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Diary
written by: Cindy Howe (unless
otherwise specified)
check back often for updates!
Most current entry is
at the bottom of the page.
December 15,
2003
Monday
Welcome to our 2004 racing diary, where
we share the details of our racing season no matter how good or bad they
may be. Check back often as we "try" to keep this diary updated
regularly.
We've got a lot of exciting news
heading into the 2004 racing season. First of all, we want to thank
Wayne County Speedway owners for making the decision to run AMRA Modifieds
regularly in 2004. In addition to bringing us in full-time, they've
also announced two Road Warrior dates. Jay and I are
extremely excited about this. Wayne County is basically in our
backyard compared to the 2 1/2+ travel time (one-way) that we've been used
to over the past 4 years. So, we're converting to a traveling from
track to track every week team to focusing on one track, Wayne County
Speedway.
What else is going on??? Well,
Wayne County Speedway owners John and Ilene Hess contacted us before
deciding to run Modifieds in '04. One of their primary concerns was
car count. We actually have 2 Modifieds. A Hot Chassis, which
we purchased last season and ran during '03, and a Huff, which we saved
for a backup car. We definitely want to see Modifieds having a long
future at WCS, so we made the decision to become a full-time two car team.
Besides, twice the headaches that we've
previously had...Ha!...what does that mean for the Howe Extreme Racing
Team? We're in the process of hiring our friend Chris Mullinnex to
race our second car. Chris will be a rookie in the Modified
division, stepping up from the mini-stock class. Chris is a good
friend, a good driver, and has helped us out quite a bit over the past
year and a half. I think we're all pretty excited over this deal.
What else? If you've read any of our
2002 or 2003 diaries, then you know that we frequently experienced engine
trouble. Towards the middle of last summer, we dumped the engine
builder, and figured some things out on our own. Our problems
definitely decreased, but we wanted to build another engine over the
Winter in preparation for 2004. We hired BadMan Racing Engines in
Wakeman, Ohio, who I'm very familiar with because Mark builds the
Sportsman engines for the NHRA Drag Racing Team I work for, Bullet
Motorsports.
Problem #1....Our Huff car did not have
an engine or tranny. So now what? BadMan is building the primary
engine for Jay's car. We'll be pulling the engine that we ran last
year and use it as the official backup engine for both cars.
Now...we needed an engine for Chris in the Huff car. We made several
contacts with area drivers and even spoke with Mark at BadMan about
building an inexpensive decent engine. The result? We
purchased an engine from a local driver, that only had several races on
it. The price was right and the components are good, so we actually
brought it home tonight. Problem solved? Ha...to early to
tell.
In addition to our decision to run two
cars in '04, we've also teamed up with our friend Roger Miller who runs an
asphalt Modified. This decision was mainly made for marketing
purposes. We take our responsibility to our sponsors very seriously.
We view sponsorship as a business transaction. We don't ask our
sponsors for money to go racing, we ask them to hire us to help sell their
products and services, and market their company. We decided we can
reach more people and accomplish our goals and the goals of our sponsors
by combining our efforts between the three cars and crews. We are
actively seeking sponsors for the 2004 season and beyond. If you
would like to receive one of our packets or know a company that may be
interested, please email me:
extreme@howeextreme.com.
December
28,
2003
Sunday
Our racing
diary has become pretty popular over the past couple of years. We're
not sure if it's because our luck is so bad and we're so honest about it,
or if people just like to read what goes on with a race team. Well,
if it's the bad luck syndrome...guess what? It's December, what can
go wrong right? Well, we've got good news and we've got bad news.
The good news? We have all the components to finish our new engine
that Mark at BadMan is putting together. The bad news? Last
years engine grenaded in the shop Friday. Luckily it didn't take out
the parts that we needed!
Here's what
happened. Jay and I both had Friday after Christmas off. Jay
had started the engine earlier in the week and found that we had a small
water problem again somewhere. We had that problem last year, but
AlumaSeal seemed to fix our problem. Jay dumped a tube of AlumaSeal
in and started the car to get it up to temperature for the AlumaSeal to
circulate. When it got up to 160, the engine shutdown. Jay
looked things over and pulled the valve covers. One rocker looked
off. Upon further inspection, he noticed the spring was sitting up
higher. Realizing something must have let go, he pulled the head.
One of the valves had broke off, moved, and was lodged in the head.
Upon tearing down the rest of the engine, he found: Multiple holes
in one of the pistons, one bent rod...yes, bent, a large deep cut in one
piston wall, and two valves needing replaced in the head, plus the hole in
the head that needs to be fixed...luckily they're aluminum heads.
Check out the pictures!
Of course,
there are some bright sides to this story. Besides having the parts
to finish our new engine...
1. It's still 2003, so hopefully this is leftover 2003 luck and not
an
indication of how 2004 will go.
2. At least we found this problem in December and not at the
racetrack
or a week before season begins.
January 1, 2004
Thursday
Happy New Year!
Today not only marks the first day of the new year, but also the first day
we officially began concentrating on the Huff car. We had carefully
checked over the car after the 2002 season, replacing bent body panels,
and thoroughly tightening all bolts and linkages. So, when we rolled
the car out of the secondary race shop this morning, we were confident
that we wouldn't have too much "extra" work and maintenance to do.
As we
transported the car across town to the main race shop, Jay, Chris, Heather
and I were pretty excited to start work. Our goals for the day
included pulling the fuel cell, applying our new graphics, dropping the
Griff Engine and Bert Tranny in, and putting the gear in.
Jay had listed
the fuel cell on a racing forum classified. It's a bottom feed cell,
and is now illegal in the AMRA organization. There is apparently
some sort of kit available to convert the cell, but after speaking to RCI
reps at the PRI show, we opted to put this one up for sale and purchase a
new fuel cell.
Although Jay
was hoping we would get everything completed by 3pm today, we still made
pretty good time and finished up around 4:30pm - 5pm. The gear gave
the guys a little trouble...due to the fact that they had missed removing
a nut! Heather and I had to make 3 or 4 small trips around town to
pick up various supplies, which slowed us down some, but had to be done.
The engine and tranny dropped in without much incident. The graphics
went on very smoothly. The fuel cell dropped out of the car without
a fight. We even painted the fuel cell brackets and the outside of
the cell.
Hopefully the
rest of the season goes as smoothly as today did!
January 3, 2004
Saturday
We decided to
meet Chris, Heather, and one of their boys, Tony, at the shop to do a
little work. Our main goal today was to check a few sets of headers
to see if we could get something to work. While we were there, we
also put another coat of paint on the fuel cell, installed the new seat
belts, put the seat back in the car, and attached the line going from the
fuel pump to the engine.
Click here to see the latest pictures.
January 10, 2004
Saturday
Last week's
header testing resulted in no matches. So, we tossed around a few
alternative solutions and decided to cut the flanges off our spread port
headers that we previously used on that car. We ordered new flanges
during the week and they arrived by the weekend, so Chris & Heather headed
over to meet us at the shop to complete the header project.
The project
took quite a bit of time and patience with lining up the flanges, headers,
maneuvering, tach welding, etc. The end product matches up quite well
though. The headers are loaded in the truck to be dropped off at the
welding shop on Monday.
All in all,
things went smoothly.
January 11, 2004
Sunday
We've decided
to apply to Beachwood Studio's reality TV show for Gearheads. With
any luck, you'll be able to see our story, as well as read about it!
January 17,
2004
Saturday
We
braved 6 hours (round trip) of rain, freezing rain, and snow to travel
down to Parkersburg, WV to “Dave’s Gone Crazy” sale at Poske Performance
Parts. Dave has this sale one weekend a year, and we’ve made the trip all
5 years we’ve been racing. Even though the weather rarely cooperates this
time of year, the savings on parts are well worth the trip.
We
had a small list of parts to pick up including a 32-gallon fuel cell for
the Huff car, a Falcon Transmission for the Hot car, Fuel Log for the Hot
car, and a handful of smaller items. We were able to get everything on
the list except a spare bronze distributor gear and a negative quick
release battery post.
It
was nice to see Dave Poske, the AMRA officials and reps, and several of
our Modified driver friends at the sale.
Upon arriving back in Ashland, Ohio, we headed to the shop to unload. Of
course Jay and Chris were like kids at Christmas, tearing into the fuel
cell box and transmission box! The cell that came out of the Huff was a
32-gallon RCI bottom feed cell. So, we were hoping that the new top feed
RCI would fit right into the brackets we had made for the other one.
Surprisingly, it fit perfectly. We lifted it up into in place somewhat
easily. Of course, after we got the bolts secured and the cell set into
place, we realized we hadn’t hooked up the fuel lines yet and would now
have to fight the top of the car to get them into place. We messed with
it for about 15 minutes before we gave up. We’ll have to drop the cell
back out and hook the hoses up and then lift the cell back into place next
time we go to the race shop.
The
transmission was the next area of interest. The guys pulled it out of the
box and looked the directions over (yea, it surprised me too!). We ran a
Bert transmission for the past 3 years. A Falcon is very similar to a
Bert, so after doing some research and talking with drivers that use them
and distributors that sell and work on them, we opted to try the Falcon.
The Falcon is suppose to be a couple inches longer than a Bert, which
would be a huge plus because we have a nice drive shaft that was 2 inches
short with the Bert. Now, we won’t have to get a new drive
shaft…hopefully.
January 18,
2004
Sunday
Here’s our breaking news for the day….Midway Speedway has decided to race
on Friday nights in 2004!!! This is terrific news. Why?
1.
Midway used to race on Saturdays. Since moving to Friday nights, it’ll
increase the odds of more cars traveling to Wayne County Speedway for
Saturday nights.
2. We
frequently raced at Midway in 2003. We enjoyed racing there and was going
to miss it in 2004. Now, we have the option to travel down to Midway on
Friday’s.
We’re definitely looking forward to the 2004 season….now, if it would just
stop snowing!
January 22,
2004
Thursday
Jay
had decided to get our spare carb back from Roger and cancel the order for
the new one. However, he forgot to actually call and cancel it, so
the new carb should be arriving tomorrow.
Our
engine builder called yesterday. Jay was anticipating getting the
engine back in-hands towards the end of February. Mark said he
should have it ready to be picked up next weekend! Way ahead of
schedule, now that's refreshing!
We
made plans to meet Chris and Heather at the race shop on Saturday.
With any luck, we'll be able to finish up the Huff car this weekend.
January 24,
2004
Saturday
Jay installed
the new carb while Chris, Heather, and I fixed our fuel cell issues. We
also managed to secure the battery mounts. Finally, it was “fire” time.
We grabbed two of the fire extinguisher that are placed around the
shop…just in case we had the wrong kind of fire. Jay flipped the switch
and the gauge lights came on. Good sign, we’ve got power. They primed
the oil before dropping in the distributor, so Jay pushed the button and
it started to turn over, but wasn’t strong. It was then that Jay realized
the battery was probably dead. We hooked up the charger and waited a
bit. After adding a little more fuel into the carb, we raised the
overhead doors again and tried to fire the engine up. It took a few
attempts to get the fuel through the lines, but the engine came to life.
Even with the overhead doors open, it didn’t take long for the alcohol
fumes to circulate into our lungs and eyes. We loved it!
No major leaks,
so we were all really excited. We cleaned up and headed to BW3’s for
dinner.
The only things left to do on the Huff car is scale it, set it up, and
load it on Chris’ trailer to transport it to his shop. We’re also hoping
to drop the BadMan Engine into the Hot car the next time we meet. So far,
so good….except for the fact it’s 0 degree’s outside, there’s snow on the
ground, and we’re expecting 4+ inches of snow to fall tomorrow.
I uploaded a couple pictures from today.
You
can view them here. I also shot a little video footage,
but won't be able to upload it to later this week.
Feb 6th,
2004
Friday
--this entry written by:
Jay Howe--
Last weekend we
took a long weekend vacation; visiting North Carolina. We started out in a
snowstorm…. I love winter in the north! Unfortunately for my wife, she
does not like winter as much as I do…I think most of the drive while in
the snow storm she had her eyes closed…. not sure why though…maybe it was
the other drivers on the road and how they were driving…. LOL…
Friday we
stayed in Wilmington NC, visiting the North Myrtle beach area for a few
hours. Saturday we visited downtown, and some of my wife’s “old stomping”
grounds. We also spent a lot of time at the “Battleship North Carolina”.
For those who have never been there, it is well worth the time.
Saturday
evening we went over to Fayetteville to stay with some friends of ours,
Jim, Melissa, Morgan, Dillon, and Jaxson. Jim has lost track of what a
mile really is. I know the heat in the south has basically fried his
brain. His directions of 10 miles to this turn really were 2-3 miles max….
Just kidding’ Jim. We headed off after dinner to watch Jim and his
basketball team play a rival church team (Cedar Creek). Cedar creek took
it to Jim’s team. After we picked Jim up off the court, we retired to his
humble mansion abode.
(Not
necessarily the correct order of events for the following) Sunday we
visited the Army Airborne museum. What a moving moment. If you have the
chance to visit, I highly encourage it. We then went to look at the two
tracks in Fayetteville. One was a 4/10-mile dirt track. The other was a ¼
drag strip. A lot of potential for the right owner. We also had a very
nice meal with Jim’s mother, sister, and his niece. We really enjoyed
meeting his family. Such nice people. Sunday night was also the super
bowl. Jim, Melissa, Cindy (my delirious wife) were rooting for Carolina.
Now Morgan and I were voting for New England. Morgan aligned herself with
a winning team; I assured her of this. As Carolina closed the gap, Jim,
and his lovely wife Melissa were “dancing” all over the house. Rubbing it
in my face. Now mind you, I never antagonized up till that point. I was
confident that New England was going to win, since they had taken it to
Carolina for most of the game. With less than a minute to go, New England
marched right down the field. No opposition from Carolina. Field goal,
game over…not being the one to boast, I withheld my bragging’ rights.
Monday I remembered to call both Jim and Melissa back to thank them for
their hospitality. Of course at that time I asked them to recall for me
who won the game last night. I think Melissa deep down was really pulling
for New England, but didn’t want to hurt Jim’s feelings…LOL!!!
Overall we had
a very nice time. Even picked up a few seashells, and racecar parts…. LOL….
Thanks again Jim, and Melissa for your hospitality.
Jim Long Jr.
owns All Star Designs, and BullzEye Performance.
February 6,
2004
Friday
Okay, there’s
at least two sides to every story, so here’s my version of our NC trip.
We leave on Thursday night after we drop Jay’s kids off. It’s snowing and
the roads are a mess, but did that phase Jay? No. Roger calls my
cell phone. He’s South of Columbus and telling me the roads are so bad
that he’s doing 35 mph. I tell him, we should be too…but we’re doing
about twice that! Anyway, we arrive in Ripley, WV eventually, which is
where we booked the hotel room.
We leave pretty
early Friday morning. There are plows out, but the passing lane on I-77
is really the only lane that still pretty much sucks. Where do you think
Jay drove??? Yea, the passing lane. I just kept watching the temperature
indicator in our rear view mirror. The farther South we got, the warmer
it got, and the better the roads got. When we hit Virginia, there was a
dusting of snow around, but the roads were clear. We continued towards
Wilmington, NC, where I went to college and watched the temperatures raise
to 58 degrees. Considering we had just left 0 degree and below weather, I
was pretty excited.
I may have been
born and raised in Ohio, but I love North Carolina and often refer to
Wilmington as “home”. So, even though we were only going to be there for
a long weekend, I was still ecstatic. We arrived in Wilmington and
checked into the hotel. We then drove by my old apartment and by a few of
the UNC-Wilmington buildings, before we traveled down to North Myrtle
Beach. We hung out in North Myrtle for awhile and then drove back to
Wilmington for the night.
Jay had been to
Wilmington before when he drove semi for K&P Trucking. He had only seen
one small part of the town and it was the bad side of town, so he really
wasn’t looking forward to the Wilmington portion of our trip. I had a
pretty big job ahead of me, since I had to convince him why Wilmington was
such a great place. So, Saturday after we made the complete loop through
the college, so I could see what all had happened over the past 7 years,
we drove down to Wrightsville Beach, which is only a few miles down the
road. I love the beach down here. It’s rarely crowded, which is pretty
cool. It was kinda windy, so I was hoping there’d be a bunch of surfers
out. When we got to the beach, the ocean was really calm…no surfers. We
picked up a few shells and walked around for a few minutes before
returning to the car.
Here’s a few pictures.
Next, we headed
for downtown Wilmington. The area by the college is a very modern area.
The area downtown is still a historical district type area. The Cape Fear
River flows through Wilmington, and I always enjoyed going downtown by the
Cape Fear. They shoot a lot of movies and TV shows from Wilmington. They
would often close off areas downtown near the river to shoot scenes. I
watched on several occasions, it was always really cool. The USS North
Carolina sits in a bay in the Cape Fear River across from downtown
Wilmington. It’s always a breathtaking sight seeing it over there. I’ve
told Jay for 7 years that the most beautiful fireworks display that I ever
saw was in Wilmington. The fireworks display in itself was amazing, but
they shoot them off so they explode above, behind, and beside the USS
North Carolina. You just get such an incredible feeling watching them.
Here’s
a few pictures from downtown, along the Cape Fear.
After we left
downtown, we took the bridge over the Cape Fear to get to the USS North
Carolina. We spent several hours on the battleship. It’s a beautiful
ship with quite an impressive history. Here’s one part that Jay “left
out” of his description. All around the ship there are plates that say
“do not touch or move levers, knobs, etc”. Anything Jay could get his
hands on, he was trying to flip, unscrew, twist, or something! I even got
a picture of him trying to dial a phone on the ship! I can’t take him
anywhere. If you’re ever in the Wilmington area, you should plan to see
the battleship, it’s definitely an experience you shouldn’t miss. Here's
some pictures from the USS NC.
There are quite
a few other sites in the Wilmington area that are well worth checking
out. However, we were on a limited time schedule and needed to get up to
Fayetteville to see our friends Jim and Melissa Long. I told Jay, we’ll
check out some of the other sites next time we come down. He actually
said he liked Wilmington, so I guess, I did my job on convincing him!
We headed up
the highway to Fayetteville and found Jim’s new house without any
problems. It was great to see Jim and Melissa again. They had Jim’s
little boy Jaxson for the weekend too. He’s a trip. He’s only 2 or 3
and quite energetic. Of course Jay, kept things interesting. For
instance, when we went to Jim’s basketball game, Jay was teaching Jaxson
to yell “run daddy run, don’t walk, run”. Melissa would clap when Jim’s
team scored. Jaxson got excited and was clapping when either team
scored. He even confused Melissa a few times and she would accidentally
clap for the wrong team. It was pretty funny. As Jay mentioned, Jim’s
team lost, but we all had a good time. After the game we went back to
their house and crashed for the night.
