Muncie Dragway's Test & Tune Wednesday Night, August 5, proved to be entertaining. Ted Harbit e-mailed that he and Richard Poe were going with their R2 and R1, respectively, 1963 Lark Custom 2-doors. My brother Stanley was also going to be there with his 1967 Fairlane 427, now 425 HP with dual quads.Noblesville, Indiana's Riverview Hospital, currently Jim Turner's domicile while he recuperates, is about a third of the way to Muncie from Brownsburg, so it was good to visit Jim on the way across the state to Muncie Dragway yesterday afternoon. Muncie was running a full quarter-mile last evening, just as God intended drag racing to be. (A little editorial comment, there...)
It was good to be back at Muncie Dragway watching Ted and Richard participate; the first time I had been to the strip since Ted's May 9th "unpleasantness." (No, I was not there May 9th, either.) I asked Ted if they had a special, commemorative plaque on the new post holding the left lane scoreboard. He said, "No, but there's a pretty big pile of dirt down there, where they had to unearth things to get it back in position!"
Traction wasn't quite as good as the previous weekend, so Ted and The Stude Tomato did not post the remarkable, steady 12-second times characterized by his outing a few days earlier. Ted and The Tomato made five runs. Times were from 12.974 - 13.675. Terminal Speeds ranged from 102.55 - 108.42.
Ted's third run was amusing. He was approaching the eighth-mile on a good run when I noticed the drivers door having popped open and being held on the safety! Ted wasn't fazed; he unlatched the door, swung it wide, and slammed it shut...and still posted a 13.187 ET at 106.77 MPH on that run!
Richard Poe's remarkable, charcoal R1/4-speed 1963 Lark Custom 2-door remains what must surely be the fastest R1 in the country. He frequently gets into the 13s, but not last night before I left. He had made six passes by that time, posting ETs from 14.062 - 14.587. His terminal speeds ranged from 94.14 - 97.04.
However, Richard may have done better after I left: He was far back in line for another run when I left about 10:00 PM. It's 85 miles and almost two hours to get home, so I needed to head out. I called him this morning to check and there was no answer, so if you did better on that last run, Richard, please post!
Two items of Studebaker amusement were to be had during competition. The better of those involved not Ted Harbit, but Richard Poe. Richard's third run, to be exact.
To set this up: These were practice runs, where you run heads-up against anybody who happens to show up in the other lane, unless you've previously scheduled a grudge match. You might have a f*rt-pipe rice rocket in one lane and a rail dragster in the other, but the lights come down at the same time, and may the faster machine/driver combination win.
Most folks reading this will remember the black 1955 Chevy 2-door sedans featured in the movies Two-Lane Blacktop and American Graffiti.
Well, there was a clone at the Muncie Dragway last night. Kind of a combination of the two, a nicely-engineered, primer-black 1955 Chevy 2-door sedan, void of any exterior trim. The Muncie competitor was a wicked-looking straight-axle gasser, high all around and even higher in the front, with no front bumper and the requisite radiused rear wheel wells. Power was a 496" big-block Chevy rat motor with 4-speed, running through mean-sounding open headers and ingesting air through a monstrous hood scoop. And it sounded and ran good, too.
Now you're probably getting ahead of me, but that's OK...I'll tell the story anyhow.
So this gasser clone snorts and rump-rumps up i
We've got to quit saying, 
BP
(or, in this case, Wednesday evening...) [8D]
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