Event Coverage SICK WEEK 2025 Any H.A.M.B.ers going?

Tony, maybe Drag Week. Depending on how things go between now and September. how about you?

 

I'm planning to go to Drag Week this year...

 

Vette? Checker cab? The truck? Man, this is going to be cool regardless of what you take

Cheers,
Harv

 

planning the Checker with it's new improved drivetrain. but it's off topic.

 

Hope you made it down Joel!

 

bump ... hoping for a positive update

 

didn't see his name in the "results"

 

Is it possible he signed up under a different name? I remember there being a joke about how he looked like some country singer. Did you happen to see the name Shania or Dolly?

 

The name has to match your registration and insurance, so it's not very likely.

 

Welp ... looks like he was on this site yesterday ... so, who knows ....

 

I saw his coupe in Tom Bailey's testing coverage but nothing else

I was at bradenton yesterday and didn't see him

 

Thanks everybody for cheering me on! Sorry to keep you hanging. Unfortunately, things didn't work out . We got to the track at South Georgia Motorsports Park 2 days ahead of time because I was signed up for the Saturday and Sunday test days. I had just got finished freshening up the Hemi and getting it installed back in the car when it was time to leave. And it was below zero here so there was no chance to test drive the car. So we spent Saturday getting the car through tech and driving it on the street and working out a few bugs. When I was getting the car ready, and looked at my notes from last year, I saw that I was planning loosen up the shock absorber settings, but I didn't see a reason why in my note and I didn't remember. So I went ahead and loosened up the shocks by six clicks to see what would happen.
Sunday, the first pass was the usual blur, after having not driven the car for a year. But something kind of strange happened at the starting line. After I rolled into the beam to light the pre-stage bulb, the guy in the other lane took 50 seconds and then he rolled in and lit his pre-stage and stage bulbs. I was planning to then get my RPM up, and bump into the stage beam and be ready to go. But the the green light came on before I even rolled forward into the second beam, so I ended up launching unprepared and didn't get the RPM up. But I got the car from the starting line to the finish line, running a 10.34 at 132 mph. We had set up a pair of GoPro cameras in the car, one to watch the air fuel ratio gauges and the other monitoring all the other gauges. Checking the video after the pass, we saw that the air fuel ratio had been very rich, right around 10: 1. That explained the slow mph, as the car has run 137 before.
So I adjusted all 16 main jets to lean it out just a little bit. And I dropped the fuel pressure by 1/2 psi.
On the second pass, when I was doing the burnout, the car moved quite a bit to the left. As I rolled ahead towards the starting line I steered right a little bit to try and get into the groove. I should have backed up and got centered but I didn't, so I launched from a bad position, out of the groove. That, combined with the shocks being set to loose made for a really crazy launch. The front wheels came up a little bit then went back down on the ground, then bounced up again, then the rear came up and the left rear tire bounced off of the ground, the car pushed hard to the left and I had to quickly steer to the right to get the car back on track. But it settled down and I ended up running a 10.04 at 1:34, which is the best ET the car has ever run. I normally don't look at the gauges when I'm driving, I concentrate on keeping the car pointed the way it's supposed to be. But towards the end of the pass I made a quick glance down at the air fuel ratio gauge and it said 22 :1! Way crazy lean. I immediately lifted.
On the return road, I noticed the sweet smell of antifreeze, and when I stopped at the timing shack to get my slip, I could see steam coming out of the driver side header. I figured that running it that lean, it probably fried a head gasket or worse. Back at the pit, I gave Cam the bad news.
When we watched the GoPro, I saw that the AFR didn't actually go lean until the very very end when I glanced down. Through the rest of the pass it wasn't too bad. We pulled off the cylinder head and I didn't see any thing that looked like a blown or leaky head gasket. I figured that the head or a cylinder bore must have a crack.
So not really having a way to test it and have it fixed in time for the next day, I had to drop out of the event.
It's a big disappointment, that's for sure. But I'll get over it. Here's a video of the crazy second pass:

 

Sorry to hear of the car trouble.
I hope you are able to get back to racing soon.

 

Dang,s sorry to hear about that, I kept looking for you in coverage from several sources the past few days and now know why I didn't see you.

 

Sorry to hear about the damage man - hope you find something simple when you tear it down.

That was a pretty neat bit of recovery - looked like it was pointing right at the tree there at one stage.

cheers,
Harv

 

Sorry about the mechanical issue! But the cool thing is, the car and you are in one piece, and will live to fight again another day.
That is a great video as well!
Thanks from Dennis.

 

That's a shame your week ended before it started. Hope the damage isn't too costly

 

Great job of Driving but sorry for your troubles! Gary

 

Sorry I did not get to see Joel run, but I did attend the day at Orlando Speedworld on Thurs Jan 30. Saw some amazing fast runs low 6's to 8's, and really checked out the fabrication on the cars. It's incredible how fast the cars are, and still able to drive the hundreds of miles each day and through the week. The reliability aspect of the whole week is a big factor, completing the week while still having consistent fast runs each day at different drag strips. The swap from race mode to street mode is neat to see. As no surprise, not many traditional hot rod style cars. Overall I was pretty blown away at how many cars running sub 10 sec 1/4; and can make the drive between tracks.

As far as the technology, twin turbos and EFI are very common on the fastest cars. Procharger or nitrous for a few, and not much of traditional GMC style blowers. Some Whipple type blowers, and many single turbo setups. All of the turbos are big, even the twins. These guys run some serious boost! The chassis work on the cars, exhaust packaging, the cooling systems, and many towing small trailers show differences from pure drag cars. Race tire choices from big slicks, to the newer drag radials 275 and 315 widths. I would say the drag radials are taking over with more cars running them. Kind of funny seeing the race cars swapped over to 33 inch all terrain tires for the street driving.

