Back out pullin' 8-5-08

Eaton Oh. usually has a good track and this night it was good but not great. We ran both the truck and SFX. SFX was up first and made a good pass to get into the pulloff with Don Deane. Don went first and made a good effort out to about 323' as I went down the track I thought this one was going to Don as I didn't get much ground speed but the last 30' it just kept moving very very slowly for the win at 331'.

Rick drove the truck on this night with a great group of trucks as the Sullivan trucks showed up as well as the home town Petro's. We had to much gear in the truck for such a good track and the engine just didn't get enough RPMs to get down the track like we would have liked. The truck is one wheeling pretty badly at times which doesn't help the effort. Rick ended up in 9th out of 13 trucks. On the brigh side 6 of these trucks are winners at the GN level.

Gallipolis,OH. We hadn't been to this event before and had heard that the track was so so and as it turned out it was. We moved some weight to the back of SFX and ended up with a pretty good pass. It seemed that most of the tractors had some sort of issues as did the sled. We got out the end as well as Ron Barga II on the Judge. Ron didn't come back for the pulloff as he had brake problems.



We took off a day from pulling (missed Wapakoneta,OH) as we needed to do some maintenance on the engines. It was time to change the rods in all three engines on SFX and we didn't have a chance to do it without missing an event. We worked Sat. and Sun. making the changes as well as getting Larry Darbro to cut the tires. We found a few little problems, mostly valve adjusting issues but had enough old parts to get them solved. We finished up SFX about 10 P.M. then started the truck to make sure the clutch was going to work ok as Doug had made some adjustments to it. A big thanks to Rick and Doug as well as Zack Doug's son for all of the help. I couldn't do this without their help.

The internals

A crowded shop

I applied for this job but the executive crew chief said no!

We next went to Urbana,OH to run the RN2 event with both the truck and tractor. The truck was up first. Tarry made a nice pass but the engine didn't get the RPM it needed, Tarry wanted to turn down the pass but I thought we made as good a pass as we could without changing the gear. Tarry ended up 5th behind some great trucks so we are happy with the placing.

SFX had a bit of a bounce at about 100' but settled down and made a good pass with the front about a foot off of the track. I was first hook and kept the hook as I didn't know if I could improve on the pass. As it turned out several tractors bounced, some pretty badly. We ended up in the first spot as we went 319' and Don was at 305'.

Next we are off to Croton to run at the Mid Season Championships with OSTPA. Hopefully I can improve upon last years event as we broke some parts last year.

S'no Farmer