New Best Pass =  10.01 @ 136.67mph

New best pass was made on the first run in Gainesville on Saturday. Jerry Wroblewski met me at the track Saturday to program the automatic transmission functions. He modified one of my files and sent it to me to load before we met. The pass you see here was made with that J mod file prior to him even getting to the track. If I had gone 9s instead of a 10.01 the track could have kept me from running again. A very BAD thing since Jerry was driving up from central Florida  just to do this programming for me. So after he arrived he set-up his datalogger in the car and the next 4 passes I just ran the car to the 1000ft mark and got out of it to be SURE I didn't accidently run a 9 and get booted while he was tuning.

Jerry is a former Ford engineer that actually worked on the development and programming of the Ford Engine Electronic Control modules (EECs). He, for a number of years, toured the country tuning Ford cars by flashing the EEC with a new program to make changes in modified late model high performance cars. He later was one of the principals that started Superchips Custom Tuning Co. who is now one of the premier suppliers of Ford, GM and soon Chrysler tuning hardware and software. The man knows his stuff. I have the SCT Racer Pro Package which is the most powerful software package available for Ford tuning. Jerry, with his knowledge and software was able to make changes in my EEC that allows the proper loop timing to allow proper shifting of my fully automatic transmission. Those are areas of the EEC that I didn't know existed, much less had access too with my normal software. It was a pretty amazing thing to witness.

After the short "tuning" passes, I made a full run at the end of the day. By then the motor was heat soaked and the track had gone away some increasing my 60ft times. Even then the car ran a 10.1 at 135mph. Normally I would have expected to loose something like 4 or 5 tenths with those conditions. That being the case, I'm hoping for a 9sec pass in the VERY near future. 

Saturday was absolutely a blast and I learned a ton. The best part is still lining up my stock looking, full exhaust quiet, street car against these all out tubbed out, open header trailer queens. It's even more effective that I launch my car by "flashing" the converter. That means I come to the line and just let the car idle in drive with my foot on the brake. No reving or anything. Then when the third yellow comes on I release the brake an floor it. I know these guys with the 300 decible dragsters see me pulling away and the last thing they see is "BULLITT" on the back. It's all in good fun.  That was a Camaro I ran on the 10.01 pass. Not sure what happened to him! Maybe he thought the car broke?