[Mark Weymouth]

John I knew your frustration level and heck we have spoke enough about how to unfrustrate ourselves on the PS cars over the years let alone FAST cars. I am sure Bruno and I must be nuts to be the next guys to try and do the seemingly improbable.

As we progress we will chat at Stanton and get some more insight from you to help out.

Your motor is actually the basis of knowledge in which we have created our short term program around and the fact that the parts were already owned. It gave a good baseline to start from. In the end though we really will need to make some major changes to where we are going and all have gone before us. We have the ideas cemented and have been twidling with them. They look promising. The good thing is the current motor has provided some solid mph in past testing. It is enough mph to be reasonably competitive. The bigger problem is traction. As you said all that tq is a bear to put down. In past testing with the motor it was impossible to give it full throttle until the 1/8th was passing by. It still hit the mph numbers we need to be in the mix for a first time out at a FAST race. Unfortunately if we do not find a way to harness it we will have poor ET's and an ok mph. Mind you it is not a startling mph, nothing like what the front runners are hitting but a nice lttle number.

So far we have tested the chassis with a much milder motor but it surely performed better than hoped. We have also done some trans testing for the package and that has shown true progress. Now matting them all together at the same time, who knows if they will play nice or not.

But with the upgraded spec motor still a few weeks away from being back on the dyno, the next gen trans not being done until next week and the car far from built we have little time left to see if they will work together. In particular as we have to get a motor done for Ron's HO GTO for Stanton and dyno'd, get the SC/Rambler built/ready and test and tuned, and get the L88 test and tuned, and get Rich's SC/Rambler tied up and ready. Those come first. It all looks a bit daunting.

Dang this hobby is becoming a job. Heck I do not even get paid to do this stuff.

For this fall all we have time to do is get a solid start and find our footing. Over the winter we will give the project some major upgrades and work forward from what we have found. If we can come out and just be competitive with what you guys all did our first time out it would be a solid win for us I believe. Really that would be all that could be asked for the project currently. That would certianly get us set up well for the future.

Give me a call John if you have any inspirational words or tidbits that will help us make fewer mistakes.

BTW, Dave Dudek told me yesterday that Pat will be coming back out to play again next year. Everything is back in order for him and he is looking to have some fun once again. I know of another Pontiac FAST project trying to get some legs and we just may have 3 Poncho's going back at it after we have had none since you guys all gave it a try.

Mark