Bob Cook’s Rt 66 Race Blog

Thursday

We arrived at the track and got the car through Tech. We made two passes that basically, used up the whole test session. I wanted to make a hit on my blue car but, missed out due to the staging lane wait being too long later in the day. The new graphics on my blue car from Sticker Dude turned out very nice. We didn’t need stick around the track so I went home and jumped into the pool to cool off

Friday
In the first round of qualifying we ran an 8.62 for the #1 spot. We decided that we would go to the back of the pack during the second round of qualifying. The plan was; if no one went quicker we would just back out and return to the pit. No one went quicker so, that’s what we did. We didn’t need stick around Friday night so I went home and jumped into the pool to cool off again.

Saturday
Well we had rain most of the morning and it took a while to get the track ready. They ended up canceling the 3rd round of qualifying for us. My brother and his fiancée Mary came down from Michigan and brought my mom out to the track for part of the day. They didn’t stay too long due to the heat. My moms getting up there in age but, she really enjoyed seeing the kids and their friends at the track. I have three children Kris (18), Lauren (16), and Megan (12). They each brought two or three friends so we had quite a cheering section. When I raced my drag bike in the early 80s my mom would come with us to US30 Drag Strip and barbecue for us. Getting back to the racing; there was some confusion about the ladder and who we would run in the first round. The PER car teched in but, never made a pass in qualifying. They were originally on the ladder then, pulled off of the ladder and that put us up against Alton Clements. We really hated to have to run him in the first round but, that’s the way it worked out. We ended up running our quickest and fastest pass of the weekend at 8.55 at 161mph. At the end of the track the car died out which I thought was odd. When I picked up the chute then, restarted the car, I noticed it sounded like it had an exhaust leak.

After returning to the pit, we checked the headers and nothing was loose. Jerry looked at the plugs; which is what he does after every pass and he noticed a mark on the ground electrode of #7 and the gap was closed. This required us to pull the head. It’s the first time we had to do this since I’ve been driving the car so, it was new to me. We started tearing into it. It’s not that bad compared to the pushrod heads but, it does take longer to do. After we got it apart we found one of the #7 exhaust valves had broken at the stem just under the keeper. Lucky for us the valve only bounced off of the top of the piston and didn’t drop completely into the cylinder. Jerry (Crew Chief) and Bryan (Crew) took the head back to Sutton HP to put a new valve in it and Larry (Crew) and I cleaned the parts so we were ready for a quick assembly when the guys got back. We got it all together except the exhaust. There was about a 1” deep river of water flowing under the car from the rain and none of us felt like laying in it to put the exhaust back on. We decided to do it in the morning. It was a late night and my head hit the pillow at my house which is about 10 minutes from the track at 3:40am.

Sunday
I woke up at 6:30am so, not much sleep but, the excitement of running in eliminations and a 20oz coffee got me rolling. We had a tough match-up in the second round. Bart Tobner can run well so, we couldn’t let our guard down. I focused on the tree and good thing because, the traction wasn’t there and it ended up being a close race. We ran an 8.70 to Bart’s 8.73. The semis were next. We were running against my blue car with Scott Lovell driving. That was one of the reasons I wanted my car to compete at this race. I wanted to race against my own car. Scott had a better light than me but, we caught up to him and won the round. We had traction issues again so we needed to make some more chassis changes for the final.

Our Final round opponent was Brian Tuten and he was tearing up the other side of the ladder. We made some chassis adjustments and planned to push the limit on the tune. The 60’ improved and the car picked up in the eighth but, at about the 1000’ the head gasket went. I got out of the throttle because the car went into a sideways drift at 150mph. I think that getting out of the throttle was the only thing that kept the car from going completely around. We were lucky we didn’t wreck it. This experience reaffirmed a lesson that I always think back about. Whenever, I’ve leaned on my blue car, 99% of the time it slowed down and broke parts plus, I’ve never won in this situation either. Although we didn’t get the win, we still met our team goal of getting to the final round. We also pulled into first place in points after Dave Guy went out in the first round and Brian Mitchell went out in the second.

Thanks to the Sutton HP Crew for building and tuning the fastest 2008 mod motor powered Bullitt in the NMRA!

Randy Morhbach (Sutton HP Manager), Jerry VanDerLinde (Crew Chief), Bryan Stepanic (Crew), Larry David (Crew), and Norm Swanson (Team Machinist)

Sponsors:
Sutton High Performance, Ford Racing, Vortech Superchargers, Dynamic Racing Transmissions and TCT Converters, Big Stuff 3, Fast Forward Racecars, NGK Spark Plugs, Permatex, Goldie’s Auto Body, Valvoline, WorldWide Bearings, and Motive Gear.

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