TurboMinivan
Still plays with cars
- Location
- Lehi, UT
This weekend (January 2018) my co-worker Mike and I made the 800-mile trek to Tucson to attend the Roadkill Zip-Tie Drags. This is the closest any ZTD event is to our homes, so we decided it was worth the trip. I loaded my 1980 Grand Prix on to my trailer and towed it with my 2001 8.1L Suburban 2500; he loaded his 1964 El Camino onto his trailer and towed it with his 2000 5.3L Yukon XL 1500. We wanted to arrive at the track in Tucson by 4pm Friday, so we split the drive down over two days and left after a late lunch on Thursday.
Four hours later we stopped in St George, Utah for our first refueling:
I was very curious to compare economy notes. I remember back when I bought my Suburban, and all my Jeep friends said the 5.3L, 6.0L and 8.1L engines all got essentially identical fuel economy while towing a Jeep on a trailer. That seemed to be true from various word-of-mouth reports, but here was a chance for actual side-by-side figures to tell the tale. After some quick math, the results were in: 12.06 mpg for Mike's 5.3L, and 11.65 mpg for my 8.1L big block. I guess you could say he was off to an early lead.
We drove another two hours, then stopped in northern Las Vegas for the night. Friday morning we continued on to Kingman, AZ for our next gas stop:
This leg of the trip had many more uphill climbs than Utah (which was predominantly downhill all the way), plus now there were crosswinds to deal with. I also decided to up our pace a little, which meant our engines were working harder. These factors combined to shrink the economy gap, dropping Mike to 9.79 mpg and me to 9.60 mpg. Okay, fine, my curiosity has been satisfied.
We were right on schedule with no time to spare, so you might think I'd resist any unnecessary side trips... but if you thought that, you don't know about my passion for Chino Bandido. So we drove through Phoenix rather than around it, and stopped for a late lunch. Mike was initially unconvinced; Chinese and Mexican food blended together, with Jamaican influence mixed in? But it only took a few bites for him to agree it was worth the detour.
While eating, I had what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity and suddenly realized I forgot to bring the correct lug nuts in order to install the drag slicks that I did bring with me. In a panic, we began searching for an O'Reilly Auto store, then went there to see if they had them on the shelf. I lucked out: they had three 4-packs in stock, and I bought them all. (Will I ever stop buying lug nuts for this car?!?)
By now it was obvious we were gonna be late--we were in the center of Phoenix and surrounded by Friday rush-hour traffic. We finally got to the track well after nightfall, and that's when I learned it didn't matter that we were late; when they had started racing a couple hours before our arrival, the third pass of the day (remember that) resulted in a car crashing into the wall, then ricocheting into the opposite wall, then it caught on fire. There was debris all across the track, and the driver had to be life-flighted to the local hospital. This took hours to clean up, and they were still cleaning when we arrived. We had lots of time to set up camp, unload, go through tech inspection, and get into the staging lanes to wait with everyone else. Eventually the racing did resume; the track's plan was to keep running cars until Freiburger and Finnegan arrived with the whole caravan from Los Angeles.
Here I am tightening my shiny new lug nuts:
At 10:04 pm I finally got to the front of the lanes and made a pass. I did a big burnout to heat up the tires, but when I let off the brake and then the gas to roll forward, the engine died. Oops--I quickly re-fired the car at the tree. I recalled the tech inspector had not been happy about my car not having a driveshaft loop to go with my slicks, so I decided I would launch very softly just to feel out the car. I got out of the hole with a 2.216 60-ft time, mission accomplished... and then things quickly went downhill. This carburetor (which I am borrowing from Mike) isn't exactly tuned properly for Utah, and it turns out it is way out of tune for the lower altitude of Tucson. The car bucked, sputtered, and coughed its way down the track--I'm sure many on-lookers thought it was only running on 5 or 6 cylinders. At the top of second gear, it wouldn't even rev high enough to upshift; I had to take my foot completely off the throttle for the trans to go to third gear, then reapply throttle to continue down the track. I was horrified; I was embarrassed; I was fearful of the countless insults which I was certain were going to come my way. Imagine my surprise when I pulled up to the timeslip shack and saw I had managed a 14.697 @ 94.43 MPH. Gee, it felt so much worse than that. (I desperately wanted to do something about the poor tune, but Mike didn't bring his carb jetting kit with him--I was screwed.)
