[ponyakr]

While I was fooling around with them old dirt cars, TJ decided she wanted to give it one last shot. Nothing serious, just a few Sat. races just for old times sake. She had always raced '68 Birds, but at that time all I had that wouldn't take much work was the '70 or '71 (I forget which) that cotton had raced. so I rigged up a 455 and TH400, some new 13x30 tires and few other goodies and had her back on the track in no time. We didn't go every week, just when she wanted to. I bought a new 1-ton and put some ramps on it for her car. then I put a gooseneck ball on it to pull my dirt car with. Some weeks I run dirt on Fri. nite then unhook Sat. morning and load up her Bird and head to Ark. Well, I guess it's sorta like the old saying "It's just like riding a bicycle. You never forget how." It took her a few races to get the rust knocked off, but it wasn't long til she was right back in the winner's circle. I noticed something I had never even thought about before as I've been looking back thru our scrapbooks. None of our time slips up thru '79 have the reaction time or the 60' time. Some don't even have the mph. I guess either that technology hadn't come long yet, or it was so expensive most of the small tracks couldn't afford it. So thru '79 all we could do was just keep pushing the light til it turned red then back off just a little. I assumed that our lights were better than most of our opponents since we won more rounds than we lost, but I have no way to prove it. But for the few races we went to in '86 and '87 all the numbers are there, so I'll share some of the best with you. RTs: .500, .505, .508, .510 (2), .511 (2), .512, .513, .514, .515, .517, .519 (2), .530 (3), .532 (2), .534 (2), .535, .536 (2), .538, .545 (4) and a slew of .550s.While these numbers won't do much against the boys with the tranny brakes and delay boxes in the electronics class, they are quite respectable in the foot brake, no-e class at most small local tracks. the displays at the end of the track at our local track now shows people's RT during the time trials. So in preparation for the 2010 season I watched the RTs of the no-e cars to see just what it would take to be competitive. Very few cars were cutting RTs better than .540 consistanly. And of those that were, many pushed it too far and drew a red light during eliminations. Well, my racingjunk.com Ventura cut a .510 and .514 RT before the stock starter conked out. So I was feeling purty confident about it for 2010. I bought another car, a 2-car trailer and a crewcab dually to attempt an active race season in 2010. but as I've mentioned our track did not open at all in 2010. "the best laid plans of mice and men." don't know if the track will make it or not. It may go the way of most of the tracks we used to run, but I hope not. For now, we'll just keep going in circles and stirring up dust. By the way, I records show that the best numbers on T.J.'s last bird were 9.85 at 104.65 mph in the 1000', with a best 60' of 1.67. Not too shabby for a low buck junker. Will send pics when we can. Not having much luck with that so far but everybody else is doing it. So I'll just do what I did in racing - just look around and ask ? til I find out what to do.