Cobra's Back in Action! New Personal Best ET & MPH! UPDATE 10/21/14
Hey guys and gals, it's been awhile since I've been to the track. As some of you may know, last summer was the summer of hell for me in terms of what was going on with my Cobra. It began on Memorial Day when I came out of the gas station to see that someone had backed into my door, creating a dent the size of a soccer ball - while it was still parked at the pump! After almost three weeks in the body shop, I got it back and decided to buy a 347 stroker motor that my brother had built for a friend of ours. I pulled the old 306 dual quad motor out, installed the new 347, and then drove it for three weeks without any issues before taking it to the track. While at the track, the crank decided to eat the thrust bearing, trashing the rotating assembly. For the rest of the summer, there were no Yellow '79 Cobra sightings anywhere in New England.
Depressed and bummed out, I had two options from which to choose. Option number one was to reinstall my 306 dual quad motor and sell off the parts of the 347 to recover my money that I had paid for it. Option number two was to work a ton of side jobs to create the money that I would need to fix the 347. I chose the latter and I'm glad I did. Somewhere in mid January I had finally acquired the funds that I needed to rebuild the 347 so I pulled the motor and I gave it back to my brother. A brand new Eagle crank was ordered, along with new bearings, gaskets, and piston rings. From there he went to work and fixed it up. In mid-February I was able to reinstall it back into the Cobra and it's heart was beating once again. I drove it as much as possible to work the kinks out and sometime in March we took it to Mike Dez racing in Seekonk, Mass to be tuned. With my brother and I making the necessary jet changes, and Mike working the dyno, we were able to put down 420 rwhp/380 rwt and the air/fuel graph was just about perfect. Since then I've been driving the wheels off of it with no trouble at all. In fact, I've put 2,400 miles on it since February!
Fast forward to this past weekend and my brother and I, along with three of our friends, made the 3 hour trek to Lebanon Valley Dragway in New York to see what it would do at the track. I was confident that it would make the drive there but was paranoid that it was going to break. In fact, after I installed my ET Streets and lowered the pressure down to 12 psi in each tire, I began to get butterflies in my stomach because I didn't want to break it! I also didn't want anyone in our group of friend's to break any of their Mustangs either. As much as I tried to deflect the nervousness, I simply could not get past it. To complicate things, it's been two years since I've had any type of regular seat time at the drag strip so that was weighing on my mind as well.
That all ended when they called my class to the staging lanes for our first time trial. As I moved down the staging lanes, I buckled my seat belt, put on my helmet, and waited for my turn in the burnout box. Once in, I spun the tires to get them wet, moved forward three or four feet, and fumbled my way around for the line loc button. Once found, I did my burnout and moved to the line. Before I knew it, the lights were coming down and I had no idea where my rpms were. I was hoping they'd be somewhere around 5,000 rpms but I wasn't sure (I don't have a two step). I dropped the clutch and I spun the wheels hard on the launch. I went through the first two gears, banged off third, and that's when I could tell I was flying. I ripped off 4th gear and headed for the finish line. On the return road I picked up my time slip to find that I ran a 12.0 @ 117 - up from my old 306 best of 12.3 @ 111! With that MPH of 117, I knew I had some 11 second time slips in my future.
I ran the car three more times (missing gears, sleeping on the line, etc... - talk about being rusty!) before I got that coveted 11 second timeslip and when I did, I went 11.98 @ 116. I followed that up with a hot lap run where I went 11.99 @ 116. I was now ready for my brother. I chose the left lane and he chose the right. We both did our burnouts and moved to the line. I pre-staged/staged first because I wanted to bring my rpms up to 4,500 and hold them there while I concentrated on the lights. Down they came and off we went. I banged off 2nd at the same time as him and looked over to see him looking at me. We both banged off 3rd at the same time and looked at each other again. Down the track we went side by side until it was time for 4th gear. We both ripped them off at the same time and looked at each other again. The finish line in sight, we were side by side and neither one of knew who had won as we crossed the stripe. I knew right away that it was the best run that I'd ever had in my life.
On the return road, I stopped to get my time slip. The young kid at the booth said, "Wow! That was a close one!" I replied, "Yeah, I don't even know who won!" He then looked at the number on my side window, looked at the time slip, and said, "It wasn't you." DOH! I was crushed! After looking at the time slip, my best ever time of 11.86 @ 117 wasn't enough to beat my brother's 11.91 @ 117. His reaction time was a little bit better than mine and that's how he won the race.
All in all, I had a great weekend as I drove three hours out there to race, made 13 passes between the two days, recorded my best ever pass at 11.85 @ 116 (on Sunday, the next day), and then drove the three hours home - all without breaking. I can't wait to do it all again!
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Originally Posted by Hissing Cobra
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