Hot Rod Drag Week 2022

Since there isn't a thread yet this year, Hot Rod Drag Week kicked off today.  All of the tracks are in Illinois and Indiana this year.  Originally Memphis International Raceway was supposed to be the first and final track this year and I believe that track closed earlier this year.

Monday, September 19 - World Wide Technology Raceway, Madison, Illinois: Racing Day 1
Tuesday, September 20 - Lucas Oil Raceway Park, Indianapolis, Indiana: Racing Day 2 
Wednesday, September 21 - Byron Dragway, Byron, Illinois: Racing Day 3 
Thursday, September 22 - Cordova Dragway, Cordova, Illinois: Racing Day 4 
Friday, September 23 - World Wide Technology Raceway, Madison, Illinois: Final Racing Day 5 

Live stream replay from today.

Rough break for Finnegan. His friends got Blasphemous back together and running just days before the event with a new Hemi. During practice day, they had issues with the throttle sticking and other gremlins from 3 years of sitting and then being thrashed together by people who weren't him. Then today he leaned it out and blew up the fresh Hemi. He's on the hunt for Hemi parts to put it back together.

Tom Bailey also absolutely destroyed the Rossler TH400 in Sick Seconds 2.0 on practice day, and had to send Joe Barry to Chicago to get it rebuilt at Rossler. He made mentions of a "mystery man with a briefcase full of money" who was potentially going to show up, but Sick Seconds 2.0 that day and run it in Drag Week in his place. Clearly that didn't transpire, because Tom drove it to a 6.03.

I saw Finnegan on social media asking for a long block.  Those chaps have deep pockets.  

In reply to NickD :

From what I have seen over the years, the car thinks it is a Top Fuel racer and considers one pass to be about the expected lifespan for an engine. Finegan just needs to show up with enough engines to do this event; maybe a dozen or so will do the trick.

I would have been more surprised had it not blown up.

Datsun310Guy said:

I saw Finnegan on social media asking for a long block.  Those chaps have deep pockets.  

Tony Angelo posted that David Freiburger is loaning them the short block out of the Hemi Gremmie. Kind of a funny back-and-forth, because Finnegan put that engine together to replace the blown-up Hemi in the Gremlin and surprised Freiburger with it at Roadkill Nights. Now Freiburger is loaning it back to them to put in Blasphemi. 

NOHOME said:

From what I have seen over the years, the car thinks it is a Top Fuel racer and considers one pass to be about the expected lifespan for an engine. Finegan just needs to show up with enough engines to do this event; maybe a dozen or so will do the trick.

I would have been more surprised had it not blown up.

The last two blow-ups have been user error. This one was a tuning problem, and the one before was because Finn and Newburn assembled the shifter wrong and launched it in 2nd, wound it out and shifted to 1st. Three times. The issues before that came from having a really terrible engine builder, that they've since dumped. The new builder talked about how the engine had headbolts because the old builder had heli-coiled all the bolt holes, but didn't have them straight, so if you put the studs in, the head wouldn't go down over them because they were all splayed.

I really wanted to get out to Byrin to see Al from the Skid Factory. Not often you have racers from Straya in your back yard. But it's not going to happen.

Well kind of hard to start a thread when I'm doing drag week.

#theplanb_mustang is back to its normal self and not getting out of its own way. I did take it across the scales and it's 4085# with me in it. Even with the switch for traction control "off", it's still on partially. It's pulling timing and tapping the brakes on launch hurting the 60'. Of course the hood is "sealed" and I can't mess with pulling fuses. 
I turned in my 13.32@110 slip for day one as my second wasn't any better. The trip to Indy was uneventful.

Looking forward to following along!

Also, we start bright and early at 8 EST.

Live stream via MotorTrend YouTube channel. 

So happy to see Goldstone back with the Javelin!

So I happen to out near Byron on Wednesday but not till the afternoon.

About what time will folks still be there?

In reply to GPz11 (Forum Supporter) :

From what I've heard, the fast guys show up, try to make a single pass as early as possible and then get on the road. By the afternoon, things have thinned out to the slower cars or the guys who are broken.

In reply to GPz11 (Forum Supporter) :

The real action happens from 8am till about 2:00. Ghost town by 3:00

Another tip... The night before, all the hotels near the track are packed with cool cars. Each hotel parking lot becomes it own car show. Local restaurants are packed with cool cars. 

I hope to do a drive and drag event with my Camaro some day. I read about Finnegan's problem this morning and can't believe he berkeleyed up another big dollar engine. Is he really unlucky or incompetent? I can't tell.

