Tigges Talk - Lebanon Valley Regional - June 2023

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner

In our not so thrilling last episode, Team Tigges was forced to turn back from our first race of the season by multiple support vehicle failures. This past weekend had its share of challenges, but we not only made it to the NHRA Regional in Lebanon Valley New York, but we made it to the winner’s circle as well.

Over the last two weeks, the racecar never left the trailer, as it was all ready to go from our failed Maple Grove event. Mark forked over $2,100 to the Chevrolet dealer to get the DEF system codes cleared and the tank assembly (which was only a year old) replaced & Fred replaced & repaired the torn-off panel on the RV. The plan was to all converge at the track on Thursday morning.

Keith drove down from New Hampshire in his RV, playing highway hopscotch with me on I-495 & I-90 in Massachusetts. We got to the track around 11:30 AM. Dave drove his fancy new pick-up from South Carolina, arriving as predicted around 1 PM & we placed side bets on when the Tigges entourage would arrive, as there were delays in their departure from the plant in Holbrook. The Tigges arrived with Rick at 2:30 PM, making me the winner of the side bet as I had predicted between 2-3. I got a laugh and a smile for my winnings. We all rolled through the gate & Larry had us pit beside fellow Massachusetts racer Matt Gill, who lives right up the street from us.

For those not familiar with Lebanon Valley, it is celebrating its sixtieth anniversary this year. It is a throwback kind of track. I like the charm of it, the killer food at the concession stand and the fans, who truly love our team and always cheer for us win or lose. You really feel welcomed by the people here. The track, however, is not kind to our suspension-free Top Alcohol Funny Cars. The left lane has two bumps and the right has a longer ski-slope bump. These bumps serve to at best make the cars squirrelly and at worst upset them dramatically as happened to DJ Cox in 2018. DJ, who walked away from that one, has not been back to the track, and several other funny car teams choose to not come either.

There was a very short funny car field this past weekend, ourselves, Matt Gill & Wayne Morris who towed up from Pennsylvania. The dragster class, whose longer wheelbase cars handle the bump challenge better, was also short, with five cars in attendance. Lebanon is a close track for us, so we show up & deal with the bumps, on track and on the return road, which is horrendous. On the other hand, the french fries are triple bypass special. As good as they are, they were not as good as the steaks that Dave brought or the veggie salad that Claire & Ann prepared, not to mention the meatballs with Fred’s killer sauce.

One of the primary challenges for us at this event was that Mark, who is a really good dirt bike rider, had a crash at an enduro race just four days earlier where he suffered a wrist injury bad enough to require surgery with pins & repair of nerve & cartilage damage. His left hand was swinging a painful & incessantly itchy cast. He was a one arm bandit. Fortunately, his good hand still could manage the grill with his usual excellence. The strength of Team Tigges is the team part. Everybody is well trained and able to step in to fill the voids and adapt.

Keith stepped up the ladder quite literally during pit set-up, going up on top of the trailer while we put up the awning, then trained on manning the starter to fire the car. Since this was our first time out since last year’s main cap crack at New England Dragway, we fired the car up four times on Thursday to get the ignition timing set and to make sure everything was working well with the freshly built engine. Aside from a few minor leaks which were easily repaired, the car and crew was ready for qualifying on Friday.

Friday we got two of the scheduled three sessions in before the spotty rain showers turned into a late afternoon downpour that cancelled the third session. We ended up qualified second out of the three cars, with a 5.99/194MPH pass in the left lane and a 5.77/212MPH pass in the right lane, both of which were early shut-off runs. The bumps in the left lane got the car squirrelly and the one in the right lane actually got the tires off the ground, so Fred shut off, since unintentionally changing direction at 200MPH is never a really wise idea. We treated these sessions as test sessions, with all of the short numbers (the first half of the racetrack) improving as well as Fred’s reaction times. Up until the bumps, the car left smooth and straight which was encouraging.

The team adapted well on the starting line also, with Keith covering the starter duties & Dave helping to strap Fred in the car and lowering & latching the body. We also had the help of newcomer Mike Litz, who filled in the gaps and supplied us with hilarious stories of his work back in the day with the venerable Bob Newbury. We did have some challenges with air lines, one that caused Fred to loose his glasses during the first pass, and one that delayed the deployment of the parachutes. The car was happy & the numbers were going in the right direction. With the fields set for eliminations we serviced the car for the first round, scheduled for 11:30 Saturday morning. We would have lane choice.

I’m always up early at the track, doing something. Saturday morning I dropped the oil pan and Fred & I checked all the rod bolt torques & the crankshaft end play. With each fire-up the normal ‘new engine’ debris in the tell-tale filter screen was reduced, small flakes of aluminum & clumps of cured RTV being the sign of things breaking in properly. We got the car warmed up, waited for the call to the lanes & towed up to staging for the first round.

It was Rick’s turn to shine. Through all the noise around us he heard a small air leak when the timer management system had turned on. It was quickly traced to one of the Lenco transmission shift pods, which are engaged by air lines. I had the tubing trimmer retrieved from the hat tray in the truck into Mark’s good hand before he asked for it, and the same fate that we had in the first round of the 2014 race here was averted. In that race we qualified #1 but couldn’t answer the bell for the first round because of an unfixable pod leak discovered at the very same place in the staging lanes. This time the fix was quick and after the national anthem, we fired the car up and took a 5.74/255MPH full pass win in the right lane over Wayne. Given the short field, we were heading to the final against Matt Gill who had run a 5.58/262MPH pass on his single. We didn’t have those numbers but were still moving in the right direction.

We were scheduled to run the final at 4PM, but Paul & Matt Gill collaborated with Fred to get the track to run our final round before the second round of the dragsters, which moved us up to 2PM. We all wanted to be able to pack up and get back home on Saturday. We towed up under ominous skies & when the tree came down Fred left with an .032 light bettering Matt’s .078. Our right lane run was string straight & our best of the day, a 5.65/257MPH, turning on the win light much to out delight and celebration. Matt suffered an unfortunate rod failure at stage and amazingly still ran a smoke trailing 6.00/237MPH on seven cylinders. It is pretty amazing how much power these cars make.

The win adrenaline sped up our teardown of the pit, interrupted by the welcome quick tow over to the winner’s circle for pictures, our Wally and those cool Lucas ‘Event Winner’ hats. We were all out of the facility by 6PM, back to our respective homes. Rick & I went back to the plant in Holbrook to help load out & get the car into the shop. Getting home at 1:30AM I still had some trouble falling asleep, as winning will do that. All that’s left is the chicken dinner... thanks Fred!

Congratulations to Matt Cummings & the McPhillips boys for their long car win.

Our next planned race will be the Regional at ATCO in New Jersey the first weekend of August.

Chris Saulnier - Team Tigges
Mechanic Falls, Maine