Pulling back through the pits, I heard the PA system announce that the staging lanes were closed because Frieburger & crew had just arrived. So much for my Friday night racing. I parked and went to the stands to watch Mike. His FiTech EFI system had no problem with the altitude change, so I figured he might fare better than me. However, Mike was on street tires... at full 35 psi street pressure... and his air shocks were at full pressure, also. Never having been to a drag strip in his life, he didn't know to drive completely around the water, and he never did any sort of burnout to even clean off his tires. At the green, he simply floored it. Did he back pedal, or feather the throttle, or do any other thing to try to limit wheelspin? Of course not. He smoked one tire for what seemed like half the track, generating a 2.637 short time on his way to a 15.136 @ 93.14 MPH.
Once the racing was done, F&F started a long Q&A session with the entire crowd. That was cool, and the guys were pretty jovial. But what was even better were the two dudes not involved in the Q&A, namely Lucky Costa and Steve Dulcich. These guys were just roaming around, hanging out in the middle of the crowd just like they were any other regular car guys. And that's what they are! Mike was in heaven when he had a 15-minute conversation about his El Camino with Lucky--they were discussing mods he has already made, how he did stuff verses other ways to do things, plus throwing out ideas for other changes and upgrades, etc. Lucky was genuinely listening and paying attention, because he asked follow up questions about remarks Mike had made ten minutes prior. Dulcich was doing the same thing with other attendees. These guys are so approachable and so laid back; they are everything you'd hope they might be after watching them in their videos.
At midnight the Q&A session finally ended and the celebrities called it for the night. Like most attendees, we were camping out at the track; in our case, we were sleeping in our respective tow vehicles. I moved much of my cargo into the Grand Prix's trunk, then set up my mat and sleeping bag and hit the sack.
We woke up shortly after dawn, and had time to eat some breakfast and get ready for the day's activities. Racing was to begin at 10:00 am, so I drove over to the staging lanes a bit early and got very near the front of the line. In front of me was this car:
I asked the guy how he got the tech inspector to sign off on using temporary spare tires as skinnies. "I didn't," he replied. "I had the car inspected with my street tires, then put these on later so he wouldn't disqualify me for them." Geez. As I would soon learn, the tires were the least of his concerns. He opened the hood to reveal this:
That's a stock Fox-body Mustang 302 bottom end with the best AFR high-flow heads the guy could find, topped with a Roots-type blower. I asked him how it runs back home in CA. He said he has gotten it down into the 11s, but now he set it up for more boost and he was going for a 10-second ET. How much boost? "Fifteen pounds." Didn't you say that's a stock bottom end? "Yep." You know that's a cast crankshaft, right? "Yeah, but it has held up perfectly so far." Well, of course--engine parts always hold up perfectly, right until the moment of failure. He was not deterred.
Soon the racing began. I lucked out and got selected for the third pass of the day (take note of that). As it happened, I was lined up against the old Volvo. The crowd was much larger this morning, so not embarrassing myself was way up on my list of priorities. I decided to make sure not to kill the engine, so I tried to be gentle with the burnout and lifting off the throttle... but I erred way too far on the side of caution and didn't heat the tires enough. How did I know? Because when I launched, the tail end stepped two feet to the left and I started drifting down the track. So much for not embarrassing myself.
Meanwhile, the Volvo hooked and left hard. However, he hadn't even made it half way down the track when he nose-dived and steered toward the wall. I stayed on the gas, bucking and coughing all along the way, and just as I was drawing alongside about to pass his car I suddenly noticed a lot of shrapnel coming out from underneath. One piece in particular was large, black, kinda cylindrical, and it had a pulley on one end. I actually said aloud, "Is that a compressor? I didn't think his car had A/C." Suddenly I realized this large piece was bouncing along, moving faster than my car, and it was coming toward my lane. I got off the throttle and moved out of the groove to my left, trying to create more space to keep from getting hit by it, and that's when it dawned on me: I just got passed by the guy's crankshaft! I got back on the gas and managed to go around it once it finally lost more momentum. I made it through the traps without taking any damage, though my comical 2.428 60-ft time combined with slaloming around the shrapnel caused my ET to increase to 15.485 @ 93.99 MPH.