Jim and Melissa
had just moved into the house that week. The cable company wouldn’t come
out until next week, so they were really concerned with being able to get
the right station for the Super Bowl. Jay and Jim experimented with the
rabbit ears and managed to get a good picture on the screen, so we were
good to go. For the past year or so, Jim had been telling us about this
Fayetteville Racing complex. So, we all hopped in the car and headed for
the track. There were a dozen or so cars lined up outside the track to
get into the drag strip area for test and tune. Some of those cars waiting
to get in were from Maryland and Virginia. We thought that was pretty
cool. We cruised around the entire facility snapping pictures and taking
it all in. One of Jay’s “dream come true” jobs would be to own and run a
racetrack. This would definitely be a facility well worth investing in.
It’s beautiful and as Jay and Jim say, with the right person/people
running it, it’d be quite profitable.
Check out
some pictures here.
After we
departed the track we went to the Special Forces/Airborne Museum in
downtown Fayetteville. As Jay said, it was very moving. They did a nice
job. We cut the museum short so we could go meet Jim’s mom, sister, and
niece for lunch. They are all wonderful people. We had a very nice lunch
and enjoyed all their stories. When we finished lunch, we met two of
Melissa’s kids, Morgan and Dylan. I think Morgan said she’s in third
grade and Dylan is in Kindergarten. They’re very sweet kids. We returned
to the museum to finish the tour before heading back to Jim and Melissa’s
to tune in the Super Bowl. Jay mislead Morgan into cheering for the wrong
team! The rest of us (minus Jay and Morgan) were yelling for the
Panthers. Even though the Patriots pulled it out at the end, I was still
proud of Carolina. They covered the spread and played an awesome game.
Even though there wasn’t much happening in the first part of the game, I
think it was one of the best Super Bowl games I’ve watched in a long
time. That’s how the Super Bowl should be…down to the last few seconds to
determine the winner.
One of the things I miss most
about living in the Carolina’s is Southern hospitality, I really don’t
think there’s anything like it. Jim, Melissa, Dylan, Morgan, Jaxson,
Jim’s mom – sister- and niece, all made our trip so enjoyable. Thank you
all so much for everything. We hope to return to the Carolina’s in the
very near future.
Here's a
few misc. pictures from the trip too.
February 8,
2004
Sunday
Well, we have
good news and bad news. Imagine that. The good news is:
Chris and Heather met us at the shop yesterday to scale the car.
What we thought would take most of the day was done in no time flat.
We thought the car would be way off because:
1. The last time the car was ready to race, it was setup for
asphalt.
2. This was a different engine and was cast heads, not aluminum.
3. Different driver.
4. We made a lot of adjustments when we moved things back to a dirt
setup.
With all that in mind, we dropped it on the scales. Chris climbed in
and I flipped through the weights and percentages. Pretty dang
close. We made no changes, and decided to try it this way for the
first time out.
More good news...the Huff car is good to go.
Now, the bad
news. We were planning on dropping in our new engine this weekend
too. BUT...our oil pan apparently doesn't fit the Dart Block we
have. So, Mark is suppose to have it all done this weekend except
for the pan. He's ordering one Monday, so hopefully, it'll be in
right away and we can pick it up this week and drop it in next weekend.
After we
finished the Huff car, we swapped the two cars around so the Hot is under
the lift now. Nothing
too exciting...but here's a couple more pictures.
February 15,
2004
Sunday
We had a rather
busy week. Drove up to BadMan Racing Engines Thursday to pick up our
engine. We can't wait to get it in the car and fired up.
Mark's confident that'll we'll definitely notice a positive difference in
performance. His actual words were "this engine's going to scare ya".
We made plans
to meet Chris and Heather on Saturday to drop the engine in. Our
friend, Roger Miller, joined us at the shop for awhile too.
Everything was going pretty smoothly until we checked the hydraulic hookup
on the transmission. The Falcon transmission had a different
connection then what our Bert transmission did. Heather and I headed
up to the hardware store to see if we could find something to work.
When we returned the guys nearly had the engine set into place.
Things were going quite smoothly. The fitting we bought even worked
with the transmission.
We dropped in
the radiator and hooked up all the lines, primed the oil pump, crossed our
fingers, and were ready to fire the engine up. Chris had to hit the
button a few times to get fuel flowing, but it finally fired, and then
Heather immediately yelled to shut it off. An old familiar problem
had resurfaced. We blew the ring on the oil filter and puked oil all
over the floor. Thank goodness Roger was there, because the 5 times
we did this last season, nobody but Jay and I were ever around. I
had written off last year's problem to a junk block where the oil filter
attaches. However, this is a brand new Dart Block. Nothing
junk about this one. Great.
Roger must have
said "I don't understand how that happened" 10 times. He asked Jay
how tight he had the filter and I think had convinced himself that it had
to have been related to how tight he had put it on. It was a brand
new Napa Gold filter, straight from the box, so it wasn't like we were
trying to reuse one or anything.
Roger
straightened the seal and put the filter back on. We fired again.
It blew again.
Jay said he's
out of oil. By looking at the floor, I'd say we puked about 2 quarts
out already. We borrowed two quarts from our friend Mike and dropped
them in a Fram oil filter that was originally on the Griff engine that we
bought a couple months ago. We dumped a quart in the filter and the
other quart in the engine, secured the filter, and watched for a third
blowout. Chris fired the car up as we all held our breaths. No
blowout, we're good to go.
Jay and Roger
set the timing as we all looked the engine over for other leaks.
It all ended well, even though Roger is still trying to figure out why we
keep blowing oil filter rings. I called Mark Cook to tell him our
results. Jay ended up talking to him, but Mark made a few
suggestions. We're going to try them out and if we still have
problems, Mark said he'd adjust the oil pump.
Our next
mission is figuring out the new transmission. We still need to
attach the drive shaft and scale the car too. We're getting close to
being ready with both cars though! Our first practice session is
next month...if the snow and ice ever melt!
February 22,
2004
Sunday
A few diary
entries ago, I explained that we shouldn't need a new drive shaft because
the new transmission was slightly longer, which should work perfectly with
our extra drive shaft. Wrong answer. Jay tried it out Monday.
Now it's too long! So, we ordered a new one this week. Jay
dropped it in on Thursday, and it fit perfectly.
Chris met Jay
and I at the shop Saturday. They figured out our transmission issues
and stopped the tranny leaks. We fired up the engine and let it get
up to temperature...all went well. We even scaled the car and set it
up for the practice.
A young local
racer, Tyler Dunn, joined us at the shop this weekend. Tyler has had
success in Go Karts and Micro Sprints, and would like to step up into
Modified Racing. We may be teaching him "What not to do", but at
least he's learning!
Chuck Griffith
was kind enough to invite us to be guests on his weekly radio show,
"Thrills on Wheels"...the fastest two hours on radio! We had a great
time and would like to thank Chuck for having us on.
Here's a couple pictures from the studio.
We've gained
several new sponsors over the Winter, including one today, so we'd like to
give a collective "Thank You" to all of our sponsors: All State Fire
Protection, All Star Designs, Ace Engineering, Autumn Computer Systems,
BadMan Racing Engines, Pepsi-Cola, Performance Race Fuels, Fryman's
Services, and Jan's Auto Repair.
February 29,
2004
Sunday
Jay has been working on building a
tire cart for Heather and I. Wayne County Speedway gives competitors
two laps to change a flat tire in a designated area before resuming
racing. This option also exists during Road Warrior races.
With both Chris and Jay driving, that leaves tire changing to Heather and
I. Although design details came together as the cart was built, it
turned out awesome! We still need to add a handle and paint it, but
other than that, it's basically finished.
Here's a
couple pictures.
Over the Winter, Jay and I attended the PRI show out in Indianapolis.
We ran across a few cool things, but the most impressive was a 12v to 16v
Volt Converter created by a racer / industrial physicist. The
company is called Auto-Physics. They had a demonstration there and
it really captured our attention. We've worked out a deal with them
to help them sell their products. We ordered two units this week for
our two Modifieds. Chris and Jay installed them yesterday.
We're really excited about this product. They retail at $395 (plus shipping).
You can order them through us for $380 (including shipping). They
weigh less than 3 pounds.
Email me if you want to order one or want
us to mail you additional information.
Click here to view our flyer, or email us
to request a flyer.
Today we head to Wooster for the Wayne County Speedway drivers/owners
meeting. We're pretty excited. For the first time ever, WCS is
going to use transponders on a full-time basis for Sprints, Late Models,
and Modifieds. It'll be a new experience for us, but they'll give us a
lot of useful information that we can apply to our setup.
February 29,
2004
Sunday
-part 2-
The Wayne County Speedway meeting went quite well
today. The transponders are $260 each, which might sound like a lot,
but once you buy them, they're yours. These transponders can not
only be used at WCS, but also at Conneaut Raceway and other tracks that
have transponder capability. The information you get from the
transponders will be well worth the investment. They'll also
eliminate human error. There's been several times over the past few
years where we felt we finished in a different place then where the track
had marked us...sometimes in our favor, sometimes against us.
Transponders will give us instantaneous race results and points
tabulation. They'll also help the track announcer because all of our
sponsors, car specs, driver info, and crew info are keyed in to our unit
and would be available to the announcer.
The 2004 Wayne County Speedway schedule was released
today. Based on this schedule and the AMRA Road Warrior Tour
schedule, we have released a tentative racing schedule for
the Howe Extreme Racing Team. Stop by and say "hi" if we're
ever at the same track.
March 7, 2004
Sunday
Gary Dreiblebis, a local Late Model driver, has decided to sell off his
operation. We stopped over earlier in the week and picked out a few items
for our team and a few items to resell. We made plans to meet up with
Gary over the weekend to complete the transaction. Check out our
“classified section” to see some of the items we have for sale.
Saturday afternoon, we met Chris and Heather at the race shop. The plan
was to check toe-in/toe-out on the Hot car, connect the battery disconnect
switch on the Huff car, and then cleanup the floor from previous oil
spills. We flew through our checklist without incident.
Jay asked our friend Roger Miller to stop out sometime over the weekend
and check out one of our carbs. We were having problems with the needles
sticking. Roger didn’t make it over while we were there, but he did stop
out Saturday evening. Jay was greeted over the phone with “do you want
the good news or do you want the bad news?” Jay looked over at me and
then said “the bad news first.” Followed by “oh no. Not again.” Roger
fired the engine to play with the carb. We had a high dollar oil filter
on the engine. You guessed it….the filter blew. The clean garage floor
that we were so proud of, was no longer clean!
I had Mark, our engine builder, on the phone as Jay hung up with Roger.
Mark said he could adjust the oil pump, but prefers to replace it. We
agreed and made plans for him to stop out sometime within the next 2 weeks
to change it. Hopefully, that’ll cure our oil filter issues. If all goes
well, we’re hoping to rent the track March 20th.
In other racing news…Bullet
Motorsports, the NHRA Drag Racing Team I work for, qualified 6th
in the Pro Stock division this weekend. Our twenty-one-year-old driver,
Dave Connolly defeated Darrell Alderman in Round 1 of Eliminations. Dave
then defeated Jim Yates in Round 2 and Larry Morgan in the Semi-finals.
Connolly was first off the line in the finals against Kurt Johnson, first
at half-track, but couldn’t quite beat KJ to the finish line. NHRA has
an online audio broadcast, so you can listen to the races over the
Internet. So, even though I couldn’t be there, it was cool listening to
it live.
March 13, 2004
Saturday
Today we worked on
finishing up the tire cart. The cart is capable of holding 4 tires ( 2
beadlocks, 2 standard wheels and tires), the jack, and cordless impact.
Actually it was done 2 weeks ago, but the tires hit the front casters
causing the cart to track straight, instead of turning if need be.
Our engine builder
this year is coming out Tuesday to replace the oil pump, since it is
pushing too much oil pressure, and blowing filters. Hopefully this will
solve the on going problem with the oil pressure. crossing fingers....
We are ready for
the 2004 season to begin. Just need a few more items to have on hand, i.e.:
tires, shocks, etc....Hopefully the weather will start to go in our favor,
and we can get out onto the track. Our friend Rick Walker from Portsmouth
is racing this weekend. Good luck Rick.
March 29, 2004
Monday
The engine builder
stopped out a couple weeks ago and changed the oil pump. Of course,
Mark figured it would be an easy project. We'd warned him that
nothing with us came easily...this was no different. A 30-minute
project turned out to be about 3 hours. Mission completed though and
the car fired with ease. Mark made a few adjustments with the carb and it
sounds awesome.
A couple "bad
news" items came up over the past 2 weeks since the last update.
First: the weather has been wet and crappy, which hasn't allowed the
Wayne County Speedway staff to prepare the track for practice. The
first practice was cancelled. It's not looking too good for
practicing this week either. And for the second piece of bad news:
there was a rumor that Cannonball Motor Speedway was not going to open for
2004. Knowing how rumors are, I decided to give them a call and get
the official scoop. I spoke with Tammy at Cannonball and she
confirmed that they were only going to run special event shows this year,
nothing weekly.
Well, with both
race cars ready for action, the four of us have been working on side
projects during our weekends. The guys decided to build a 5ft sheet
metal break. At first we were a little skeptical, but the break came
together quite well. We completed it this weekend and tested it out.
Works quite well. Cool thing was, a new one would've cost between
$350-$400. Ours came in just under $50.
April 2, 2004
Friday
Bad News/Good
News. Bad? It's been raining...snowing....and crappy for about
4 days straight. We want to go racing! Where to go???
Wayne County Speedway cancels practice. KC Raceway cancels racing.
Tyler County Speedway cancels 2 days worth of practice. Midway
Speedway, cancelled. Mudlick Valley Raceway in Kentucky cancelled a
Sunday practice. South Buxton Raceway (in Canada) doesn't open until
May 1st. Lawrenceburg Speedway (Indiana) not open yet.
Florence Speedway in Kentucky opens April 3rd. Hmmm.....I make the
phone call.
The girl at
Florence tells me they've had rain, but aren't expecting anymore and are
counting on racing Saturday. Sweet! Yet, Florence runs under
UMP rules. In order to get UMP legal we need to drop the spoilers
and add a strip of sheet metal across the back of the car. Not a
problem. Both cars have the pieces already made, we just need to
attach them.
More potential bad
news though. The Hot car doesn't have the Vortex Coned Mufflers that
are required by Florence Speedway. Jay calls the Speedway to see if
they'll let us slide. No such luck. He calls Summit Racing in
Akron. They have them in stock and are open late. However, I
remember that our friend Roger Miller works South of Columbus and comes
back to Ashland on Friday nights. I figure if Summit has them then
Jegs probably does too. Jegs is located in Columbus. Jay has
also thought along the same lines...(scary). We talk Roger into
stopping at Jegs.
Jay and I ordered
the kids a pizza and headed out to the race shop to convert the cars to UMP
rules. I drop the spoilers off both cars while Jay measures tires
and gets them setup. We just finish mounting both back pieces when
Chris and Heather arrive.
Jay and Chris get
the mufflers bolted in after breaking half a dozen drill bits! Good
to go. We're home by 9:15pm.
Now, as long as
the weather holds, we're racing tomorrow!
Oh yea...I almost
forgot. More good news. In previous diary entries we announced
that we applied to a "Gear heads" reality TV show about racing. I
received an email from them today. They want to meet us and tell us
more about the show. If we're still interested in participating,
they're interested in us! How cool is that!?!
April 4, 2004
Sunday
It took us about 3
1/2 hours to get down to Florence, Kentucky. That even
included a couple fuel stops, so we made pretty good time.
Day started off
beautiful. Temperatures were in the 60's and mostly sunny. Track was
in pretty good condition. There were quite a few Late Models, with a
few big names like: Donnie Moran, Rick Auckland, and Steve Landrum.
Sixty-Two Modifieds showed up as well.
Jay pulled a
good pill and started on the pole of the 4th heat. He finished second
in the heat. Chris pulled a lousy number and started on the tail of the
3rd heat...which was good though, because we wanted him to learn the car
and get some seat time. Chris finished on the tail of his heat, but got
some good quality learning laps without tearing up anything.
The track
roughed up bad as the night progressed. The weather turned for the
worse too. Temps dropped to the 30's and the winds came through
strong.
They took the
top 6 in each heat to an "A Feature" and 7-12 went to a "B Feature".
Jay started 8th in the "A" and moved up to 5th, but got himself into
some trouble with the rough track and slipped back for a 10th place
finish.
We had a great
time and were extremely pleased with our first night out. We're
ready for Opening Night at Wayne County Speedway this Saturday providing
the weather cooperates!
April 10, 2004
Saturday
Thursday we met
with the Producer and Assistant Producer of the Gearheads show from
Beachwood Studios. Really nice people. The original concept
was to follow a few teams around for a season. The new idea is more
compact. Instead of a series type show that follows teams for a
season, it'll be a 2-hour type show, which would follow a team for a
couple weeks. We really liked everything we heard and are pretty
excited about the show. The studio plans on starting with us next weekend
at Wayne County Speedway's opener. Hopefully we'll have good
weather...and good luck...although bad luck would probably make for better
TV. Hmmm...you think maybe they want to follow us because of our bad
luck?
Okay, today's
plans were to head to Wayne County Speedway to take part in their noon-6pm
practice session. We were the first team to arrive. The pit
gate was locked and they couldn't find the keys. So, they did what
we'd do, got out the bolt cutters and clipped the lock. Slowly but
surely, cars started rolling in. I think we ended up with 13
Modifieds. I thought that was pretty good for a practice session
when other tracks are open and racing today.
Session 1 of
Modified practice. Jay and Chris and 2 or 3 other Mod's hit the
track. Jay's hooked and doing really well. Chris has a
push in the car, but we're not sure if it's a bad push or just because
he's learning the car or a combination.
Session 2 of
Modified practice. Jay's still hooked. Corner entries and
exits are awesome. Chris still has a push and plays around in
different areas of the track looking for a comfortable groove.
Towards the end of the session Jay catches up with Chris and decides to go
for a pass. I'm not entirely sure what happened at this point.