In reply to loosecannon :

I think some has to be for show as well, if he just went out and laid down easy passes it wouldn't be very interesting. The other possibility is being at the sharp end of the sword isn't easy. I am far from an expert on gassers but he seems to be running about as hard and fast as possible in that genre. If you are running at the max you are going to break stuff. The list of fast broken cars isn't short.

Day 2 Livestream

loosecannon said:

I hope to do a drive and drag event with my Camaro some day. I read about Finnegan's problem this morning and can't believe he berkeleyed up another big dollar engine. Is he really unlucky or incompetent? I can't tell.

Like I said earlier, the first couple blow-ups were due to an incompetent engine builder (like when he did the Roadkill vs. Hoonigan shootout, the engine was fresh off of a rebuild and still had head gaskets that weren't sealing). The one that they blew up the last time it ran was because they were thrashing to get it done for SEMA or PRI or one of those and threw the car back together, then had zero testing time, then discovered that they had reversed part of the shifter linkage so that it was engaging 2nd gear with the shifter in 1st, and vice versa, after they had moneyshifted the car three times. This one was that he didn't have enough fuel in the tank, which is just dumb, and a frequent mistake of his. I'm always amazed at how often he runs out of fuel in stuff. 

In reply to NickD :

I'm really surprised he didn't have any low fuel pressure protection set up on the Holley Dominator that runs the car.

In reply to NY Nick :

For Finn, the "show" is definitely part of the issue. He always has to juggle multiple projects for content. Throwning epic amounts of time time at rebuilding   ramp trucks, totter homes, and other stuff when he would have been putting this car back together doesn't help. He needs to show them thrashing to get it done for ratings.  Plus, he is using a rare engine combo that takes time to source and build. So, it is pretty much a given that he will be putting it back together the week before Drag Week.  The only way out is to punt. 
 

It's sort of a self fulfilling prophecy. 

In reply to RacetruckRon :

It still wouldn't catch it fast enough.

tester (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to NY Nick :

For Finn, the "show" is definitely part of the issue. He always has to juggle multiple projects for content. Throwning epic amounts of time time at rebuilding   ramp trucks, totter homes, and other stuff when he would have been putting this car back together doesn't help. He needs to show them thrashing to get it done for ratings.  Plus, he is using a rare engine combo that takes time to source and build. So, it is pretty much a given that he will be putting it back together the week before Drag Week.  The only way out is to punt. 
 

It's sort of a self fulfilling prophecy. 

I know the thrash on this one wasn't actually his fault. He had sent the engine out to the builder after it was blown up at Rocky Mountain Race Week and there was some part that they needed, pistons I want to say, that just were not available because of supply chain issues. The engine sat there for 2 years waiting for someone to make a run of pistons in the size he needed and they only got them recently. In the meantime he had sent the car out to the body shop to get it actually painted (the matte black was previously a wrap) and put a steel decklid back on, and only recently got that back as well

Ranger50 said:

In reply to RacetruckRon :

It still wouldn't catch it fast enough.

BullE36 M3. Seriously. If you are watching fuel pressure and/or have O2 sensors on it, you can definitely keep ahead of it. The dominator has some decent features for this, even ms has these in the latest versions. 

If anything it's "for the show" (or just hack E36 M3).

Paul_VR6 (Forum Supporter) said:

Ranger50 said:

In reply to RacetruckRon :

It still wouldn't catch it fast enough.

BullE36 M3. Seriously. If you are watching fuel pressure and/or have O2 sensors on it, you can definitely keep ahead of it. The dominator has some decent features for this, even ms has these in the latest versions. 

Agreed. Fuel pressure isn't going to go from 60psi to 20psi in a millisecond but even if that drop happened within the duration of a second that's plenty of time for a safety (if set up) to pull +20* of timing and basically shut the whole program down.

I'm starting to wonder if he actually likes blowing up these big dollar Hemis.  Blowing E36 M3 up like that on Day 1 isn't good for views, he said he was going to be uploading videos daily throughout the week. So he's missing out on 4 more days worth of content with this failure.  Ultimately, he's a better fabricator than anything and all of the failures I think are a combination of bad luck and unintentional negligence. 

Tom Bailey and Steve Morrison had a bit of a scare. They were tweaking the tune on Sick Seconds 2.0 during the drive, then got in and drove off with the laptop on the roof. It fell off somewhere and they didn't discover it until when they got to a shop to replace a hurt piston, and they realized that they now had the street tune in the car and no laptop with the race tune. The laptop was found by someone, only after it'd been run over by a car and damaged, but the guy who found it and brought it to them was an IT guy and he dissected the laptop and got it working again.