As we say in NASCAR...

Rolling coal. As I'm paid by a large turbofan manufacturer, I check to see who made any engine that fails. That is ostensibly a B757-200 [per Delta], so Rolls or Pratt powered, so no worries for me.
 
Seems to be running a bit rich.
 
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Back in the day NASCAR: Boys, we're finished, it done blowed up...

PoA: It came from together...

Redneck PoA: It done come from together...

Just simple redneck pilot: YeeHawwww.!!
 
Making me chuckle remembering a racing 'incident' involving my son and three out of four corners on a formula car. He was talking to Marco Andretti at Mosport one year. He told me that Marco was coming off the backstraight holding flat out through turn 8. Alex said I think I can do it and shave some time. About 30 minutes later after seeing the sand and dust fly while spotting nearby he gets on the radio and said the balled it up and OK but the car...not so. I asked him what happened and he said he came into 8 flat out, not braking....but "ran out of talent". I laughed a bit until I saw the remnants of the car that had to be rebuilt overnight for qualifying the next morning.
 
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That’s a booger of a departure IIRC, after V1 that coulda been sporty.

If I was gonna have that happen, a 75 is what I would want to be flying.
 
Chrome horn

Driving a race car is like dancing with a chainsaw.
 
We called it an 'agricultural excursion'. Only fun in a Spec Miata where 'passing in the grass' was somewhat acceptable. In a carbon fibre winged car....'spensive in a hurry. LOL
 
I just listened to the cockpit voice recorder. 7 seconds before the incident the you can clearly hear the pilot say “Watch iss”!!!! Obviously he was showing off for someone.
 
robin ardoin said:
We called it an 'agricultural excursion'. Only fun in a Spec Miata where 'passing in the grass' was somewhat acceptable. In a carbon fibre winged car....'spensive in a hurry. LOL
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Only done it once. My home track only had walls on the straightaways. Caught the end of the inversion and had to pick my way through the much slower traffic. 2 guys nearly got into as I was fixing to go high wide and handsome. Rather than wreck the grass over the banking seemed like the best option. Kept my foot in it and came right back on. Lucky for me 2 laps later someone couldn't quite make the pits and got stuck so they threw a yellow. Came back and won. Man, those Legends cars were a fun series. I keep going back and forth on how to fill my unbuilt garage/shop. Build an RV or buy a race car....
 
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Slap a Cummins “C” on the housing and send it…
 
Press Release:

“We at Delta recognized the popularity of the most recent Top Gun movie and set to work creating a customer experience for those not fortunate enough to have flown fighters. That’s why select flights will include simulated afterburner.”
 
robin ardoin said:
Making me chuckle remembering a racing 'incident' involving my son and three out of four corners on a formula car. He was talking to Marco Andretti at Mosport one year. He told me that Marco was coming off the backstraight holding flat out through turn 8. Alex said I think I can do it and shave some time. About 30 minutes later after seeing the sand and dust fly while spotting nearby he gets on the radio and said the balled it up and OK but the car...not so. I asked him what happened and he said he came into 8 flat out, not braking....but "ran out of talent". I laughed a bit until I saw the remnants of the car that had to be rebuilt overnight for qualifying the next morning.
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Yeah, BSing a competitor is an old but useful strategy. “Oh, sure, you can go through the chicane flat out, no problem.” (Snicker snicker tee hee hee....)
 
Half Fast said:
Yeah, BSing a competitor is an old but useful strategy. “Oh, sure, you can go through the chicane flat out, no problem.” (Snicker snicker tee hee hee....)
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It can work the other way too. When I was racing motocross as a teenager, there was a jump section I wasn’t doing that my dad knew I was more than capable of (just lacked confidence). After my first practice, dad informed me that a competitor (who I knew I was much faster than) was doing it. What do you know, the next practice, I sent it on the first lap…only later did I realize dad was bluffing, lol…
 
Half Fast said:
Yeah, BSing a competitor is an old but useful strategy. “Oh, sure, you can go through the chicane flat out, no problem.” (Snicker snicker tee hee hee....)
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That time it was not BS. Marco was running a LMP-2 car with more than double the downforce of Alex’s formula car. Worked fine in the prototype…..not so well in my son’s car:oops:. At the first race of the season at Sebring they were talking and Marco was taking turn one flat out and suggested to Alex that he could do the same. It worked at that track. Up in the Great White North the story did not end on a good note. Fortunately besides an ego and the major sponsor’s wallet (moi :() no animals were harmed in the making of the incident.
 
Half Fast said:
Yep. Reduces the unsprung weight.
;)
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I cut the wheel studs and found the smallest lugnuts I could. Then found a 2.93 rear spool for road racing, chucked it in the lathe to fit 3.58, 3.73, and the 4.10 gears for circle tracks. Not legal, but no tech inspector at the local short tracks would figure it out.
 
Racerx said:
Not legal, but no tech inspector at the local short tracks would figure it out.
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That's pretty sad. Jack up the rear, rotate the rear wheels, count the revs of the drive shaft. Takes less than 5 minutes.
 
