Kudos to B.L.

Good job by Brad Littlefield and great input by D.T, Bob Stroud, Bob Newberry and Murph McKinney on this weeks article in ND about stopping Alcohol Funny Cars. It can be a scary situation and there are too many chute failures in the AFC class. I noticed on the Pomona coverage on Bucky's run one of his failed to blossom. Good info.
Joe Percoco

 

I had a double chute failure two years ago at Woodburn, Or. Woodburn dragstrip is a little short in the shutdown area. I hit the levers, nothing happened so I hit them again, still nothing, so this time I bent them right over still no chutes. So I went to the brakes and the car started hopping. I let off the brakes to settle the car down and got on the brakes again. I momentarily debated spinning the car but decided to take it off the end straight. Thank god it is a grass seed field. It broke the lip on the front of the body and filled everything with grass seed. What a mess. I had to send the car to Brad Hadman to take the dimple out out the seat where my butt sucked air. The whole episode was my fault. I had installed brand new parachutes and adjusted the clamps on the cables. There are three clamps, I tightened each of them about half a turn too tight. The cables where unable to move in the sheaths. I never even tried them after I installed them. No one to blame but myself. Nothing wrong with my chutes or the mounting of them just my cable clamps. A lesson learned relatively cheaply. I wonder how many chute failures are the racers fault rather than the chutes or their mountings?