Well, all in all it was a great night for the Cageman/340king Racing Team last night. There were three significant things that happened.
First and foremost is that Cage and his little brother both were second in their features. At least we think Scotty (he goes by Scott, but we call him Scotty for the song "Scotty Doesn't Know") was second. We will have to see the official results. Second, I made my first appearance behind the wheel in 11 years. It could have been better, but it could have been much worse. More on that later, along with the most action packed two seconds of the night.
The track was miserable. Turns three and four were not any better than a plowed field and chalk dry. The amount of dirt/dust thrown up on that end was amazing. Turns one and two were hard packed dry slick and great to run on. They tried to water the track in a little, but it made no difference in the mod feature race.
The heat races saw Scotty looping it a couple of times. I didn't see how it all happened, but from what I could gather it was mostly self induced. With attrition however, I think he still managed a third or fourth place. That gave him outside pole for the feature. After a couple of getting started cautions, the feature was pretty good. Scotty went right out to the front and led the whole race to lap 12 of 15. He had a 5 car length lead and was just cruising along. Then caution. After the restart he pulled back out to a 2 to 3 car length lead. On lap 14, the second place car had pulled back up to a car length and did the old school bank shot. He drove it hard into one and slid up hard into Scotty. That bent the drag link and gave the car about an inch of toe in. The third place car made a move on the final lap and put him back to third. We did hear word that the track may make the call of rough driving on the part of the second place car that piled into Scotty eventually taking the win. That is the we need to wait and see what is posted part.
I went out for heat race one before Cage. I started dead last in tenth. It was a 30 car field of mods. Down from the 42 of a week before. We took our time getting laps in. It seems that about 1 lap in and caution. It seemed to take forever. I knew right from the start that I had something for the other racers. I could pull up on them coming out better than I ever dreamed I would. I was blipping the throttle on the starts to keep from running them over. After several more cautions, I find myself in 4th on a restart and get a good run in one and two and I am 3 wide for 2nd. I pulled the nose out of there however as that door was coming closed quickly. I settled into 4th again and started to work a line around the top of the groove in 1 and 2. I got a great run on them in the middle of the corner and ended up outside of the second place car, for a while. I got just little too high coming out and spun the tires hard, allowing the 5th place car to come up inside of me and putting me back. That was on the penultimate lap and I wasn't able to get back up for the battle on the last lap. So 10th to 5th in my first heat race back in my 15 year old car.
Cage goes out and I don't remember his starting spot. I think he was second or third row outside for the third heat. He gets into a great race for 1-3 in his heat. They were racing two and three wide all through the race with Cage settling for 4th on the final laps. He started 3rd row inside for the feature. I was back in the 7th row inside. I could see him the pits, but that was the last I saw him. The track was absolutely horrible in the feature in turns 3 and 4. Some cars were running the bottom and would throw their excess material up the track and made the going very difficult. News flash, this was my first night back after a long hiatus and I should have gone to the bottom to avoid this junk on the track. I didn't but Cage did. He worked his way up to the top five and kept running them down one by one. We went green about 20 of the final laps.
I was running OK, but it was very difficult to pass. I was faster than two of the cars in my group where I settled in at around 16th/18th, but couldn't make a move. As a group we were passing other cars as they dropped back, but we were pretty equally matched. Then one of the cars that started on the pole came back into our group and decided to make a hard right turn coming down the front stretch as I was going by. That put me off the track and hard on the binders. Then back on the track about 4 positions back. Now in another group, but I can feel that I am getting tired. I notice that I am fighting the car too much and trying to hold my body up with my arms against the steering wheel, so I started to relax and let the seat do its thing. I am not sure where I ended up, but I finished.
In the mean time, Cage has worked his way up to 2nd and is headed for the front. About that time a back marker takes him off the track, but he was able to pull back on without loosing any positions, but lost a lot of track position on the leader. In the end Cage came in 2nd on a very good run. I couldn't see him as he was coming up behind me.
