We arrived at about 1:00 on Wednesday. By the time we got through tech and registration and got in line it was 2:15. At 5:30 when they shut down the meet for the day we were 3rd in line. Oh well.

So yesterday morning we ran early. Susan was riding her S1, I'm crewing for her, my bike is still broke. She ran 175.0, which is her best ever. The salt is really good, not the best I've ever seen it but really good.

We took it to impound, all smiles, thinking we'd swap the plugs and the nitrous bottle and relax the rest of the day. Hah! On pulling the front plugs, I found both of them melted. The compression tester showed 30psi. Damn.

At BNI meets you only get 4 hours to work on the bike. By the time I figured out something was wrong, most of the first hour was gone. So for the next 3+ hours, it was wrenches flying. The front piston was toast. Pulling the front cylinder and head is a bitch on a Buell S1, without also doing the rear, but we had no time to pull the rear.

We got it all back together, tank on, and fired it with 7 minutes to spare. Sounds good.

Susan goes to make her backup pass here in a couple hours. Old record is 166.9, a record we set way back in 2003. It only has to live one more pass!

I took a bunch of pictures but forgot to bring the camera's USB cable. I'll post'em when I get home.

Go get em. Good luck.

Good Luck!!! Record is nice (actually would be great!) but a safe run is more important!
Enjoy and let us know how you do!

Well, the bike was inexplicably slow on it's backup pass. I still don't know why. I made 2 seemingly small changes, a very slight adjustment to the timing (trying to avoid damaging another piston) and a top off of the tank with some ERC A8C that was sitting in a can in my trailer. It wouldn't pull clean, just broke up the whole way down. She only managed 155.

I backed out those two changes: change to fresh A8C and put the timing back to where it was on the 175 pass. We waited in line about 3 hours and then tried again. This time it ran pretty clean and managed 169.9. So we took it back to impound.

The motor wasn't hurt, so I spent most of my 4 hour allotment doing preventive stuff. Mostly cleaning up some wiring, redoing terminals, and so on. The salt is brutal on wiring.

With about an hour of work time left, I buttoned it up and started it. It was idling awfully high. On a hunch I stuck a mirror into the carb to look at the intake seals. There was one pulled in. There's a story behind that, but I'll spare you. Let's just say I knew the manifold didn't fit this setup as well as it should.

So it was a bit busy there for the last hour while I fixed that. Got it all done wiith a few minutes to spare. The bike sounds perfect now.

We get another shot at our backup pass first thing in the morning.

Sometimes things go smoothly, other times it seems like you just can't catch a break. Oh well, gotta keep trying. If this stuff was easy, everyone would do it.

Sounds like your having an interesting time. Good Luck on the pass in the AM!

Aaron/Susan,
Way to go ... record just posted ... 173.067mph .... Joe

Well, on this morning's backup pass, the bike ran really well on the motor, but pushing the button made it sputter and shoot ducks. As the bike is geared to match the extra power of the nitrous, it ran slow again, around 155. Damn, this is hard!

Being the last day of the meet, they run backup passes from the previous day's qualifying runs, then a couple hours of qualifying passes, and then at noon they shut down qualifying and do backup passes again. Then the meet is over.

So here we are, it's about 10:00am, we just failed on our backup pass for the previous day's 169.9 qualifying pass, the bike wouldn't run on the nitrous, and I have no idea what's wrong. I've got two hours to figure it out and get her qualified again. We put it in line and I started working on it. The only good news is that the motor did not appear to be hurt.

On a hunch, I looked in the carb while I hit the nitrous (motor not running) and saw something odd. Nitrous and fuel were spraying out the rear injector but the front only had fuel!

So off came the tank and I started pulling fittings, trying to determine where the nitrous for the front was getting blocked. Trial and error pointed me to the injector itself. I got it out (it's a bitch to get to) and cleaned it up good, tested it off the bike and it seemed to work, put it back on, buttoned it up, and rolled her up to the start line. There's no way to really prove it works without running down the course.

Well, not only did it work, but Susan ran her best speed ever, 175.799mph. I picked her up and took her to impound for the third time this week. We got there about 11:00, an hour to do whatever we needed before backup passes resumed.

I changed the plugs. The motor wasn't hurt. Had to do some rewiring though, as the nitrous switch was broken. I just bypassed it. Bolted up a fresh bottle and was in the process of warming it up when we got called to the line for backup passes. Nothing like cutting it close.

By the time she ran, we had an 8mph headwind. She ran 170 and change, and as Joe noted above, the average was 173.068, against our old record of 166.953 we set back in '03. So we finally got it, and at the last minute.

Sometimes things go smoothly, other times you really have to work at it. This event sure made me work. It feels good to pull it out though.

I'm tired, will post some pics tomorrow.

http://www.aswracing.com/WorldFinals2009/piston.jpg

You know it's going to be a tough meet when this happens on your very first pass.

Ironically, the bike ran 175.0 on the pass that caused this damage. The piston was brand spanky new before the pass.

Fortunately, I carry spares. It was a rush to get the cyl and piston swapped out in the allotted time though. I also swapped the head, the one that was on there was damaged.

http://www.aswracing.com/WorldFinals2009/susanwaiting.jpg

This was just prior to her fastest pass of the meet, 175.799 mph. If you look close you can see the front head is silver and the rear head is black. I had Thunderstorms on it but my spare heads were a set of XB heads. So when I swapped out the damaged front head it got an XB head instead.

http://www.aswracing.com/WorldFinals2009/timeslip.jpg

She had 3 qualifying passes altogether: 175.0, 169.9 (intake seal problem slowed her slightly), and 175.7 (above). Since the old record was 166.953, all 3 of these qualifying passes were successful.

Unfortunately, the first two of those qualifying passes were followed by problematic backup passes. Not until the final run of the week did we manage to make a successful backup pass, a 170.0 into an 8mph headwind. Such is racing at Bonneville.

Random images from the meet:

http://www.aswracing.com/WorldFinals2009/DSCF2379.JPG
This was one of my favorite cars of the meet. How many Ferrari 308's do you see with a 2000hp 540ci twin turboed big block? Only at Bonneville!

http://www.aswracing.com/WorldFinals2009/DSCF2380.JPG
The Hammond family 300mph lakester

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Another view. beautiful racer

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Someone else taking advantage of the new APS rules for this year.

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A narrowed coupe, in impound.

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You are the man!!

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Congratulations Aaron and Susan! Awesome result! And with one Thunderstorm head and one XB head? Is this a combination that NRHS is going to be recommending from now on? :D

Looks like a lot of fun (and hard work). I like the Ferrari, but I suspect the people at Modena would be horrified to learn that someone fitted a "truck engine" in one of their cars. :laugh:laugh

You are the man!!

Thanks Dan, but you know better than anyone that this is a team effort. NRHS is much more of a partner in this effort than a sponsor. We work together on the R&D it takes to run faster than the competition.

Congratulations Aaron and Susan! Awesome result! And with one Thunderstorm head and one XB head? Is this a combination that NRHS is going to be recommending from now on? :D

I guess I shouldn't be giving away all my speed secrets!

Still, I gotta wonder, if swapping to the XB head helped with the piston melting issue. Maybe the bigger fins helped. The front cylinder actually had more compression with XB head than it ever had with the Thunderstorm, according to my tester, so the chamber must be slightly smaller. Yet the piston melted on the first pass with the Thunderstorm and then ran 5 passes with the XB and never had another issue.


Looks like a lot of fun (and hard work). I like the Ferrari, but I suspect the people at Modena would be horrified to learn that someone fitted a "truck engine" in one of their cars. :laugh:laugh

To me it's the best of both worlds. You have the outrageous horsepower of a twin turbo 540ci big block with the exotic looks of the 308. But you just don't see people do that kind of stuff to Ferrari's, except at Bonneville!