All Ford drags at Mason Dixon Dragway

driller

El Presidente
Staff member
Part of the Mid-Atlantic MN12 meet was attending the Mason Dixon Dragway All Ford event which was a combined drag day and car show held every August.

It was an interesting day for the Blue Flame. :rolleyes:

We arrived about an hour before racing began and had plenty of time to unload the car from the trailer and get through tech. After prepping the car we went to the tech line and waited a few minutes. When our turn at tech came we were set back somewhat by an unusual order from the engine compartment the tech crew had picked up on. It smelled somewhat like burning wiring and they politely asked that I return to the pits to diagnose the issue for safety's sake.

Once back in the pits, we poured over the engine compartment looking for anything amiss that could be overheating causing the acrid smell. We sort of narrowed it down to the drivers side close to the firewall and could not find anything in particular that was suspect. Out of desperation, we tried to remove a maxi fuse that was on the heavy gauge power wire that fed back to the trunk for the aftermarket audio amplifiers. We ended up basically removing the wire from the battery feed including the maxi fuse assembly and tucked everything back in place. We started the car once again and amazingly the smell seemed to dissipate and all seemed well.

We returned to tech and passed this time around. The tech crew seemed satisfied. Meanwhile we had missed the first call for our class to the first of two time trials. We rushed through a final check of everything and went to the staging lanes to join up with the test and tune group to try to make up our missed run.

The run down the track seemed uneventful but it felt like it launched kind of soft and maybe just didn't seem to be up to par. When we picked up the time slip it showed a paltry 1.919 sixty foot and a 13.1 ET at 102.8 mph. :eek:

Nothing had really changed from the last outing so we were left guessing in the pits while we waited for the second call to the staging lanes. It wasn't really that long of a wait and once we were ready to run, the first thing I noticed during the burnout was that the car seemed to be struggling a bit. The launch was very obvious not up to par and even the normally violent 1-2 shift seemed off. When it hit 2nd gear I knew something wasn't right and I immediately lifted and coasted from there through the traps and took the short cutoff to the return road. It hit me coming back down the return road... I believed the car was running on fumes. We did manage to make it back to the pits where we put 5 gallons of race gas in and ran the car a few minutes to purge the fuel system of any air. :eek::eek:

So now we were in a quandary. What ET to dial for the first round of eliminations?? I decided to play it safe and dialed up a 12.90 figuring I would simply fender race whomever the bracket opponent would be.

It all seemed like a good plan, except for one thing. I red lighted at the tree! :mad:

Instantly aware of my mistake, I ran the car all out to the end just to see what the car would do. I picked up the slip and it showed a lacking sixty foot of 1.924 with an ET of 12.750 and a trap speed of 109.10 mph. :rolleyes:

Besides a near electrical fire, running out of fuel and then red lighting at the tree... it was a great day at the track! :laugh:
 
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