Thursday, March 26, 2015

Saturday, March 21, 2015

2015 Goodguys Spring Lone Star Nationals Outcome

It was definitely the best decision to not drive the Mustang to Goodguys.  The weather was horrible.

My wife and I left the Holiday Inn Express for Texas Motor Speedway in the rain.  We waited in the car at the speedway for a while watching the weather on our cell phones and questioning if it would clear up.  The weather looked like it would clear in about 30 minutes so we waited.  Sure enough, it cleared and we started walking to the gate wondering how many cars were parked inside.  We paid admission and walked in to find most of the lots incredibly empty.



We looked around inside at some of the vendor booths.  Cars then slowly started to show up and we were able to look around,  It was quite a bit colder than we expected to we ended up buying a couple of Goodguys hoodies.  We stayed until around 2 or 3 o'clock and saw plenty of cars so it turned out much better than I expected when we arrived to an empty lot.

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Goodguys Preparation - Change in Plans

It has rained each weekend for the last several weeks.  I've not been able to drive the Mustang as I wanted in advance of the trip due to all the rain.  However, today, it stopped raining and I decided to take the car out for a 100 mile drive to ensure it was up to the task of driving up to Ft. Worth for Goodguys. 

The Mustang was very hard to start.  It seemed as if it was just not getting enough gas.  I checked the clear fuel filter just before the fuel pump and found it contained much less gas that normal.  There was so little, it really did not fill enough to even reach the line running out to the carburetor.  With a full fuel tank, I knew the fuel pump was the most likely culprit.  After all, it is now the only original engine part remaining since my rebuild. 

After cranking for a while, I was able to get the car to start.  It did not run well and the A/F gauge showed it running much leaner than normal.  I turned it off and started to consider my two options.  I could use a replacement style pump from a local auto part store in hopes of having it on the road for Goodguys or order a performance version from Summit and potentially pass on driving the Mustang to Goodguys.

In the end, I decided to order the better fuel pump from Summit.  I made the decision after checking the weather and noticing the chance of rain during the Goodguys show was 80-90% on both days.  I decided to go with an Edelbrock 1725 fuel pump rated at 110gph which produces a steady 6psi without a regulator.  The pump arrived the day before I planned to leave but it was already pouring rain so I decided to wait to install it until I returned from Goodguys.