3rd Annual Desert Diesel Nationals

Big Thumper said:
Rolled my own using some prototype parts we've been testing for our upcoming production kits.

Small differences - I'm using CO2 pressure to push it, and the nitrous controller to PWM the flow directly.
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Sounds very similar to the System John Robinson came up with two years ago. Uses CO2 and all.
 
Just got home, a little 2600 mile trip for me by way of Boise. Super event. Thanks to NHRDA and all the sponsors. Special congratulations to Shawn, I didn't think I'd ever see a 6.0 Ford go that fast. Don't get too cozy with that record Shawn, White Out is coming for it. Also special congrats to Trent Nell for running a 10.32 first time out for his Extreme Prejudice prostreet truck. Banks rail is awesome, I stood behind the starting line for their final pass and Wes was doing some serious driving. I hope all the diesel events that are held this year have great crowds and are as fun as this one was.
 
Big Blue24 said:
Max'd Out put on a great show as well. Here's one of the slowest passes but it was still incredible to watch in person! If any of my projects every ran 10.02, I wouldn't know what to think. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv-D0h4ausA
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After Trent got beat due to a faulty shift linkage and Arron broke a shaft who were the other fastest trucks in Prostreet, we just kind of eased up a bit and ran just hard enough to win. Truck was not running all that well, laying over at the 1/8 mile and we are not yet sure why. Lots of fun though.
 
i was one of the other pro street trucks, the only 2wd truck in the class. ran 11.3 only but truck was just built in last 6 weeks before event so am pretty happy with progress. Now time to turn things up and go for 10's
 
dieseldragster said:
Have fun there... I have ran that track in the past. Cool place. Retro. Did run a TAFC there and was a little scary. DON"T RUN THE LEFT LANE!
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Left was the best one for me. The one time I ran in the right, I broke out

YOUNG GUNS15 said:
I really liked the event! aside from the powerjoke staging 50ft early and destroying his torque converter and dumping tranny fluid all over it was fun!
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That was Garrett from Elite, and the guy he was running against started to stage and let out of it and I know that once I'm staged to that perfect point, I don't let out for anything!

rocracing said:
Yes we did and your fellow country man Mr Ellerton has the record , we are still traveling home and will get results up over the next couple of days
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Since when has your truck been red good sir?

Subman631 said:
Just got home, a little 2600 mile trip for me by way of Boise. Super event. Thanks to NHRDA and all the sponsors. Special congratulations to Shawn, I didn't think I'd ever see a 6.0 Ford go that fast. Don't get too cozy with that record Shawn, White Out is coming for it. Also special congrats to Trent Nell for running a 10.32 first time out for his Extreme Prejudice prostreet truck. Banks rail is awesome, I stood behind the starting line for their final pass and Wes was doing some serious driving. I hope all the diesel events that are held this year have great crowds and are as fun as this one was.
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Thanks for letting me borrow your floor jack at the end of the day!
 
rauautomotive said:
i was one of the other pro street trucks, the only 2wd truck in the class. ran 11.3 only but truck was just built in last 6 weeks before event so am pretty happy with progress. Now time to turn things up and go for 10's
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Watched your truck, it ran well, what's it weigh? You can run slicks in Superstreet with a 2x4 and one set up correctly would own that class due to the weight advantage.
 
i can't run superstreet because i have 4 linked it and don't have factory fuel tank anymore. I am going to get truck alot faster but we built the truck in just the last 6 weeks so ran out to time to do more to go faster lol. I have no idea what truck weighs still have to do that.
 
Just a little opinion from a spectator's point of view...

Take it FWIW... but mostly constructive...

It seemed to me and others around me like the track lacked continuous action. There were allot of dead spots, when the track just sat there. Empty.

LONG periods of emptiness.

Not even a tumbleweed race to keep us interested. Maybe it was the venue, i don't know. But if you expect this sport to grow, the track has to stay busy for the spectators to stay interested. When trucks were running, the action was great, but the longer the track is quiet, the more time a fan has to reconsider his or her time in "participating by viewing", which may result in an empty seat next year.

