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.........................Hooley's 2005 Bonneville Experience
......Click (HERE) To order a 2005 Tee-Shirt........
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This year Hooley (Loyd Huffman) drove west from eastern Oklahoma with his wife Wanda to Blanding, Ut.. John Kimbrough and his wife Brenda flew from Missouri to Albuquerque, New Mexico where they rented a car and went to the Grand Canyon and some of Utah's national parks before arriving in Blanding, Ut., where I live. A number of other friends from the eastern U.S. and Canada also arrived in Blanding a few days before we had to leave for the salt. We finished a few items on the Stude and did some sight-seeing and hiking to some Anasazi Indian ruins in the canyons west of Blanding and enjoyed each others company.
Wednesday (Aug.10th) Hooley, John, Wanda, Brenda and the Stude left for Salt Lake City so the wives could fly home. The rest of us made the trip up to the salt on the next day. The trip was about 50 miles longer than usual (487 miles from Blanding), since an explosive truck had blown up on our route #6 and we had to take the long way there.
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Friday morning we were in line to go out on the salt to setup our pits bright and early. We had to wait until 7:00 a.m. before they would let us on the salt. This picture was taken between the end of the road and the pits about 5 miles out on the salt.
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This would prove to be home for the next 4 days.................
We erected a 3 bay canopy between the vehicles. This picture compliments of Ken Tindall.
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After setting up the pits we got in line Friday morning to have the car inspected.................
The line looked real long when we got there, but it moved pretty fast and there were lots of other cars to look at. If you are there with a race vehicle most of your looking gets done in one line or another.
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.......................................................( Picture by Ken Tindall)
The line moved and we got through inspection with just a couple minor suggestions about safety related issues they would like to see us change for next year. The main one was that they would like to see the top of the seat fastened to the top of the cage. Now it is fastened at the floor and to the shoulder bar of the cage.
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Early Sat. morning we took pictures of the car and the crew. The main visual changes to the car this year are the hood scoop and the larger spill plates at the back of the car on the sides of the spoiler. John built the scoop and also made the frontend all one piece and flattened the fake grill openings so they were now flush with the front and not indented like last year. He then applied decals for the headlights and to make the grill openings look like they were still there. He did a fantastic job on the front of the car in a very short time period (Be sure and check out the construction pictures of the car for this year). Hooley enlarged the spill plates and also added a belly pan, another big job, and made other changes to the car besides the motor (also documented in the 2005 construction pictures).
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The other big change to the car took place behind that little hole on the hood scoop. The old 406 small block chevy was replaced with a new 406 with an 871 blower on top of it. On the dyno they could only take it to 6500 rpm (due to dyno problems) where it was making 700 HP and tons of torque. We feel this is around an 800 HP motor up at least a couple hundred HP over last years un-blown fuel motor. Also this motor is built where high rpms are no longer a factor. Last year with the cast crank we were limited to 6500 rpm max.. Go look at the construction pages for more info on the motor.................
Here is a picture of the crew that was on the salt with the car. Standing from the left, Alan Snyder, Ken Tindall, Mel Wilson, Sumner Patterson (your story teller), Jerry Pace (who supplied the new block), John Kimbrough (who did all the body work on the front of the car and paint), Benny Rhoads and his wife Lillie (kneeling). Left bottom, Patrick Melson, Jim Rivers, and "Hooley" Loyd Huffman (driver and car owner). Thanks also to those who helped with the car in Oklahoma, but were unable to attend Speed Week. Also a special thanks to Tom Burkland for all the help/advice he has given to us this past year. Also thanks to Daryl Ward of ADPRO for all of the decals on the car and the tee-shirts.................
This year they let us put our cars in pre-staging after 7:00 in the morning and before the mandatory driver's meeting. We went and got in line about 2 or 3 cars back from the first car, Hooley didn't want to be the first car down the course. Then we went to drivers meeting.
Sat. after drivers meeting they wanted us all to drive the course to see how rough it was and we were suppose to make our own call on running or not. It was ROUGH. Worse than I've ever seen it and the old timers said the same thing. The pits were rough and also the road from the pavement to the pits.
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After driver's meeting we moved up to the starting line. Last year we could pull the hood off of the Stude and insert a towbar at the front crossmember and tow it behind my '48 GMC. With the front of the car all one piece now that wasn't an option this year. I built a removable push plate for the front of my truck and Hooley put a push-bar with a roller on it at the rear of the Stude. Here I am pushing him to the front of the starting line.
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Here is Hooley suited up and ready to put on the belts and his helmet. The first car down the long course spun on the rough course and the other cars in front of us for one reason or another pulled out and they moved Hooley up into the next starting position. Not exactly what we wanted, but we weren't going to pull out.
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John is helping Hooley with the belts here. They are left loose and the starter comes over to the car and does the final tightening. John pulls the safety pins on the chute and the two fire bottles and shows them to the starter. After the car is started the data recorder for the throttle position sensor and the air/fuel ratio is started. Also the two on-board video recorders are started (one on the gauges and the other down course).
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Here we are waiting for the course to clear from the spun car. To start the car Patrick would spray gas into the scoop opening until it fired and started to run on it's own.
