Mag's Racing Updates

welp, we're ready to go. We would have pushed the big red button tonight, but it was 11PM by the time we got everything connected.

The car was a roller at noon this morning..at 11PM, it was turnkey. Not bad for 2 people!

(and that was also with a 2 hour break to go out to dinner)
 
Whizzer said:
GREAT STUFF, Magnethead!

Best of luck this year.
Click to expand...
Thanks!

Got it off life support today- everything looks good! Runs MUCH better with the top end/header changes.

We only have 2 weekends to test before the first 5.80 race (Feb 11th), and we're licensing on the 19th during a drag racing school session + integrated bracket race. I think our schedule is to scale it this week, hit the track sunday, and go from there.

Calendar >> http://www.mcdermottfamilyracing.com/calendar/

I'm actually working on the site still, splitting multimedia from text articles. Also going to change up the "About Us" page.
 
Scaled it tonight..everythign is pretty much ready to go..just a few odds n ends left...

165143_10150169228054606_771454605_8487192_8361950_n.jpg


168624_10150169168514606_771454605_8486217_3728583_n.jpg
 
http://mcdermottfamilyracing.com/ said:
01-29-11

We went up to North Star Dragway today for a testing session to work whatever bugs out of the car that we might find- being the car’s first trip down the track after being completely disassembled, re-wired, and re-assembled over winter.

On our first pass, the wheelie bars were set far too high, resulting in a stunning wheelstand, leading to an aborted run, tripping the 60′ beams at 1.29 seconds, possibly but unsure whether the beams were tripped by the front or rear tires.

The second pass was also an abort, even with a wheelie bar adjustment. The run wound up as a 5.89 at 117 mph after going back under power.

Our first full pull was on the third attempt down the racetrack, with a lazy 1.26 60′ time, but picked it up at the other end with a 3.6986 330′ and closing the run with a 5.76 at 118.69 MPH.

The fourth run was nothing special, a slow 5.80 at 118.58 mph. After this pass, we made a suspension adjustment.

Our 5th run was against a friend of ours, Rhonda Trietsch. The suspension change that was made put the car pushing in the opposite, straight to the wall, requiring another abort. Our run wound up as a 5.89 at 117.07 after recovering at the top end, but Rhonda still got us at the stripe by 0.0013 of a second (granted it’s meaningless in testing).

Our final run, we went back halfway on the suspension adjustment, and made our quickest pass- a 5.7263 at 119.43 mph. The car tried to drift towards the centerline again, but nowhere near as bad as prior.
Click to expand...









 
http://texaspic.net/p284960793/e5a8e056

http://texaspic.net/p284960793/e7c1f29f

Drag slicks + mud = dented (brand new) headers + one very pissed off driver.

Drag slicks + oil on starting line = one very pissed off driver

Drag slicks + oil on starting line AGAIN = one very pissed off driver

Dad's not too happy with Track management up in Denton right now.

Today in Kennedale was much better. Here was our final pass today- the only one that I recorded. I'll do videos and such from yesterday, tomorrow.

 
Reset our personal record twice today.

199811_10150198738399606_771454605_8851801_4340943_n.jpg


189104_10150198840024606_771454605_8853213_2466902_n.jpg


First 2 passes were as shown, tripping the 60' beams on the back tires. Put a 50lb lead ballast on the nose for the 3rd run.
 
mcdermottfamilyracing.com said:
This weekend, we went and made three testing runs at Kennedale.

Two weeks ago, the track received 30 feet of new starting line in each lane. after spectating on Friday night to evaluate track conditions, we were skeptical coming into the testing session, especially since we were unsure of the chassis setup that we had put in the car.

We could not have been any more wrong.

On the first pass, the car made an impressive (albeit somewhat unnerving) wheelstand, tripping the 60′ beams with the back tires, and setting the front tires down around the 100-120 foot mark en route to a 5.642 second pass. In an effort to increase wheelspeed and reduce the wheelstand, we made a shock adjustment for the second pass, which slowed the car down to a 5.66, but only marginally reduced the wheelstand.

