This past January I received my Grand Marquis back from Boost Logic after they installed a fully built motor. I have now put roughly 6,000 miles on the car to break the motor in a bit and \finally able to start thinking about going to the track.
I took my Turbo MGM to the track in April and was caught off guard on many levels. First I was suppose to go with a bunch of friends who go every week. I had talked to them the weekend before and throughout the week and they all said they were going, well Wednesday came and they were no where to be seen, so I went with my own crew. Luckily some of my great UIW students were ready to go with me and film the event. On the not so lucky side of things I was unable to obtain a helmet (which one of my car buddies was going to provide). However I did not see this as an issue as I thought for sure that my car would not be cutting times lower then 13.99. So we showed up to the track and to make sure that I would not cut times below a 13.99 I told my students I would just roll my car out off the line and see in general how it does. So I go through tech with Phillip James (one of my students) documenting the whole process and I go get in the lanes to run. Well sure enough someone 5 cars ahead of me breaks an axle at the end of the track and we are delayed by 30 minutes while they clean it up. So while we are waiting there I am looking around and notice that most of the cars there that night are either imports or trucks (I was surrounded by trucks). So when everything is cleared and I am ready to make my run the truck next to me is allowed to cut a car in front of me and I am now lined up against some huge dragster. So I notice a newer Toyota Tundra behind and I politely ask the drag car if it is ok if I run the Tundra instead. The drag car driver approves and lets the Tundra ahead. Now I am not very competitive in the ultimate sense, but when the Tundra guy pulled next to me I tried to say hi and he intentionally pulled another foot ahead of me and revved. So I pulled up a couple feet and said hi again. I told him I figured we would be a better race then the drag car and myself and he said something to the extent of “yeah… ok…”, as if he was just going to waste me. So he then asked me if I had anything done to my car, usually I am very forth rite, but for some reason this guy annoyed me and I told him nothing was done to my car and I wanted to see how it would perform on the track. My student, Phillip, who was with me cracked up a little and it was very enjoyable.
Now what is the problem with this story? Well if you remember correctly I was suppose to be setting up to just leisurely leave the line and dial the car in… Well it is time for us to stage and I go around the water box and line up. I figured I would just go when the tree turns green so I do not red light and give the car some gas just to see if I can keep up with this guy. Next thing I know I am going down the rack and see that I am going 90mph and no where near the end of the track, when I pass 1/4 maker I am almost hitting 110mph. Immediately I realize that maybe I went a little faster then I thought I was going to… I go to pick up my slip and the guy starts yelling at me that I need a helmet and I just ask “how fast did I run?” and he is like “you need a helmet sir you ran faster then a 13.99!”, I am like “Sir I have never run my car on the track before I did not know it was going to do this” and he is like “You have never run this car before? Sure…”, I tell him I am serious and ask him what my time was because I am so thrown off because I truly thought I did not roll out that hard. He says, “A 13.2 at 104.77mph, you need to get a helmet!”. I tell him ok and go to the weight station and weight in just for fun, without me the car weighted 3910 (I won’t say what the race weight with me was…). Just to note, the Tundra ran a 15.1 at 91mph.
When I got back my students were there waiting for me and we all laughed at what happened. Phillip got the run on video and we were all excited yet a little sad I would not be able to run again. Christian reminds me that I should have had my windows up.
Overall it was a trip to say the least. I had been wanting to go to the track all semester since I had just gotten my car back this past January. It was great to make a run with my students there, they got to see how the track worked and we stuck around for another 45 minutes or so and just watched all the various cars run. The best run we saw was a bike do a 8.8 at 165mph which wasn’t too shabby, the slowest was a Nissan Sentra that ran a 22.XX at 62mph.
I would like to first and foremost thank my wife Corina for all her help and support, Marc for building the Turbo kit, Boost Logic for building the motor, ADTR for supplying a large amount of parts, Ly of KC Automotive, my ACTLab and UIW students, Kuro and my brother Mike for their help on the build, Justin of Tuning Concepts for fabrication help, Brian of Drag-On racing for the wonderful tuning and the Crownvic.net crew for all their help and support.
I do plan to turn the boost up this summer, currently I am making 350rwhp and 400rwtq, I hope to up those numbers to an even 450rwhp/500rwtq, we will see 🙂 Stay tuned!