In Carl’s words,”It was a long but rewarding week. I got in town last Saturday night knowing that I had to pull my motor and rebuild it. It was out and down to a short block the first night. Then it was torn down and back to a short block by Sunday night. Monday night it was all rebuild and back in-car. Although I was still busy all day Tuesday getting the car to 100% and the motor broken in.”“On Wednesday we went to the track and got all set up in the pits and went through tech without any issues.”

“ “My first goal was to take my dad for a ride in Betsie. I got him all set up in safety gear and we did 192.960 MPH in the mile. This was a new record in A/GALT. His hand was steady before and after the ride. Not bad for a 73-year-old man! Although he was disappointed that he didn’t go 200 mph.

“Then I took my cousin for a ride at 193.919 MPH. He take’s his vacation every year so that he can help me at the Maine Event so this was a well deserved bonus for him. This bumped my last run and set a new record A/GALT again.”“It was close to the end of the day so I decided to finish off the day with a full NA (normally aspirated) pass to see how much it picked up in the 1/5 mile. I slipped the clutch and it launched hard with the new cam!”

“This was setting up to be a better pass than the first two until in the middle of 4th the motor went flat, followed by the cab filling with smoke. The scent was clearly oil so I started moving to the left to get off the track and reached over and shut off the motor.”

“I coasted to a stop and upon exiting saw a line of oil leading up to my car… and a puddle was developing under the car. A closer look and there was a crack in the bottom of the oil pan and some dents pushing out. It was an instant indictment that the 427R was done for the week. ““Thursday morning I looked at a couple of stock car motors a local friend was willing to sell. They were a couple of really nice stock car motors, but not the best for land speed racing. To get the MPH I’d want to go, they just didn’t have the right set up.”

“This led to me deciding to get my street car with a 331 small block and 5 speed out of storage, fix its gremlins and race it in a few stock classes. I’ve run it at LTA before and it did really well for a street car. However, last year it starting having issues that we couldn’t fix and it wasn’t drivable on the street, let alone performing like it would need to for a good LSR car.”

“Unfortunately we failed to get the EFI fixed on Thursday.. and we were out of ideas until I thought about some pieces and parts I had from a land speed motor I built/used in the past.”

“I didn’t have everything that I’d needed to convert it from EFI to a carburetor, but I placed a next day air order from Summit and took off for Poland, Maine so I could get the parts I had ordered.”

“Although this sounded like an easier option that would also have my car on the road again, it turned out to be more work than we thought it would be… and luckily a few friends had some gaskets and a throttle cable that we had overlooked.”

” I went for a test drive around 5:30 on Saturday night and found a few issues… Then around 11 pm the car was ready to race.”



“Sunday I went to the track with Mustang #2 for the week. I went through tech without issue and started making passes in multiple classes trying to set some records.” “The first pass was in the AA/BGSS Super Stock class and resulted in 143+ in the mile and 154+ in the 1.5 mile. Both new records! Nice passes for a street car, but about 3 mph slower than passes a few years ago when it was an EFI.A plug read showed that we could add another degree of timing. “



“I switched to A/BFSS for the second pass. The degree of timing was good for about 1 MPH as it went 143+ in the mile and 155+ in the 1.5 mile. These were good for two more new records. A plug check showed that the timing was perfect and the plug had good colors so it was burning well also. Time to add some tape to make it a little slicker in the air. We also removed the antenna and windshield wipers.” “For the 3rd pass I switched to the Real Street class and ran in A/FRS. The tape job and other changes were good for just under 1 MPH as it ran almost 145 MPH in the mile and almost 156 MPH in the 1.5 mile. Two more records, but it was still about 1 MPH slower than EFI. Time for some more tape and to add some air to the tires. “”Unfortunately for the 4th pass I missed 3rd gear and slowed down about 1.5 MPH. Hard to make changes based upon the results.. but I really wanted to get to 160 MPH, so I needed to make some more changes.”

“We decided to remove the thermostat to try to get it to run a little cooled, let it sit for a while to cool off as much as possible, and remove the side mirrors to make it sleeker.”