HISTORY continued
I made my Super Comp (S/C) licensing runs at Idalou Motorsports in July of 2000. In the fall of 2000 we decide to go to the NHRA Division 4 race in Noble, Oklahoma. We ran S/C and if you ran the car as hard as it would run you could run an 8.90. This was the car I ran my first 8 second run in. 94camaro-19, 94camaro-20 and 94-camaro-21 PICTURES HERE.
The Seminole High School asked if I would bring the car up to school and make a little presentation to their Automotive Tech class on how mathematics and engineering are used in drag racing. NHRA supplied me with a short video and some trinkets to hand out to the students.
In 2001 my wife divorced me. Racing came to a screeching halt for a while. In 2002 I bought a Steve Schmidt big block and went to Dallas with my daughter and her boyfriend. Was racing in T/S and during eliminations I got out of the groove, did a 180 and hit the opposite side guard rail. The car didn’t roll but came close. I didn’t make fun of guys who had wrecked their cars anymore. Needless to say that set me back for a while. Sent the car to Bickel to repair and while there made some additional updates to the car and had it totally repainted by Jeff Hoskins with a Scott Brown design.
Ran the car a few more times with the big block but really wanted to get back to running a small block in Comp. Bought a used 304 Patterson wedge and decided to run a G-Force T2000 5 speed. Kept having problems with the shifting forks binding up on the shift rails. Even shot the shift rails out the back of the transmission during a burnout. Went to a couple of Division 4 events but kept having trouble with the shift rails. In October of 2006 went to the Fall Nationals in Dallas and the same thing. Shift rail problems. Got home with the car late Sunday night and pulled that transmission out and said it would never go in that car again.
Things at work got super busy and just didn’t have the time to race. I worked until January of 2012 and was able to retire after 34 ½ years with the company. I was super excited that now I would have more time to concentrate on drag racing. It seemed that I always had limited space to work on my cars so I decided to build a shop in a town near our lake house since that was where I planned to live after retirement. Bought some land but had trouble with the city on what I could and could not do on the property. So I found a building in another town near our lake house that was originally built as a hardware store. It was in shambles. Some people had climbed on the roof and cut through a skylight and cut all the wiring loose to sell the copper. They must have gotten spooked because all the wiring was cut loose but still in the attic. I bought this building in October of 2012 and spent over 2 years remodeling it doing a lot of the work myself. SEE SHOP TOUR.
After finishing the remodeling work on my shop and getting all moved in I now had several cars and engines. I had sold the Bickel Camaro and now I had a ’06 Bickel Cobalt, ’97 Haas Split Window Corvette, ’84 Ness Camaro, ’90 Camaro and a ’98 Bug. Yes a ’98 Bug body on a 2”x3” frame rail chassis. I had the 304” Patterson wedge (outdated), a 358” Lingenfelter wedge(outdated) and a 625” Steve Schmidt BBC (fresh but outdated). When I last ran the Camaro in E/A I was adjusting the clutch after every run. One day I had clutch dust all over me and was cussing about having trouble getting down on the passenger side floor to adjust the clutch and my wife looked over across from us where Tom Schmidt was pitting and his wife was sitting in a chair reading a book and Tom was dusting off his car. She asked why they didn’t have clutch dust all over them and I said they have an automatic and she turned to me and said “why don’t we have an automatic?” So I bought an A-1 3 speed automatic and I still had the Liberty 5 speed that I had bought after I said the G-Force T2000 would never go back in that Camaro.