Another curve ball I pitched to Tony was that I needed a converter by the end of the week so I could make the IHRA Div.3 Race in Byron, Ill. He said that if I wanted to pay the extra shipping they would reconfigure the converter and ship it the same DAY they received it! Man is that service! So I paid UPS an obscene amount of money for overnight freight to Hughes and the next day I got a call from Tony saying they got it and they could work with what was there, substituting some of their own Hughes parts and technology along the way. He briefly went back over my information and they went to work.

As it turned out it didn’t leave the same day due to the late time of day it got there (yay UPS ) and the amount of changes made but it did leave the following day. The next day I took delivery of my shiny new toy and after recuperating from the equally obscene amount of shipping back to me I went to work.

This would be the point where things went south for me again as I discovered I had a few other issues such as rear control arm torque boxes trying to tear themselves out of the car again and a catchy u-joint and a fraying shift cable pretty much dashed any plans of making Byron considering this was already Thursday night. Oh well, it was going to be miserable hot and humid that weekend anyway so I decided not to sweat it so to speak. I performed some repair work on Muscrate and installed the new converter and shift cable and was ready for the following weekend at CFR.

On Friday night I headed out to CFR for a Test and Tune determined to see improvement. The air quality wasn’t very conducive to making HP at about 3000 ft. so I wasn’t expecting much especially considering this was a Test and Tune night and traction would be questionable. All things considered, the first run was promising at an 11.44 @ 116.3 mph. The immediate difference I noticed was it was much easier to hold the car against the two step and when I launched the front end actually came off the ground! I made two more runs and called it a night not really improving on the first run. I knew there was more left, but with the track conditions the way they were I was just literally spinning my wheels for nothing.

So, against my better judgment I entered the “Night Under Fire" fiasco the following day and became “filler" along with all the other bracket cars for the “show,” which was basically two jet dragsters, the pretty cool three jet engine semi of Shockwave, and the what used to be fun to watch Chicago Outlaw Super Stocks. The Outlaws have tamed down their launches SO much that it now appears someone made a mistake if the car actually does a wheelie. Weak.

Basically I had a pretty good night of racing and lost in the 6th round after sliding my front tires through the previous cars water on the track and red-lit. The only highlight of the night was a 4th round bye run and I FINALLY achieved a 1.40 something 60ft at a 1.483! I clicked it off at the 1000 ft. mark to not let the remaining competition know what I would have run but it looked like it would have been a 11.38 or so, not bad for the conditions. All of this however was just a mere gleam in the eyes of the racing gods as things were about to get a WHOLE lot better!

Skip ahead two weeks to the Heartland Stock/Super Stock Association’s combo race at Tri-State Raceway in Earlville, IA. The weather for Sunday was to be a nice mid 80s sunny day with about 40 percent humidity and for once the weather man was right. Certainly not the “killer” air we should see in October when everyone around these parts tries to “lay down a number,” but it’s the best air I’ve seen this year.

Once I arrived and got everything ready to run, I checked the air with my old Computech weather station and it was showing about 1800 ft corrected altitude and we had a slight cross-head wind. First round of qualifying was called to the lanes and I was thinking if I could go a mid-11.30 something I would be happy.

Track manager Bill Cassil and his crew always do a great job of prepping the track when we have a Stock/Super Stock event, and Bill himself owns a very fast Super Stock 283 Chevy II Nova so he knows what racers want. I was hoping to come away with a few high 1.40 sixty foots and figured this would be the chance.