"I think" Jay went for the outside pass and surprised Chris. Chris
was drifting up the track towards the outside lane to setup his entry into
the turn. Well...Jay was there. Jay thinks they touched, Chris
didn't feel them touch. Either way...Jay took a ride into the front
stretch wall just before turn 1. Jay continued around the turns and
exited the track. The rest of the cars came off too because they
ended the session after the wreck.
I'm thinking it
can't be too bad because he's still driving on it right? Heather and
I round the car to see a mess. The rim is bent beyond repair.
The upper control arm is destroyed, shearing off both rods and breaking
the pieces off the little center section that fits on the ball joint.
The ball joint is toast, totally bent. The shock, destroyed.
The tie-rod bar...what tie-rod bar? The circular part of the heim
was all that remained of the tie-rod bar. The rest must be on the
track somewhere. Fluid all over the tire indicating a brake line
problem. The brake line actually broke off at the brake. Like I said,
a mess. Okay, now my theory on packing the trailer is: "If you
pack it, you won't need it. If you leave it at home in the shop,
you'll need it." We had.....a shock. Everything else?
Yep, at the shop. Well, we had spare tires and rims too.
This is the first
year for Modifieds at Wayne County. Of course, the parts trailers
don't carry suspension parts for a Modified because they don't know what
we might need. Let me tell ya, that guy was taking notes. He
had a lengthy "things to get list" after we left the trailer.
Lucky for us,
Scott Stiffler and his crew from Wizard Chassis were there and had
everything we needed. Somewhere in the ballpark of $50 later, we
have enough parts to rebuild the right front of the car. We missed
one session of practice laps, then the track took a break to water the
track. I don't think we missed any more practice laps before we got
everything ready to rock.
We'd like to thank
the Stiffler's, Danny Dean, Rocky Kugel, and all the other racers at WCS
that let us borrow tools or parts or whatever to help get us back
together. I don't know about the Late Model teams or other classes,
but Modified teams really seem to go out of there way to help out when
someone has a problem.
Back on
track...the track really dried out and blacked over as the day progressed.
Our car seemed to handle pretty well through both the early mud and the
later-in-the-day dry slick. Chris still struggled with turning.
Our friend Roger
Miller wandered in around 3:30-4pm. He practiced over at Mansfield
Motorsports Speedway in his Modified earlier, and stopped through to see
how things were going. Roger made a small wedge adjustment in our
car and we made a last minute panhard bar adjustment on Chris'.
Chris went out for a final session to see if the panhard change helped,
but he ended up having a right front tire issue that cut his laps to 3 or
4 instead of a full session. The right front somehow got cut and was
basically rolling itself over the rim when he hit the turns. (He
probably ran over our missing tie rod bar!)
We don't have a
whole lot to do on the cars this week. Wash them down, general
maintenance, scale them both, and check our caster/camber on the right
front. Hopefully that'll do it and we'll be ready for next weekend!
Here's a few pictures from
our Wayne County Practice.
April 11, 2004
Sunday
Happy Easter!
We took it easy today, for the most part. Headed to Mansfield to
catch The Rock's & Johnny Knoxville's new movie "Walking Tall". Jay
and I liked it, kids thought "it was okay".
I uploaded new
track profiles and pictures for
Florence Speedway and
West Virginia Motor Speedway
today.
Jay and I did
wander out to the race shop for a couple hours today. We unloaded
and washed the car, made our "to do" lists for the week, tightened the
wheel studs, fixed the left rear jack bolt, and drained the oil. We
were excited to see the oil is "oil colored" instead of our milky colored
oil that we often experienced last season.
While washing down
the car, Jay noticed our pull-bar is rubbing against the frame. Of
course, the pull-bar isn't even suppose to be on the Hot car, so I asked
Jay why he switched them. He had an explanation, but I'm thinking he
was really just bored one day and switched them. So, this week,
we're putting the pull-bar back on the Huff and bringing the biscuit rod
back over to the Hot.
April 13, 2004
Tuesday
We met Chris and
Heather at the race shop last night. The biscuit rod and pull-bar
are back on the correct cars. We replaced the battery switch on the
Hot car, checked and adjusted valves on both engines, fixed the Hot car's
oil pan leak (we think), tightened bolts, and made a few other minor
adjustments.
We scaled the Huff
car. I wish we would've scaled it after our practice...before we made a
spring change, a panhard bar adjustment, and put the pull bar back on.
And then scale it again after the changes. We have the paperwork
when we scaled it before Florence, but it would've been cool to see what
the results were from the conclusion of Wayne County practice. Oh
well, maybe we'll think about it next time.
When we did scale
it last night, we had to make some serious adjustments to loosen up the
car and get the percentages to work out.
We'll finish up
the cars tomorrow or Thursday and should be ready for the weekend.
April 17, 2004
Saturday
Opening day at
Wayne County Speedway has finally arrived. The weather is beautiful
even though they are calling for a chance of showers later in the evening.
We're all psyched up and ready to go. It's also our first official
day with Beachwood Studios. We planned on meeting at the shop with
Beachwood around noon, but we're so pumped that we're at the shop around
9:45.
Chris and Heather
arrive around 11 and the Beachwood Studios crew arrive just before noon.
Krista from Beachwood filmed us loading the cars and trailers. We
were a little nervous about it while we loaded and didn't say a whole lot.
It got a lot easier as the day progressed though.
It was a little
windy at the track so we figured it was going to dry out and go slick.
There wasn't a whole lot to video since the cars were basically setup.
The crew mounted two on-board cameras to our car. One faced Jay and
the other was behind Jay and faced forward. We can't wait to see the
footage off these cameras!
There's a Road
Warrior Race at KC Raceway tonight and double features down at Midway
Speedway, so we're expecting a low car count tonight. It turned out
we were correct. Only 13 Modifieds signed in. We went out in
the same set of hotlaps as Chris. Jay managed to turn it sideways
coming out of turn 3 and luckily the two cars following him (one being
Chris) checked up and avoided the collision. We were all thinking
"oh no, not again".
Jay drew a low
number, putting him first out on the qualifying run. Jay loves to
qualify, but has never had much success with it. His first lap was
awesome, 20.044. The second lap was a little slower, but was still a
smooth run. The track started developing a bad hole down low coming
off of turn 4. Several Modifieds spun out during their qualifying
runs. Chris came out and made two nice runs. However, his
transponder was malfunctioning and it didn't record his times. Chris
volunteered to take the tail of the heat and feature since he's still
learning, so the track didn't have to try and time him with an alternate
method. Larry Kugel time trialed after Chris. He was flying'.
We were pretty sure he took over the top spot, but ended up being about
.004 slower, leaving Jay as top qualifier! Maybe...just maybe...our
luck is beginning to change for the better.
Krista, Brandon,
and Warren split up while the guys were on the track. Krista
followed Heather and I for our reactions while Jay and Chris were on the
track. Brandon and Warren filmed the crowd and the racing action.
Jay now has a nickname. Fellow Modified driver, Scott Stiffler, has nicknamed Jay, "Hollywood
Howe".
We were shocked to
learn they inverted our heat lineup. We've never seen that done
before. After Jay's heat lined up in the pit, the track reversed
their inversion decision and reorganized the heats. That moved Jay
back onto the pole of his heat instead of 6th. They flipped Chris to
the tail of the second heat instead of the tail of the first heat.
Jay pulled away
from the pack at the drop of the green. He lead a few laps before
hitting a few craters, throwing his car out of whack, someone got around. He stayed strong and was having a great race,
but he went into turn 3 too hard and looped it with about four laps to
go. When the light went green again, Jay got around two of the cars
in front of him and tried to track down the other 3. There wasn't
enough laps left though and he took 4th in the heat.
Chris is still
getting the hang of the Modified, and is doing quite well. His
entries and exits are definitely improving. You can tell by his
driving that he's getting more confident. I'm not sure if Chris went
into turn 1 too hard or too low, but he got turned around and went into
the infield backwards. Luckily he avoided the big tire and hit the
dirt mound! He made it out of the infield without damage...just a
little dirtier. One Modified ended up coming off the track and
another lost a drive shaft forcing his track exit. Chris had a 4th place finish. Ut Oh....that would put him beside
Jay in the Feature!
We made no changes
to either car. The clouds started getting darker and I hooked up the
laptop for a weather report. Potentially bad news. A storm
cell stretched from west of Mansfield to Canton. It could hit us...it
could miss us. After we shut the computer off, we felt a few drops
of rain.
The rain drops
steadily increased speed and it wasn't long before a wickedly cool
lightning storm was in full force. We were on a holding pattern
while the storm continued to develop. We loaded the Hot Modified into the
trailer and tarped the Huff. The lightning flashed across the entire
sky while we stood around the pit talking to other drivers and the
Beachwood crew.
The rain finally
stopped, but the lightning continued to flash across the sky near the
track. The
Pure Stocks and Mini Stocks completed their Features and the Modifieds
were released for their Feature. Jay wasn't part of the inversion
and began in the 7th spot. Chris was suppose to start 8th, but opted
for the tail. The green flag dropped and so did Jay's oil pressure.
He dropped down low when he saw bingo oil pressure and the red light.
But then as he entered turn one the oil pressure kicked back up. Who
knows what happened, but Jay re-engaged in the fight.
The car and engine seemed hooked and strong. Jay was flying and
Chris was hanging quite well when the rain started falling again.
The race stayed green until Danny Dean exited down the entrance ramp off
of turn 4, which brought out the yellow. I'm not sure if it was the
rain or car problems that turned Danny off the track, but he continued on
down to his pit. The cars lined back up and went green. A lap
or two later the officials sent the Modifieds off the track and back to
the pit while the rain increased in intensity. We loaded both cars
in a total downpour.
After we were
loaded we helped the Beachwood crew remove the on-board cameras.
When Jay and Chris walked up to get paid, they learned the race had only
recorded 5 laps and was not over. So, I guess we're into double
features next week. That'll be cool though.
April 18, 2004
Sunday
We got home
shortly after midnight last night. We're thankful for the short
drive from Wayne County Speedway. We agreed to meet Chris and
Heather Sunday to begin going over the cars and getting them
cleaned up. Even though we were both wiped out from Saturday's
events, we were up and on the way to the race shop an hour and a half
earlier than anticipated. We pressure washed the Bullet Motorsports
Dually, Racecar Trailer, floor of the race shop, and had nearly finished
the Hot Modified when Chris and Heather rolled in. I love our
pressure washer. The hot water really gets rid of the grease and
junk that accumulates along the frame and body.
We got everything
unloaded, washed both cars and made the weekly "to do" checklist for the
cars. Jay and Chris fought with Jay's rear bumper. Let me tell
ya, the bumper was beating Jay for quite awhile, but he finally won.
Chris got a new transponder last night. So, we replaced that and his
tach. We thought we had an 8000 or 9000 rev limiter chip in Chris'
MSD box...well, we learned there wasn't a chip in it after all! We
dropped one in though. I think, we basically have to scale the cars
and double check the wheel bases to complete this week's list. Not
bad. Somewhere around 3:30, we called it a day.
April 24, 2004
Saturday
After a week full
of cool days and rain, we were pleasantly surprised by sunny clear skies
on Saturday. Jay had to work until 12:30pm, but we headed out to the
shop to load up right after that. Chris and Heather were already at
the shop when we arrived. They had the tires aired up, fuel loaded,
and pretty much everything ready to go to the point of loading the cars.
We pulled into the
Wayne County Speedway at 1:45pm and heard the announcement that Modified
tech would begin at 2pm. We were happy to hear that though.
The fact that there was no inspection the previous week caused quite a bit
of controversy. We unloaded the cars rather quickly and Chris and I
climbed in the cars and headed up for tech. The president of AMRA,
Bill Hayes, was the tech inspector for the day. He was checking the
cars over really well. I noticed several Modifieds had to return for
inspection over minor infractions.
After Chris and I
passed our inspections, we all cruised around the pit to see who was
there. Some of the guys that run the Road Warrior Tour (Ken Riddle &
Larry Holbrook) came up to do some testing for the upcoming RWT races.
Jay was first out
for Qualifying. The track had already blacked over and developed
holes down low. Most likely due to the mini stocks and pure stocks
running earlier in the day, plus the Late Model qualifying. I told
Jay to pick 2 different lines in his qualifying laps...one low and one
high. Did he listen? Of course not. He recorded two laps
in the 21's, which could mean track conditions didn't allow us to run the
times we ran last week or our setup was off. After hearing the times
of the other cars, we decided it was track conditions. I never saw
the actual qualifying order posted, but it looked like we were in the
middle of the pack somewhere.
Chris still
struggled with his transponder. During the hotlaps session I asked
the track officials to check Chris to see if it was picking up a signal.
Nothing. So, before Chris went out for his qualifying laps, we moved
the transponder from the engine plate to the frame just off the engine
plate. The track owner and one of the officials oversaw the
transponder operation and approved of the location. There was
absolutely nothing over there to get in the way unless the fuel line
dropped down and went under the thing.
Chris hit the
track for his qualifying run. It wouldn't record. They think
the fuel line got in the way! Jay and Chris strapped the fuel line
down with more wire tires to insure it wasn't going anywhere. The
track strapped on a battery operated temporary transponder beside the
mounted one. Maybe between the two...one will work. Bad thing
is, they couldn't get a green light on the temporary one!
Unbelievable. Chris got back in line and finally recorded two laps.
The original transponder kicked in and started working! The
announcer never broadcast the lap times, but at least it was working.
We started 8th in
our makeup Feature from last week. We had 13 cars last week, but
only 11 returned for the makeup. Chris started 10th. The track
was still really dry even though they continued to water it throughout the
night. It was incredibly dusty. Jay made it up to fifth and
was doing quite well, but hit a rut between 1&2 and turned it sideways.
There were several cars immediately behind Jay and they had a 4 or 5 car
pileup. Jay came out of it in good shape. He fired up the car
and continued on. Danny Dean was one of the cars that hit Jay and
then Danny got hit by another car. Danny's car was pretty bad off.
He got back into the pit and was finished for the night. Chris was
lucky enough to miss the whole thing. Jay went to the tail and made
it back up to 8th when the checkered flag dropped. Not how we had
hoped things would go, but we made out pretty good considering.
Chris finished 10th.
I don't understand
why Wayne County inverts the top 4 in each heat, but they do. This
put Jay on the pole of the first heat race. They watered the track
before the Modifieds hit the track. Jay's heat took two laps to help
run in the track. They threw the yellow out, which we figured was to
lineup the cars. Guess what? Jay's brand new left rear tire is
flat! Un-freakin-belivable. You have 2 courtesy laps to change
a flat on a Feature event, but you're outta luck if it's not the Feature.
Jay parks the car and we measure and change tires. We bought 10
Hoosiers a couple months ago. Three of the new tires have pinholes
in the sidewalls. Apparently this one did too. The Hoosier rep
told me we had to circle the holes and give the tires back to the place we
bought them for an exchange. Great. Another trip to West
Virginia.
Chris is really
getting the hang of the car. He stayed tight with the cars in his
heat. He was stuck in the middle of a three-wide pack. The
outside car squeezed down too low and ran over Chris' right front causing
the outside car to spin. He ended up with quite a bit of
damage and was pulled off the track. I noticed that Chris' right
front tire didn't look right. Apparently the track officials noticed
too because they stopped Chris on the front stretch and checked it out.
They let him continue. The 185 Miller car lost a drive shaft and
came back to the pit as well. This left 4 cars in the Heat when the
checker came out. Chris finished 4th. We had to replace the
tie rod when Chris returned to the pit. It was bashed up pretty
good. Realigned, made some tire changes and was ready to go for the
Feature.
Well, since Jay
never took the green in the heat due to the flat tire, we ended up on the
tail of the Feature. Chris started 12th. He decided to go
ahead and take his starting position instead of opting for the tail.
The race went green and Chris was hooked up. The car looked great
and he was holding his own. Jay's car was hooked as well and he
began advancing through the cars. Chris took a hit off of turn 1 and
spun. Car didn't look too bad. Left rear quarter panel was
folded under the car a bit, but didn't appear to be in the tire. The
wind was blowing towards us and the grandstands. The dirt was
blowing so bad it was to the point of being dangerous. As a
spectator it was bad, but we weren't the only ones that couldn't
see...neither could the drivers. Somehow Jay was still moving up
through the pack. He made some terrific passes and stayed strong.
The handling in Chris' car seemed to be going away though. He turned
it off of turn 4 and backed it into one of the large tires in the infield.
It was a pretty heavy impact. The car fired up though and he
continued. The right rear quarter panel was ALL messed up.
A couple laps
later a caution came out. We weren't involved by Chris exited the
track and pulled up to where we're permitted to change flat tires. I
ran around one side of the car and didn't see anything. The tires on
the right side was fine too. The sheet metal was into the right rear
though and one of our friends kicked in the quarter panel enough to get
past the tire. Chris took off and rejoined the lineup on the tail.
Several laps later, Jay ended with a 7th place finish and Chris finished
15th.
When the guys
returned to the pit we looked over the cars. Jay's looked pretty
good. Chris...well....we've got some sheet metal work on our hands.
Chris said he thought he had a right front flat when he came off the
track. Upon further inspection, he found one of the upper A-arm
bolts had either sheered off or came apart. Either way...it was
gone. That's what caused his steering to go away. We figure it
must've happened in the first hit in the last Feature. That's when
he noticed the steering going away.
We had one
on-board camera on Jay's car tonight and the Beachwood Studio's crew
filmed the heats and Features. We had a little more "working on the
car" action for them this week...but not as much as we have in previous
years.
Also,
congratulations to our friend Roger Miller who won his asphalt Modified
Feature at Mansfield Motorsports Speedway!
April 25, 2004
Sunday
We met at the race
shop around noon today and worked until 5pm before calling it a day.
We got everything washed and unloaded and started our weekly checklist/to
do list. Chris' car was damaged a lot more than we originally
thought. I was concerned that something had shifted when I noticed
rubber from the tire on the right rear shock. That's not a good
sign. It turned out that one of the frame bars collapsed when Chris
hit the infield tire. He also bent one of the rear suspension bars
and heim.
We already knew
the right rear quarter panel was going to get replaced, so we pulled it
off. Jay and Chris made pieces to replace the frame bars and welded
them back into place. The rear bumper piece that curves around behind the
rear quarter panel was crushed. We got it pulled out, but it still
needs to be replaced. Chris replaced the bent suspension bar.
We still have a few bars in the trailer, but I called Roger and placed an
order for extra suspension bars and tie-rod bars to cover both cars.
Chris noticed that
the right front is bottoming out and is hitting the tie-rod bar. I
found a taller front spring in the trailer and switched it out hoping to
eliminate that issue. I fixed the upper A-arm while I had it apart.