For the third pass, we added a 50 pound lead ballast (putting the car’s weight at a modest 2955 pounds), and kept the shock adjustment. The result was a nearly non-existent wheelstand, leading to a 5.639 second ET at 120 MPH.
Click to expand...

http://mcdermottfamilyracing.com/
 
http://mcdermottfamilyracing.com/ said:
This weekend, we went up to North Star Dragway for a double-header weekend, for the first Summit ET Bracket race of the season, followed by the Scotty Richardson Grassroots Bracket Series on Sunday.

We kept the full 50 pound lead ballast on the nose of the car to see if it would keep any consistency through the day, as an experiment, before deciding to remove any material to bring the nose up higher on the launch.

As with the nature of Texas, we were fighting the weather conditions through qualifying, with our qualifying times having a wider range of variance than we would have liked. However, once the weather stabilized in the mid-afternoon, we were able to reference notes and prior knowledge, to predict our dial-in for first round. However, we went out in the first round in both Super Pro and Quick Door, placing us in the “Second Chance” race.

We were able to debug our first-round issues in the main classes, before running the first round of the Second Chance race.

In First round, we slowed off our dial, while our opponent broke out, giving us the win. The second round went in similar fashion, as our opponent red-lit, while we broke out (“First is worse”), putting us into the 3rd round. Here, we went up against Ron Shields and his dragster- but when it was Ron’s turn to leave, he instantly went into tire spin (Watch the video, at 0:45), and gave us the win since he simply could not chase us down.

In Fourth round, we were put up against Chad Sandlin, a seasoned veteran. Chad had a PERFECT 0.0000 reaction time, but unfortunately for him, ours was just as good, at a 0.0005. At the top end, the race could not have been a more perfect doorslammer bracket race, as the margin of victory was 0.0083 of a second, in our favor. We drew the bye run for round five, allowing us to motor on through to a 5.7252 at 119.46 MPH, on a 5.72 dial-in, putting us into the final round. North Star Dragway combines No-Electronics with Electronics for the final round of the Second Chance race (because of a lack of track sponsorship), so we were put up against a foot-brake car. Our luck continued, as our opponent broke out while we slowed under, taking the overall win.

We got our first win, ever!

(And it took 12 passes in exactly 9 hours, to do it)

We came back on Sunday for the grassroots race, hoping things would continue. However, after a pair of solid qualifying runs, we came up short at the top end in first round, and were put on the trailer by 0.016 of a second.

All in all, it was a great weekend, and we got our first win in our second final round appearance. Not bad, not bad at all.
Click to expand...


Also, we have a completely new batch of decals coming in this week, not sure when they will be put on.
 
My dad was glad to have cut a 0.0005 light saturday....until I told him "You were still 2nd off the line". The margin of victory, .0083, was between 14.2 and 17.4 inches. Dad also cut a .0004 yesterday in qualifying.

200760_10150206076034606_771454605_8919135_435752_n.jpg
 
nice :) think i'd make the text a little smaller so it isn't competing with the car for the viewer's attention.
 
SlowNeasy said:
nice :) think i'd make the text a little smaller so it isn't competing with the car for the viewer's attention.
Click to expand...
I thought about it, but at the same time, the text is more of the attention-getter for that page, the car is just to get the reader's eyes focused on that part of the page so that they'll read the text

Our driver needs a little help, lost us 2 races on the tree, and our only round win was because the other guy red-lit first. :/
 
This was a real nice roadster. But in Dialing for Dollars, he snapped the left rear axle at the brake caliper, and hit the starter's barrier, taking out the left front suspension. Took us (the car's owner, his father, the car's old owner, 2 track workers, and I) 30 minutes to maneuver the tractor and dollies and get it off the track. Thankfully, the damage looked mostly to the suspension and left front fender, no structural damage that I could see. It was pretty limited to the left front fender, strut, rack & tie rod, rim and tire, and left rear brake caliper. The axle housing stayed straight, and the frame (looking from the back) looked pretty straight where it had landed on the ground when the front collapsed.

The guy had bought it a month ago, and had it re-geared for 1/8 mile instead of 1/4. The guy he bought it from was helping him, said he felt bad because in the 3 years he had it, he never had anything break on him.

normal_IMG_5509.JPG
 
Just made this up. Taking opinions on where it could use help. Trying to go down the business card/"something different" road.

hero_card_4_640px.png
 
I'm thinking more like where you see the whole car from the bottom of the tires to the top of the roof
 
2 weeks, 2 wrecked cars that I've helped get off the track.

