The Club cars divided themselves into two groups, plus one odd ball. There were cars than drove the 1/4 mile race track in some increment of 14 seconds and some cars that drove the track in some increments of 15 seconds. I fell into the latter category. The odd ball was a guy from Redding who trailered in his 1966 mustang fastback which was prepared as a dedicated race car. The car finished the quarter mile with a best time of 12.8 seconds, which provides a top speed in the 120 mph+ range.

I was very nervous about racing, as it is something I have never done and of course has the potential to become dangerous if your car is not decently prepared and if you are a few slices of bread short of a full loaf. I was up till 3 a.m. the day of the race, preparing the car. One of the hood latches was stuck and I could not get the hood open. Took a couple hours to get that taken care of, plus I was working with the clutch linkage, fabricating a "stop" to prevent overtravel of the clutch pedal and stretching of the clutch cable (which would mean that I would not be able to shift gears - more about this later).

The club cars met in the parking lot of a Home Depot and we all caravaned to the racetrack, which was fun. It was quite an eclectic mix, with young men in their 20s and older men in their mid to late 60s. Some of the cars had been raced before and other cars were the owner's principal form of transportation. They were at various stages of restoration, but the mechanics were sound on all. One man's wife came along, another brought his girl friend, but no female driver's showed up. The clubs have female mustang owners in them. One of my co-workers showed up, with one of her friends. This is the woman who owns the 1966 mustang coupe that I painted and am putting back together for her.

Before racing, each car was inspected for certain equipment features - seat belts, no loose items in the interior, a reservoir to catch overflowing radiator fluid, battery clamped in place, etc. If the car will drive faster than 14 seconds to complete the quarter mile, the driver has to have an approved helmet. If the car will drive faster than 13 seconds, the car has to have an approved rollcage welded or bolted into it. Convertibles have to have roll bars if driven faster than 14 seconds. If you lack the required equipment, you don't race. If you lack the equipment associated with your speed, once you make it down the track and demonstrate you are driving faster than your car's allotment of safety equipment (cage, roll bar, helmet), you are kicked off the track and cannot race any more.

The most interesting part of racing to me is that what you are doing is much faster than your thinking and reactions. This is called "being behind your car". The first pass down the track was just a blur of adrenaline and tunnel vision out the windshield to keep the steering straight. I did not have time to look at the gauges or to look at the electronic timer to see how fast I the car had gone in the first 60 feet (called the "launch"). I was also contentrating on shifting- picking the point to change gear by the sound of the engine, making the shifts as fast as possible, while not missing putting the transmission into the next gear, making sure the clutch is not let out before the tranmission has completed the shift.

The next time I launched the car, my mind was processing a little quicker and I was able to glance down at the speedometer for a split second just about the time I hit the 1/4 mile mark. The third time was better still. I am told by the experienced drivers that after you have raced a couple three different times, you are processing what is happening very quickly and are "ahead of your car" and able to glance at the electronic time board and plan ahead with your shifts.

To start, the cars that want to race are qued up in various lanes, behind the starting line. The tech people assign your car to a lane, based on your expected elapsed time (ET). I was in lane 5, as were most of the other stangs in the club, plus a few 2003 mustang cobra SVT cars (these are factory supercharged cars). So, I guess lane 5 was for basically factory stock and slightly modified cars. You inch your way up to the head of the que. You have your windows up for aerodynamics so it gets hot in your car. As your car idles, you debate whether to turn it off so as to avoid overheating. Generally, a car that is cooler rather than warmer tends to run faster. On some of the race cars, they have a helper car that literally tows them to the starting line, before the driver's starts the engine.

Once you are at the head of the que, you wait for the traffic guy to point to you and direct you to which lane of the race track you are to be in. When he points, you drive over to the lane and hold your car just behind an area sometimes called the bleach box or burnout box. Basically, this is an area at the foot of the racetrack that has water sprayed over the surface from time to time to keep it wet. When the car in front of you has cleared out, you drive around the box so as to keep your front tires dry, then back up until your rear wheels are in the damp spot. Once there, you stand on the brake and rev the engine, with the car in gear. There are sophisticated mechanical or electrical systems to enable drivers to do this without overheating their brakes. However, those systems are not on the factory type cars, just the dedicated race cars. The purpose of spinning the tires is to clean off any oil or grease on them, and also to warm up the rubber so that it is "tacky". Both of these measures allow the rear tires to grip the road better when full power is first applied at the start of the race. Cars with ordinary passenger type tires, or even speed rated passenger car tires, usually do not do this and it is used mostly by the cars equipped with big fat tires with no tread on them (slicks). I did not use the burnout box.

