HOT ROD Drag Week 2018

Final results.

More than 80 cars out by the end of the competition. Drag Week is tough :cool: Though to be fair, some of those will have been the ones who live in the path that Hurricane Florence was taking and needed to get gone in order to make sure family/pets/belongings were safe. Still, plenty of mechanical carnage was had. One man who dealt with faintly serious carnage was David Newbern, in the Chevy Nova that had the engine out of the Roadkill 'Earle Camino' in it. 'Had' being the operative, as on Day 4 he crammed just a little too much nitrous through it and put a hole in all 8 pistons. This after suffering alternator trouble earlier in the week and having to strap a generator and battery charger to the decklid to keep driving until he could replace it. Buying an engine from a junkyard that he knew was worn out but at least in one piece, he and his co-pilots set about fitting it overnight before Day 5 with help from Mike Finnegan and Finn's co-pilot Daniel Boshears. Then they all completed the drive back to Atlanta for Day 5 competition on no sleep. The junkyard motor was so worn that putting nitrous on it would probably have instantly grenaded it and hosed down the track with oil and parts, so he could only run a 24 second pass on the final day. But his attitude to the whole endeavour and heroic effort to stay in and finish the competition earned him the Spirit Of Drag Week award :)

Now, I'm not saying that using an engine previously used on Roadkill was a mistake...but I'm not not saying it either :D

***edit***

Been weighing up what my favourite car of the week was. That '71 Dodge Demon that clicked of a 9.452 ET on Day 1 like it was no big deal was pretty darn cool. And Blasphemi, of course. And the 'vette Gasser. But Scott Brown's green '53 Chevy Bel Air that ran with the rear fender skirts on all week clicking off low 9s (and an 8.941 in Charlotte!)...that was properly cool. It wasn't his first Drag Week with the car, and hopefully it's back again next year as well.
 
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Bumping this back up for a Blasphemi update.

Unfortunately the engine was indeed badly hurt on that last pass after an un-good gearshift send the revs north of the redline into 'oh, bugger' territory. Finnegan told the story (and the saga of Dave Newbern's Nova engine fragging, along with the oh-so-cool upgrade headed his way) on his YT show Finnegan's Garage in this episode:


But it has now been rebuilt, and sweet Jesus does it sound good...
 
A quick update on the 'grudge' match between Finnegan with Blasphemi and Jon Chase of Hoonigans with 'Tri 5 By Fire', a Chevy Tri 5 gasser running a Chevy LS motor. They finally met up at Pomona this weekend during a NHRA event.

Blasphemi had a problem in the run-up keeping the coolant out of the oil - Finn and friends tried hard to solve it, but in the end the solution was to race with no coolant :eek: Clearly it did something for it though, as in practice for the event Finnegan ran in an 8.689 @ 160.48mph, comfortably the best run that the car has made. The weight saving of all that coolant not being there :p Tri 5 By Fire wasn't faring much better. They arrived with the car basically not really ready, despite the extra few months work on it (the match-up was originally supposed to go down in November last year). Jon had also never run on a properly NHRA prep'd track.

They set up to do a best out of three event. Yesterday Finnegan stomped all over Jon, 'cruising' a 9.1 second pass after Tri 5 bogged hard off the line and eventually crossed the line for a 13.5. The Hoonigans team then changed the engine. They got ready to line up again today, and Blasphemi's starter motor crapped out leaving the car needing to be bump started. But round 2 also went to Finn, giving him the win and the trophy. And leaving Jon to get his beard shaved off :D

Testing passes.

Round 1 link.

Round 2 link.
 
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