Refresher course

        The Cuda Beast will be at home in its shop this weekend, its engine out and apart. Even though it's a PDRA weekend, in Memphis, Paul says it's time for him to go through the 526 hemi and freshen things up, especially since he's going to reset the tuneup baseline and try some new things. "I'm going to need a good engine under me," he said.
      Based on a conversation with former top-team pro-mod tuner who is now working with the identical engine setup as the Beast's and is in the 3.90s, Paul says he has new strategy for programming the timing on the hemi to get it launched and fully powered all the way down the track.
     The Beast's best runs, a couple of 4.07s, came when the car ran a clutch. It has come close to those with the new automatic trans, but consistency and even lower ETs have been elusive. So, Paul is going back to the clutch tuneup that yielded the 4.0s, and starting from there with the automatic.
     The new engine plan involves starting out with less total timing than has been used, taking less of it out at the start and putting it all back in more quickly, after a second into the run. With the old clutch setup, Paul said the timing did not change during the run. From this new baseline, Paul said it will be a matter of adjusting until the car gets up on the tires and gets down the track -- and into the 3.90s.
     The Beast's computer tuning guru, Keith Dockery, has had a difficult recuperation from surgery. Paul said he will likely be in the hospital another week to 10 days, and then into a period of rehab.  Please keep Keith and Louise (Paul's sister) in your thoughts and prayers.
     With Memphis now off the calendar -- bummer, because I was looking forward to seeing the Beast in person as I did last year, but health, physical and mechanical, always comes first -- the next race will be another Open Outlaw Racing event, again at Huntsville on Sept. 12. At the last one, Paul qualified No. 8 with a 4.57 and smoked the tires in a first-round loss to top qualifier and eventual meet winner Rocky Flanagan, who had a 4.0 bracket car all day.
     The next PDRA event likely will be at Bradenton, Florida, the first weekend in October, and maybe the season closer at Richmond a couple of weeks later. If the Huntsville Open Outlaws race gets the tuneup nailed down, Paul said he might try another promodifieds.us Southern Shootout event, likely Sept. 26 at Atmore, Ala.