I learned a couple of very interesting things about my chassis by accident. The front mounting bolt for the top link came off during the heat race. So I was a two link without a top link. The car ran pretty good. Had good bite and would hike the left rear up on the throttle. I run splayed springs on the rear with the left in front of the axle. This however killed the rear brakes for the rest of the night and was weird driving. But it would hook very good. Fixed that prior to the feature and lost forward bite......Hmmm. I see a pull bar experiment in my future. I also had something (rock, boulder etc.) pull the number 2 plug wire off, so I ran part of the heat on 7.
Now on to the exciting part of the evening. About 120 miles out of Mandan, I came across a group of deer in the East ditch. This was on the worst section of Federal/State highway in SD. About 150' out one of the deer bolts toward the other side, mine, of the roadway. I locked up the brakes and started to jack knife the trailer, it was raining and on hard hits the anti-locks will slide the rear end. The ass of the pickup went toward the ditch as the road has no significant shoulder. I let up on the brake and steered to the right to straighten the truck out as the deers head comes by the mirror about 1' away. The deer ends up getting between the truck and trailer and I hit it about 50 mph with car and trailer. It spun the front wheel on the car about 5° with a tie down strap on it. I could see in the brake lights the deer helicoptering off into the East ditch. I look and see that most everything looks good in the brake lights and carry on.
Well, I stopped and looked it over about 10 miles later; things were OK. I kept going and it started to rain again. As I was meeting a car about 80 miles from home, I hear a funny sounding BRRRRP. I look back and the car I just met is stopping on the highway. They turn around and start coming up behind me, but then stop again. I didn't know what they were doing and they didn't flash their lights at me so I kept going. When I got to town I could see in the street lights that I was missing a trailer tire. Apparently, when I hit the deer the wheel studs sheared off, at least some of them. It seems the tire came off as the other vehicle was passing me. I reported it to the police and have yet to hear if the tire hit the vehicle or what. I have a hard tail trailer with tandem axles that allows you to keep going with only one of the tandems. So that was my excitement for the night!!:king:
First and foremost is that Cage and his little brother both were second in their features. At least we think Scotty (he goes by Scott, but we call him Scotty for the song "Scotty Doesn't Know") was second. We will have to see the official results. Second, I made my first appearance behind the wheel in 11 years. It could have been better, but it could have been much worse. More on that later, along with the most action packed two seconds of the night.
The track was miserable. Turns three and four were not any better than a plowed field and chalk dry. The amount of dirt/dust thrown up on that end was amazing. Turns one and two were hard packed dry slick and great to run on. They tried to water the track in a little, but it made no difference in the mod feature race.
The heat races saw Scotty looping it a couple of times. I didn't see how it all happened, but from what I could gather it was mostly self induced. With attrition however, I think he still managed a third or fourth place. That gave him outside pole for the feature. After a couple of getting started cautions, the feature was pretty good. Scotty went right out to the front and led the whole race to lap 12 of 15. He had a 5 car length lead and was just cruising along. Then caution. After the restart he pulled back out to a 2 to 3 car length lead. On lap 14, the second place car had pulled back up to a car length and did the old school bank shot. He drove it hard into one and slid up hard into Scotty. That bent the drag link and gave the car about an inch of toe in. The third place car made a move on the final lap and put him back to third. We did hear word that the track may make the call of rough driving on the part of the second place car that piled into Scotty eventually taking the win. That is the we need to wait and see what is posted part.
I went out for heat race one before Cage. I started dead last in tenth. It was a 30 car field of mods. Down from the 42 of a week before. We took our time getting laps in. It seems that about 1 lap in and caution. It seemed to take forever. I knew right from the start that I had something for the other racers. I could pull up on them coming out better than I ever dreamed I would. I was blipping the throttle on the starts to keep from running them over. After several more cautions, I find myself in 4th on a restart and get a good run in one and two and I am 3 wide for 2nd. I pulled the nose out of there however as that door was coming closed quickly. I settled into 4th again and started to work a line around the top of the groove in 1 and 2. I got a great run on them in the middle of the corner and ended up outside of the second place car, for a while. I got just little too high coming out and spun the tires hard, allowing the 5th place car to come up inside of me and putting me back. That was on the penultimate lap and I wasn't able to get back up for the battle on the last lap. So 10th to 5th in my first heat race back in my 15 year old car.