Last night we put a small bodied shock on Chris' right front. I've
wanted to put small bodied shocks on the cars for the past 2 years.
The larger bodied shocks just get too damaged on a modified. There
isn't much clearance with our cars, so they just get slammed, dented and
destroyed. I finally won the battle. We had two small body
Bilstein shocks and mounted them both on Chris' car. I'm ordering
more tomorrow for the Hot car and extra for backups.
We got a lot done
today, but still have quite a bit to go before we're ready for next
weekend.
April 30, 2004
Friday
We worked on the
cars Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, and finished up Friday
night. We worked at an easy pace though and didn't have to slam to
get them ready. So, that was a cool thing. Jay even had time
to start making a little shock rack for the trailer. We had one
several years ago when we had the open-trailer, but we sold it with the
trailer and never got another one. They're really handy for storing
shocks. We're always up for something like that. And, of
course, Jay's been on a roll with "side projects"....the pit cart, the 5ft
sheet metal break, the stand for the 3ft break...etc. Anyway, the
cars are basically ready. We didn't take time to scale the Hot, but
the weather is looking pretty crappy for Saturday, so we're doubtful of
getting the race in. In fact, I didn't even bring the Bullet
Motorsports dually home this weekend based on the weather forecast.
Even though we really didn't work on the car Thursday, we were still at
the race shop. Warren from Beachwood Studios came down Thursday to
do some one-on-one interviews with Jay and I. That process took
about 4 hours or so. It was fun though. Jay and I compared
notes from our interviews after we got home. Sometimes you don't
remember some of the stuff we've been through until you're asked and sit
back and think about it. Warren told us before the interview that it
was mainly for background and filler information. Most of it
wouldn't make the show, but it gave them stuff to work with. I kind
of
hope they use the story about Jay and I arguing one morning and catching
the car on fire in the shop! I finally won the argument after that
incident though!
Minor problem...we
must've blown a fuse in the Tahoe because the lights aren't working right.
Chris and Heather have to follow us home.
May 1, 2004
Saturday
As we suspected,
Wayne County Speedway has cancelled racing for tonight. I was on my
way to Mansfield to exchange the Tahoe for the Dually when Jay called the
track. Even though it's still bright and sunny, there's still quite
a few clouds and they're still calling for rain. I turned around and
headed back to Ashland as we made alternate plans.
Racing is pretty
much out for this weekend. We're not even considering going to
Muskingum and anything else is just too far away at this point.
I guess we'll head
to dinner with Chris and Heather and see what kind of "side projects" we
can get into this week. At least we'll have time to scale the Hot
before we race again. Maybe we'll get the sheet metal out this week
and make some spare body parts for the cars...just in case we need them
this summer!
May 3, 2004
Monday
We met Chris and
Heather at the shop tonight to scale the Hot. A few minor
adjustments were required, but it was pretty close to where it should be.
Since our
checklist was basically complete, we mounted our homemade shock frame and
installed new brackets (that Jay made) to hang our toe in/toe out gauge
and our stagger gauge.
click for pictures.
Jay and I kicked
around the idea of racing at Jackson County Speedway on May 14th instead
of heading down to Midway Speedway. Of course, there's pluses and
minuses to each. If we go to Midway, we'll get AMRA points.
However, we're more likely to get torn up at Midway, and we're more likely to
have a very high car count. Even though Jackson isn't an AMRA track,
the rules are comparable and we wouldn't have to make any changes to the
car. We tossed the idea at Chris and Heather tonight. They
were open to either track, so we made the call to go to Jackson. We
haven't been to Jackson since 2002, so we're pretty excited. Chris
has never been there, but we've had some good races there....too bad we
won't get points for it though.
Our friend, and
sponsor, Rick Maffett, Jr. (aka Ricky Ticky) of Ace Engineering called
while we were at the race shop. He asked us to swing by his house on
the way home to check out his new Harley. Cool! We
stopped...and...well...it's not "exactly" a Harley, but still way cool....check
it out.
May 9, 2004
Sunday
First of all, we
want to thank all the drivers, crews, fans, and Wayne County personnel
that helped us out after Saturday's events. All of your help and
support is and was greatly appreciated.
Now...for the
story...we had a nice 16 field of Modifieds yesterday afternoon at Wayne
County Speedway. The weather was beautiful and our car was hooked
up. Jay qualified 3rd and took 2nd in his heat. Chris' car was
completely out to lunch. He was real tight and couldn't turn.
We made several major adjustments and sent him out for the Feature not
having any idea of how the car was going to act.
Chris started
11th, Jay started on the outside pole after the #94 Modified scratched for
the Feature. Chris went from WAY tight to pretty loose. Jay
fell back a little but held a solid 3rd place through most of the race.
Chris brushed the front stretch guard rail after he and another driver
made contact. The car slid into the guardrail rather strange and
somehow managed to rip the entire spoiler off the car and wedge itself
into the guardrail. It was quite comical because the support wings
remained intact on the car itself. That...and the officials couldn't
seem to get the spoiler to release from the wedged position.
Lap 17 is where
the REAL trouble happened though. Danny Dean, Larry Kugel, and Jay
were all passing lapped traffic. Jay was coming up on Chris going
into turn 3. Next thing we see is Jay's car screaming full blast
into the guard rail, flying up in the air, and slamming down on the roof.
The race immediately went red. I couldn't believe what I had just
seen. The official wouldn't let me on the track, but I watched Jay
crawl out of the wreckage and walk to the wall. He was being tended
to by the medical staff and I made a break for it when the WCS official
looked the other way. When I got there, Jay was shaken up, but was
telling me he was okay. The car? Forget about it. It's
done.
Against Jay's
wishes, I drove us home. It was the first time I've pulled the
trailer. Jay's confidence in me? Well, I quote "No Honey, I
don't want to be in another wreck tonight." But, we made it to the
shop without incident. With the help of my boss, Mike, and Chris and
Heather, we convinced Jay to go to the hospital.
Somewhere around
4:15am, we left the hospital. Jay's right foot is broken in 3
places, his ribs are bruised, and his left knee tendon or ligament is
either severely stretched or torn. They want to do an MRI on him
later this week. He's got a wooden flip/flop type shoe for his foot
and a brace for his left knee. We're truly lucky it wasn't worse
though. Hey, racecars, they can be replaced.
It's WAY past my
bedtime, but I promised some friends I'd get these
pictures up.
Check back in a day or two for more updates, and larger pictures.
Oh yea...and don't
count us out. We'll be making a return quicker than you may think!
More on that later also!
Thanks again
everyone!
May 14, 2004
Friday
Here's the latest
and greatest in the Howe Extreme Racing complex. Chris, Heather,
Roger Miller, and I spent Sunday tearing apart the wrecked car. We
made Jay relax and "supervise" our progress. It was sad to think
that it took us 6 months to put the car together from scratch and only
took 6 hours to cut the entire thing apart into pieces small enough to
hall away in a small pickup truck.
We hired fellow
Modified driver Larry Kugel and his wife Cheryl to pick up a Rolling Hot
Modified from our friend Jim Long in North Carolina. We're fortunate
enough to have good friends to help us out when things get rough.
Larry and his wife left Tuesday morning and rolled back into Ashland
Wednesday before lunch. They made awesome time. Larry &
Cheryl: thank you again for all your help!
Our Beachwood
Studio's crew stopped by the shop Wednesday to get some footage of the new
car and to film some of our work progress. The new chassis is
"Carolina Blue" and arrived with an orange interior body. We had
already made plans to pull off the orange and design a black body.
Now Jay will be black and blue...in more ways than one.
Wednesday, Jay and
Heather started working on redesigning the body while Chris and I mounted
the fuel cell and made some rear end suspension adjustments.
Thursday, we switched gears. I worked on the front suspension while
Chris mounted the electrical components and gauges. There were several
bolts that were sheared off in the block during the crash. Jay
extracted the bolts and looked over the engine for problems.
I shipped the carb
back to Rupert's Performance Products to be checked out. He
freshened it and shipped it back a day or two later. Hopefully we've
ordered all the parts that we'll need to complete the new car.
Jay seems to think
he'll physically be ready to climb back in the car next Saturday.
We've got a ways to go on the car. We've got some late nights ahead
of us, but we'll be ready if he's ready!
Written by Jay:
What a ride I
took! It appears as though the throttle pedal had a bind in it, and over
time, it managed to become slightly askew, causing it to stick (this is
our theory).
I personally would
like to say thanks to the following people for their help and concerns: my
wife who is my best friend, Chris and Heather, The Kugel Family (Larry,
Rocky, Ziggy, Cheryl), Tom King, Matt Blanchard, Wayne County speedway
safety personnel, Ernie Coffman (WCS owner), and so many more people that
stopped and helped out. I really appreciate your help. I know I forgot
some people, and I am sorry, I didn't mean to.
Currently here's
our progress, body panels on the new car are off. Our old rearend is in
the new car, our old front end pieces my wife is putting on the new car,
Chris is working on wiring ( I don't do electrical), I am working on
engine, mounting the battery box, and making body pieces as we go. Hope to
mount seat tomorrow, maybe the seat belts, brake pedals, other misc.
stuff.
Physically
speaking.........I am 100% ready in my mind to get back into that cockpit.
I am already counting the days. I have the need for speed, my body on the
other hand, might have something to say about that.
May 15, 2004
Saturday
We met Chris and
Heather at the shop earlier today to work on the new car. Tom King
and Matt Blanchard dropped by so we could help them scale Tom's car and
get it setup for next weekend. It didn't take long to scale the car, but
Matt and Tom were nice enough to stick around and help the rest of the
afternoon. Roger Miller stopped out to check things out and give us
a hand too.
Our goal is to be
back on track...literally...next weekend. We've definitely got a
ways to go though.
Check out our latest pictures.
May 19, 2004
Wednesday
After a solid week
of working on the car, we're making pretty good progress. Our goal
is still to hit the track this Saturday...three days away. We
dropped the engine, transmission, and radiator back in tonight.
Several of the body panels are attached, several more are made, but
awaiting the arrival of the new decals. We can't fire the engine
until we get the headers back. I'm a bit concerned about
the engine, but I seem to be the only one.
Jay is doing
better. He's still pretty sore, but I left him unattended Sunday and
he snuck out to the shop in the Explorer. The wooden flip flop shoe
was getting to him too. He upgraded to his normal shoe today.
His foot is back to normal size and color (for the most part). His
ribs are still a bit sore and so is his knee. He's still convinced
he'll be ready Saturday...so we'll see how the next 3 days go.
Here's a few more
pictures that we took tonight.
May 20, 2004
Thursday
What a day.
Jay and I met the TV crew at the race shop around 6:30pm. Things
instantly started off bad. We hoped to have the headers back today
so we could attach them and fire the engine. No such luck, they're
not ready. I'm nervous about the
engine and the sooner we get it running, the better I'll feel (I hope).
We couldn't find
the right length and grade of bolts for the motor mounts last night, so
Jay picked up 2 new ones today. They didn't fit. In fact,
they're the same size as the ones we tried last night.
Next, I decide to
attach the throttle rod while Jay measures and cuts the new Carb stud.
The throttle rod is WAY short. I have to take everything apart and
extend the heims. I reattached it, but the pedal rides pretty high.
I'm not happy with it. We'll probably have to reposition the pedal
tomorrow. Jay has success with the carb stud.
Jay moves along to
the shifter rods. More trouble. They're both long. Even
though the chassis is built the same as the other one was, we have
apparently dropped in the pedal and shifter rods into different areas.
Jay decides to measure and cut the rods (and his finger). He's
finally satisfied with the rods and re-taps them. Now he realizes
he's lost the little spacer that goes in the heim. Great. He
has to make new ones. After getting everything lined up and going on
several "hide and seek" missions (he laid parts down somewhere and
couldn't find them again) he secured the shifter rods to the transmission.
Meanwhile, I
attached several body panels and the spoiler. Things actually went
pretty smoothly on that project.
Jay decides we'll
attach the drive shaft and call it a night. I had to search for nuts
for the one u-joint since they were no longer with the others. It
doesn't take long for us to realize the transmission is either stuck in
gear or is broken. I try to slam the shifter into a different
position, but it won't budge. Jay crawls out from under the car and
gets it to move. That's good though because the shaft rotates now,
so the transmission appears okay. However, the shifter rods are
going to need to be readjusted because what we thought was "neutral"
wasn't.
Our friend Larry
Kugel called tonight too. He crashed his car pretty bad last
weekend. He's okay, but he has to replace his rearend, fuel cell,
and quite a bit more. Larry is confident he'll be ready to race this
weekend too, but he's still slamming to get ready. Even if we do hit
our goal of racing, Jay's planning on laying back and getting some
shakedown laps and staying out of trouble. His body still isn't 100%
and the car probably won't be that far either. We'll see how things
go...
May 22, 2004
Saturday
Friday was rather
depressing. We started off by holding the new headers up to the
engine and quickly learning....they're the wrong ones. Apparently
Hot Chassis has made some adjustments in how they're building their newer
cars. The headers they told Jay to order are never going to fit in
this car! So, I called Summit Racing because I knew they would be
open until 9pm. I figured Heather and I could fly up there and get
new headers if they had them or maybe Warren from Beachwood Studios could
pick them up since he lives up there. Well, Simon from Summit kept
me on hold for 20 minutes and never came back to the phone, so I hung up.
Obviously, I should've called Jeg's. I've never had a problem with
Jeg's.
I did get a call
from my ex-engine builder who had a set of used headers for sale. He
described them to me over the phone and they sounded like they might work,
so Heather and I ran over there to pick them up. They're very close, but need some slight modification to work. I contacted my
friend Don Stuart who does custom work on this line. He agreed to do the
work. When we originally talked to Don, we thought it would have to
be done from scratch. Now we're thinking it'll be a somewhat easy
job if he can modify these headers. So that's cool at least.
Even though we
were all bummed out, we worked on the car until 11pm or so before heading
home. We weren't in much of a hurry Saturday morning either knowing
that we weren't going to be able to race. Jay and I got to the race
shop around 10:30am and began working on the car. We had severe
storms Friday that blew through the area and had tried calling Wayne
County Speedway to make sure they were still racing. The line was
busy for hours. Other racers were calling us trying to find out what
was going on. The website didn't indicate a cancellation, so we were
prepared to load Chris up and go.
THEN....a call
came in from Cheryl Kugel. She had found someone that had headers
that should fit our car! We instantly went into thrash mode.
Jay and I were putting body panels on the car and hurrying to get ready.
We were going to load Chris up and send him to the track and continue to
work until we could leave. We still had the door panels from the
green car that I was just going to rivet on to get us through the evening.
Meanwhile our phones constantly rang from other racers and Wayne County
phones were still busy.
Chris and Heather
arrived and we loaded the Huff car. Chris and Heather helped us work
on the new Hot as it neared time for them to head out. Tom King
called and said he heard from a driver that said Wayne County doesn't have
power and has cancelled. Tom called fellow Modified driver Danny
Dean to confirm. Danny hadn't heard anything, but called the track
owner's son and got the confirmation. Racing was cancelled.
Chris was
depressed because he was ready to race. Jay and I breathed easier
though because we wouldn't have to push so hard and weren't going to lose
out on points or anything. We continued working and a normal pace
until 10:30pm, only taking a time out for dinner at bw3's.
We'll finish up
the body panels tonight and then take the car to Don for header work
Monday evening. There's a "dash for cash" invitation only race at
Wayne County on Wednesday. With any luck, we'll be able to be there.
It'll be a good chance to shake down the car before Saturday's race.
Weather isn't looking good though.
Here's the latest
pictures.
May 31, 2004
Monday
Sorry for the lack
of diary updates last week. Something happened to our phone lines
with all the storms last week. Bad phone lines combined with a full
week of long nights working on the race car prohibited any updates.
Here's the latest though...
Thank you Don
Stuart for doing an incredible job (as usual) on making our custom
headers. We should've gone to Don to begin with! He had the headers
completed and back to us Thursday. We painted the headers Thursday
night and waited until Friday to bolt them on and fire the engine.
As you may recall, that was the part I was most concerned about...the
engine.
Our camera crew
was hoping to be there Friday for the engine test, but couldn't make it.
So, I filmed 125 Megs worth of footage through the digital camera.
Unbelievably it fired up without much incident. Chris predicted we'd
have a lot of smoke at first, but there wasn't any. Much to my
relief, it roared! We all breathed a little easier after that and
our mood brightened. Finally!
Jay gets better as
each day passes. This extra week was really good for him. He's
still not 100%, but he can at least climb in and out of the car and get
around pretty good.
We still had a
dozen things we needed to complete before hitting the racetrack Saturday.
We hate to be rushed because that's when mistakes happen. So, we
tried to be thorough, yet still push hard to get ready. The camera
crew got to the shop around 12:30 and filmed a little bit. Chris and
Heather rolled in around 12:45-1pm and helped us wrap things up. We
loaded and headed to the track.
There were still
two small things to do to the car once we reached the track. Chris
and I knocked those two things out pretty quickly though. I knew
that there were 3 Road Warrior Races scheduled for this weekend.
Friday at Skyline, Saturday at Midway, and Sunday at Tyler County
Speedway. I was doubting that we'd have many Modifieds. So, I
was quite surprised to see 19 of them roll in! That's the largest
car count this year. Several cars that showed up mentioned they were
there to prepare for next weekend's Road Warrior Race at Wayne County.
Jay was a bit
nervous. He's still "gun shy" as he puts it. His plan was to
take a few laps and shake the car down. He planned on taking a
couple laps in the Feature so he'd stay up in points. Well...as usual,
nothing goes the way we plan.
Hot laps were
fine. Car seemed to handle pretty good. Jay didn't give it all
he could for time trials. The engine sounded great, but the car
seemed a bit loose going into turn one unless Jay was just shaking it out.
I couldn't hear the times for qualifying and they weren't posted, but I
think Jay was middle of the pack for qualifying.
Chris was first
out for qualifying. I missed his laps because I was getting Jay
ready to get lined up. Heather came back shaking her head though.
Chris looped it somewhere off of turn 2 and couldn't get re-fired.
He said his second lap was like 2 minutes!
Our friend Larry
Kugel went for a wild ride on time trials too. He went into the wall
and had A LOT of damage. He's got a good crew though and they
slammed on things and got it back together for the heat. The rear of
the chassis is very bent though.
Jay was suppose to
start 5th in his heat, but opted for the tail (as planned). Chris
was also starting on the tail. Ut Oh. Chris had joked all
morning that he would get to put the first mark on Jay's new car since he
helped put it together. I told him, he might get his wish!
