..absolutly had a blast. My brother Ron and his buddy Shaw drove down from Seattle tuesday night and we hooked my trailer up to Shaws truck and left by 11 am wednsday. We arrived at 4 am thursday morning and slept untill 8 am when it was time to roll in and get pitted.
we got everything unloaded and got the car out and I went to work finishing the cars last little details. We made it over to tech at 2:30 and everything passed on the car, and believe me they looked hard and long at it...while there
we weighed the car with me on the scales and 4 gallons of alky and it is a whopping 1875 lbs,..cool deal, so anyways
back to the pits and up on the jacks to fire the car up for the first time,.. ..yes the first time. after about three attemps and re setting the mag and barral valve the ol blue came to life,..she runs and sounds bitchin,..We woke Friday morning
to get ready to make the first pass in this car that hasnt been down the bakersfield track in 36 years, and also is my first ride in a funny car,.My plan was to make three test passes, one to the 330-400, then 660ft and then 800ft then a full pull,..so the first one the car fired right up, rolled the water box, smoked the tires, tried to stage and rolled the beams before i got it stopped, took the red light and charged it out to 330 felt really great, it left straight and steered excellent,..the next pass at noon did a way better burnout and the smoke coming in the cockpit and came to a stop out at 500 ft,..that was such a bitchin feeling and sence that it was a excellent burnout,..so i went to creep into the beams, and again rolled right threw them,..newbie yea yea yea
so again I took the red light and this time she hiked the wheels up about 7 or 8 inches and carried them out to what seemed about 70 ft or so, perfect feeling straight as an arrow she set the wheels back down and I shifted to second gear and she charged hard out to half track where I lifted as planned,..got back to the pits checked the plugs and it was looking perfect, other than it was idling to fast and that is why I was having trouble rolling the beams to stage the car.
So I made the adjustments to the butterflys and corrected the barral valve,..now its saturday and I decide to warm it up and check the idle and temps,..long story short the battery was not being charged right and it was near dead,.and I wound up chunking the flex plate and breaking a starter, I was thinking damn the weekend is over but,..we found a new flexplate, and Greg Means had a new starter to throw at it, basicaly I spent saturday pulling the tranny and changing parts, and then finding that my fuel pump was not picking up the fuel, I had spike check it out, it didnt pump at all at first then he removed all the fittings off the inlet side and re assembled it and it worked fine, I get it back on the car and go to start it and it wont pump fuel up past the fuel shut off, this was getting old so I had several available pumps over to me and brought one back and installed it,..its now late in the day and chose not to start it thinking I would lose the battery again and have nothing for sunday,..my last attempt to make a full pull,..and only if two runs are allowed for us exhibition cars,..so its sunday the fuel cars are running and blowing up and oiling the track and time is passing rapidily, the word comes around that we will only get one more lap,..well my next lap is to the 800 ft,..and thats exactly what I stuck with,..we pulled to the line the car fired right up on the second attempt,..got off a good burn out, and this time was able to stage the car ,..took the green and it was an absolute pig,..uhhhh forgot to change the barral valve back and also the main jet,..The vega woke up a little bit after about ten ffet and I legged out first gear to far grabbing second,..made it pass half track got out to 800ft and lifted,.and then thinking to myself lets see if the chute deploys,..woops did it before the finishline and ran a 10.08 at 85 mph,..yes the chute deployed,.so anyways it was a crappy 60 ft but ran 5.54@138 to half track,..and now I am thinking why didnt I run it out all the way,...dont know why,..guess I just had one plan to know if this car was going to be stable and straight,.and that was the 3 shakedowns and the 4 fouth run to be all the way out the back door,..guess I have to wait a while now to find out how well it does run.
It was a totally great weekend, even with the thrash on Saturday,..met several folks off the board and put many names now to the faces. thank you everyone who stopped by and said hello, or introduced yourself, thanks Darr, Bob, Pete, Darrell, and James for the photo shoots, Cant wait to see the photos,.HOW ABOUT VIDEO, if anyone knows who has it id love to see it.
thanks again,...I finally did it,..
Vic
,..could have fooled me... 