Cage goes out and I don't remember his starting spot. I think he was second or third row outside for the third heat. He gets into a great race for 1-3 in his heat. They were racing two and three wide all through the race with Cage settling for 4th on the final laps. He started 3rd row inside for the feature. I was back in the 7th row inside. I could see him the pits, but that was the last I saw him. The track was absolutely horrible in the feature in turns 3 and 4. Some cars were running the bottom and would throw their excess material up the track and made the going very difficult. News flash, this was my first night back after a long hiatus and I should have gone to the bottom to avoid this junk on the track. I didn't but Cage did. He worked his way up to the top five and kept running them down one by one. We went green about 20 of the final laps.
I was running OK, but it was very difficult to pass. I was faster than two of the cars in my group where I settled in at around 16th/18th, but couldn't make a move. As a group we were passing other cars as they dropped back, but we were pretty equally matched. Then one of the cars that started on the pole came back into our group and decided to make a hard right turn coming down the front stretch as I was going by. That put me off the track and hard on the binders. Then back on the track about 4 positions back. Now in another group, but I can feel that I am getting tired. I notice that I am fighting the car too much and trying to hold my body up with my arms against the steering wheel, so I started to relax and let the seat do its thing. I am not sure where I ended up, but I finished.
In the mean time, Cage has worked his way up to 2nd and is headed for the front. About that time a back marker takes him off the track, but he was able to pull back on without loosing any positions, but lost a lot of track position on the leader. In the end Cage came in 2nd on a very good run. I couldn't see him as he was coming up behind me.
I learned a couple of very interesting things about my chassis by accident. The front mounting bolt for the top link came off during the heat race. So I was a two link without a top link. The car ran pretty good. Had good bite and would hike the left rear up on the throttle. I run splayed springs on the rear with the left in front of the axle. This however killed the rear brakes for the rest of the night and was weird driving. But it would hook very good. Fixed that prior to the feature and lost forward bite......Hmmm. I see a pull bar experiment in my future. I also had something (rock, boulder etc.) pull the number 2 plug wire off, so I ran part of the heat on 7.
Now on to the exciting part of the evening. About 120 miles out of Mandan, I came across a group of deer in the East ditch. This was on the worst section of Federal/State highway in SD. About 150' out one of the deer bolts toward the other side, mine, of the roadway. I locked up the brakes and started to jack knife the trailer, it was raining and on hard hits the anti-locks will slide the rear end. The ass of the pickup went toward the ditch as the road has no significant shoulder. I let up on the brake and steered to the right to straighten the truck out as the deers head comes by the mirror about 1' away. The deer ends up getting between the truck and trailer and I hit it about 50 mph with car and trailer. It spun the front wheel on the car about 5° with a tie down strap on it. I could see in the brake lights the deer helicoptering off into the East ditch. I look and see that most everything looks good in the brake lights and carry on.
Well, I stopped and looked it over about 10 miles later; things were OK. I kept going and it started to rain again. As I was meeting a car about 80 miles from home, I hear a funny sounding BRRRRP. I look back and the car I just met is stopping on the highway. They turn around and start coming up behind me, but then stop again. I didn't know what they were doing and they didn't flash their lights at me so I kept going. When I got to town I could see in the street lights that I was missing a trailer tire. Apparently, when I hit the deer the wheel studs sheared off, at least some of them. It seems the tire came off as the other vehicle was passing me. I reported it to the police and have yet to hear if the tire hit the vehicle or what. I have a hard tail trailer with tandem axles that allows you to keep going with only one of the tandems. So that was my excitement for the night!!:king:
