Time to sum up the success at The Doorslammers and Main Event at Santa Pod Raceway! Below is a lot of pictures and text from both weekends!
How about that awesome time with friends and family, first five second round with our Swedish Self-Built Bad Ass Doorslammer, world record setting “House brick on wheels from hell built, driven, tuned and owned by the same guy” well that’s what they did say in England at least! =)
But first a little about how this season started… I have been quiet for a while now, due to I needed to take a break from racing and take care of work stuff that I’m way behind with….
It’s 4 weeks since me and Max got back to the Sjödin Motorsport / ÅBM Racing shop after the 2 day travel from Santa Pod Raceway, the first thing that amazed me when we arrived to Täby were we have the shop was that it was green grass and trees everywhere and I realized that the summer is here and I totally have missed the spring time… I haven’t even been home to my own bed in the last 10 weeks and the reason to all this and why I missed spring time was because the mess during the first part of this year… After last season I thought that 2019 would work out great for us but instead a total mess with 5 months delay on the paint job on the trailer that ended as a big joke when it comes to the quality on the result… And on top of that a crazy mess and way too much problems at work that really made my and my dads life way much harder than what we needed, but at least those problems are over now and we can start to work on a better future for our companies instead!…
But still, makes me so mad, sick and tired of the never ending story with bullshit talking shitty people…!
Back to the fun and to racing at Santa Pod Raceway, Monday this week it was 4 weeks since we made the second world record setting pass in the semi elimination round with our standard bore space big block Chevrolet with conventional heads that ended up with a 5.8813 @ 242.55mph or 390.35km/h on the 1/4 mile!!!
Crazy good feeling to first set that world ET record with 5.8929 in E1 and make reality of what I been talking about since September last year, and then in E2 repeat and improve with 0.0116 seconds the pass after, ridiculous is the word that many people might use but in drag racing this means a lot and also that the tuner knows what he does and that the car is consistent! Make a good pass now and then is something that everyone can do!…
Wizard tune on the way! 🙂
I was more than sure I was able to do this, I knew I had it in the car! The old record to beat was 5.898, and that was made in a turbo powered Corvette (that of course is better in the air compared to my brick on wheels) and that one also got Big Chief type of heads (and that’s cheating of course if you ask me) they did speed a lot better, I think it was 12mph more than what I did and I knew I won’t be able to beat that with the Chevelle so I never even did think about it. But the ET, funny thing is that I haven’t done anything to the motor since before the 2017 season, haven’t found a reason to update anything because I haven’t used all the power yet! Next funny thing is that I have made better numbers on 60ft, 330ft and on the 1/8 mile once before so I know I have more in the motor and better numbers are coming next year at the Doorslammers! 🙂
What’s even better on top of this is that a lot of people said this is not possible with my car, guess they are just jealous and wrong and I’m right!? Oh wait I did it so I’m right for sure! 😉 Hate to say I told you so!…
My tuning buddies! 🙂
First weekend, The Doorslammers and the class Pro Doorslammer! Awesome event were they did have a rule I like “Let the racing do the talking” and what I mean with that I like it is because this is not a place for all the keyboard warriors out in the world, just make sure you brought all you have and that it is enough! 🙂
First of all to this weekend I needed to take it easy and make baby steps when it comes to the tuning on the car, I didn’t have too much 1/4 mile racing experience and no good old runs to look at before this. And of course when everything back home at the shop have been a mess during the whole start of the year I never got the time I wanted to sit down and figure out anything more than rear axle ratio and some ratios to start with in the transmission. The rest of the stuff when it come to tuning of the chassis, fuel, timing and so on was something I started with first when we got to the track at Santa Pod… But the most of it are just logic stuff, after all I got a lot of experience of 1/8 mile racing and now I just needed to make sure to get the parts to run about 2-2.5 seconds more and survive it! We are a low budget team just trying to have some fun so I got just one motor that’s all, no spare crank, heads and fancy stuff like that so we simple can fix it if we hurt something at the track, of course I got internal parts like rods, pistons, valves, cam and so. But when you hurt parts in a motor like this because you are doing stupid stuff it will take a lot of parts with it and the weekend is probably over for you…
One way to solve that we didn’t got any spare heads was to fabricate a fixture to be able to service the heads and cut / be able to change seats at the track!
In Q1 I only wanted to make sure to get the car down the track and get a graph on it and I did, made a personal best directly with a 6.56@226mph and this was my first 1/4 mile pass since 2011, that’s 8 years of just making the 1/8 mile racing! It felt really good and it was fun to show my dad and Fast Freddy that I wasn’t afraid to keep the pedal down all the way on the 1/4 mile, they both said I wouldn’t, I said I will if it feels good (yes I could hear both of them in the helmet during the pass!…) I was off the throttle at 6.66 seconds and I was more than satisfied with the pass improving from my earlier one and only 6 second pass with a 6.81@195mph 8 years ago the first year I raced with the Chevelle.
Now it was time to step it up just a little but the Racepak did not work like it should in the first pass so I never got a drive shaft graph to look at and continue to work from so I just guessed on what to do and of course it was in the wrong direction… 😉 Q2 ended up with a 9.91 second pass that started with a crazy tire shake and I just coasted down the track!…
And then Saturday we never made a pass due to a lot of rain during pretty much all day, so that was all for qualifying, 2 rounds or one real round for us! Must say that I’m way impressed of the track crew at Santa Pod that did work all day so a couple cars could make some passes even that the weather was against us all day!…
Sunday and elimination day! In E1 we got a bye so I took it a little bit soft to make it all way down but still hopped it up a bit and made a 6.28@232mph and that felt good with a new pb again! In E2 I got some gear shift problems and could not get into high gear so I went up on the rev limiter instead, not with a bang so we did not hurt anything and ended up with a 6.35@195mph!… In E3 the transmission worked but now instead we did have some misfires from the motor but still we made one more pb with a 6.17@232mph!!! In E4 and the semi finals we made even one more personal best! Still with some misfire issues but what a way to end the weekend with a 6.04@229mph, never felt that good to loose a round before! 🙂 Congrats to Wulcano Racing Team for the event win!!
