Congrats Michael Nogrady (da pinks car)

[TurboBabe]

Congratulations to Michael Nogrady. His sixth and final pass for his NHRA license runs was a 9.65 @ 139 plus!
Another licensed drag racer....he completed his runs today at Englishtown.

[FVC WE4]

Congrats Michael, WAY TO GO!!!!!!!!!!!!! your car looked like it was running great.

[whitecobra98]

sweetness...congratulations

[JCotton1]

Wow, what a weekend.... Once agaiin, it was fast and furious. We were all missing Lorrie, but sucked it up and did the best we could without her. Her preparation for the trip was huge for me. Once again she worked her butt off to get us out of the gate..The ride down was not the best, I needed to meet an NHRA tech on The Jersey Turnpike at 6:30am to get my chassis certified, meaning I had to leave the shop somewhere between 3:30 and 4am... needless to say, less than 2 hrs sleep, nite driving and rain do not mix well for me. To top it off, we didn't hit the road until almost 4:45..... 2 hours to travel 150-60 miles while driving a 36ft motorhome, towing a 26ft trailer...... with eyeballs that just wouldn't co-operate was not fun... Long story short, we made it, late, but Bob Nixon, the tech was kewl, he waited and took care of business.

Once we got to Etown, I was thinking maybe an hour powernap would help, didn't happen, just non-stop all day... I was not a good day for me, but I worked my through it and did the best I could. We had many customers to work with, not to mention my son Brian and Mike N. trying to make license runs.... My son got 1 pass in, but the workload we had was just too much for us, Brian stepped up to the plate and took care of our customers helping me tune and do whatever we had to do with more cars than I could handle. I won't go into detail, I'll just say we had planned to install a net in Mike's car, but when we began to prepare for the install, I realized I forgot the welder at the shop..... After an hour of trying to figure out where to find a welder... E-town came to the rescue and came up with one... thank you thank you!!!

I could write a book of how saturday went, but I won't I'l just say we made it through the day, lots of battles to fight, Claude car made it's first pass and popped all the way through 1st, into second, plugs were fouled out... Martins car took some time to wade through many details, I took the maiden voyage out and basically spun, not much usable data from that... Brian made his first license run in the Pumpkin, that was scary.. it wouldn't build boost at the line, when he let it got, it kinda dogged out of the box, before hitting like a ton of bricks about 100ft out... he ran it to the 1/8 before lifting.. Mike N, made his first license run.. flawless.. just like always, a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day.. Brian Lee and the Wagon, made a pass.. what we call a boost check run, Bob V made a pass, another walk in the park. As I sit here and collect my thoughts, I'm coming up with blanks... All I can say is it was a rough day, making it through it was all I could do with not a lot of positive stuff happening, or so it seems.. All I know, is there were many, many cars in Camp Cotton and I just wanted to go to bed and start fresh on saturday.. Maybe some of the other guys can fill in the blanks from saturday... I went to bed.... finally....

Sunday morning, I woke up at 6 am in the motorhome, at the track to a big ole forklift working next to the coach, moving wooden barriers, I felt good, made a pot of coffee, sat outside and relaxed.. I was feeling totally different than the day before, looking forward to what would indeed be a beautiful day at the track.. To sum it up, Mike N's car ran beautifully, he completed his 6 license runs, topping it off with a 9.65@139mph run on a stock block RPE bullitt... Next up, we finally got Martins car down the track with Martin running the Q16 class, winning his 1st round, before red liting in 2nd round elims.. his car ran excellent with lots more to come.. Harold Z ran super, getting a couple of warnings to slow it down... no cage.. yet.. he ran a 10.9, the slowest we could get the car was around 11.40.. still too fast for the NHRA rules. Chris from AE ended up flat out pissing Etown tower personel off and basically got thrown out for going too fast.... he's flying.... looks like a cage is going in on that one as well... Claudes car ran excellent, lots of power off the starting line resulted in lots of tire spin, no matter how soft he tried to launch. Ted H's street car, made several 10.0-1 passes with some good 60ft times and just cruising down the track.. I know there were several more I should note, just can't think straight this morning... Oh Ya!!!! Bubba Lee, the Wagon Master.... was working up to making a run at the 10 second club when "The Little Six That Could" decided it couldn't anymore... after many years of abuse from Brian, the motor had a major heart attack about 200ft from the finish line... resulting in catastropic engine and transmission failure. The crank came out the bottom of the motor, breaking the transmission in half resulting in Brian planning his next motor before he came to an abrupt stop on the side of the lane...

Hopefully, others will come in and add to the weekend we had as I just can't go into all the details... I'll just say a big thanks to all that showed up, the many customers I can't begin to name and mostly to my son Brian for all his hard work "taking care of business" he was awsome this weekend and deserves a big thank you from his proud father... there are many that pitched in with food, drink and helped in many ways, I can't begin to name. Someone brought to beautiful cheesecakes with strawberries, I think it was Greg, a bag of baggles also showed up, again thanks to all..

[toofastforyou]

wow!...what a weekend indeed!...We left Canada friday evening and were delayed over 1 hour just to get through the border...but after that, the trip went smoothly. We got to the track Saturday morning and unloaded the car and Jack came to check if everything was ok for the first time trial. For an unknown reason, the car stumbled and popped coming out of the burnout and I thought it would clear on the run nut it didn't. We just ignored any data recorded from this run and had to call it a day as there wasn't any more time left for time trials. After everyone left, we were able to take some beautiful pictures on my car along with Martin's car parked at the starting line with the Raceway Park tower in the background...Awesome!
Then on Sunday, I did manage to do a few runs with the best being a 10.75 and another one at 10.79 @ 127 mph!
Jack was very helpful coming to my car after every run I made with his laptop to check the recorded parameters and do some adjustments. Also, there was some great food at the "Cotton motorhome"...That was very nice of you and greatly appreciated.
When the time for eliminations came, I won the first run with a 10.78 on a 10.77 dial!......but I redlighted on the second pass...
Thanks again Jack and Brian!.. my girlfriend and I as well as my son and his girlfriend all had a great, fun weekend!

Again, thank you for everything!

Claude, Claude, Benoit and Audrey...

P.S: Congratulations Mike for that great run and getting your license!!

[BrianHynes]

Glad everyone had a great time! What can I say about Mikes car----wheww. Jack, you have patience and dedication with your customers way beyond words! Hopefully I'm in your future somewhere. My new slcks are mounted.

My weekend was not as nuts as you guy's, but it was busy. My son Gabe scored a goal and had 2 assist in the soccer tournament, and our team went on to win it all, while posting 2 shutouts.

[toofastforyou]

Here are some pictures my son Ben took this weekend...

Claude