November starts the Saturday Test & Tune sessions at Sacramento Raceway so we went out to do some additional testing with the new nitrous oxide system. The plan was to do a baseline, swap to the taller drag slicks and turn-up the spark advance to see if we could get the Cuda into the 12s.
With some "sweet-talken" I managed to give my son Allen a ride down the track. (The rule say "no passengers" for test & tune runs!?!) We baselined the car at 14.90, using the shorter DOT  legal T/A drag radial tires and no NOS.

Dan took the wheel for the next run and "wacked" a newer 'Cramero' with a 14.43 ET.

We swapped on the M&H drag slicks and hooked-up the NOS bottle, then got back in line.
Next pass was a 13.09 at 106 mph, hitting the NOS about 1/2 way through first gear

It was getting close to the end of the session so we "hot lapped" back to the staging lanes and advanced the timing 4 degrees. The next run produced a 1.8, 60 foot time but by 1/2 track the car started to "go flat" and smoke.

I got out of it and still ran a 13.80! We packed-up and headed home.
Once at home we pulled the sparkplugs to find plugs #1 & 2 completely burned-off and #4 starting to burn.
The bad news is that once the engine cooled, it seized-up solid, I would guess we melted some pistons.

Kinda bummed-out we did not get a 12 second time slip but we learned some stuff and had a fun day at the track.
We will swap-out this 'now toast' back-up engine and get a good motor installed over the winter. You can bet we will be more careful with timing advance once the good engine is in the car! - DD