Ok so June update! Turn of events as things went my way for a change!
Put the motor back in and the new fuel cell, put the e85 in blah blah, then went up to the dyno at JSpeed tuning in Gastonia. This man has helped me out a ton with the car even though he mainly messes with corvettes and LS based stuff.
Everything on the dyno went smoothly except that weird issue where the motor didn't want to spin past a certain point and would just stop accelerating. After 2 days of trying to figure this out I finally said fuck it, it runs lets go load it up because we had to leave for the hill climb in the morning and I still had to take it to my brother's shop for an alignment. Well to our surprise when I pulled the car off the dyno and gave it some beans up the little side street the can CAME TO LIFE and blew the tires off in an impressive display all the way to like 8800 RPM....ok so what ever issue it had on the dyno it was not having that under real load on the street....that made me feel good. Made about 440 with the e85 though.
So loaded the car up and went to my brothers lined it up, packed all the stuff in the RV and trailer and went to bed, no drama. Woke up the next morning did my usualy morning routine with the wife and kids and met up with Micah for the road trip. Got into Norton about 2:30 I think, again no drama. met up with everyone, got the tech inspection and then our paddock neighbor in his rad built Ford Focus RS offered to take me up the mountain and see the course so we did that. On the way down we saw some woman walking down the hill (3 miles to town) so we stopped and offered a ride. As soon as she started talking and saw the lack of teeth Dave and I looked at each other as she started going on about her ex and her turmoil. But we dropped her off in town and got the car ready for the Friday night party on main street where all the race cars line up and there is a band and beer flows pretty good, great night! Hill climbs are so fun. Oh also we had to put my rear glass in the car last minute so we decided to do that in the dark after we had been drinking lol
Next morning we woke up and went to the drivers meeting as per usual. I was in the 2nd group so I had a little time to wait while group 1 went up the mountain.
First run up took awhile as we had to wait for a few cars from my run group to be cleared from the side of the road. Apparently one car had a intake manifold explode open and caused a run away turbo situation and couldn't slow down. As I got the line Micah walked up to watch and I left the line very very cautiously as this was my first time on this course. I did a good scouting run and was super slow like 2:26 or something. But the car felt good!
This basically repeated all day... Wait for my run group to get called Micah and I ride up behind the police escort to the start line and then start working the course. Getting faster and faster until I think I ended the day with a 1:56 and I was in 1st by the end of the day! Again the car ran fantastically, no issues, I was getting more confident and the nervousness of driving an almost 500HP car for the first time was basically gone. It was a great feeling.
That night Micah and I went to eat at a Mexican restaurant with a lot of our competitors and friends and then walked down to what seemed like the social center of the Norton VA at this little hole in the wall type bar (but was actually pretty nice) that was hosting karaoke. We met up with some other hillclimb friends and Micah, being several beers in at this point was very adamant about singing Vanilla Ice...there are videos of this night but I'll hang on to those lol
Next morning we rolled out of bed in the RV and shook off the night before. Warmed the car up and starting to get in the mindset that today I was going to go faster and win!
AND THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I DID.
I had an amazing day battling Tracy Gaudu in her bad ass c6 corvette with fresh tires for 1st place. Every run we went back and forth back in forth. Then on the last run she was right in front of me and we were playing mental games trying to get me to go first. But it came down to me being the last car on the mountain on the last run of the day, and I took 1st from her with a time 1:52.2 over her 1:52.6!!
I drove the car hard, didn't crash, didn't have any mechanical issues, and I won my class, got to hangout with my brother and friends, drink beer....I mean come on this was probably the best racing weekend of my life so far! Hopefully I can keep it up with 2 more races this year and a points championship I'm in the running for now.
