Well it seems as if the Bollman Racing luck continues as we made it past the first round for the second straight race! The weekend started off pretty slow. We arrived at the track Thursday afternoon to do some pre-race testing. However, when we got there nothing seemed to go our way. Small problems kept showing up when we were in a hurry to make a run before the track closed for the day. When we were warming up the motor all of a sudden the water hose came off of the bottom of the radiator! Well I know that I'm glad that it happened on the jack stands and not on the track. But we finally made a pass and when I let the clutch out it seemed as if the car moved hardly at all! So I shifted into 2nd and it got worse, the motor sounded horrible so I shut it off immediately. I was really scared that we had broken the motor! The only other time that it sounded like that was three years ago when we were testing at Capitol Raceway and I kept my foot in it! Well that motor was trash but, this motor isn't. It was just really rich. Lebanon Valley is in the mountains in New York State and it was a cool 90 degrees in the shade. So we leaned the motor out a step and it responded much better. However, after the first two qualifing runs we were very unhappy the car wouldn't leave the starting line, it was a slug. We changed from a 6.20 rear end ratio to a 6.00 and changed transmission ratio's around also before this race. The Probe was like my street car comming off the line leaving at 1.21 60' times. So Kim Eckel was nice enough to video tape our cars rear tire. We found one reason the car wasn't leaving hard was because it was spinning the tires. So we adjusted the shocks for our 2nd round race with Walter Zales and his A/A. This was a really close race and was fun to be in except we lost. The car ran much better lowering the 60' time to a 1.19. Still slow but pretty good for a car that was geared very wrong. Maybe that combination will work later in the year when the air is better and the engine is making more power. So we shall see! But we are ready for the Numedia FMDRS, armed with better gear ratios and more shock adjustments! So wish us luck, we'll take all we can get!
