It's been a good week at Keating Machine

[LPreston]

It was a good, no...make that great week at the Keating Machine camp. The NHRA chassis tech stopped by on his way to Bristol for the weekend races. He threw the templates and the meter on the tubes and after giving her a complete checkup, signed off on the chassis.

Thursday morning we load the truck and head over to Bristol. After fielding the usual batch o' questions at tech, we rolled back to the trailer, threw the hood on and went for our first of 6 passes.

Run 1. Mini burnout and then a 100 foot pass. Not sure everyone knew we were doing licensing, so we were afraid we failed to impress with a 100 foot pass.

Run 2. Another short pass....330’ I think.

Runs 3 & 4. The next 2 he shuts it down 1/8 mile, but the traps are set up for 1/4 mile runs. 3rd pass time thru the traps is 9.90 at 90mph on a 1/2 track run. Not bad. Keating slides under the truck and makes a few adjustments to the rear suspension. The next the truck launches like a missle. Pass 4 turns out 9.59 @ 107. Wow...

By this time, the afternoon sun is BLAZING and the humidity sky high....another Southern summer afternoon. Finally we get to make full 1/4 mile passes on a track with a slight uphill climb.

Run 5. Another missile launch. 8.90 @ 149! Get back to the pits and Keating says the boost pressure looked low (by about 1/5 low of it’s normal number), so he let out of it and then got back in it. Get the data logger hooked up while the other guys yank the hood. There lies the problem....the output on turbo 1 popped a clamp going into turbo 2. Never seen one of these clamps fail like this. A quick mod, another clamp and were all beat down tired at this point. Goal for the last pass is just to get thru the lights, not break, get paperwork signed, drive 2 hours home, eat dinner, get some sleep.

Run 6. Mission accomplished with an 8.92 @ 150.8 on a loose as a goose launch.

A new group of racers saw diesel in an application they had not seen before. The track guys seemed to be impressed. Lots of positive remarks. We have been invited back to make exhibition runs any time we want. Nice to leave a good impression on the track manager…lol.

Recap;

1. Chassis NHRA approved.
2. NHRA license good to go.
3. Ran an 8.90 @149 pedaling the throttle (air temp 86, dewpoint 62, altimeter 30.11, altitude 1478)