Finally after some time off, to rest and recharge it is back to work. With the Invader back up to speed, there was some much needed items on the to do list needing to be finished.
All the things that normal people do. Mowing the yard, trimming the hedges, sorting the shop, movies, bowling, girls scouts, etc... Along with that, the cool Arizona summer has finally hit. With the daily commute from work, the temperature reads between 115 and 118 degrees. I know it is not the OFFICIAL temperature, but close enough.
For all of you who say, "But it's a dry heat!", you are correct but so is an oven!! Hot is HOT!
In the racing world, things also pick up. Work on the engine rebuild is started, work is progressing on two new overhauled afterburner pumps, and hot sections being dissassembled to be balanced prior to assembly.
We have had a few calls from people lately about damaged engines, a J-60 and a J-85 from back east looking for parts. Down in Tucson, we get the call from our friend Al. He raced us at Firebird with his freshly repaired J-60 dragster and all was good. Well not really, after the race he loaded the car up and went home. A week ago, he went to test fire the car prior to his Denver race in August, and it is locked up. Looking up his afterburner, he saw some damage.
We sent Craig and my dad down to pull the second stage of to see how bad it was. It is trashed! Looks like a hotstreak might have stuck, and acted like a plasma cutter taking out the blades and vanes. ( A hot streak is a small pulse of fuel injected into the combustion can to create a blast of flame to light the afterburner.)
Also Al wanted us to look at a brand new J-85 car that has been built but needed to be plumbed and wired. He is going to take both the new car & the damaged engine to our good friend, Montie to take care of.
So now we are getting the truck and trailer prepared for the east bound trip. We are going to race at Texas Raceway in Kennedale, Texas on Friday Aug 4th. After that race we are going to Red River Raceway in Gillam, Louisiana on the next night, Aug 5th.
At both tracks we are going to battle with the Larsen Motorsports Miss-Ta-Fire jet dragster, driven by Elaine Larsen. It will be a battle of East meets West, Woman vs Man, for all the bragging rights!
I really would use this space to talk trash, but my mom raised me to respect my elders, so I will just say to everyone in the area, come on out at watch the beatings begin......