The heat goes
green. Jay seems to be doing fine. He's just getting some
laps...as planned. THEN...cars scatter all over the track on both
ends of the track. All but 3 cars (one being Jay) were involved in
some sort of cluster. Wayne County has a "no stop" rule.
That means if you stop, you go to the tail. All the cars start
lining back up. Jay wants the tail, so he waves everyone by.
The flagman stops the cars on the front stretch and bring Jay back up to
third and line everyone else up behind him. GREAT! There goes
"the plan".
Now that Jay's up
here, he has two choices. He holds back and drifts to the back and
hopes no body slams him...or he goes for it. Now, it's not likely
he'll get out of this clean if he eases up and drifts back, so yea, he
goes for it. The green flag drops and off they went. The top 3
cars just pull away from the pack. Jay and #86 Dave Liles have a
great battle for second. Jay has it for awhile then Dave takes it
back. Chris detours through the infield and through a mud puddle to
bring out a caution. In 5 years of racing, I've never seen one of
our racecars "that" muddy! The battle for 2nd was intense the whole
time. Dave finally secured the spot in the end though.
Jay was pumped.
He's got steering problems though. It's binding and when he goes
into the turn, it doesn't want to come back. We've had this problem
in the past. I think we went through 5 power steering boxes trying
to get one to work. This box came with the car. Maybe it's
bad, maybe the quick steer was bent from the wreck, who knows. The
steering shaft is new, so that shouldn't be the problem. Chris
loosens the heim and messes with it, but we're not sure if it's fixed.
Chris' car is
ready. He's excited, it's handling very well.
Larry Kugel has
more problems. He was in another bad wreck in his heat.
They're tearing off the nerf bar and cutting it to make a rear bumper.
They've replaced the right front spindle and half a dozen other things.
We help them push the car up to the pit shack for some welding repairs.
What a night. He jokes and tells the track owner, "yea, I think I'll
take 'er out in the Feature and finish it off". I think there's only
one panel left that isn't bent.
Jay's suppose to
start 3rd in the Feature. He thinks long and hard about it. He
opts for the tail. Not because he's still "gun shy", but because
he's concerned about the steering not being corrected. That's all we
need...go into a corner, loop it because the steering hangs and 15 cars
plow into you. Bad idea. Right decision to take the tail
because the steering wasn't right still. Jay came up through traffic
quite well. At one point, he had a great race going with Larry Kugel.
They were going back and forth and then...well, we think Larry's MSD box
went out. Remember that panel on Larry's car that wasn't bent?
Well, it is now. Larry was trying to get off the track and
well.....Jay helped him. There wasn't anything Jay could do, but he
tagged him on the left rear. Neither of them spun, Larry just
continued off the track and Jay recovered and kept going.
Jay did spin twice
due to steering issues. He came back up through the pack each time
and finished 9th.
Chris had a really
strong race. His car was hooked up the entire time. He's
improving each race, but tonight was definitely his best race. His
corner entries and exits are better and he's trying to watch the cars
ahead of him and follow their lines. Once he does that, he'll learn
what works for him and create his own lines. As the checkered flag
was waving, Chris had a good race going with the #23 Kyle Brown.
Chris came out of turn 4 a little too hard though and lost it. He
came to a sliding screeching halt down the front stretch toward the inside
wall. I wasn't sure if he'd crossed the finish line on his skid or
not, but apparently he came up a bit short. He did miss the
guardrail though, and pulled out a 13th place finish.
Nice job Jay and
Chris. I'm really proud of everyone. I guess all of our late
night work paid off. Things went really well and held together!
June 5, 2004
Saturday
We finally had a
rather easy week away from the race shop. We did our usual Sunday
cleaning and organizing routine. Then met at the shop again on Thursday to
scale the cars and check everything out. I was concerned about the
power steering box still, so convinced Jay to change the box. That
way if we still had steering problems we could eliminate the box as the
culprit.
The AMRA Road
Warrior event date at Wayne County Speedway had arrived. We were
pretty excited. The Road Warrior events typically bring out the best
of the best. AMRA officials were concerned that we wouldn't have the
car count that they usually see because of Wayne County's transponder
system. Maybe some drivers did stay away, but we still had 35
Modifieds roll in for the event.
Jay went out for
hot laps and had major right side rollover. We had some issues
earlier in the week with our ride heights. We weren't sure if that
was the problem or not. He came off the track with a left rear flat
and right side sheet metal damage from rolling over into the tire.
We changed the tire and snipped away at the sheet metal to raise it up off
the tire.
Chris didn't have
any problems. Car felt good and we made no changes.
Jay was second out
for qualifying, Chris was 5th. We still had roll over problems.
Smoke was rolling off of Jay's tire when the sheet metal would drop down
onto it. Jay didn't qualify that well, he finished 21st. Chris
turned his best qualifying runs to date and qualified 15th.
We were still
trying to figure out what was going on with the sudden sheet metal
problems. We decided to change both rear shocks. We had a huge
puddle of fluid at the rear of the car, which we decided was gear oil.
It was flowing through the breather though, so we must have put too much
gear oil in. We put the tires back on and the guys headed to the
drivers meeting when Heather noticed the left rear was flat again.
This is a different left rear tire than we had on there earlier, but it
was still flat!
Jay starts 10th in
his heat. Top 6 advanced to the feature...Jay still had rollover
problems and finished 7th. I'm not sure where Chris started in his
heat. Chris was in a good race for 6th when he had to go high to
avoid a spun car on the checkered lap. He finished 7th.
Jay and I went
back and forth on what to change to try and fix the rollover issue.
We bent sheet metal up for the third time that day and decided to change
both rear springs. After we'd changed springs our friend Roger
walked up and said, "ohhhh. I wouldn't have done that". Well
yea, since when do we do what we "should" do? We dropped the car
back down and as Chris was putting the tire on, I noticed something wasn't
right. Off comes the tire, out comes the axles, and gear oil gushes
out the end. Great. Now we have gear oil flowing out of two
ends of the car. Roger and Chris adjust the lock nut on the rear end
and reassemble everything. I guess it's fixed. Our extra gear
oil is in the race shop, so I bought some from the parts trailer.
Let's go racing'.
Jay started on the
outside pole of the B-Main and Chris started 3rd for the B. Jay's
turning the best laps he's turned all day. I don't see any smoke
rolling off the tire...maybe the springs were the answer! How about
that. We took a shot in the dark and it paid off for once. Jay
lead several laps of the B, and Chris wasn't far behind. For awhile
it looked like both would transfer. Then things turned bad for Chris
when another Modified pinned him against the front stretch wall. Not
good. Same place he "donated" the spoiler a few weeks back.
Chris climbed out and walked back to the pit. Both cars were pulled
into the pit shortly afterward.
They went green
again and Jay made a nice pass for second and then took the lead for a few
laps. Jay got high one too many times though and lost the lead.
He still came in with a second place finish. Nice job Jay!
We had next to no
time to get ready for the Feature. They were moving the program
along quickly. We noticed oil on the right side of the frame near
the engine. Chris checked to see if the valve cover nuts were tight
and it broke off in his hand. Roger took over and checked the
rest...one broke off for him too. Great! We lost a bolt on our
right rear support piece too. I replaced it, and we sent Jay off.
Chris appeared to
have a lot of damage. The right front spindle ear was sheared off.
The tie rod bar was bent and the brake line was broken. Upon further
inspection we found the rear end had problems too. We had seen the
track official pick up something on the track earlier...apparently it was
Chris' spring and spring cup because they were missing! The panhard
bar bracket was tweaked too. We dropped another spring under the
car, but the whole thing was shifty. Not good. Worse part?
We found out Chris had a track provisional. He was suppose to start
25th in the Feature!
Jay starts 21st in
the Feature. It was plagued with cautions. It was absolutely
horrible. Jay was throwing oil on the headers and smoking bad.
Of course, it wasn't overly noticeable because they couldn't get more than
2 laps in without a caution anyway. Chris kept growing concerned
with the oil loss as the event progressed. We've got too much
invested in everything to blow an engine like that. So, at lap 20,
we asked one of the Wayne County officials to pull Jay. Another
caution came out and he sent Jay to the pit. On the way home Jay
admitted his knee was bothering him due to all the cautions. So, we
did the right thing. Jay finished 19th overall.
June 6, 2004
Sunday
As usual, we spent
the morning washing and unloading everything. We went over both cars
really well and made our weekly "to do" list and "things to order" list.
We thought it was going to be a rough week with Chris' car. However,
after further inspection and a decent start today, it may not be as bad as
we first thought.
Jay drained his
oil. It's suppose to have 8 quarts, well, he blew 4 of them last night.
So, I'm even more confident that we made the right call last night.
June 18, 2004
Friday
Well, there hasn't
been a whole lot to report over the past couple weeks...hence the lack of
updates. We've had quite a few storms throughout our region lately,
which caused racing to be cancelled last weekend. We only met at the
shop once, which was mainly to check things over and work on some side
projects.
Saturday is double points night at Wayne County Speedway, so we're pretty
pumped up. My friend and co-worker, Lori Cates and her husband are
coming out to WCS Saturday too. It'll be their first time out with
us. So, we're looking forward to that too. Beachwood Studios
will also be with us.
June 19, 2004
Saturday
Today's weather
forecast sounds pretty awesome for racing. It's suppose to be a
little on the cool side at night which is perfect for our cars.
We're happy to see 20 Modifieds roll in tonight. There are several
that we've never seen before.
Hotlaps are
basically uneventful. Jay's still rolling over on the right rear
tire causing white smoke to roll off the tire when the sheet metal hits it
coming out of the turns. Chris looks good. He's psyched.
We fix Jay's sheet metal issues.
Qualifying:
The track is ROUGH. I can hardly believe how bad it's chunking up.
Cars are getting tossed all over the place. Danny Dean takes one lap
and then pulls off. He's broken an axle. Tom King breaks a
drive shaft and tears up his whole rear end suspension. The guy
parked beside us also breaks a drive shaft. It was his first time in
a Modified. Not a good start for him. Jay takes his warm-up
lap and gets in the rough off of turn 4. A chunk of mud pops up and
kinda wedges between the right rear tire and the sheet metal causing the
car to react harshly. Jay thinks something let go and shuts down and
pulls off the track. Chris makes his two laps and is about a second
off the top qualifier, but still records two good laps.
Turns out Jay has
a loose wheel bearing. It doesn't take us long to tighten it.
We make a shock change and check out the rest of the rear end too.
Jay starts 7th in
his heat, Chris starts 8th. We still haven't figured out how Jay is
starting ahead of Chris...but they're side by side for the Heat. Our
buddy, Rocky Kugel, is starting ahead of us. WCS staff made positive
changes to the track and smoothed it out. Chris gets tangled up
in someone's spinout and breaks a left front tie rod bar. He comes
off the track under his own power. Jay tries to get around Rocky,
but they keep picking the same lines and he can't get by.
We make a left
front shock change on Jay's car and a right front tire change. Jay
and Rocky were involved in a slight fender bender with a spun car, which
messed up our right front rim a bit. The tire is still holding air,
but the rim is definitely damaged. We put a new tie rod end and tie
rod bar on Chris' car. We have to readjust both cars toe in/toe out.
Chris starts 17th
in the Feature and Jay's in the 12th spot. We're starting behind
Rocky again! Before Jay goes out he tells me to let Lori know he's
going to create some excitement. (hopefully good excitement!).
While the guys are staged awaiting the completion of the Late Model
feature, Warren from Beachwood asks me if we've ever had to do a tire
change while under caution. I told him, "not yet".
The race goes
green and Jay gets around Rocky early. Jay battles up through the
pack and is doing awesome. Chris is doing well too. Jay has a
great race going with the 94 car and after several laps of trying finally
gets by. However a caution comes out and we have to do it all over
again. Chris gets involved in a rubbing match on the front stretch
with the 29 car. Sparks were flying and we were all thinking "oh no,
not the front stretch wall again". But they got through it without
crashing. Jay got around the 94 again and then Chris gets tied up
with another car and crashes. Chris comes off the track with a flat.
Warren's excited because he gets to tape the "tire change". We get
two courtesy laps to get the tire changed and the car back on track.
Tom King, Rick Maffett, Sr., Matt Blanchard, and half a dozen other's
helped us get the tire changed and get Chris back on track. Thank
you to everyone that helped out.
Chris only took a
lap and a half before pulling back to the pit. He had a broken shock
and no brakes. Chris parks the car on the trailer and is walking
back up to watch when Jay pulls into third place. Larry Kugel and
the 2nd place car has quite a lead on him. He pulls a little closer,
but can't catch them. He hangs on for our best finish so far this
year, 3rd. Chris ended up finishing 16th.
WCS points aren't
posted yet, but Larry Kugel would've pulled another 16 points away from
us after winning the race. Congratulations Larry! We still have second place tied up for points, but we're not
sure how everyone else finished and will shake out.
June 20, 2004
Sunday
Happy Father's
Day! Even though it's Father's Day, we still do our weekly Sunday
routine of cleaning up, organizing, and making our "to do list". We
did a lot of work on Chris' front end and body panels too.
We'll be racing at
Wayne County this coming weekend, but then there's 3 weeks in July and
early August that Wayne County won't be racing Modifieds. During
that time, we're planning on racing once down at Mudlick Valley Raceway in
Tollsboro, KY and maybe once or twice down at Midway Speedway or Tyler
County Speedway. We're not 100% sure yet. We might even head
up North to South Buxton Raceway in Ontario, Canada. We've raced
there in the past and would love to return. Ever since 9/11, we're a
little concerned about crossing the border with our racing gear though.
So, stay tuned to
see what we do!
June 27th, 2004
Written by Jay W. Howe
Kids night
Track was very smooth last night, compared to last week. Also, I put out
the word to some of the other drivers out there, that if they came to WCS
and raced with us, I would arrange their transponders for them at no cost
to them for that week. Muskingum advertised $1000 to win; I-77 had $800
to win shows scheduled. I wasn’t sure we would get a lot of guys. I was
happy I was seeing a lot of new cars rolling in, all told, 26 cars, 10 new
ones.
Chris qualified 20th, starting on the tail of the first heat.
Chris struggled with a loose car, on a very slick track, still trying to
learn how to drive a car that is loose. He’ll get the hang of it, when to
lay off the throttle, and wait for the car rear to catch before applying
throttle again. We have faith in him. He transferred to the “B” main
without a lot of damage.
I qualified 8th, starting on outside pole 2nd heat.
Finished 2nd. Not bad considering I had a loose car. I was
happy do make it out without any damage.
Chris during the “B” was doing well, almost to the transfer spot, before
looping the car. He exited the track, car intact.
Last night was kids night at WCS. We had “hero” cards made for the kids
during intermission. I was pretty excited about it, because my brother,
Jerry, was just back from “Baghdad”, and had his daughter with him. He
lives in Florida, and we only get to see him once every couple years.
Great to have them at the races. My brother Mark was also there, taking
pictures. My father was there, along with my kids. It was nice to have
them there.
At intermission, the track asked the drivers to bring their cars out onto
the track so the kids could see the cars, and talk to the drivers. We gave
out all out hero cards, and took a lot of pictures with the kids, even
letting a few of them to sit in our seat. I had a great time, and I hope
that the kids had a good time.
Started outside pole in “A” main, led the first lap or two, knew we were
out to lunch on setup after first lap when car wanted to come around on me
on exit. Tried to keep it down on the bottom, (and believe me I tried) but
car had other ideas, finished with a 7th place finish. Danny
Dean won.
July 4, 2004
Sunday
Happy 4th of July! We had an easy week at the race shop this
week...for once. Our major debate was "do we head south to Mudlick
Valley Raceway in KY or north to South Buxton Raceway in Chatham, Ontario
Canada. We do our best to make it to Mudlick once a year. We
haven't raced at South Buxton in a few years, but always have a terrific
time there. We've got some racing buddies in Canada that we try to
hook up with at least once a year if not at the races, at Casino Windsor,
or for dinner, or at a racers swap meet. Early week weather
predictions had forecasted rain in KY and southern Ohio/WV. Canada
was still looking good as the week progressed. We cancelled our
Portsmouth hotel reservations Thursday and called our Canadian friends to
let them know we were headed north.
South Buxton has come under new ownership since we were there last.
Jay called the new owner to see if they still offered incentives to
American racers and to give him a heads up that we'd be bringing up two
Modifieds. He's a pretty cool guy. Turns out he works with a
Hooters Cup team and will be headed down here to Mansfield Motorsports
Speedway (where I work) in October. Small world.
Chris and Heather have heard tons of our South Buxton stories and were
excited to make the trip. I was a bit concerned with crossing the
border with all of our racing gear in an enclosed trailer, but it was
surprisingly smooth. The line at the border was really long though,
which we weren't expecting. Luckily we left early allowing us plenty
of time..."just in case".
We arrived at the track around 5pm. Our friend Dan Smolders had sold
his Modified, but still helps out a couple teams. He had them save
us two parking spots so we could all be together. The track has
undergone some changes. They decreased banking and it was a lot
smoother. Since we don't regularly race at South Buxton, they put
Jay and Chris on the tail of the second heat. That was fine with
both of them. Jay had made a couple changes to the car and South
Buxton doesn't have a hot laps session. We were also running under
UMP rules, which meant no spoilers. We had made a couple changes to
Chris' car this week too plus he'd never raced here, so he was happy on
the tail.
There were 12 Modfieds signed in. Jay and Chris both hooked up great
in the heat. Jay pushed up through pretty quickly and got into the
second place spot. He's used to dropping the front tires over the
bottom edge of the turns at Wayne County. Unfortunately for him,
South Buxton has tires laying down around the bottom edge of their track.
Jay pretty much bounced off of or ran over every single one of them.
He even bounced one out onto the track, which officials had to fetch under
green. I'm not sure how he hung on after hitting all of those tires,
but Jay kept his second place position to the end. If he wouldn't
have hit all the tires, he might've been able to lead the pack.
Chris had planned on taking some laps and making a smooth run. One
by one, the cars he was running with would slip up or give him a clear
opening and Chris would take it. Before the end of the race, Chris
had pulled in behind Jay for a third place finish. Both Jay and
Chris were pumped!
Once again, the track tossed Jay and Chris on the tail. We were cool
with that though. Jimmy Dale and our friend Dan had always been the
guys to beat at South Buxton when we used to race there. Jimmy Dale
was in the pack tonight and was still the dominating Modified at South
Buxton. We were determined to give him a run for his money tonight
though!
