Getting Ready for Route 66
A huge thank you to Doug Marino and Carey Bales for quickly jumping into the team, knocking out several weeks of work in a matter of days and helping significantly improve BlackbirdX.
Doug got about 15 minutes of input from me Tuesday night and a little help along the way, did a bunch of fab work / welding and helped us make some changes that strengthen, stiffen the chassis and move weight. We might just get to the promised land of right at 2,650 lbs with more than the required 1,300 on the rear now, all while losing 40+ lbs and keeping all that in the rear. It looks great, on BBX and we are hopeful, will run great also
Given our tight time window, it started out as a multi stage improvement, and then, Carey just went after it, essentially taking out all the oid, then rewiring nearly the entire car in about six days, albeit very long ones. We chose to move away from the ARC system that had gotten us here and through a lot, and further simplify, significantly reduce the footprint and lighten things up with a solid state solution. Beyond that, the wiring layout and robustness was greatly improved, and while he’s determined to come back and further improve / refine, we are all blown away by how awesome it came out AND how quickly he made it happen. Joy, Happy and he enjoyed a tiny home rental down the road in rural Kentucky and we’ll be looking forward to them returning, watching the Wizard of Wiring perform his magic on the Demon after we all get back from testing / racing to the shop.
Of course, Keaton Vester provided much needed assist and as always continued to organize and improve the shop.
We are all packed up and rolling out, headed to a track to do some much needed testing just ahead of the Gerber Collision & Glass NHRA Route 66 Nationals presented by PEAK upcoming event.
We are excited to meet up with Alex Laughlin and some new to our team talent, then go see how these much needed improvements up our game. If you’re tired of seeing Chevys win Factory X races, you might imagine, sitting 3rd in points , so are we and we will all be working very hard to change that.