Here's what it looked like before:

Eddy%20W%20No%20Elec%20092306%20sml.jpg


Now, it looks like that, except the right front corner of the body is gone, and both frame rails are bent. He hit the wall right on a post (metal aarmco barrier), bent the wall hard and snapped that post right out. The track kept running after they got the coolant and fuel off the track, i wouldn't want to though, if somebody hit that wall again, they would go right through it.

Eddy was fine. He has prosthetics on both arms, so the second his car came to rest, there was probably 5 or 6 of us jumping the fences to get to him. He thinks he broke an axle on the line, he tried to save it, but it faught him (again, prosthetics) and ultimately hit the wall at the 330 cone. They run the same speed/ET as we do (roughly), so 330 would be similar as ours- 92 MPH.
 
Heard from Eddy. They unbolted the entire right front suspension, found that there wasn't as much structural damage as they thought. Straightened a few things out on the chassis, they're putting the suspension back on it, I didn't hear about the nose, said he'll have it back out by next race. He was there with his wife Linda and her corvette, she run's Kennedale and he runs Denton in the camaro.

We went 2 rounds in quick door and 3 in Pro. Could have gone to the finals, but dad did a long burnout and staged out of the groove, and had to shut it off at the 330's.
 
4-22 & 4-23-11
Posted on April 24, 2011 by Steve

After installing new front shock absorbers, we went testing at Kennedale, alongside the Fuel Altered race.

The test was a success, with a pair of 5.75 passes and a 5.73 pass, with the Density Altitude around 2800 feet.

For Saturday, we attended North Star Dragway’s bracket race, albeit skeptical of the weather.

Based on the previous night, we expected the car to start around a 5.79 and get worse as the barometer dropped (from the storms approaching). Our first qualifying pass was a 5.788 and the second was a 5.804 however a street-class truck dampened the starting line in front of us for the third qualifying run, leading to an aborted run as the car hooked towards the wall. With the storms fast approaching, We chose to dial a 5.80 for first round of Super Pro, but were defeated by .0089 of a second, our opponent cutting a .001 light and getting around us, while we ran on dial at a 5.801. In first round of Quick Door, Radar said that it should have been raining and the humidity was very high, so we dialed a 5.82. However, we red lit by 0.0009 (which would be a dead perfect light at most tracks) and ran out the back door to a 5.78.

Racing was called off after the second round of No Electronics, so our points day was not as bad as it could have been otherwise.

and entire first row of http://texaspic.net/p862574854 plus these 3

FA_TXR_1937.jpg


SMC_TXR.jpg


SMC_TXR2.jpg
 
Well, part of today was interesting.

Top sportsman is supposed to be a 16 car field, $75 to enter, no payouts until semi-finals.

The track decided to make it an all-run- 20 cars.

4 extra entries $$ (DNQ = entry back)

pays 1 less car

16 - 8 - 4 - 2
20 - 10 - 5 - 3 - 2

So they get to keep $300, and don't have to pay out $100 and something.

So all the driver are pissed off....we pull up to staging lanes, there are no less than 8 racers (including the pole sitter) up there arguing with 2 of the track workers. Then my dad and I come up, along with a few others, and it pretty much goes all short of a brawl. One of the track worker manages to escape from the mob, the other fellow...lets just say he's going to have some nightmares tonight. I think I heard every word in the sailor's dictionary. The only thing that would have been more entertaining, is if everybody had gone straight to the tower. Then we would have probably had a mess (and canceled race) on our hands. There were some pretty miffed people.

Traditionally, if there is an odd number, the pole sitter gets a bye. Well, we had 20 cars. They hadn't mentioned that one car broke, making it 19. Well the pole sitter (one of our friends, our record together is that we've won 3 pairings, he's won 2) climbs out of his car, asking why he's getting a bye. One of the other competitor overhears, and brings up why it's an all run field. Then the mob began.

The next race in 2 weeks is going to be VERY interesting.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom