[Dave Muller]

Well, I had the Chevelle out for this weekend's AZ Stock/SS Assn. race at Wild Horse. The new master cylinder worked pretty well and it was nice to be able to stop with the engine idling without having to stand on the pedal. The pedal is still soft though. I did some bleeding and did get some air out of it, and that helped some. At least I didn't feel the need to pump the brakes. I'll do more bleeding soon, there could still be some in there, but the master cylinder bore size may not be right after all. When I upgrade to racing brakes for the front next year I may just buy a matching master then.

Otherwise the car ran pretty well, except for a problem with the neutral safety switch on the shifter. I encountered that problem at the scales after Q1, and only got it running again just in time for Q2.

I didn't get to use the 2-step, though I did try. I think I need to lower the pressure setting and the RPM setting both. I'll get more serious about sorting that out in a day race in October.

The car ran similar ETs to Fontana, a 12.57 best. This was at a 4000 ft DA.

The big surprise for me came up when I was laddered to race Ryan Smith's N/SA wagon in round one. I hadn't thought they did heads up races in this group, but it turns out they do. That was a big thrill for me as I had never had a heads up race, at least not where it's legal... (long time ago, empty country road...)

So Ryan was running at least 3 tenths slower in qualifying. But I don't really have any data on what would make my car faster and I wasn't really prepared to do any of the obvious things; I wasn't even prepared to ice down the intake. So I just added some weight to be safe at the scale, and headed off to staging.

There was a long clean up on the track at that point, but there was still no sign of Ryan until just before we ran. I started imagining all the things he might be doing to get those 3 tenths and then some and started to get a bit nervous. But I stuck with my plan to just make sure I was green (though my .086 was later than I aimed for) and made sure I was good on weight (15 pounds over as it turns out).

When we launched I could see him in my peripheral vision (his .006 light helped that) and for a couple hundred feet after that too, but from there I never saw him again. It was strange to not have a reason to look back as I approached the stripe! The final result was 12.58 to 12.93. And I had always figured that my first heads up race would probably leave me scorched by a missile from Nevada!

I went out in round 2 after staging a little deeper than I meant to. So while my .008 light looked good that added to the ET, and the car slowed a bit on its own as well, so I lost to Alex Kadar. But I had some fun including my first heads up race, so I left happy. I even got some prizes for best losing package of the round (only because the rest went red!)

I'm starting to get pretty comfortable in the car but the biggest thing I need to change on that front is to move the toggle switches closer to me. I have to loosen the shoulder straps to get to them as it is now.

Two more races are on my schedule for this year: the October 21 AZSSSA race and the Las Vegas divisional in November.