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...................................................( Picture from SCTA 2005 B'ville Coverage )
When the starter would wave us off I would push the car up to about 40 mph as fast as was reasonable and then Hooley would give it gas and engage the clutch and pull away from me. It was really neat to see him accelerate away from me and head down the course at speed. I would then angle over to the return road and head down course to pick him up and push him back to the pits.
We decided to make the first run an easy one so we could also collect air/fuel data and check the plugs. We were really worried about hurting the car with the blown-gas combination, which runs much hotter than the fuel (alcohol) motor we ran last year. Hooley still ran 173.310 in the first quarter of the 3rd mile. He averaged 181.183 in the 3rd mile and ran 198.043 in the 4th mile. This was all with very little throttle input. He didn't run the last mile since we wanted to check the plugs and so forth. He reported that the course was terrible. Last year the car hunted a little over 200, but now it just jumped all over the course and was "real scary" to drive.
The video/audio tape from the first run ended with an "Oh Sh*t, what a ride" from him alone in the car!!
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..........................................................( Picture by Chris Nelson )
We pushed back to the pits and tried to check things out the best we could. We got funny air/fuel readings from our data collector and the plugs looked a little on the lean side, so we changed the "pill" on the injection to make it a little fatter. When we checked things over we found that the new front springs had settled and the car was riding bottomed out on the stops. Not good on a rough course. We cranked the coil-overs up to get some clearance and suspension travel back.
We went back and got in line, which was real short as a lot of cars decided not to run. On the second run he ran 194.174 in the first quarter of the 3rd mile and 201.803 average for the 3rd mile. The car went sideways and he pulled the chute. Racing was over by then and we quit for the day. Our days were long from about 6:30 am to 7:00 p.m. usually.
Sunday morning after looking at the rear suspension if was discovered that the back suspension was also down on the stops. He has coil overs back there, but they are not adjustable. We pulled the stops out, but there was still only about 1/2 inch of travel before it bottomed on the top of the shock housing. We took some square tubing and welded it to the top shock/spring mounts and put a hole in it so that the top shock mount for the shock rod was higher up and that gave us about 1 1/2 inches of travel before it would bottom out on the body.
We had reports that the 4th and 5th mile were a little smoother, so decided to take it easy in the 3rd and try harder in the last 2 miles. He ran an easy 163.426 in the 1st quarter of the 3rd mile with an average of 171.426 for that mile. He averaged 185.810 in the 4th mile and 202.100 in the 5th mile with an exit speed of 212.311 at the end of the 5th mile. If the course was any smoother down there it wasn't very evident.
At the end of the run Hooley heard a "pop". Getting back to the pits there was oil on the front two plugs and a bad smell like rear-end grease, which is used in the blower to lube the front gears.
Monday morning we decide to add weight to the car and mounted about 100 lbs of lead to the car. Then when we tried to start the car it "hydraulic-ed". We found that more oil had leaked down into the cylinders over night. We pulled the top off the blower and found oil on the rotors and pulled the front. We feel it lost the seal on the front of the blower that separates the gears from the rotors. A call to BDS and it was determined that the blower had to be sent in to them and was non-fixable on the salt. Our meet was over and hopefully the motor was not damaged.
It was probably a good thing we were done. There was not going to be a record set on the course as bad as it was this year and we didn't want to see Hooley get hurt trying. I feel we have the horsepower to run past the current 231 record on a good track. I had a throttle position sensor on the throttle and was data logging it for all of the runs. Hooley was never over 25% throttle on any of the runs. The pill change never made any difference in the the air/fuel mixture, so it appears he was running on the barrel valve, which is like the idle and transition circuit on a carb. Believe me this car will run much faster than the 212 he ran on the one run. The most boost he ever saw was 3 to 5 lbs. and the motor was running 16 lbs. on the dyno. This is a good motor and I'm sure it will get him a record next year if the track is good and we get out there before someone else ups it..............You have probably heard by now that John Beckett lost his life on the salt Sunday in his competition coupe. Our thoughts and condolences to his family and friends. John's family, friends and the Land Racing Community have lost a good man.
We left Tuesday morning in the rain for home. That was also the last day of racing on the salt as a bigger storm moved in that night and washed out the rest of the meet. There were very few high speed records set and very few cars and/or bikes over 220 and no one over 300. More spins than I have ever seen and it was lucky no one else was hurt. In reality there was no way to setup a car no matter what the spring/shock combo to run high speeds on the course this year safely. Even though we were unable to accomplish our goal for this year we had a great time and we learned a lot more. We are still rookies, but learning.
Besides the pictures of the car on this page there are more on the SCTA site on Friday's page 2, Sat's page 2 and Monday's page 2 (which is a picture of the car being pushed off on Sunday). You can also find more pictures at Landracing.com's 2005 Bonneville coverage on their August 13th page 1 and page 3 pictures and their August 14th page 5 and page 6 pictures. We would like to thank SCTA and all of their volunteers for putting on the meet and Landracing.com for their coverage and their great site were we can all communicate with each other during the year.If anyone has any pictures of the car going down the course I sure would like a copy to post here. Also I'm going to put a video together from the various cameras we had with us this year that were on and off the car. So far I have just seen one of the in-car video's and it is not too good. The salt was so rough they vibrated a lot. If I have something worth viewing I will post here about the availability of a 2005 video tape.
........For The Car's Construction Story and Pictures
.............................................................( CLICK HERE )
................................................(Click here if you want to.......................................................see the changes for 2005)
