and another 9,91 run was a fact! Only 243kmh in speed but the time was the most important thing to back up.
The log file and the exhaust temps said there was some kind of reason for the slower speed.
Added some extra fuel for the third run, but I lost my concentration completely.
Just as I was on my way in to stage the car ahead of me caused a minor oil stop at 350m. While the crew cleaned the track I lost all my focus, and tried to start in second gear. Since we tried that before we all know basicly nothing happens. At all.
Fourth run was our last qualifying run on saturday, and I managed to keep control over my nervs.
Now the engine was running dangerously lean acording to the log, and the EGT said the same.
When checking the fuel system later in the evening, we discovered that the filters were full of dirt. We cleaned them, reset the cluch and had us a couple of big ass steaks.
Sunday morning I woke up at the fogiest racetrack I've seen in a long time.
We got one qualifying run before getting to the eliminations. We would have needed at least two or three qualifying runs to get everything sorted out after cleaning the fuel filters but there was no time for that.
The one qualifying run we got only prooved our theory with the filters.
1,64s 60ft, left the line ok, but after that the engine were just running far, far too rich. So rich it became powerless and even a bit boring...
Even if it was boring, we got all info in the log that we needed to optimize the Autronic for the next run.
Between the qualify and the eliminations, Stefan from Airtune, stoped by to congratulate us for the nine second passes with a cake.
That was very apreciated.
First eliminations I was to race against a Mustang Mach1, a car I passed with ease at 300m line in a previous qualify. I was so scertain to win I almost killed myselfe. I accidentally ran into stage before I was really ready. Did work out anyway, 0,24s reaction, 1,64s 60ft.
Second eliminations I was to run against a Corvette stingray. Usually one can get a quite good sense of ones oponents since these are small classes...
but this Stingray, I had never seen it before and it looked lika taken from a museum. Verry nice, and verry not racy. I was verry wrong about this stingray though.
He left the line with his front wheels nicely airborne and my 0,24s reaction time was slow as a snail if compared. My tyres were really in poor condition, so I had alot of wheel spin and at 250m I popped a intercooler pipe.
In previous years when the car was put together mainly by Gaffa, wire and stripes, blown intercooler pipes was more seen as a proof of boost rather than actually something failing. Nowdays it is more seen as poor craftmanship from me. On the other hand, this is the first since 2003, so I belive I can live with it.
We were thereby out of the competition, but we were offered to run test n tune the rest of the day, so Fille and Elmer refitted the pipe and filled the car up with the last fuel we had.
While we were waiting in the test n tune line Ari Nurkkula blew his second flywheel in two years 150m out. This time he had a custom strengthened bellhousing, but it still caused a significant cleaning procedure.
Ari who most definitly has ben fighting for the first FWD nine second pass in Sweden had to see himselfe knocked out.
We in team Hot Wok Racing most gracefully thank Ari for making the fight more interesting, and hope for more competition 2009. Will it be 9,5 or even 8 second passes that will be the next goal?
After a long while it finnaly was our turn to run a test n tune. The tyres were now so worn out the burnout was almost completely smokeless, but I still managed to do a 1,63s 60ft. The clock stopped at 10,05s - 248kmh.
I would say the time is in direct relation to the tyres, but the engine seems to be very OK. We now backed up the speed also.
Too bad the tyres were in such poor condition that they sould have been retired before we even got to the track.
Now the season ends in Sweden, and we will take a couple of weeks vacation before we start to dismantle everything. 2009 we will be even stronger, better and faster!
New tyres, new paint, new fuel but still the go.
Feel free to download the film from the weekend!
3,55 minutes
36,5Mb
Comopressed with DivX
Streamed by youtube in lowres:
It is available in better quality from inside youtube
But I have encounted some problems accessing the film from youtube,
and it seams to be some sort of trouble with the music rights...
Photo: woken.se andLars Sikhammar.
