retroblazer
04-06-2009, 02:15 PM
Jeff,the Tomato man, drove the first two laps. We started off in a small panic as the batteries went dead while lining up. There are two Optimas on board, so it shouldn't have happened, but when the ignition was left on when the car was parked that's all that we needed before we went scrambling for a set of jumper cables. Everything went well on the first lap and we finished close to the Pikes and the BC bronco. The second lap was more of the same except towards the end of the second lap before the power line roads, they high centered the truck in the silt and tire grooves. They spent close to an hour getting out. I took over on the third lap. Just a few miles past the start, my codog asked if I had the cooling fans on. He said the temps looked high. The h20 was at 235 f degrees. I checked the switch and it appeared to be on, but the detent was odd. I had a small piece of black electrical tape on my helmet that I keep in reserve in case I need to tape my radio connection and I used it to hold up the switch. We went another couple of miles and the temps weren't dropping, so we stopped and turned the motor off, only to hear the helmet fans. Dennis hopped out and grabbed a tool bag out of the door with a spare switch. I had the switch out of the panel and we swapped it out pretty quickly. Not much else happened until the end of the third lap when the black Bronco passed me. I didn't think there was anyway that they had gotten behind us, so I pretty much knew that I was being lapped. I wasn't particularly happy about it, but I tried to continue to maintain my pace. Before we went out for the four lap, my crew either checked or replaced the a front wheel bearing. As I went out for the fourth lap, I thought that we were in fourth place, so I wasn't concerned with anything other than a finish. I had no idea that I was that tight on time. Figuring that I was one of the last trucks that they let out for the fourth lap, I didn't think it would hurt to help someone along the way, so I stopped to pull a class 11 that had almost made it to the top a rocky/silty hill. That didn't take long, but a few miles later I came across the Chinese pro truck that was buried in a long silt bed. Same deal, I knew if I didn't get them out they were done. It took ten or fifteen minutes and a couple of pulls to get them on solid ground. It almost cost us a finish, as we went over time.
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