The craziness continues

     This year’s unpredictable season found new tangents on and off the track in the past couple of weeks. Paul and the Cuda Beast team had to forgo last week’s Central Alabama Pro Mod Series races while the transmission was getting sorted out to try to fix the problem of the car rolling through the starting beams. Paul was in second place, just three points behind Tim Segars, who at the time wasn’t expected to be racing that weekend, either.
    Well, Segars did race and won both events, pretty much locking up the points title. Paul is conceding as much, and doesn’t plan to run the series’ last dates next month. (A possible driving job for Ron Stokes didn’t pan out, either, as Stokes’ regular driver was at the wheel.) Paul said the Beast’s remaining races will take place at Huntsville and Montgomery, where the team was headed this weekend.
    When I talked to Paul on Tuesday, he was checking the bottom end of the motor and awaiting receipt of  his repaired transmission on Wednesday. As suspected, the bands were bad, which meant the line lock wouldn’t work properly, but a pump on the front of the transmission was also found to have failed, possibly due to exposure to excessive heat. With the pump not working, that meant the torque converter was also not working as it should.
    After we hung up, Paul kept rolling the transmission woes around in his mind and thought to look at the torque converter, and saw that it looked like it had suffered some damage. He called PTC in Muscle Shoals, and they said they’d be in the shop at 6 a.m. Wednesday to take care of things, so Paul was immediately en route to Alabama.  I  got all this from Paul Wednesday as he was driving back from PTC, getting ready to put all the new pieces back in the car and head to Montgomery.
      While this was going on, Mother Nature, who has rained out events all summer long, hit the Montgomery area with a severe storm, and a lightning strike at the track fried most of the wiring and timing equipment, postponing the race yet again. Track owner Jim Howard says he hopes to have things fixed by the middle of next week, but no new race date has been set. The next outing for the Beast could be Aug. 24 at Huntsville, though there are other possibilities in between.
      Needless to say, Paul was really looking forward to Montgomery. The car has run more consistently this year, in the 4.20s even with the sick drivetrain, and Paul is confident that he’s dialed in on the engine tuneups. With the trans and torque converter both healthy, and the new Mickey Thompson tires that he says are the best he’s ever run, Paul says he wants to hit the 3-second zone “now.”
     When the race schedule firms up, we’ll be back.