I had a BYE run, and so did the guy (Moss) in back of me, who was to have run Dallas – but that car had broke and was on the trailer.
I get into right lane and do my burnout and I’m moving up to stage when they make the other guy do his burnout and have Dallas’ 9.75 instead of my 11.0 on the board.
I refuse to stage as they’re feverishly waving me to do so, and so they come over and I’m trying to explain their error as my car is getting hotter and hotter. The problem is that they list us both as D. Schultz and I’m 7601 while Dallas is 7602. After 5 minutes of communications back and forth to the tower — they get it straightened out and have the other guy go first. So they finally get Joe Ewing to backup so I can do another burnout — which I do. Big Mistake!
I make my run and just before the MPH cone the car starts shaking violently and hopping up and down in the rear at about 125mph. I’m thinking a wheel is coming off and hoping I can get slowed down before I lose the whole wheel.
When I get it slowed down to about 40 and make the first turnoff — the shaking quits. I drive back to pits and check the wheel lugs — and they all tight. I look at the slicks and they look good – aired up and no bubbles. We’d just had the motor out to replac freeze plugs and so I thought maybe the torque convertor bolts loosened — but they were good. Dallas pulled the wheels and we checked the rear brakes for locking, wheel bearings, drive shaft, front and rear suspension, pinion…. all good. So now I’m thinking it must be 3rd gear in the transmission. I noticed that the wheel weights were missing on the slicks (the hopping must have thrown them) — and while the shaking and hopping was too violent to be just a balance issue — I take the slicks to the Mickey Thompson trailer. The guy tells me I might win a prize for the oldest slicks at the track as they’re dated February 2004. The first tire needed 6 oz to balance. When they put the second one on the balancer — it was a pound and half off. We had to let the air out to get them off the car without dropping the rear end — so I asked if maybe the tube twisted when he aired them up. He said maybe — and broke the wheel down.
This is what he found:
$606 later I have two new slicks and tubes and all appears to be well for Round Two this morning. Elsewhere in this forum is a link to the Joliet report – that I keep updated. I guess two back to back burnouts was all those old tubes could take.
The funny part is while I have this going on, there is this guy at the top of the track waving Hi to me. It was Scott Sparrow taking photos and I believe totally unaware of my bung hole clamping down on the seat bracing for the belief I was going to wreck when the wheel came off.
I’m Ok Scott — lol