Jimmy had won last weeks feature and had to start in the back, but still
in front of us. He started right in front of Jay. Again, Jay
decides to play with the tires in the infield. Amazingly, and
luckily, they never really threw him off too badly. Jay moved up the
pack fairly quickly, but it seemed he kept getting shuffled back through
after a caution would come out. It didn't take long for Jay to
battle back through to 4th and into a great race with the other 3.
Jimmy Dale was leading when Jay made a beautiful move to get into 2nd.
The car was running awesome. There were quite a few cautions, which
was good for us when Jay got into 2nd because Jimmy had been pulling away
while the other 3 were fighting behind him. With the distance closed
on the restart, Jay and Jimmy had a great race going. After several
laps, and several cautions, Jay finally got around Jimmy coming off of
turn 4. Unfortunately another caution came out giving Jimmy his spot
back. The officials decided they'd had enough. They threw
yellow/checker for the end of the Feature. That kinda sucked that we
didn't get to finish under green, but we had a blast.
Chris did a terrific job too. He was the victim of being in the
wrong place at the wrong time on several occasions. He had moved up
from the tail into 5th or 6th before getting tagged and spun out in turn
4. The track was smooth and slick, a lot like Wayne County Speedway.
Chris had another close call in turn 2 when a 4 or 5 car fiasco
roadblocked the whole turn. Chris locked up the brakes in time to
skid to a stop inches away from the mess. The car stalled, but fired
back up before the push truck got there. The car started to get a
little loose as fuel burned off, but the loose part wasn't the problem
this time. As he moved up through the pack again, another car got
loose and tagged Chris off of turn 4 spinning Chris into the infield
(between Jay's infield tires). Chris went back to the tail and
advanced a few more places finishing 8th overall.
We all had a terrific time. We were amazed at how many teams and
fans came up to us before and after the race. The track owner,
promoter, and officials stopped over all throughout the night to visit.
Jimmy Dale even came up to Jay after the race and congratulated him on
such a tight race. Jimmy told Jay that he was surprised that he
couldn't pull away from him and that every time he looked over, Jay was
right there. It was pretty cool. Everyone up there really made us feel welcomed. It was nice meeting
everyone and seeing our friends Dan & Brenda again. The whole trip
was awesome.
We promised them all we'd be back up in early August when Wayne County
Speedway isn't running Modifieds. BUT...you never know...we might
just be back sooner than expected!
Click
here to view some pictures from South Buxton Raceway.
July 8, 2004
Thursday
Decisions, Decisions, Decisions....Wayne County Speedway isn't running
Modifieds this week. So that leaves (a) The Road Warrior race at
West Virginia Motor Speedway this weekend. (b) Return to South Buxton
Raceway in Canada (c) Skyline or Midway Speedway on Friday (d) take
some practice laps with the Limited Late Models at Lakeville Speedway (e)
back to the drawing board.
Well, choice (a) was our original plan. However, Jay's running
second in Wayne County points and Chris is doing well too. We know
from experience that if you crash at WVMS, you're season is basically
finished. WVMS is also known as a motor killer. Even though
it's Jay's favorite track, the risks are far more than the benefits at
this point. We'll still get to race at WVMS for the Nationals in
October, so he's pretty content with the decision.
Option (b) return to South Buxton. We've made plans to return to SBR
once or twice in August and probably once in September. Chris and
Heather have to drop off their kids at camp on Sunday. So time and
cost is prohibiting us to make that trip this weekend.
Option (c) Friday racing at Skyline or Midway. Jay didn't think he
could get off work Friday and we're not sure if Chris could've either. We
came up with that option to late in the game to plan for.
Option (d) We called Lakeville about running some laps on their
Friday night show. They're expecting a lot of cars because Attica
isn't racing Friday. They'd prefer we not bring the cars out.
BUT....they've given us option (e).
Judy & Bob Schippers offered to rent the track to us on Saturday. We
jumped on that one! We're pretty excited because we can get a lot of
practice laps in...plus...I get to go out and play too. I drive
around the pits and tech the car, but haven't kicked it up to the higher
gear and take off. So, I'm excited. We've also invited a
couple of our sponsors over to the track to take a few laps in the car.
We're looking forward to Saturday. Now, if the rain will hold off,
we'll be good to go!
July 13, 2004
Tuesday
The weather held out for our practice session Saturday. It was hot
and humid, so Lakeville Speedway was solid as a rock. We hit the
track around 10:30am. Our friends Rick Maffet, Sr., Rick Maffett,
Jr. and one of Jr.'s sons stopped over to hang out with us. Rick
Jr., who is also one of our sponsors (Ace Engineering) climbed in the car
for some practice laps. It was Rick's first time in a Modified.
Rick has raced in the Mini-Stock division off an on over the past few
years.
We also asked Lakeville owner, Bob Schippers if he'd be interested in
taking some laps. Bob jumped at the chance and had a blast! He
was impressed with our chassis and our horsepower.
We couldn't get Chris' wife Heather to hop in his car, but I headed out
for 3 sessions in Jay's Modified racking up 75 laps or so. It was
pretty cool. I'm not sure if I'd like it as much with other cars out
there with me, but I had a lot of fun. Between the two cars we
burned up 4 Hoosier tires. It was worth it though. We all had
a really nice time.
Thanks Judy & Bob for allowing us to rent the track and hang out for a few
hours!
July 14, 2004
Wednesday
Hawk Performance in Medina, Ohio is having an employee appreciation day at
their facility on July 22nd. They were looking for some racecars to
display at their event. We gave them a call and offered to take the
Hot Chassis up for the day. Below is their post. Give Jeff a
call if you're a local driver and interested in taking part. They
don't want too many cars due to space, but they want a good variety, and
it's a terrific opportunity to help promote your team and your sponsors.
PLUS, they're compensating participants....so check it out below.
"Hawk Performance (a division
of The Wellman Products Group and manufacture of racing friction material)
located in Medina Ohio is holding an employee appreciation day on July
22nd, 2004.
I am looking for several-interested racecar owners that would be willing
to show their car during the day from 9:00am until late afternoon. The
cars can be dropped off and space for the trailer can be arranged on site.
It would not be necessary to stay with the car during the day. Would like
to have one each of Modified, Late model and Sprint car. Also looking for
dirt cars. Would be necessary to have Hawk Performance decals on the car
and remove any competitor’s decals.
In payment for the above, Hawk Performance will provide at no charge two
car sets (4 axle sets) of brake pads, 2 Hats, 2 Tee shirts, and decals.
If interested please contact Jeff Smallwood 812-549-7772.
Please do not contact the Medina office, as they will not be familiar with
this information. Would appreciate confirmation as soon as possible.
Hawk Performance is located at 920 Lake Road. Exit off I-71 at Route 18.
Calling the above phone number can attain further directions and
information."
July 21, 2004
Wednesday
The weather was looking pretty gloomy Saturday when Mansfield Speedway
called me to cancel their racing events. We dialed up the Wayne
County Speedway offices several times to make sure racing was still on.
It was raining as we pulled into the pit, but WCS was still hopeful.
It wasn't long before the showers stopped and the officials began working
in the track. It looked tacky and beautiful. It's rare to find
WCS tacky like it was Saturday. Of course, we were setup for dry
slick.
Hot laps were basically uneventful. Jay and Chris both thought their
cars felt good. Qualifying was a different story. The track
was very fast. The top 10 cars bettered the track record set by Jay
earlier this season. Jay qualified 13th, Chris had transponder
issues, but qualified 21st.
Jay made a bar adjustment to try and loosen the car. He started in
the middle of his heat, Chris started on the tail. Jay was doing
decent but another car got into his front tire messing up his toe in/toe
out and steering ability.
Jay ended up starting towards the middle back area for the Feature.
Our friend Larry Kugel started beside us. Chris started right behind
us. The race went green and when Jay got to turn 3 Eric Eicholtz
driving Bruce Miller's 185 Modified lost control and crashed us. We
saw Jay had a flat and was prepared to change it. When he rolled up
to the pit entrance I saw the tie-rod was broke and we were done. We
changed the tire with help from another crew that jumped in, and headed
back to the trailer.
As we were evaluating the damage, the push truck rolled up...pushing
Chris! A weld had let go before the green even dropped again.
The rearend let go and shifted and the drive shaft dropped out.
GREAT!
The only good news was that our friend Larry Kugel made his way back up
through the pack for a second place finish. Way to go Larry.
July 22, 2004
Thursday
Well, the cars are ready for the weekend. We had to have Chris'
drive shaft rebuilt and checked. We got Jay's front end repaired and
parts replaced. The Hawk Brake day has been changed from today to
August 5th. We're still signed up for the event and looking forward
to it.
We've got regular racing this weekend at Wayne County. Next weekend we're
planning on hitting the Road Warrior race at Wayne County on Saturday and
then heading to Canada Sunday for a special event they're running.
Jay, Chris, Heather, and I have taken Monday off for a travel day.
"Hopefully", all goes well Saturday so we can make the Sunday leg of the
plan.
July 25, 2004
Sunday
We rolled into Wayne County Speedway a little early Saturday. We
were all pumped up and ready for a great night of racing. Since the
Sprints were racing at WCS instead of Late Models, we were asked to pit in
a different area than usual. We were pretty pleased to see 23 or 24
Modifieds roll into the pit. Chris and Jay went out for the first
session of hot laps. They both looked good out there and came back
ready to rock. We knew the track was going to be dry slick and
smooth with the weather and the Sprints. We headed to the RPM
Motorsports trailer to buy a harder compound of tire to prepare for the
evening's race.
One of our friends, Rob Stambaugh came off the track on a wrecker.
Tough deal for Rob, especially off of a hot laps session. Rob turned
hard to get out of the way of a transmission that flew out of the car in
front of him. Unfortunately for Rob, he turned into the tires and
tore him up pretty bad.
We headed out for qualifying. Rocky Kugel, had his rear suspension
break loose and put him out of commission for the evening. Jay
turned some nice laps and ended up 5th. Chris turned some nice laps
too and ended up 13th.
WCS setup three heats for the Modifieds. We often pit with our
friends the Kugels. They had brought all three of their cars.
We also try to help out another local driver Tom King. How ironic
was it that 6 of the seven people in our heat were: Jay, Chris, Tom
King, both Rocky & Larry Kugel, and Ted who races Kugel's old car.
Like I mentioned a couple paragraphs ago, Rocky was out for the day, so
didn't make the heat race. His brother Ziggy thought that was
probably a good thing since Rocky was suppose to start in front of his
dad! Larry moved up to outside pole with Rock out of the picture.
Larry jumped out front and Jay, who started 3rd moved up into second.
Tommy brought out a caution when his harmonic balancer broke off and it or
something whacked the oil pan. Chris made a nice move towards the
end and finished in third when the checker dropped.
Only 4 cars were inverted for the Feature, which didn't help us any.
Jay was slated to start 5th, right behind Larry Kugel. Chris was
starting 8th. Jay moved into 4th and was in a tight race with the 00
of Crawford. Chris was having a good race too, until he found
himself in the middle of a three-wide pack headed into turn 1. No
sooner did I tell Heather, "Chris is in trouble", did the lower car move
up the track and the high car moved down. The result? The
yellow came out as Chris exited the track with a cut right front tire.
Bryan Casey's crew chief jumped in and helped us change Chris' tire.
We got him back on the track with time to spare.
Chris started moving back up through when he came low into turn 3 and
found the #23 of Kyle Brown spun out with his driver's door exposed to
him. Chris hit the brakes and slowed up as much as he could, but
still tapped into Kyle. Neither car appeared damaged from the
incident, but it put Chris on the tail again.
The 00 of Crawford finally got by Jay moving Jay back to fifth. Ed
Haudenschild, brother of World of Outlaw Sprint driver, Jac "Wild Child"
Haudenschild was running with us tonight. It was the first time
we've ever raced with Ed. He had moved from the back of the pack to
6th and was giving Jay a run for his money on the restarts. Once the
race stayed green Jay and the top 4 cars pulled away slightly. The
66 of Rick Wolford lead most of the race, but towards the end our buddy
Larry Kugel made a terrific pass for the lead. Larry, who is also
WCS points leader, held on for the win. Jay took 5th and Chris
finished 10th.
We were pretty happy that both our cars finished the race and neither were
tore up. Even better, track owner, Ernie Coffman gave me the thumbs
up to take our car out for some laps at the end of the night. We
invited Todd Swim, a Pure Stock driver, to climb into Chris' car for some
test laps too. We've been working on Todd to move up to the Modified
division. We were pretty convinced that if we got Todd in the car,
we wouldn't have to convince him any further. I think we were
right!!! Todd turned some terrific laps and had a blast. As he
was pulling out of the pit last night he was telling us he had a lead on a
Modified Chassis that was for sale!
July 31, 2004
Saturday
The AMRA Road Warrior Tour headed to Wayne County Speedway tonight.
The weather wasn't looking good. Tracks all over Ohio, Pennsylvania,
and West Virginia cancelled due to rain. Wayne County had been hit
with rain, but was going against the odds and try to get the show in.
We really hadn't gotten too much rain at home, but when we hit Wooster, we
could tell they got hit pretty hard. The pits were a muddy mess.
We followed Larry Kugel around the pit looking for 4 spots together that
weren't under water. We finally made our camp at the far end of the
pit area near the road.
It soon became obvious that every nearby dirt track had cancelled because
the cars just kept rolling in. We were happy we arrived early
because crews were really stressing to find room to park.
The track was pretty wet. Track owner, Ernie Coffman, kept shaking
his head and probably second guessing himself on if he made the right
decision or not. Forty-two Modifieds made the trip to WCS.
Hot laps were....rough. We basically had a 1-groove track at that
point, but some of our Mods tried to create an upper groove and widen the
existing groove. There were a lot of large clumps out there though,
which is something uncommon for WCS. We usually have a very dry
slick track. I think the "WCS Regulars" were hoping for our normal
conditions. It would be like a "home field advantage" for us.
Unfortunately, that wasn't going to be the case.
Jay had made a few changes to the car over the week. We stiffened
the left front spring, raised the ride heights, and lowered one of our
rear suspension bars. We couldn't really get any feedback from the
hot laps session because of the track conditions.
AMRA only runs one lap for qualifying instead of two like we normally do.
Jay turned a pretty decent lap. We still couldn't tell what the
changes were doing to the car though. Chris turned a pretty good lap
too, especially for conditions.
They're running 4 heats of Modifieds. Jay starts 5th with Chris
starting right behind him. Well...we finally figured out what the
changes did to the car. Straight to the point...we absolutely sucked
in our heat race. At least Jay did anyhow. Jay looped it twice, all by himself. Jay
tried to stay in the throttle and keep going on one of the spins and was
nearly tagged by Chris. Chris did a good job of keeping high and
made it through safely. Chris went on to finish 6th in the heat and
Jay finished 7th.
We had a "C-Main", but luckily Jay and Chris had finished high enough to
make it to the B-Main from the Heats. Our friend Larry Kugel had
finished 4th in his heat and advanced to the A-Main. That's cool for
Jay because he automatically gets a track provisional into the A.
Chris is going to have to fight his way though though.
We were hit with scattered raindrops or small bursts of rain throughout
the night, which kept the track wet. We changed the left front spring
back to what we were running before tonight. We also readjusted our
ride heights so that they were back to where we previously had them.
Even though Jay had the provisional he still had to take some laps in the
B. That was okay though because we wanted to see if the changes
worked.
The C-Main finished and the Late Model B-Main hit the track. The
B-Main of Modifieds were due out next. Jay opted for the tail since
he wasn't under pressure to advance. The Late Models were near the
end of their consi when the rain rolled in and let loose again. This
time it was flatout pouring. They pulled the Late Models off the
track and quickly sent everyone to their pit spots. We pulled our
car in the trailer to get it out of the weather. It didn't take long
for the track to make the announcement. Too much rain had fallen and
they called it a night.
Of course it stopped raining right after that. WCS isn't running
Modifieds next weekend. All the other classes are running double
features next weekend, but the AMRA Road Warrior race will resume in two
weeks, August 14th. We'll be running a regular show after the RWT
race. Wonder what our changes did this time!!!
We do want to say thanks to Ernie Coffman and the WCS staff for trying to
get the race in. You guys did a great job. The track was a bit
rough at first, but got better and better as the night progressed.
Thanks for giving it a shot!
August 1, 2004
Sunday
Back in July, we told our Canadian friends at South Buxton Raceway in
Ontario, Canada
that we'd return later this year. We knew they had this Sunday event
scheduled and planned on heading up if we survived the RWT race. We
met at the race shop Sunday morning and washed both cars. We scaled
ours to see how out to lunch we were after screwing around with the
adjustments at the track. Amazingly enough, it was right on.
We loaded up and hit the road around 10:30am.
We hit Detroit and were quite surprised that there wasn't a line at the
toll booth for the Ambassador Bridge. In fact, it was so slow that
the guy manning our booth had his head down and was fast asleep. We
couldn't believe it! The dually we were driving is diesel power, so
it's kinda loud. The kid never budged. The horn had been
malfunctioning so one of the guys I work with had removed the relay.
We couldn't blow the horn, the kid wouldn't wake up, and somehow we
thought banging on the window would be going a little too far.
So...we started to back up to go to another lane. Just as Jay
started backing up, the kid popped up and was a little surprised to see us
staring back at him. Apparently the kid wasn't completely awake
because he couldn't remember how much money Jay gave him...either that or
he tried to rip us off. Jay got it straightened out though.
Luckily, customs went smoother than the toll booth. We breezed
through and was on our way to the track. Apparently Jay had drifted
off into lala land because as we approach our exit he says, "is this our
exit." I respond, "yea. See, there's the truck place".
We pass the exit and Jay says, "Hey. You're right, that WAS our
exit." Nice.
A mile or so (or a few kilometers) down the road, we pull off the side to
tell Chris and Heather we blew the exit. They already knew that of
course. A little further down the road, we make an illegal U-turn
and head back to the exit.
We decide to go directly to the tack instead of going to the hotel first.
We made the right decision because there's already quite a few cars here.
South Buxton doesn't usually run sprints, but had booked a special show
with them tonight. Sprint teams were already pitted where we usually
pit, so we continued on through the pit until we found an area that had
enough room for us.
They had a nice turnout of sprints and had drawn 6 or 7 new Late Models to
their event. I think we were the only two Modifieds that weren't
regulars. We love coming up to South Buxton. The teams are
very friendly. Chris Vandewiele (aka cornstock), one of the Modified drivers, designs a really cool mud
scraper. It's light weight and really nice. He stopped by our
pit and gave Jay one and Chris one.