Normally, a horrible run like that would have made me upset. Not this time. I laughed hysterically. I actually got passed by a guy's crankshaft! How often does that happen in street cars??? Who gets to say that? I only wished I had a GoPro or something else to have captured it on film. Oh, well, at least I will remember it forever.
Later in the day, I caught up to the guy in the pits. He had his trophy on display:
The explosion broke his water pump (seen in the photo) and his oil pan, dumping all his fluids all over the track. This caused the track to be closed for hours due to the cleanup. I guess the third pass of the day is the jinxed one. Knowing my car wouldn't run any better, I parked it for the day and decided to get up close and personal with the vehicular celebrities which were in attendance:
It was amazing and jaw-dropping to see these things in person. Not because they are famous; it's just that they are so much more sketchy in real life than they appear on video. Looking over Nascarlo, for example, made me appreciate anybody brave enough to just sit in the thing, much less drive it on the street. Seeing some of these things is an absolute hoot.
With cleanup over, racing resumed. However, a storm was moving in and the winds had picked up considerably. For that reason, track officials decreed that now we were only running 1/8-mile... which meant I was one of only five cars to complete a quarter mile pass on Saturday. Mike got to make one pass, though this launch wasn't much better than Friday night. After that run, he thought about his tire and shock pressures; this is when we dropped both of them to see if there would be any improvement. He went back to the staging lanes, but it began to rain before he was able to make another pass. The racing was over. As the rain increased, the crowd quickly thinned out. We loaded up our cars while getting soaked, then with so many people gone I spent some time getting a few autographs. By then it was 5pm, so we left.
Could we complain about the weather, or the long cleanup times, or any number of other things that limited the action? Of course we could. But did we? Not at all. We both had a lot of laughs, a lot of fun, and we got to hang out with some heroes who turned out to be even better in real life than they are on the small screen. We were both very glad we went, and we'd do it again in a heartbeat.
So get out there and meet your heroes!
Four hours later we stopped in St George, Utah for our first refueling:
I was very curious to compare economy notes. I remember back when I bought my Suburban, and all my Jeep friends said the 5.3L, 6.0L and 8.1L engines all got essentially identical fuel economy while towing a Jeep on a trailer. That seemed to be true from various word-of-mouth reports, but here was a chance for actual side-by-side figures to tell the tale. After some quick math, the results were in: 12.06 mpg for Mike's 5.3L, and 11.65 mpg for my 8.1L big block. I guess you could say he was off to an early lead.
We drove another two hours, then stopped in northern Las Vegas for the night. Friday morning we continued on to Kingman, AZ for our next gas stop:
This leg of the trip had many more uphill climbs than Utah (which was predominantly downhill all the way), plus now there were crosswinds to deal with. I also decided to up our pace a little, which meant our engines were working harder. These factors combined to shrink the economy gap, dropping Mike to 9.79 mpg and me to 9.60 mpg. Okay, fine, my curiosity has been satisfied.
We were right on schedule with no time to spare, so you might think I'd resist any unnecessary side trips... but if you thought that, you don't know about my passion for Chino Bandido. So we drove through Phoenix rather than around it, and stopped for a late lunch. Mike was initially unconvinced; Chinese and Mexican food blended together, with Jamaican influence mixed in? But it only took a few bites for him to agree it was worth the detour.
While eating, I had what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity and suddenly realized I forgot to bring the correct lug nuts in order to install the drag slicks that I did bring with me. In a panic, we began searching for an O'Reilly Auto store, then went there to see if they had them on the shelf. I lucked out: they had three 4-packs in stock, and I bought them all. (Will I ever stop buying lug nuts for this car?!?)
