Well they say practice makes perfect. In this case I was ready to run and felt very comfortable in the boat race light. I have never run the boat without batteries or gear in it and add the center steer change and I was a little worried I would have the control I wanted. I ended up just fine. Boat felt locked in. Unfortunately, I missed an obvious one that now that I look back the writing was on the wall.
After I replaced my cable I went out at night and made a few passes with the race wheel. It was faster than loaded, but off from what I thought it should do. I chocked it up to evening heat and thought I will run both props and see who does better that day at the race. In hindsight I should have realized something was off and went back and tested the other prop again, but I had too much prep and a work trip planned and ran out of time.
Race day was much hotter than I have ever seen at this event and my first pass was 7mph off from what I had been running earlier in the week. I pulled the prop and went with the wheel I had tested and set my best with and that one ended up 6mph off. I then ran a total of 11 passes and couldn't touch my best or get near it. I called and talked to Nathan and Jay at the race and we tried all sorts of things to speed it up but nothing helped. I pulled the data logger chip at the race got in my truck with the laptop and compared runs about 8 passes into the event and it was clear something was wrong. My 1000' times were way off. I thought maybe fuel, altitude, or heat, but some of my testing passes were in heat and the I was using the same gas used for testing. In the end I never got up to my testing speeds and ended up with third place 3 mph behind second place and 9 mph behind first.
I have run this event for almost 10 years (I have broke at the race or the day before...) and this is my best finish yet so I'm happy with it I just would have liked to have seen what the boat could do. I still had a great time at an awesome event.
Since my motor was off I decided to skip the second day of drags and go home and fish a tournament with my son.
After looking into the motor I found that my plugs are worn out and my gap was 0.054" not the recommended 0.044", the long idle fouled things up and that was the final nail for them. I have new plugs on the way and I bought a second set just to use for racing. If I would have thought of this I had a used set with me that were in way better shape than what was in the motor. Looking forward to better performance next month at the second race of the year.