Click here to check out his website.
Another Modified driver, Curtis Coulter invited us into their pit for
dinner. They come to the races prepared! They grilled chicken,
hot dogs, and cheeseburgers. PLUS they had a cooker going for sweet
corn. They really made us feel welcomed. We really enjoyed
their company and dinner was awesome.
Okay, back to the reason we're here. There were only 12 Modifieds
tonight. They had 2 heats setup. Jay started outside pole of
the second heat. The pole sitter jumped ahead early. Going into turn
1, he pushed alittle. At that time, Jay was hoping that and had diamond
the turn, taking the lead. He
had a close race going with Justin Coulter, but Justin went into turn 3 too
hard and nearly lost it coming around for the checkered flag. The caution never came out and Jay took the
checkered for his first heat race win in Canada. Apparently, our changes (or
unchanging) worked!
Chris started from the tail of Jay's heat and moved up to third fairly
quickly. He was able to take advantage of the fumble on turn 3 to
capture a second place Heat finish.
Decisions, Decisions, Decisions. The track had been dry slick.
We're used to that. That's a good thing. The sprints are here
tonight, so we know it "should" stay smooth and dry slick. But, will
they water? We decide to gamble on dry slick. We put a Hoosier
"H" tire on Jay's right rear. We put a Hoosier "A" on Chris' right
rear.
Jay and Chris are slated to start 9th and 10th. Jay moves into 4th,
but is having a rough time keeping heat in the tire. We failed to
take into consideration that we may experience an abundance of cautions.
It would take about 3 laps to get the "H" to work. We just couldn't
stay green long enough to get it to hookup. Jay tried to duck under
the third place car and spun. Chris and two other locked up behind
Jay to avoid the crash. Chris got bumped and pushed around a
bit...including a detour through the infield on the last lap.
Jay didn't have enough laps to get back up front. He finished 7th. Chris
finished 8th.
Thank you to all the teams and track personnel that welcomed us. We
had a blast. We'll be back in September...if not before!
August 4, 2004
Wednesday
I snapped a few pictures this past weekend while we visited South Buxton
Speedway in Ontario, Canada.
Click here to check them out.
August 5, 2004
Thursday
We've been looking forward to going up to Medina to the Hawk Performance
employee appreciation day event. We try to take every opportunity we
can to promote our team, our division, and most of all...our sponsors.
Jay took the day off so he could take the car up and spend the day there.
He had a terrific time. Jay got to take a tour of the plant and met
a lot of Hawk's employees and managers. At one point Jay fired up
the car for the crowd. He gave away some Howe Extreme Racing hats
and answered questions that the employees had for him.
Hawk Performance has designed a new brake pad for dirt racers.
They're pretty confident in this new compound and have asked us to test
the prototype brake pad. We're honored that they asked us to help
them with the research and development. Stay tuned, we'll keep you
posted on our testing!
August 15, 2004
Sunday
Wayne County wasn't racing Modifieds last weekend, so we took the weekend
off too. We had the rained out Road Warrior race this weekend and a
whole show for this week. Jay had an automatic track provisional
into the Feature of the Road Warrior race, so we didn't have much
pressure. We also planned on taking it easy for the Feature because
WCS doesn't issue points for the Road Warrior races. Chris was going
to have to work his way through the B-main to get into the A. But
once again, we had decided not to get tore up in the RWT race because
Chris is running 4th in points at WCS. We didn't want to blow the
points race.
There were originally 42 Modifieds entered for the WCS Road Warrior race,
but 37 arrived for Saturday's action. Several of those drivers were
not here for the Road Warrior race, so would not be eligible to make that
event. Amazingly, and sadly, both of the Hubbard's blew engines
before the night even began. One blew in line for hotlaps, the other
blew in hotlaps. Man, sounds like one of our stories! AMRA
officials adjusted the lineups and announced they would be taking 8 from
the B-Main instead of 5.
WCS ran our qualifying session before finishing the RWT show. Chris
ran an awesome time. He probably ran his quickest time of the year,
somewhere around 20.89, putting him as 9th fastest qualifier. The
time earned him an outside pole start on the heat. Jay stopped for a
burger and fries while he was out for his session....recording his worst
times of the year. I think Jay qualified 31st overall, putting him
9th in the second heat.
Back to the Road Warrior race. Jay opted for the tail of the B-Main
since he had a free ride to the Feature. We wanted him to take a
couple laps though to see if the car got any better. Jay did his
job, made a few laps, stayed out of trouble and brought it back in one
piece. Problem. Jay notices the distributor cap is broken.
He takes it off and finds the rotor is broke too. I head to the
parts trailer only to find they don't have an MSD one in stock that'll
work. We checked with a couple other teams and found one at Jr.
Nolan's trailer. Cool, back in business.
Chris tried to pick up one of the transfer spots, but came up short.
Jay started on the tail of the Feature for the RWT race. As planned,
he only took a few laps and came back to the pit. New problem.
He lost fuel pressure. Hmmm...we haven't had that problem this year.
Great. Now what! Chris and Jay mess around and decide to
change the fuel pump. We don't have a spare, so I buy one at the
parts trailer. Of course...the fittings aren't a match either, so I
buy new fittings too. We get it back together in time to climb in
and head off to our heat race.
Even though Jay started 9th in his heat, he found some power and some good
lines and got around our friend Rocky Kugel to take the 5th and final
transfer spot of our heat. Fuel pressure still wasn't that great
though. I've already picked up a spare regulator at the parts
truck...just in case. While he was on the track, we noticed alot of
sparks coming off the left side of the car. We're not sure if it's
from our new brake pads or if it was fuel dropping onto headers.
Either way, it's probably not a good thing.
Chris takes the outside pole of his heat and starts off REALLY well.
He makes 3 or 4 awesome laps. Very smooth and fast. He got
into turn one too hard though and moved up the track too high giving the
rest of the pack an opening. That cost Chris several spots and he
couldn't recover to transfer. He heads to the B-Main.
We unbox the regulator and realize it's not going to work. We send
it back to the parts truck where the parts guy tells us he looked up that
fuel pump we had just bought and found out we don't need a regulator with
it. President of AMRA, Bill Hayes stops by and watches us work.
Jay asks "what did I do now?" Bill tells him, "nothing" and pulls me
aside. He gives me a certificate for Jay for Aero Wheels. It's
the "Hard Luck Award" from the Road Warrior race. I told Jay it's
the "Sucks to Be You" award!
We disconnect our regulator and block off the hose and the fuel log so we
don't catch the car on fire out there. Yea, that's all we need!
We fire the car up and have fuel pressure. We also check the timing
on the car since we never had time after changing the distributor rotor
and cap.
Then we head over to cheer Chris on for the B-Main. We missed a few
laps and get there in time to see an ambulance on the backstretch and the
race under yellow. Just as I say, "wow, I hope Chris isn't involved
in that", we see Chris down by some tires on the backstretch. That
can't be good. Heather tried to give us the explanation of what
happened, but we still couldn't figure it out. Something about
"starting to spin off of turn 2 and then lost control (maybe
overcorrected?) into the tire barrier on the backstretch. Chris was
okay though and jumped back in line. The car looked quite "bruised",
but operable. Several laps later, the 17JE car spun in turn 2...the
33 car turned it sideways to soften the collision...and Chris hit the
breaks hard and tried to swerve out of the way, but tagged the 33 car.
That was it, he'd had enough, Chris came off the track.
I think Jay starts 14th in the Feature. Our fuel pressure is solid
if you give the car some pedal, but is all over if you let off.
Forget about trying to idle. It's not going to happen. Jay
gets off to a pretty good start and we're pleased to see the race staying
green because we had made a tire change hoping that would be the case.
The tire came alive and Jay found he could run the high line or a low
line. I was surprised to see him try that high of a line, because he
usually doesn't go up there. It was working well though. He
moved into 7th. The car pushed towards the end coming off of turn 3
and half a dozen cars paraded past us. Jay didn't give up
though. He fought back and got the car hooked back up to pull off a
12th place finish. The car seemed to be hooked up quite well.
We ended up with some damage on the right side door though when Jay and
the 150 car got together in battle. Considering how the night had
been going, I'm really pleased with that finish.
Congratulations to Benny Hickel for pulling out the win. Nice race
to everyone. I think there were only 2 cautions in the race and
neither were anything major.
August 23, 2004
Monday
Saying things went from "bad to worse" might not cover this weekend's
racing for us. Considering we had an entire week of rain, we all
expected to have a wet/tacky track. I was a bit surprised to find
the initial condition looking a little wet, but good. The tractors
continued to work in the track, but the big tires and heavy equipment were
making some definite waves throughout the track.
I drew a 20 for Jay's qualifying start and Chris drew a 26. It was
also our Modified Mechanics race night, so I drew a number for my starting
spot. My number sucked, but that was okay because I wanted to start
in the back anyway.
Usually, about this time of the diary entry I say "hot laps were
uneventful". Well...not the case this week. The track is
roughing up, but dusty. Chris went out a car or two ahead of Jay.
They were into the green for hot laps and on the first lap Chris turns it
sideways in turn 3. Guess who is behind Chris????? Jay slams
into Chris. Something white launches off of Chris' car and onto the
track.
Jay pulls off the track under his own power. He slows down to pick
me up and we head to our pit. His right front is messed up bad.
They bring Chris back on a wrecker. Chris says, "the tranny let go
or something". We look under the car. Un-freakin-believable.
What happened is still a mystery, but the driveshaft is broken in half.
The bellhousing is busted open and pieces of it are still missing.
The tranny came out of the engine and is resting on the lower frame bars.
And the biscuit bar bracket broke off and is dragging along. The
biscuit rod is bent and so is the right rear shock. What a freakin'
mess.
We know Chris is done, so we all focus on Jay's right front. The
tie-rod bar is bent. As is the spindle, ball joints, and lower
control arm. The wheel and tire are cut and the shock is broken in
half. We replace all of these items and are putting the tire back on
as Jay's revving up the engine. We don't have the bottom of the
shock totally tight and haven't checked the toe-in/toe-out, but feel okay
enough for two qualifying laps.
Jay gets in line just in time and heads out for his laps. He takes
one and doesn't feel comfortable so pulls off. After he got back I
told him about the shock being loose at the bottom. We knew it
wasn't coming off because it was stripped and had a locknut, but Jay
didn't know any of that. Better safe than sorry.
We replace the shock bolt and go over the rest of the car and adjust our
toe-in/toe-out. Jay recorded a good qualifying time and starts 5th
in his heat. I think there's 23 Modifieds signed in.
They had watered the track again, but had run the Pure Stock and
Mini-Stock features from last week after that. The track was junking
up bad. I don't know if it was their small tires digging in or what,
but it wasn't pretty. The track staff tried to make it race ready
for us, but everything they tried just didn't help.
Jay jumped up to third in his heat and was doing really really well,
especially for conditions. They had several cautions with wrecks or
broken cars. Brian Casey and Rocky Kugel both lost drive shafts.
Jay had a solid third with one or two to go and got down in some mud.
He thought he cut a tire or something let go and pulled into the infield.
When we got back to the pit I pulled out about 10 pounds of mud that
wedged itself past the mudplug and into our beadlock rim. We figured
the clumps threw him off balance enough to cause the vibration that forced
him off the track. We chilled out and prepared for the feature.
We were starting 17th.
While we were waiting out the B-mains of the other classes, we ran into
the owners of Lakeville Speedway. They had already staged Late
Models at that point. Bob asked Jay if he broke an axle. Jay
said "no, I don't think so". Now Jay's worried because we never
checked...just assumed it was the mud. We ran back to our pit as
they're calling Modified's for lineup. We pulled out the right-side
axle and find it's okay. They make a second call for Modifieds.
We pull off the cap on the left side. I can't get the axle out.
We get the flashlight on it and see shavings...that can't be good!
Rocky Kugel ducks in to see what we're up to. He and Chris think
it's just the hub and he has extras! We pulled the tire and pulled
off the asembly. They were right. But the axle is still stuck
in the hub. Rocky takes his car up to stage while we get the sledge
out and pound away at the axle. We finally get it out. The
first flange we try doesn't match up. We try the other set. It
matches. We slam it together and once again get Jay up in line.
It's the season ending points battle for the Pure Stock division and the
Late Model division. Late Models are running a 50-lap feature and
Pure Stocks running 20, which is more than a normal night. Modifieds
and Mini's end their points next week. The track, well, it got
worse. We're all glancing at our watches as we watch the late models
and hope for the curfew to cancel us for the night. The track makes
the call to push Pure Stocks ahead of the Modifieds since it's their last
night. Six cars finished the Late Model race. They started with a
full field.
The Pure Stocks didn't have as many cautions, but Ernie did make the call
to send the Modifieds back to the pit to load.
We were definitely relieved. Now we have time to fix Chris' car this
week and get him back on track. Plus go over ours real well to make
sure we got everything tight and in place after the rough track shaking us
around. The track staff did what they could to prepare the track for
us, it just wasn't coming together Saturday. Hopefully, we'll all be
ready next week though!
August 29, 2004
Sunday
Weather forecasters had been predicting thunderstorms all weekend, so we
were prepared to race, but doubtful it would happen. Not only did we
have double features scheduled for the Modifieds, but it was our
season championships and we also had the Mechanics race for Modifieds.
Wayne County Speedway received a brief storm during the early morning, but
then cleared off. Racing was on. We arrived early and picked
out a good pit space on high ground. The track looked tacky, but we
figured it wouldn't last long since the Sprints were there Saturday too.
I drew a high number putting Jay towards the back of the qualifying order.
Chris had a mid-pack qualifying start.
As expected, the sprints dried out the track and we were under very dry
slick conditions for qualifying. All the times were WAY off normal
pace. Chris recorded a 21.6 beating Jay's 21.9 time.
After the drivers meeting, the Modifieds were called up for the makeup
Feature from last week. We prepared for the dry slick track, but
then made a last minute tire change when we saw the track staff had
decided to water the track. Jay got lined up but, had a flat tire.
One of the Sprint teams aired it up for us before we went out for the
Feature. Chris started on the inside tail and Jay started on the
outside tail. Twenty Modifieds started the first Feature.
Jay got tied up with traffic for several laps, but finally found a passing
line and got by several cars on an outside line. We had a strong car
and Jay kept trying different lines working his way towards the front.
He made me nervous on one extremely high sweep around turns 3 & 4.
He took the whole turn inches away from the guardrail scraping into it at
one point. Luckily, it didn't throw him off pace and thankfully, he
didn't do it again!
Several cautions came out, including one that ended our points leader and
good friend, Larry Kugel. Larry broke a cam shaft and came off at
lap 9. Chris was involved in one caution, but only because he
stopped to avoid hitting a spun car. Chris' main goal was to take
some laps, stay out of trouble, and finish the race. And, he did
just that. Chris had a really good race and came in with a 14th
place finish keeping him in the 4th place points position.
Jay continued to move up to the front. It seemed every time we'd
make some passes and move up a caution would come out. Sometimes it
helped because it brought the leaders and the front pack back into
striking distance. Sometimes it hurt because the guys we'd just
passed would get their spots back and we'd have to do it all over again.
Jay eventually moved into 4th and had a good race going with Ron Miller
#185. It was back and forth for awhile, but Ron held Jay off when
the checker flag dropped. We were very happy with a 4th place finish
though! Way to go Jay and Chris!
We had been watching the sky during the Modified Feature because dark
clouds were rapidly approaching. We knew Mansfield Motorsports
Speedway had already had a bad storm and cancelled their events. As
soon as the Modifieds came off the track we all rushed to our pit and
quickly put the rest of our stuff away and loaded the car. Several
minutes later the rain poured down on us. Jay and I sat in the
trailer and waited for it to lift. Racing was obviously cancelled
for the evening, so we headed for home.
Even though we still have one race to go, our friend Larry Kugel has the
points championship wrapped up. Congratulations Larry! We've
had a terrific time getting to know the Kugel family this season.
Larry's been a dominant competitor each week and definitely deserves the
title!
Jay's still holding on to second in the point standings and has a sizeable
lead on the third place of Kyle Brown. I don't think Kyle can catch
us with one race to go, so we're pretty confident that we've got 2nd
wrapped up. Congratulations Jay!
Sept 5th, 2004
Sunday (written by Jay)
What a night, a night to forget! We got to the track at our usual time. I
went out for hot laps. Everything is checking out ok, motor wise. Oil
pressure good, fuel pressure ok, water temp coming up nicely. Slow lap
(parade) to loosen up the car heims, waiting on the green light for our
hot lap session. Green light, GO. Motor comes up nicely, then 200 ft under
power, BANG!!!!!!, CLUNK....oh no......coasting on the track up high to
not get run over...I had already shut the power down and put car in
neutral. A track worker comes over to me as I am leaving the track, hands
me the harmonic balancer. Great. Push truck pushes me back to our pit
stall. While passing my wife, I just shook my head, like it's fatal. Upon
further investigation, we see the crankshaft is broke in half, oil pan has a hole
in it, harmonic balancer had tried to come into the drivers compartment,
and tons of oil on the ground. I am walking up to the pit shack to tell
the pit steward Donn that we were scratching when I see the TV crew coming
into the gate. Bad news for ya guys.....blown motor. Now we concentrate on
getting Chris qualified.
Chris qualifies decent and starts 7th in his heat. Chris finished 7th in
his heat. We have 29 cars that have signed in for the "Freedom Fighters
Fifty". Twin 25 laps features for the mods, and late models. For a high
dollar late model race, they had 27 cars signed in. Their normal late
model count is 35. Also on tap for both divisions is a Australian Pursuit.
Our friend Larry Kugel starting from the 7th starting positon, won the
10lap race. Unfortunately, he blew his motor also as he was coming off the
track. We tried to fix it, but seized it up when he refired the motor.
Motor #2 of the night. Rob Stambaugh finishes 2nd behind Larry, but also
blows his motor, 3rd of the night, but more to come.....
Chris has to run the "B" Main. He starts 5th. Car is working well, he's
running decent times, then gets into a pile up. He makes it out ok with a
little toe out. Continues to race. Two laps later, he's involved in
another wreck, wrong place wrong time. This time, it caves the right side
of the car in, he's done. Uggh.....but on the bright side of things, my favorite car
(the green one) is slowly creeping it's way back into the racing world.