One track we used to race at, alcohol was not allowed in the class we ran. (limited late model) Soooooo..... I had a 32 gallon fuel cell and a 22 gallon fuel cell. I would fill the 22 gallon with alcohol, place it in the 32 gallon cell, then plumb it up to the engine. Then we would close the 32 gallon cell and fill it with gasoline.

Now for you folks that have used alcohol as fuel know that the exhaust will curl the hair in your nose, change the color of your eyes and cause your babies to be born naked. To get around that I put a 1/2 gallon of extract of spearmint in the alcohol which made the exhaust smell like a burning Snickers bar.

I also had a broken pressure gauge that showed something like 25-30 PSI mounted on a non-structural bar on the roll cage. Folks would ask what it is for and I would tell them I pressurized the roll cage with helium. When asked what that did I would tell them that since helium is lighter than air it makes the car lighter.... Seems very few dirt racers understood that it takes volume, not pressure for the helium to have the floating effect....



Yeah.... BSing was one of my favorite parts of racing.!! :lol:
 
Zeldman said:
One track we used to race at, alcohol was not allowed in the class we ran. (limited late model) Soooooo..... I had a 32 gallon fuel cell and a 22 gallon fuel cell. I would fill the 22 gallon with alcohol, place it in the 32 gallon cell, then plumb it up to the engine. Then we would close the 32 gallon cell and fill it with gasoline.

Now for you folks that have used alcohol as fuel know that the exhaust will curl the hair in your nose, change the color of your eyes and cause your babies to be born naked. To get around that I put a 1/2 gallon of extract of spearmint in the alcohol which made the exhaust smell like a burning Snickers bar.

I also had a broken pressure gauge that showed something like 25-30 PSI mounted on a non-structural bar on the roll cage. Folks would ask what it is for and I would tell them I pressurized the roll cage with helium. When asked what that did I would tell them that since helium is lighter than air it makes the car lighter.... Seems very few dirt racers understood that it takes volume, not pressure for the helium to have the floating effect....



Yeah.... BSing was one of my favorite parts of racing.!! :lol:
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Reminds me of the Smokey Yunick story where NASCAR was suspicious of his fuel tank having more capacity than allowed. They removed the tank for inspection, Smokey started up the car and drove it back to the garage. Turns out he'd installed a massive fuel line that could hold about 5 gallons on its own.

Ever read The Unfair Advantage by Mark Donohue?
 
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Zeldman said:
No, I haven't. Sounds like it should be on my list.

Who was it that said...''If you're not cheating, you're not trying.??''
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don't know. don't care.

but if you cheat to win, you are still a loser.
 
Half Fast said:
That's pretty sad. Jack up the rear, rotate the rear wheels, count the revs of the drive shaft. Takes less than 5 minutes.
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No. No. The spool that holds the ring gear was different on the 2.93's. if you chucked the spool in a lathe you could machine a little down to make a 3.58,3.33,3.73 or 4.10 ring fit. The only way to tell would be to remove the whole pumpkin. Might have saved half a pound.

Qualifying for a national qualifier race we tried to game the invert. I was always top two or three. Actually held the track record despite having a cast from my knuckles past my elbow from a wreck with nascar driver David Ragan trying to pass him for the lead. Made shifting fun. So I couldn't just go slower. Just before I got on the track we pulled a plug wire. Talk about running rough. Missed it by one and had to start in the back anyway. Where I would have been without.
 
Bob Noel said:
but if you cheat to win, you are still a loser.
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Racing is a game of limits. The person who is able to get closest to the limits of the car, the tires, the track, and the rules, without breaking any of them will go fastest and win. Racing has a long tradition of competitors learning to stay just inside the rules, getting as close as possible to the limit, interpreting the literal words and barely complying.

Consequently, just as a racer sometimes pushes a limit a bit too far and slides off the track or blows an engine, sometimes the racer will cross the line on a rule. That's where the saying comes from - if you try hard enough to gain a winning advantage, once in a while you'll break a rule. "If you're not cheating, you're not trying."

When I first started racing in Improved Touring, our cars were required to have two front seats. The intent was that you weren't allowed to remove the heavy stock passenger seat, but that's not what the rule said. Some folks mounted lighweight webbed lawn chairs for passenger seats, saving significant weight, and they were technically legal. (Eventually the rule was removed anyway to let us put in more robust roll cages.)
 
rationalize all you want, but if you cheat to win, you are still a loser.

edit: trying to push limits within the rules isn't cheating.

The team that took the America's cup in yacht racing with the winged keel didn't break the rules, they didn't cheat. The teams that used lawn chairs instead of stock seats weren't cheating since they didn't break the rules.
 
Bob Noel said:
edit: trying to push limits within the rules isn't cheating.
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If you push a rule limit more and more, eventually you’ll exceed it.

Example - usually the top 4 finishers in our races were weighed after the race. We all tried to carry juuust enough fuel to meet minimum weight at the finish. Sometimes one of us would misjudge by a gallon or so and end up a few pounds too light, which would result in disqualification.
 
It’s much like penalties in football. If you don’t get an interference call once in a while, you’re not covering the receiver close enough.
 
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