 |
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
Once the tire problem was dealt with there were a couple of other nagging little details. The old Burkster didn't relish the idea of racing the heavyweight El Camino with the stock 1967 seat belts. It just so happened that we had an extra set of RCI belts that we got for our project four-link dragster. So we took the El Camino over to Bill Weckman's Granite City shop and, after a beer and burger at O'Connell's Pub, they propped me up in the seat and fitted the belts to me. Weckman drew the short straw and got to help position the crotch belt. When that job was done, we did a little last minute adjustment to the shocks and proceeded to Gateway International Raceway (or "The Swamp" as it is known to those of us who have been racing there for a couple of decades) for the first real passes on El Camino Nitrouso.
Upon arriving at the track, I paid the $15 entry fee and followed Bill Weckman, who was testing his eight-second street Corvette, into the pits. Even though it was a Wednesday night test and tune, the car still had to get teched for safety so I drove the Camino over to the tech line. It was an experience I won't soon forget.
The tech guy was all business; no smiling, no small talk. "Who's the driver? Get the hubcaps off right now! You'll have to have two throttle return springs! You can't run the nitrous without a vent to the outside." He was absolutely correct in everything he said and did, but I certainly didn't feel welcomed and I couldn't help wondering how some kid bringing his or her car in off the street to the track for the first time would feel about organized drag racing if the first official he met treated him like he was lucky they let him in. Maybe the guy was just having a bad day...I sure hope that was the reason for his attitude. Once we got a tech card and got over the crushing disappointment
of not being able to use the nitrous we pulled the El Camino into line
for our first lap. When it was my turn I drove through the water did
a weak burnout and tried to act like I wasn't a total rookie when I
staged the car. The first thing I learned was that the low profile tires
I put on the front of the El Camino make it very hard to stage shallow.
When I turned the top bulb on, the second came on almost immediately.
The second lesson was that the radials also won't hold if you leave
on the converter. And the third was I can't cut a light. |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