By now it was obvious we were gonna be late--we were in the center of Phoenix and surrounded by Friday rush-hour traffic. We finally got to the track well after nightfall, and that's when I learned it didn't matter that we were late; when they had started racing a couple hours before our arrival, the third pass of the day (remember that) resulted in a car crashing into the wall, then ricocheting into the opposite wall, then it caught on fire. There was debris all across the track, and the driver had to be life-flighted to the local hospital. This took hours to clean up, and they were still cleaning when we arrived. We had lots of time to set up camp, unload, go through tech inspection, and get into the staging lanes to wait with everyone else. Eventually the racing did resume; the track's plan was to keep running cars until Freiburger and Finnegan arrived with the whole caravan from Los Angeles.
Here I am tightening my shiny new lug nuts:
At 10:04 pm I finally got to the front of the lanes and made a pass. I did a big burnout to heat up the tires, but when I let off the brake and then the gas to roll forward, the engine died. Oops--I quickly re-fired the car at the tree. I recalled the tech inspector had not been happy about my car not having a driveshaft loop to go with my slicks, so I decided I would launch very softly just to feel out the car. I got out of the hole with a 2.216 60-ft time, mission accomplished... and then things quickly went downhill. This carburetor (which I am borrowing from Mike) isn't exactly tuned properly for Utah, and it turns out it is way out of tune for the lower altitude of Tucson. The car bucked, sputtered, and coughed its way down the track--I'm sure many on-lookers thought it was only running on 5 or 6 cylinders. At the top of second gear, it wouldn't even rev high enough to upshift; I had to take my foot completely off the throttle for the trans to go to third gear, then reapply throttle to continue down the track. I was horrified; I was embarrassed; I was fearful of the countless insults which I was certain were going to come my way. Imagine my surprise when I pulled up to the timeslip shack and saw I had managed a 14.697 @ 94.43 MPH. Gee, it felt so much worse than that. (I desperately wanted to do something about the poor tune, but Mike didn't bring his carb jetting kit with him--I was screwed.)
Pulling back through the pits, I heard the PA system announce that the staging lanes were closed because Frieburger & crew had just arrived. So much for my Friday night racing. I parked and went to the stands to watch Mike. His FiTech EFI system had no problem with the altitude change, so I figured he might fare better than me. However, Mike was on street tires... at full 35 psi street pressure... and his air shocks were at full pressure, also. Never having been to a drag strip in his life, he didn't know to drive completely around the water, and he never did any sort of burnout to even clean off his tires. At the green, he simply floored it. Did he back pedal, or feather the throttle, or do any other thing to try to limit wheelspin? Of course not. He smoked one tire for what seemed like half the track, generating a 2.637 short time on his way to a 15.136 @ 93.14 MPH.
Once the racing was done, F&F started a long Q&A session with the entire crowd. That was cool, and the guys were pretty jovial. But what was even better were the two dudes not involved in the Q&A, namely Lucky Costa and Steve Dulcich. These guys were just roaming around, hanging out in the middle of the crowd just like they were any other regular car guys. And that's what they are! Mike was in heaven when he had a 15-minute conversation about his El Camino with Lucky--they were discussing mods he has already made, how he did stuff verses other ways to do things, plus throwing out ideas for other changes and upgrades, etc. Lucky was genuinely listening and paying attention, because he asked follow up questions about remarks Mike had made ten minutes prior. Dulcich was doing the same thing with other attendees. These guys are so approachable and so laid back; they are everything you'd hope they might be after watching them in their videos.
At midnight the Q&A session finally ended and the celebrities called it for the night. Like most attendees, we were camping out at the track; in our case, we were sleeping in our respective tow vehicles. I moved much of my cargo into the Grand Prix's trunk, then set up my mat and sleeping bag and hit the sack.