The fastest car on my day was the "Snot Rocket 3.0" late model Mustang, which runs a Ford Coyote based engine and drag radials: 6.20 at 232(?) going from memory. What is so impressive is the engine is on the smaller side compared to the bigger SMX (aftermarket from Steve Morris Racing Engines) or BBC many competitors use. The slower (?) classes 9 sec or slower, had a lot of LS swapped engine choice.

I remember back in 80s when a 10 sec street car was barely streetable, and certainly not for hundreds of street miles. Now these guys are running way faster and have better driveability. Mostly thanks to turbos and computer engine control technologies.

 

Snot Rocket had the fastest average time all week. He had to pull the nose off to go down the road though as it blocked all air flow on the road.
Some of the older trucks in the slower classes may have been closer to Hamb friendly. Personally I'd have to think that some of the guys in the slower classes were having a lot more fun. Build something dead nuts reliable that can run 12's all day long that doesn't need a laundry list of changes to go from Street to track and go have fun.

 

I agree, the slower car guys have more fun. No late night big engine repairs, no radical changes needed from race to street. But it's just amazing to me that "street" cars are running low 6's.

 

you kind of need to shift your idea of what a "street" car is. It turns out it's not what you personally would consider a reasonable car to drive on the street. Instead, it's what actually can be driven on the street. And it's not that hard to get a license plate on just about anything, and then be able to drive it around. As long as it keeps cool enough, and keeps running, it's a street car. Also, there are a lot of things about normal race cars that don't need to be that way, to go fast. As the turbo guys have discovered, you can just crank up the boost to overcome that extra bit of weight that the car might need to survive the street driving...

 

There's a reason "street" is in parentheses. They are not street cars, but are race cars that can drive on the street. The real fast cars are all tube frame, lightweight carbon or fiberglass body parts, minimal interiors and enough lights to meet minimal needs. Of course they do not meet all the requirements of a true street car, I never implied that. The fact remains that these are 2000 to over 3000 hp capable engines and chassis. 30-40 years ago, there were hardly 1000 hp engines that could run on the street; and those were much worse driveability.

 

See, that's where you need a little paradigm shift. There is only one requirement for a street car, which is that it be driven on the street. If you have some other set of requirements, that's your problem, not the guy with the true street driven car that you personally would never drive on the street.

If he drives it on the street, it's a true street car. Very simple fact, no opinion necessary.

 

There are 2 very different types of cars at these events. And as Jim has pointed out, you can drive things on the street that would never pass the street safe standards that all modern cars are supposed to meet. Race Cars are built to try and win with accommodations made to allow them on the street. Street cars are built to live on the street and options added to make them faster and pass tech to go down the track. You have race cars that get driven on the streets and street cars that get to race down the drag strip. You can look at the coverage and pretty much figure out which are which. The hard core racers tend to lean toward the race cars driven on the street. The more HAMB friendly cars tend to be more street car going down the track. Out of the over 200 cars most were nowhere near capable of winning their classes. This tells me that the majority of the drivers were there for the experience and not the win. I know that if I get to go, I'll definitely be in the latter category. And if on the off chance that luck shines your way and win, that is all the better. Getting to participate is what the party is about. If you win it is Icing on the Cake.

 

Kind of an odd statement on an old car forum, since any HAMB friendly car, street or race, has none of that modern stuff.

I don't know about that. Have you ever seen Joel's coupe? It's pretty hamb friendly, but it's all about going down the track, and the stuff to let him drive it on the street is definitely down on the priority list.

I built Plan II to be as much of a 60s period race car as I could, but with the added street equipment that all the racers left off the car. I put over 30k miles on it. Spend that much time in a tin can "race" car, that's really streetable, and you might change your mind.

To me, the only distinction between street cars and race cars is that the race cars don't get to play on the street. It's their loss.

 

I love the concept of drag-and-drive events. They focus on something that not only works for 10 seconds at a time, but has to deal with all the shenanigans that come with street driving.

Modern technology can run some incredibly low numbers, and there is some real wow-factor in watching a 6-second run in a door car. Makes me smile like a Cheshire cat watching Alex Taylor pilot that '55 Chebby.

What makes me sit up and take notice though (from 8,000 miles away) is when someone builds something largely HAMB-friendly and runs drag-and-drive. Almost impossible to be fully HAMB-compliant and run very low numbers, but some come very close to compliance.

A lot of respect for what Squirrel, Joel, Brian and a few others do.

Cheers,
Harv

 

Damn, sorry to hear it didn't end up well. If it makes you feel any better, I think your car kicks ass.

 

I was at Bradenton on Tuesday and it's a wild event. As said above these are all street cars in my book. The 33 inch all terrains for road driving and the small trailers is cool. I was driving behind Joe Barry's 56 and the yellow/orange coupe on my way in and it looks so cool.

The craziest car there was the naturally aspirated mustang that ran 7.0x 4 days and a 7.1 the other. You can't turn down compression and the rowdy cam it had (I heard 17:1 comp and 1.2 inches of valve lift). How that car survived all week is incredible.

 

I normally start out the day at a Drag & Drive event gravitating towards the Unlimited cars. As the day goes on and I walk through the pits the weird or super high maintenance combinations catch my eye. Big props to the guys who go through the pain of keeping them running for a week.

Looking forward to Sick Summer. I'm thinking for sure Thursday to Tri State then possibly Friday to Byron depending on work.