No racing this weekend

    A combination of events will keep the Cuda Beast in its garage this weekend, instead of hitting the track at Montgomery Motorsports Park for the season's last Southern Outlaw Tour race. The Beast's torque converter is on its way to PTC for some work, as Paul said the tolerances of some important pieces are off by a few hundredths, meaning they don't fit together properly. Also, chilly weather, at least by racing standards, has settled over the South for the past several days and will run through the weekend. That means a cold track and iffy racing conditions. Finally, Paul has agreed to fill in at his church this Sunday while the pastor is out of town to conduct a revival, so he was possibly looking at getting back home in the early hours of Sunday morning, grabbing a shower and maybe a couple of hours of sleep, and getting up in the pulpit.
      So, the Beast will remain idle throughout November, and then head way south to Bradenton Motorsports Park, near Tampa-St. Petersburg, for a big three-day race the first weekend in December. Paul said it will be a 9-to 10-hour drive, but the temperatures should be fine for racing.
     With 2013 winding down, Paul had been looking east for 2014, to the Carolinas at a no-screw-blowers series, but it just announced that it will cease operations after a 10-year run, and will hold its final race this weekend. Paul said there is another Carolina series that is a possibility, and maybe some races at Lassiter Mountain. Of course, the Cuda Beast team could join the pro mod technology arms race, but that takes gobs of money and thus is not something Paul can do without major sponsorship, as he's largely financing his racing out of his own wallet.
    We'll preview the Bradenton race after Thanksgiving. Have a great one.

Huntsville recap: Unhappy on the starting line

   The Cuda Beast's timing controller had bad timing in more ways than one at Huntsville last weekend. Paul and the Cuda Beast team headed to the Rocket City full of optimism, with the engine at full strength and backfiring problems likely solved. But the first test pass revealed that the timing controller, added when the Beast switched from a clutch setup to an automatic for this year, was not working. Paul said today he had been suspicious of it for a while, but Saturday, the suspicion was confirmed.
   The 4 seconds or so of a run are sliced and diced into intervals of tenths of seconds by the timing controller -- pulling timing out of the engine at the start to get the car off the line, and putting it back in at various levels for the rest of the run (that's my layman's understanding of it; hope it's reasonably accurate). It's hard to imagine that such tiny changes, happening so quickly, could have such big effects, but they do. Paul's controller wouldn't pull timing out at the start, so the Beast blazed the tires at the start, killing any chance of a decent pass.
    With the controller not working, Paul took a guess at the timing to get the car off the line -- timing it would have for the entire pass. No luck. The team passed up the first round of qualifying, readjusted the timing and went out for round two and blew the tires. They dropped the timing again for the third round, but again the Beast killed the tires.
    Saturday's racing wrapped up fairly early, so Paul said he set about trying to find someone who had a spare controller like his, an "8973."  In asking around, Paul said he found out that 8973s had fallen out of favor, and a new and less-expensive device, called a "grid," was now in wide use. A fellow at Huntsville had a rolling chassis for sale that had a grid, and he let Paul borrow it for the Beast. After church Sunday, Paul and the Beast went out for the final qualifying round with the grid, and took a stab at the timing, the lowest Paul said he has ever used at the start. The Beast spun the tires all the way to a 4.39, and the same went on in the second-chance race. Paul bought the grid controller, and is now looking to Montgomery in a couple of weeks.
     Paul said he talked with the mechanic for another team, who said Paul needed to consider one of two factors to get the car launched: blower boost or backing the timing off. Paul said he now has a boost graph to look at that is a picture of the boost for an entire run. He said he's inclined to leave the boost alone, and concentrate on the timing to get the car off the line. "We're not shaking the tires. We're spinning them," he said. "We have a mountain of torque -- we've got to harness it."
    So, Paul plans to hit the track at Montgomery as soon as it's ready, to get at least a couple of test runs before qualifying starts. If the Beast responds and hits its potential, somewhere in the high 3's, that meet will wrap the season. If the right combo is still elusive, Paul says they'll look for other races. "We'll go to Florida if we have to. We'd like to end in the 3.90s, and know where we are going into the next year."
    We'll be back in a couple of weeks to set up the Montgomery race.    
    

Back on track: Huntsville

   Car and driver are back in good health, mechanically and physically, so the Cuda Beast and Paul Gibbs are on the way to Huntsville this weekend for a Quick 8 shootout. Paul got a final check of his back yesterday and says he's feeling good, and he's optimistic that for the first time in a long time, the Beast's problems with backfiring are under control. After brainstorming with fellow racers, Paul believes a change from a less-expensive spark plug and the addition of a crank trigger to better control timing are the essential pieces of the puzzle.  He rues the false savings of the cheaper plugs: "We've lost a lot of money and chances at winning because of backfiring."
    The engine has been rebuilt, including a new No. 8 piston and new head gaskets to provide a bit more relief. It's basically the setup Paul was going to take to Orangeburg, S.C., last month for a race, before his back went out. That race was won with 3.9-4.0 times (screw blowers are banned), easily in the Beast's capability. That Carolina series, the Quick 8 Outlaws, could be where Paul races next season.
    But it's Huntsville this weekend, site of the Beast's last outing, which produced the best run of the year despite the backfiring and its related problems. The schedule on the flier above has been changed: There will be three rounds of qualifying on Saturday, starting at noon, with a fourth round on Sunday morning, and then eliminations at noon -- good, Paul says, as the nights now are getting too cold and too damp for safe racing. He passed on racing there last year at this time for those reasons.
    Not sure if Brian C. of promodifieds.us will be able to attend any of the racing, but check that site anyway, as information does tend to get out through other folks.