We woke up shortly after dawn, and had time to eat some breakfast and get ready for the day's activities. Racing was to begin at 10:00 am, so I drove over to the staging lanes a bit early and got very near the front of the line. In front of me was this car:
I asked the guy how he got the tech inspector to sign off on using temporary spare tires as skinnies. "I didn't," he replied. "I had the car inspected with my street tires, then put these on later so he wouldn't disqualify me for them." Geez. As I would soon learn, the tires were the least of his concerns. He opened the hood to reveal this:
That's a stock Fox-body Mustang 302 bottom end with the best AFR high-flow heads the guy could find, topped with a Roots-type blower. I asked him how it runs back home in CA. He said he has gotten it down into the 11s, but now he set it up for more boost and he was going for a 10-second ET. How much boost? "Fifteen pounds." Didn't you say that's a stock bottom end? "Yep." You know that's a cast crankshaft, right? "Yeah, but it has held up perfectly so far." Well, of course--engine parts always hold up perfectly, right until the moment of failure. He was not deterred.
Soon the racing began. I lucked out and got selected for the third pass of the day (take note of that). As it happened, I was lined up against the old Volvo. The crowd was much larger this morning, so not embarrassing myself was way up on my list of priorities. I decided to make sure not to kill the engine, so I tried to be gentle with the burnout and lifting off the throttle... but I erred way too far on the side of caution and didn't heat the tires enough. How did I know? Because when I launched, the tail end stepped two feet to the left and I started drifting down the track. So much for not embarrassing myself.
Meanwhile, the Volvo hooked and left hard. However, he hadn't even made it half way down the track when he nose-dived and steered toward the wall. I stayed on the gas, bucking and coughing all along the way, and just as I was drawing alongside about to pass his car I suddenly noticed a lot of shrapnel coming out from underneath. One piece in particular was large, black, kinda cylindrical, and it had a pulley on one end. I actually said aloud, "Is that a compressor? I didn't think his car had A/C." Suddenly I realized this large piece was bouncing along, moving faster than my car, and it was coming toward my lane. I got off the throttle and moved out of the groove to my left, trying to create more space to keep from getting hit by it, and that's when it dawned on me: I just got passed by the guy's crankshaft! I got back on the gas and managed to go around it once it finally lost more momentum. I made it through the traps without taking any damage, though my comical 2.428 60-ft time combined with slaloming around the shrapnel caused my ET to increase to 15.485 @ 93.99 MPH.
Normally, a horrible run like that would have made me upset. Not this time. I laughed hysterically. I actually got passed by a guy's crankshaft! How often does that happen in street cars??? Who gets to say that? I only wished I had a GoPro or something else to have captured it on film. Oh, well, at least I will remember it forever.
Later in the day, I caught up to the guy in the pits. He had his trophy on display:
The explosion broke his water pump (seen in the photo) and his oil pan, dumping all his fluids all over the track. This caused the track to be closed for hours due to the cleanup. I guess the third pass of the day is the jinxed one. Knowing my car wouldn't run any better, I parked it for the day and decided to get up close and personal with the vehicular celebrities which were in attendance:
It was amazing and jaw-dropping to see these things in person. Not because they are famous; it's just that they are so much more sketchy in real life than they appear on video. Looking over Nascarlo, for example, made me appreciate anybody brave enough to just sit in the thing, much less drive it on the street. Seeing some of these things is an absolute hoot.
With cleanup over, racing resumed. However, a storm was moving in and the winds had picked up considerably. For that reason, track officials decreed that now we were only running 1/8-mile... which meant I was one of only five cars to complete a quarter mile pass on Saturday. Mike got to make one pass, though this launch wasn't much better than Friday night. After that run, he thought about his tire and shock pressures; this is when we dropped both of them to see if there would be any improvement. He went back to the staging lanes, but it began to rain before he was able to make another pass. The racing was over. As the rain increased, the crowd quickly thinned out. We loaded up our cars while getting soaked, then with so many people gone I spent some time getting a few autographs. By then it was 5pm, so we left.
Could we complain about the weather, or the long cleanup times, or any number of other things that limited the action? Of course we could. But did we? Not at all. We both had a lot of laughs, a lot of fun, and we got to hang out with some heroes who turned out to be even better in real life than they are on the small screen. We were both very glad we went, and we'd do it again in a heartbeat.
So get out there and meet your heroes!
