speed week 2011
me and dad dropped talor off in salt lake city with mom on friday morning after moms plane landed. the two of us then headed west for the salt. we got pitted and headed towards tech by 2pm and ended up being the very last car to get through tech on friday. Went great and had a nice guy doing the inspection. Got up and headed to the staging lanes right after the drivers meeting on saturday morning. everything seemed to be in working order until i went to 2nd gear on the first pass. nothing. the clutch pedal hit the floor and the motor was free wheeling. towed the car back to the trailer and realized there was a problem inside the bell housing. we pulled the motor anddiscovered that the throwout bearing had exploded. luckily we had another trans in the trailer and we were able to rob the throwout bearing and cross shaft out of it. we had this done in about 3 hours and got ready to head back towards the starting line. I was in the car ready to go when I noticed that the clutch was not engaging all the way and i was not able to get the car in or out of gear while the engine was lit. we towed back to the trailer and re-adjusted the clutch linkage again and got it right the second go round.
Got back out early sunday morning and went straight to the lanes to make our first official pass. car pulled hard in 1st with minimal wheel spin and little to no wheel spin in 2nd. as i stuck it in 3rd i could tell it was going to drive good and straight so i didnt go easy on the 3-4 shift at all. i could see the afr guage at all because of the glare from the sun but we found out later that it was running very lean. 143.???mph was the locked 3 mile average so we had run better than ever before. we meet up with burly (vw fanatic and super nice guy that does work for hotvw and been going to bonneville for 30 years or something)on the return road and he followed us back to the staging lanes where we made a carb jetting adjustment before our next run. I was in the car ready to run and dad realized the window net rod which holds it in up top was gone. they looked for it then i remembered that i had opened the door and let the net down before I stopped on the first run. shit, its on the return road somewhere. so as dad and brent (pal from knoxville that came for his first trip to the salt)took off to find it burly asked what the problem was. they told him and his exact words were "I've got it!". they looked at him weird im sure and he explained that he saw it on the return road and didnt think anything of it and just decided to hold on to it until he culd take it to an official. so dad comes back with it and i light the fuse on our 1914cc naturally aspirated flat four. again it pulled HARD in 1st and 2nd. of course i really wasnt taking it easy either. shifting at 8000-8100rpm sounds great. I stuck it in 4th right at the 1 mile mark i think and held in it. last look at the tach was at the 2.25mile an it was pulling still at around 6500rpm. then it nosed over like a had dropped and ancor. i quickly clutched it and clicked the ignition. I could smell burnt oil but didnt see or smell smoke so i didnt hit the fire bottles. as I coasted to the return road the course official pulled along side me and asked if I had left and parts on the track. I lifted me ass out of the car and looked under the rear. I didnt see and parts hanging just alot of oil and told him that I though I kept everything i owed in the car just let out some smoke. letting out the smoke is the bad part. we towed back to the trailer where we found that it had broke a valve and bent the push rod and tube to the point that it wouldn't come out thru the head. our week was over knowing that the head was in need of machine work and not having any extra valves. next year we hope to be a little more prepared. but on the bright side we looked at the time slip to see that I was motoring along at 144.75mph at the 2.25 mile mark. this was great, it was on one hell of a pass! 144.75 in a stock bodied 1974 karmann ghia that i traded a four wheeler for. this little space ship rocks. we hope to be the fastest production class type one vw on earth one day.