When it was time for me to race, I inched up to what I thought was the starting line - a column with 5 lights stacked vertically in it - 4 orange and the bottom one green. This is called a christmas tree. The track starter had to come over and explain to me that I had just moved my car about a car length ahead of the starting line! There is actually a light beam located at a painted white line. As you pull up your car two yellow light bulbs on the christmas tree light up. You are supposed to slow down even more and just inch your way forward until two more yellow lightbulbs light up. You stop there since the 4 lit bulbs tell you that you are perfectly positioned. This process is called staging.

For me, I found that once I staged the car and sat there with the clutch in and revving the motor, the car wanted to roll forward, causing 2 of the light bulbs to go off, meaning that I had committed a foul. Had to back up the car to the light beam. Once when I was doing this the christmas tree starting counting down the green light to go. Whoops, things were crazy for a minute as I was trying to go back, stop, go forward to get the 2 light bulbs lit again, plus start racing when the light turned green. Needless to say, my reaction time to the green light was a lot slow - 1.2 seconds! (a perfect reaction time is .500 of a second.

Back to my first pass on the track. Well, there I am sitting ahead of the start line and I found that I could not shift the car into reverse, or any other gear. The clutch linkage cable and stretched and the clutch was out of adjustment! The track folks pushed the car back out of the start area and I was allowed to adjust the linkage while on the track. All was well with a few turns of a wrench. Apparently it is not uncommon for the more exotic race cars to have mechanical problems at the start line and have to get pushed away. All those sensitive high performance race parts. Of course, I did not have that excuse. haha.

Anyway, once repaired the car was put back at the head of the line and I got to try again. I staged, waited for the green light (mistake) and took off. I applied pretty much full engine power at the time I dropped the clutch so the back tires spun and the back of the car slipped a little sideways. I eased off the gas a bit and the car took off down the track. Shifting into second gear was no problem, However, I held it into second gear just a shade too long and the electronic engine speed limiter kicked in (this protects the engine from over-revving and damaging itself). This meant that the engine stopped making power at that point, kind of like missing or backfiring (although it was not backfiring). That oh so subtle signal told me it was time to shift into 3rd! So, away I went down the track, concerned now whether I would be able to slow the car and make the turn off the track, at the end of the race area. I was in the left of the two drag lanes, so I had to wait for the car to my right to make its turn before I was allowed to turn off.

In a blink of an eye the pass down the track was over and I was tooling down the exit road. Wow, there was actually no sensation of speed, the mind was to busy processing what had to be done to really become cognizent of any sensation of speed. Plus, you are too busy to look to the side to see things whizzing past you and tell you that you are going fast. Once of the exit road, I parked the car and walked over to a room where the time keeper handed me my computerized time slip. It showed that it had taken me 15.69 seconds to race the car the 1/4 mile track and that my speed at the 1/4 mile point was 92.something hundreds mph. The time slip also tells you your reaction time,how long the car took to move the first 60 feet, and how long and at what speed the car has traveled the first 1/8th mile. There is another number on it, but neither myself nor any of the club members could tell me what the number was for.

After that first pass I let the car cool down and watched others. One gentleman was racing his jaguar. This was the XJR model, about 8-10 years old I suppose. It was equipped by Jaguar with twin superchargers. The car ran the 1/4 mile in 13.5 seconds with a top speed of around 110 mph or so. The fastest car there ran 8.7 seconds at topped out at 157 miles an hour! It was an interesting mix of vehicles - a Nissan maxima, a transam, an older camero, a few hondas, even a souped up volkswagon beetle and a few motorcylces. For my second run I adjusted the carboratuer and increased the timing of the engine. My second run cut the time down to 15.23 seconds and topped out at 94 mph. On my final run, I launched from the starting line when the last orange light on the christmas tree lit up. during my slow reaction time to this light, the bottom green light came on. I also started in second gear so as to try to avoid the wheel spin (which wastes time). It was the best run of the day for me. My time was 15.02 seconds and the top speed was fractions about 98 mph.

I was right in the middle of the pack, as far as the club cars were concerned. I kept up with my friend John's car, so that told me that the modifications which I did to my car were ok. I always thought my car was slower because I drive it gently, when driving on the street.

There you have it. My grand adventure. I have to fool with the clutch cable linkage still, as it is starting to go out on me again. Other than that, some more adjusting of the carb and practice and the car should turn in the high 14s and top out over 100 mph. That's pretty much the best I can expect from a modified street engine. To break into the 13 second range I would have to either add a supercharger or nitrous oxide, or do some serious engine modifications that would make the car less driveable for ordinary street use. I hope you enjoyed the story.