We had a great turn-out and another fun time in Redding thanks to Wayne and the entire Killer Bees - West Coast SL6 Racing Team.
Many of the "regulars" and many new racers made the event.
Here is the group photo we took on Sunday.
Pat, is a new "powder-puff" racer to join the racing action with a stock green 70 Demon. (She is front - center, wearing the Plymouth tee shirt)
She somehow got into the heads of all her competitors... who all readlighted against her. (including me
) She ended-up in the final, paired-up with Mike Williams... who also has a Demon! So we had a "double demon final" on Saturday!
Mike has been down the track a few time and he knows Pat so he put some "Mo-Jo back on her...
It worked, Pat lit the big red bulb in the final, giving Mike the win.
There was lots of calibration and many of the members that were camping at the track were also treated to a nice Saturday night racing program put-on by the Redding Dragstrip, including a live band and lots of cool cars from the local crowd.
On Sunday, we all lined-up again for time runs, we had a few Inliner club members that also ran in that group. The combined group "over-flowed the single staging lane they assigned us so the track re-suffled the classes and gave us a second lane!
18 SL6 cars made the call for the first round of Sunday's eliminations. Aric Erickson was the fast car there, running 12.80's. Myself and Dave Erickson were running in the 14's and Mike W. & Fopar in the 15's... it worked it's way up from there.
Lot's of Slantsix.org members were at this event including Wicked Six, CeeJ, Kidd, Fopar, RDJ, WhaleMaster and a couple of others.
When we came down the the last 3 cars, good old Glen Terry, Aric Erickson and myself were still in it.
I have to say that I was getting some early Chrismas presents during eliminations and my luck continued when I got the bye run in the semi-finals.
So Glen took care of Aric and I took the bye to get another "data point" on my wounded engine.
Yes, at that point the Lancer's engine was running like crap.
It looks like a piston ring(s) either stuck or broke on the #1 cylinder because the engine kept missing on the high end. It actually stalled-out and would not restart on one of the Saturday's elimination passes. A tow back to the pits and pulling the spark plugs found the #1 plug completely wet with oil.
We swapped-in a clean set of spark plugs and jump started the car, it restarted just in time to make the next round of action.
From then on, the engine was putting-out a good amount of blue exhaust smoke and we were changing the #1 spark plug after every pass.
The car kept getting slower, we kept swapping-in clean plugs and moving up the dial-in time. My son Allen told me I was "dead meat" after doing this drill thru Sunday's time runs and into the 1st round... I told him "it's not over yet",... BTW, Allen was out, I was still in!
So here we are in the final round. I did a "record time" spark plug change and met Glen back in staging for the final.
Glen is a "go for the throat" racer... I have proof!
So after all the times I have lost races to Glen, I finally got one back. Beat him on the tree and his car did not run the number at the far end. I backed out of it a little once I got by him and ran a 14.94 on my 14.85 dial to get the win light... Yes!
So I actually came home with more money then I left with but more important, we had a really good time with a great bunch of SL6 racers.
We have said it before and I will say it again, you really need to make the effort to come-out and join the fun.
DD