After my wreck, we cut the chassis up, and the good pieces of tubing we
saved. It (the green car) must be missing the racing action, because it
now occupies both Chris's and my car, close to 20% now. Have I ever told
you, I miss her (green car)??????
Since Larry blew his motor and Chris didn't transfer, we put Larry in the
26M car. We adjust the tires air pressures according to where Larry wanted
them. We also had to put a "booster seat" in the seat, so he could see
over the wheel!!!!LOL. Funny now, but Larry can drive. Left our setup on
the car. Larry starts 20th for the first 25 laps. He slowly makes his way
up to 13th, where he tags the 12th place car, causing the left front upper
control arm ball joint to sheer off. He finishes the race in 12th, passing
the 12th place car. He comes back into the pits, we thrashed to get the
car ready for the 2nd "A" main, where he starts 12th.
Larry has us adjust the car some more. Now Chris and I don't agree with
what he wants, but he's driving, and knows what he likes. He starts out,
and we can see almost immediately, that the changes were wrong. We all
were crossing our fingers. He starts moving up a few places, then almost
looses it, causing a major slow down, but no yellow flag. A few laps
later, he spins it. Starts tail again, finishes 8th. Not a bad run.
Larry is looking for a ride for the 2005 racing season. He is currently
unemployed. If anyone knows of someone needing a good welder, or
maintenance person, he's your man.
Up next, we are trying to put together a motor for the "Ohio Dirt Blowout"
at Lakeville Speedway, Sept 24th, and 25th. If you have a "Race Motor"
that you would like to donate, or allow us to use, please contact us.
Sept 22, 2004
Wednesday (written by Jay)
Things are looking up for this
weekend at Lakeville Speedway for the Ohio Dirt Blowout. Slight chance of
rain (20%). Check out
www.lakevillespeedway.com
for more information on this weekends races (Friday / Saturday).
We have a motor in our car now. We
dropped it in Sunday, did not fire it till last night. Changed oil this
morning, debris in screen, although engine builder thinks we are ok,
normal. I put the oil filter on this morning, and promptly blew it out
tonight, after starting the motor. My fault, I neglected to check to see
if there was the old filter seal still attached to motor....Uggh, what a
mess on the floor....LOL!!!!
Chris thinks the motor sounds pretty
stout, my wife thinks so also. Guess we will find out Friday. Motor has
our old crank in it (from the engine we blew up in the garage over the
winter), our old rods, new pistons though!!!!.....our old heads......new
oil pan!!! our old water pump, new pickup tube!!!!.....LOL....I am sure it
will last the weekend.
We are both looking forward to this
weekend....Both of us have a good feeling about the races at
Lakeville.....now when both of us have a good feeling about something,
GREAT things happen. At least I hope this time they do...LOL....
Stay tuned.............
Sept 26, 2004
Sunday (written by Jay)
Wow. What a great time we had at the
Ohio Dirt Blowout at Lakeville Speedway, in Lakeville, Ohio. Let me say
this, if you are going to the dirt blowout, get your pit spot EARLY. We
had 193 cars in the pits, in the infield, in the overflow
parking......Cars everywhere...
Friday night, practice was sloppy on
the straight-aways, but the corners were good (moisture wise). Car was
neutral, good forward bite... Of course I draw the pill, and it's
horrible. We start dead last in our heat. We had 15cars in attendance.
Before our heat race, Mr. Coffman and his son, Clint, came up to our
trailer to visit (Ernie owns Wayne County Speedway). We got to talking,
and I suggested to Clint that he could drive in my heat race. Just keep
the car out of trouble I said...LOL...after some coaxing, he said OK. 8
Started our heat, and Clint finished 4th. Not bad for his first time in a
mod. Clint normally runs a late model. Our friend Larry Kugel finished
second behind Took Wiles (remember that name in this post).....
Saturday was a busy day. We took some
friends over to Mansfield Speedway, and gave them a tour of the
facilities. They were in awe....
We redrew for the inversion, and we
started 7th. Tom King was starting behind me, and I told Cindy to tell him
while we were in line, to lay back on the start, because there would be a
caution by the time we hit turn one.....and there was, and neither one of
us were involved, but the pole sitter (Took Wiles) was. Took took (LOL) the
tail for causing the caution. We restarted and I remained in 7th for the
first few laps, waiting for the cars to spread out a little. I bet you are
wondering why. Well, Lakeville is basically a small track, with one groove
per say.....anyways, by lap 5 I knew Rob Stambaugh should be breathing
down my back. I was making a pass under Douglas, when he came down, I
checked up, spun. Rob Stambaugh was right there, tapped me in the drivers
door panel. 5 cars involved. I caused the spin, checked up too hard.....I
admit when I am wrong most of the time....LOL.....Had to restart on the
tail. Now I am not exactly happy, because of what happened. Lakeville does
not have a high side, but I created one....LOL....10 laps I was up to 5th.
Passed the 4th place car, caution comes out....dang dang dang.....took me 5
more laps to get around him. Now my sights were set on Took Wiles......I
caught him around lap 20, and went for the pass under him between 3 and 4.
Well, Took comes down on me, and we get together, I end up in the swamp,
yes the swamp....I was buried up to my rear axles.....the tow truck got me
out, and the flagman promptly black flags me (causing 2 cautions). I had a
broken left front shock since lap 10 anyways.....Ended
up with a 9th place finish. All in all, we had a great car (a little loose
in the feature), and without a doubt in my mind, a top 3 car that night.
Afterwards, Ryan Markham (a very good late model driver, and multiple
tracks champion) came over and congratulated me on a great race he said. I
said, well, I guess they didn't like my driving. He said yeah, sometimes
they (officials) don't....LOL....That was a good highlight in my book for
the weekend; to have someone who is a very good driver come up to you
afterwards and tell you how well you were doing.....Just my opinion.
Chris started on the pole for his
heat race. Now, some say that he should have started there, while others
say he should have started on the tail. Here's my take on that. I think it
was good that he tried it once this year. I told him to get a good start
on the outside pole sitter, and he did. Now, this is where the learning
process comes in. He hits the turn at a good speed, the outside pole
sitter comes in on his outside. So far so good. Rob Stambaugh (an
accomplished late model and modified driver) is right behind Chris. He
taps Chris lightly. Now, I think Chris got on the throttle a little too
hard, causing the car to start to loop, thus collecting the outside
pole car (Jeremy Scott) and Rob Stambaugh. He made it out of that melee
without a lot of damage. He restarted the race, and finished 6th. I had
the opportunity to follow Chris for a few laps during the feature. He has
become a lot smoother, and is hitting his marks better. Car doesn't push
as bad, because he is hitting the corners a lot better. Chris has
progressed nicely this year. Next year should be better, he's maturing as
a driver, and I look for him to start sticking his nose down inside better
on a competitor. Look for him to be back next year, but in a different
colored car (possibly pink).....LOL.......NOTTTTTTTT.
My wife and I would like to
personally thank Bob and Judi from Lakeville Speedway for having our
division there. Although we had only 15 cars, and had 26 sign up, I hope
he continues to have the mods at the Dirt Blowout. Our class has continued
to grow, and will continue to grow, as long as we have promoters that
allow us to.
Oct. 3rd, Tom King #89 modified, is
getting married. Congrats to Tom and his soon to be bride. I have to work
in the morning, but we plan on attending their reception that night.
Oct. 9th, we will be at Cedar Point.
Oct. 10th, we will be at the Riceland
Golf Course, for the local racers benefit event. Now I have heard most of
those other racers cheat at the game of golf. I guess we will find out
first hand.....We are bringing two of our great sponsors, a rep from Pepsi
Cola, and the owner of Ace Engineering, Mr. Rick Maffett. We are in the
process right now of planning a golf outings for in the spring.... Stay
tuned.....
By the way, the motor ran good after
we changed the filter Friday night. Should have known better than to run an
AC Filter...My fault....for those of you who didn't know, we had BadMan
Racing Engines throw us together from our used parts stock, a motor for
the dirt blowout. It was as strong as our last motor. Maybe it will last
all season....LOL......season is basically over....
Jeremy Scott broke his crank at the
blowout. Not as bad as we did though. He should be back in business
without a lot of cost...hopefully.
Thank you to our fan club for coming out and supporting us. Yes, we
actually have one or two of them (fans)....LOL Thanks Roger and Sharon,
Dad and Mark for coming out and supporting us.
I would like to race one more time
before the season officially ends. Where? Stay tuned!
Sept 26, 2004
Sunday
Jay did a good job on our weekend summary. I just want to add a
congratulations to our friend Larry (Brother Bear) Kugel on bringing home
the win.
Also, nice job Rocky Kugel in your brother Ziggy's mini stock. The
car ran pretty good on 3 cylinders Friday night, but much better Saturday
on all 4!
And another congratulations to my Bullet Motorsports teammate Dave
Connolly who brought home his second Pro Stock win of the 2004 season
tonight. Dave's only 21 years old, so I'm sure you'll hear his name
for quite awhile in the NHRA Drag Racing world (and on our diary)!
Stay tuned to see what we get ourselves into next!
Oct. 6th, 2004
Wednesday
We have decided to
call
it a year racing wise.
At this time, we would really like to
thank our GREAT sponsors. We strive to present an image that reflects
upon their business. Please let our sponsors know that you seen
their advertisement on our car.
See ya soon in 2005! Great
things are going to happen. Have a safe holiday season.
Oct. 10th, 2004
Sunday
Although it was a non-racing weekend for us, Jay and I had an eventful
weekend. We spent Saturday at Cedar Point. Of course we had to
pay a little extra to take some laps on their "Grand Prix Go Kart Track".
They have some pretty nice karts. Jay and I had a clean race (unlike
the incident from the Niagara Falls go kart track we tried last year).
The weather was beautiful, which unfortunately meant the park was crowded.
We still had a blast though!
We joined some of our fellow racers at Riceland Golf Course in Orrville
today for a golf outing hosted by the Delaney Late Model team. Jay
and I brought in two of our sponsors, Rick Maffett Jr. from Ace
Engineering and Steve Burdick from Pepsi Cola of Mansfield, to round out
our golf team. We had a good time, although, I can't say too much
about our golf game except we lost A LOT of golf balls! (what
she neglected to tell you was that there must have been over 20 squirrels
that stole our golf balls, LOL). We all had
fun though, so that's what counts. Thanks goes out to the Delaney's and
Mrs. Drown for putting on a nice outing! Also, a thank you goes out
to Al Hutchinson, Jr. for keeping our beverage holders filled in our golf
carts! We appreciated it!
Ogle and Pistol Pete....where were you two hiding? Sleeping???? Who needs
sleep.....it's over rated....
Four years ago, we had tossed around the idea of doing our own golf
outing, but never went through with it. We've decided to give it a
shot in 2005. We're tentatively planning a Sunday date in late
May/early June at Brookside Golf Course in Ashland, Ohio. We haven't
put together pricing and booked the date yet, but we would like to get a
list started of golfers and sponsors that would be interested. If
you'd like additional information,
email me so we can add you to the
appropriate list(s).
If any of you play Hot Shots Golf Fore online, Jay is: RACERX and
Cindy is: Extreme1 We're a lot better at HSG4 than real
golf...but I'm not sure that's really sayin' much!
Oct. 20th, 2004
Wednesday (written by "Hollywood" Howe)
No rest for the weary......fall/winter = rebuilding time for the cars.
Here is what has happened so far:
Motor pulled out of Chris's car, along with all the sheet metal. Now it
gets washed again. When you pull the sheet metal off the cars, you realize
how much you missed when you washed it......Mostly Heather's
fault.....always in a hurry.....LOL.....just kidding Heather. Don't throw
anything at us this week, pleaseeeee.....LOL....
Rearend out of Jay's car, repainted. Motor had gas ran through it to lube
the internal components. Headers repainted.
Working on the sheet metal brake right now. Making it easier to use.
More to come soon.
Oct. 24th, 2004
Sunday
Even though we're in the "off-season", we're still meeting up at the race
shop at least once a week. We dropped the rearend back into the Hot
Modified and reattached the bars, shocks, brakes, and springs.
Chris rewired the inside of his car making it more organized. He
ended up with "extra" wires, so hopefully it all still works! Chris
also moved the switches from the right side of the cockpit to the left.
Every time he would adjust the brakes, he'd shut off the car!
Jay and I dropped Chris' engine off at BadMan Racing Engines yesterday to
get freshened. Then we met our friends Roger and Sharon Miller for
dinner and a movie. If you get a chance, go see "Without a Paddle".
It's pretty funny!
Oct. 28th, 2004
Thursday
--written by Jay--
I received a nice email today from
the owner of Lakeville Speedway. He wants to have a couple modified races
in 2005.
Now for those of you who have been
following our diary, you know that we struggle at that track to finish a
race. We seem to have a fast car there, just can't make it through the
night. This past time was partially my fault. I probably try to hard to do
well for the local fans, since we live within a half hour of the track.
Then again.....
Stay tuned for more details as soon
as I receive confirmation on the dates.
Can't wait to race there again! I do
enjoy racing at Lakeville.
Oct. 30th, 2004
Saturday
--written by Jay--
We
found out today that our banquet for Wayne County Speedway will be held in
Ashland, at the Ashland University Convo Center, February 19th, 2005.
Please give the track office a call to reserve your tickets for the
banquet.
November 6, 2004
Saturday
We met Chris and Heather at the race shop last night. We had painted
Jay's fuel cell and redesigned the strapping and safety bars for it.
We put it all back together and secured it in the car last night.
There really isn't a whole lot more to do on the Hot.
The Huff car that Chris drives is a different story though. It's
stripped down to prepare for a chassis painting. We sanded the
chassis last night and will get it painted this week. We looked it
over closely as we sanded looking for cracks, broken welds, and bent
tubing. It looked really good though.
The rearend is out of the Huff too. We cleaned it up and made sure
it was not bent. It's getting painted this week too.
BadMan Racing Engines called this week. They're almost done
refreshing Chris' engine.
I figure we're going to have to step-up our shop time to 2 or 3 nights a
week or start meeting on weekends where we have more time to work if Chris
is going to Georgia with us to race in February. We still have to
paint the chassis, paint the rearend, drop the rear in, drop the engine
in, shift the fuel cell and re-secure it, bolt everything back on, design
a new body, put the body back on, set both cars back up and scale both
cars. We wanted to make some changes on how Chris' Upper A-arms
mount too, so we'll still have to figure that out.
November 18th, 2004
Thursday (written by "Hollywood" Howe)
Update: Chris's car is starting to come around. Chassis is painted, fuel
cell to be painted next, install new front upper "A" arm brackets, then
re-assemble the car. Motor is about done.
Jay's car is mostly done. Leaving the body on it as is, since we have been
asked to put the car in an "Autorama" in January, for the TV pilot series
(Gearhead Nation). We think it might be better to leave the car as it was
for the show, instead of putting all new sheet metal on it, etc...What do
you think?
December 1, 2004
Wednesday
We had a terrific weekend at Mansfield Motorsports Speedway. Our
friends, the Kugels, brought over Ziggy's mini-stock for the first annual
"Leftover Race". Larry Kugel piloted the Ford Probe. Larry
qualified the Probe 9th fastest. Pretty awesome especially for
Larry's first time in that car and the first time on asphalt! The
Feature wasn't so awesome though. It was a horrendous start. I
think it took 30 minutes to get 3 laps in! Like most racers....you
can win on the first lap...even if the race IS 100 laps long!!!
Well, Larry threaded one big mishap in lap 2 and came out clean. He
was involved in an incident in lap 3, but I can't tell you about that
because I missed it. After everyone got straightened out, the race
restarted and there was a bump and run on the backstretch. Larry
tried to squeeze by on the inside, but they nicked him and he went for the
wall. We actually thought we saw the front of the car start to lift,
before the wall and gravity launched him back onto the straightaway.
The car looked pretty bad from where we sat, but it turned out to mainly
be a destroyed radiator that puked all over the track upon impacting the
wall. The safety crew checked out Larry and towed the Probe to the
infield. Larry watched the next 46 laps from the infield using the
ice machine as a wind blocker. After the first 50 laps, there was a
pitstop, which allowed Larry to exit to the pits.
We had a really nice dinner with the Kugel family after the races.
Even though there wasn't a whole lot of racing on our side, we still had a
blast. Hope they come up again next year. Maybe we'll
find Jay a car to play around in for the race too!
Now, for an update on our Modifieds. We met Chris and Heather for
dinner and then headed to the race shop. Chris and I put the rearend
back in his car and secured all the bars, shocks, springs, and suspension
pieces. Jay and Heather worked on the new upper A-arm setups for the
Huff car. We need to replace part of Chris' brake line. Why?
It has a hole in it. How did that happen? Probably from the
fire. What fire? Well, Jay got a little carried away welding.
Next thing Chris and I know there's a lot of commotion at the front of the
racecar. When we looked over, Jay and Heather were trying to put out
the fire. It was pretty comical. Thank goodness the engine
wasn't in the car yet!!! It's not the first fire we've
had...probably won't be the last either! If you want to read about
another fire story, refer to paragraph one of our
May 25, 2003 entry, a.k.a. "Hold
This".
December 11,
2004
Saturday (written by
Jay)
We attended the PRI Show (Performance
Racing Industry) in Indianapolis, Indiana. What a huge event if you ever
get the chance to go. We met up with our friends from "Gearhead Nation".
They were out there to help promote and generate enough sponsorships for a
TV package. Chris and Heather came out Friday and Saturday. Not sure what
they thought of the show, but I am pretty sure they liked it.
We also visited with a few of our
sponsors, and potential sponsors. We had a great time. Met a lot of nice
people. Cross your fingers.......
Thursday night I had the unique
opportunity to go to a kart track, and race against Nextel Cup driver
Michael Waltrip. But, yours truly declined the offer. Don't ask me why,
but I did.
We are excited about 2005. We stopped
by the AMRA booth, visited with the good people of AMRA, Bill Hayes, Steve
Davis, Mark Dickson, and Larry Keifer. Picked up the new rules, and the
AMRA Road Warrior Tour Schedule. We were shocked to see a May 20th date at
Attica Raceway Park. We'll definitely be adding that date to our
schedule!
We are awaiting Wayne County
Speedway's schedule, before we post ours. Stay tuned....We plan on hitting
at least 4-10 different tracks this year, in the US and Canada.
December 31,
2004
Saturday (written by
Jay)
At Howe Extreme Racing, Inc., we
would like to wish you and your family a Happy New Year. May God bless you
and yours in 2005.
Oh yeah, 91 days left to the first
practice day at Wayne County Speedway.
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