AllStar Rug Doctor Dodge Challenger NFC Off-Season Report
Greetings. I hope your holidays were enjoyable, restful, and allowed rewarding time spent with family and friends. Ours sure 
were.
I thought I’d provide some insight to what we’ve been up to in our off-season. In the off-season, much of my spare time is spent reviewing our performance from last year and preparing for our next season of racing. All aspects are in consideration as our objectives have remained the same: an affordable, reliable and competitive program.
With the car as the centerpiece, the entire operation is under review of condition and for improvements, to include tuning, procedures, tools/pit configuration (storage, access), spare/replacement parts inventory, consumables, and transportation trailer. For us, the offseason started shortly after our return from the October World Finals in Memphis, Tennessee.
This being the second full season with the new car, it was time for a complete tear down and inspection. While it’s normal that we remove, inspect and replace many of the components on the car during the season, the focus is typically on the motor, clutch, and other mechanical systems. It’s a good practice to periodically take the car entirely apart to inspect, clean and recondition the items that aren’t routinely addressed such as the electrical, cable control, safety and braking systems. This also offers the opportunity to inspect and refinish the chassis since everything is completely removed from it.
Mostly you have seen numerous photos of the car in action and completely assembled. I’ll bet that not many of you have seen a picture of one of the most critical components of the car. The backbone or skeleton which affords attachment of every component required from the accelerator pedal, to the fuel tank, to the steering yoke, to the body and the parachutes: the chassis. See the attached photo. If you look closely you can see all the various tabs and holes that accommodate the component attachments but also you can see how the chassis also provides the structure to guide and transfer the generated horsepower to the track and provide the safety cage that will protect me should something go wrong.
Practice Helps Make Perfect
To be as proficient as possible requires practice individually and as a team. During the offseason tear down, we took the opportunity to practice some of our race day activities planned for next season. As an example, we removed and replaced the cylinder heads five times to improve our choreography and efficiency. As we look forward to next season’s competitive environment, there is a higher probability that we’ll need to make significant motor repairs between rounds and do so in less than 90 minutes. This will require each of us to complete specific tasks efficiently and without error.
IHRA’s New Race Format
Next season will be both exciting and present new challenges for us. The IHRA has changed the racing format for the 2014 NitroJam Racing Series. See the link below.
The new format incorporates a more traditional approach to crowning the weekend event’s champion to include qualifying and elimination rounds similar to the NHRA professional format. Each two day event will be based on a minimum of 12 teams that will establish an 8 team qualified field that progress through eliminations to a single winner. As a “rabbit” to keep the “greyhounds” in pursuit, the IHRA will post a $50,000.00 per event purse and season level championship points fund worth $100,000.00. The difference for us and our new challenge will be to perform on the track and as a team in a manner that produces sufficient times to qualify and then continued performance to advance through eliminations. Our portion of the weekend purse will depend on our performance. If we fail to qualify or if we lose during eliminations the weekend is over. This new and highly competitive environment forces us to be on our game in both tuning decisions and servicing the car between rounds. We are excited and up for the challenge but acknowledge that we will likely attend only 4 or 5 National events based on our current operating budget. We are not unique to this plan as several other teams plan to participate in a similar manner. To fill out our racing season we plan to participate in several match races in the Midwestern region. Hopefully we’ll be in a town near you.
At present the motor is at AMT Racing Engines for inspection and reconditioning. The chassis is cleaned, inspected and painted. New safety harnesses and cockpit padding is being installed. The ignition system and fuel pump is with their manufacture for inspection and refurbishment. Soon I’ll be ready to begin reassembly in order to be ready for our first race in March at San Antonio Raceway, San Antonio, Texas.