During the week between the races me, Sofi and dad stayed at the track having some vacation, servicing the race car and Sofi are lucky to have a job that she can do in front of a computer wherever she is so she was still able to do her daily work but away from home!
Second weekend, The Main Event and in the class Top Doorslammer but here as a exhibition class running on the 1/4 mile instead of on the 1/8 mile we are doing in Sweden.
Now I did have some good data from the earlier weekend so in Q1 I did put in pretty much the same tune l had from the last 6.04 pass and we ended up with a 6.11@231mph which felt really good to start the weekend with! In Q2 we made a 6.09@223mph but we got some misfire issues again and now I finally found the reason and made something to solve it!
The rotor tip did came loose… not good at all!
Now something big happened! THE FIRST FIVE SECOND ROUND FOR ME AND THE CHEVELLE in Q3 with a 5.97@238mph!!! How about that!?!? 🙂
Still ignition problems… but now they started really far out at 5.5 seconds… Q4 repeated with one more five second pass, we now got a real five second car and this time with a 5.98@229mph, and yes misfires…. Of course….
Monday and race day, time for eliminations! I now felt it started to be short on time to make reality of my plan why we went to Santa Pod, yes that world record thing…. I knew this might be the last round for this event so just go for it, time to use the motor! E1 ended up with a 5.89@239mph and that made it, we just made a world record with our conventional headed standard bore space big block Chevrolet!!! What a crazy feeling it was, I was screaming in the helmet when Sofi gave me the numbers on the radio when I was rolling down the shut down area, fuck yeah we did it!!! 🙂
Time for E2 and we were up against Mattias Wulcan, on the paper we are going to loose this one but everything can happen in drag racing, we got some rain after E1 and that made me go from a tune I did put in and made it slower because I was afraid the track would have changed too much, and the track was different, it was better… bummer!…. I was slower all the way to the 1/8 mile compared to in E1 but still we ended up with a new personal best again and one more world record with a 5.88@242mph, pretty good top speed for that brick also! What’s even better is that I know I got more to give in the car, 5.7? Next year! 😉
And that’s the worlds fastest Chevrolet Big Block with standard bore space and conventional cylinder heads!
So at the end we did succeed with my goal that I got planned already in September 2018 even that we got a lot of problems during the way before we even headed for Santa Pod and then we did struggle some during both events with small things but still we made a total of 8 personal best rounds, went the whole way to the semis during both weekends, qualified as number 7 of 23 cars or at The Doorslammers and number 4 of 8 cars the second weekend at The Main Event! All of this without hurting anything major or expensive, we made 12 rounds and 11 of them between 5.88 to 6.56. Just hard work and servicing the car and giving it the love it deserve and it will be fast and still in good condition!
Chevy power!!!
Felt kind of sad to pack it up and go back home again…
Thanks to Keith Bartlett for inviting us, thanks to the whole crew at Santa Pod Raceway for an AWESOME work with the track no matter what, it was drizzling, raining a bit, crazy rain and they worked all the time to make sure we did have a track to race on as soon as possible when the rain stopped, I’m amazed how good the track was all the time and I for sure enjoyed to be able to use my car and power all I could for once!!… And also, thanks to everyone that works with everything around at the track, safety crew, shut down area, spotters, speaker, timing crew, photographers etc, just awesome!
Must say also that I was really impressed of the crowd, all the English drag racing fans! You guys are just amazing, it was great to meet you all and I look forward to the next time already!
Thanks to our awesome partners!
First our own companies that makes this possible for us, Åkes bil & Motor, Birka Motorrenoveringar, Sjödin Motorsport Race Cars.
The companies / people below are the reason we were able to go to Santa Pod Raceway and do what ai wanted because they believed in me and my plan!
Micke, Victor, Andre, Putte from Clearwrap. Glenn from Sprinkler Resurs. Peter, Patrik from Rörmekano. Uffe from Winassist. Larsa from L.I Karlsson Transport AB. Tobbe from T.Grundström Plåtslageri AB. Björn from Norrort Fitment Custom. Kaare from Stockholm Gourmet / ICA Gärdet. Marcus from Loggamera. Jonnie from Jonnie Lindberg Motorsports. Jörgen from Lastvagnsverkstan i Smedjebacken. Peter from Pro Tools SnapOn. Erik, Micke from Bengtssons Smide. Johan from Swelube / Amalie Motor Oil. Kenneth from Swecomposite. Danne from Berga Lås & Larm. Johan from LSF Custom Paint.
Parts suppliers like Bryan at CP Carrillo. Trevor at Manton Pushrods / Rocker Arms. Rick at Alan Johnson Performance Engineering. Marty at Neal Chance Racing Converters. And much more!
Thanks to my awesome team / family, my dad Åke, girlfriend Sofi, Max the best a man can get, Mr and Mrs Monk Daniel and Elin that was with us during the first Doorslammers weekend and my cousin Marcus and John the snake that was with us during Main Event the second weekend! Love you guys!
Two weekends with champagne is not bad at all! 😉
