He already posted this over at Michigan Speed so I think it's OK if I post it here.

My brother took his 1970 Nova to US 131 on September 27th. He got one run in, and then the rest of the day got rained out. His run that day (with good weather but with the glasspacks on and letting the auto trans shift by itself) was 13.79 at around 98mph. He was geeked about that.

Yesterday US 131 was open for racing for all the people who had valid tech cards from the 27th. Basically it was a make-up day. Pete brought the Nova out again to make some more runs.

This time, it was open headers! He made 4 runs I believe: two time trial runs and two runs in the brackets. I was video taping but still somehow lost count of the runs.

He got eliminated in the second round of brackets by a red light start, and I'm not going to say how red he was because the lights were off. People who were cutting .5XX lights all day were hitting lights in the .4XXs in the brackets, so I wonder if something got screwey. Martin is a kick-@$$ track, incredibly sticky, but their lights have had problems all year. After his first run in the brackets, the guy that he beat came up to him and the two of them were talking about how they both hit the red (the other guy first) and how it was weird.

It was OK though, because by that time it was around 11:30 and we were tired and wanted to go home! (Stupid dragster spilled oil on the track and it took like 2+ hours to clean it up. Makes me feel better about the 30 minutes or so it took to get me out of the sand trap my very first time.) We also wanted to beat the rain that was purportedly approaching.

His best run of the day/night was 13.34 at 101mph with a .540 light.

That was in worse air than on the 27th, but with !glasspacks, !air cleaner, and shifting his auto trans manually.

He can give more details about his RPMs, etc. next time he comes in here. But he was incredibly impressed with the car, she exceeded his expectations wonderfully.

Now if we can only get him to M8....

 

Congrats to Pete on his new PB

 

Heh, thanks. It'll be sweet if I can get it to M8!

 

Nice runs Pete. What were the differences between your 60 on the 13.7 runs & then the open header runs?

"(Stupid dragster spilled oil on the track and it took like 2+ hours to clean it up. Makes me feel better about the 30 minutes or so it took to get me out of the sand trap my very first time.) "

Really, you went into the sand? I dont think I've heard about that one. Do tell!!

 

Check your PMs.

 

My 60' times really didn't change at all... 1.88 with the mufflers, and a best of 1.84 with open headers. I guess mufflers don't kill low rpm torque, just power in the midrange and higher.

I can't believe The Nova went low 13s! I was psyching myself up to be happy with anything faster than a 15 second run, and my first pass ever was a 13.79. I'm soooo proud of my car! Is it wrong for me to want 12s now?