I'll admit I did not run in the "Test and Tune" category like I wanted. I was busy BBQ'ing ribs, chicken, burgers, etc. for the group I went with. But even if I DID participate and run my truck, it wouldn't have made a dent in the dead time of the track.

It would seem to me you guys need to consider something to keep the track busier... otherwise, people will not come back next year. People come out to see diesels running down the track. If the action is non stop, they are more likely to come back next year, and you will have a bigger fan base to build on.

Even if it's watching 14-16 second trucks race, it's better than an empty track from a spectator's point of view.

I don't pretend to know your business, but maybe enticing amateur diesel enthusiasts to participate to fill in the gaps between the "main event" would help.
The venue doesn't have to make it "free" for everyone to generate more interest to fill the track to get this... perhaps something simple like the first 100 Diesel trucks in "Test and Tune" run free would do it, and a lower price for all those after that would work.

It's just a suggestion, I'll leave the details to the bean counters to work out.

I guess we'll see next year if your strategies from this year yield you more or less spectators, or if this sport is destined to die on the vine.

Good luck!
 
wildcat455 said:
Just a little opinion from a spectator's point of view...

Take it FWIW... but mostly constructive...

It seemed to me and others around me like the track lacked continuous action. There were allot of dead spots, when the track just sat there. Empty.

LONG periods of emptiness.

Not even a tumbleweed race to keep us interested. Maybe it was the venue, i don't know. But if you expect this sport to grow, the track has to stay busy for the spectators to stay interested. When trucks were running, the action was great, but the longer the track is quiet, the more time a fan has to reconsider his or her time in "participating by viewing", which may result in an empty seat next year.

I'll admit I did not run in the "Test and Tune" category like I wanted. I was busy BBQ'ing ribs, chicken, burgers, etc. for the group I went with. But even if I DID participate and run my truck, it wouldn't have made a dent in the dead time of the track.

It would seem to me you guys need to consider something to keep the track busier... otherwise, people will not come back next year. People come out to see diesels running down the track. If the action is non stop, they are more likely to come back next year, and you will have a bigger fan base to build on.

Even if it's watching 14-16 second trucks race, it's better than an empty track from a spectator's point of view.

I don't pretend to know your business, but maybe enticing amateur diesel enthusiasts to participate to fill in the gaps between the "main event" would help.
The venue doesn't have to make it "free" for everyone to generate more interest to fill the track to get this... perhaps something simple like the first 100 Diesel trucks in "Test and Tune" run free would do it, and a lower price for all those after that would work.

It's just a suggestion, I'll leave the details to the bean counters to work out.

I guess we'll see next year if your strategies from this year yield you more or less spectators, or if this sport is destined to die on the vine.

Good luck!
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The trucks who are actually racing need time to cool down so they are not doing hot laps...

If anything they should have announced more that there were two lanes open for ANYONE that wanted to race there personal car for fun (test n' tune)...

The event seem to go smooth and i didnt notice the crowd leaving, and my friends and family seemed pleased...
 
I totally hear what you are saying, I felt the same way on a lot of it. Most of the delay was with the tower, they were having trouble with the laddering. I also didn't like the single pass thing they were doing when the truck who was supposed to be running dropped out due to failure. They should have matched up the trucks still running and if an odd number, have the fastest truck in the previous round get the bye.

I think the track was a bit over whelmed by the number of people who showed up. Needed way more food concessions than there were as well. Also the wait at the gate was way too long. Needed more than one gate operator for sure.
 
Subman631 said:
I totally hear what you are saying, I felt the same way on a lot of it. Most of the delay was with the tower, they were having trouble with the laddering. I also didn't like the single pass thing they were doing when the truck who was supposed to be running dropped out due to failure. They should have matched up the trucks still running and if an odd number, have the fastest truck in the previous round get the bye.

I think the track was a bit over whelmed by the number of people who showed up. Needed way more food concessions than there were as well. Also the wait at the gate was way too long. Needed more than one gate operator for sure.
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Well put!
I noticed the weird match-up's it seemed like for super-street and pro-street, i guess cause of failure's and not as many racer's in those divisions...
And I heard from friends that it took an hour just to get into the race!
Last I checked that is an insane amount of time just to wait for a one day race, speedworld needed more staff at there booth's out front, big problem on there part!

But all and all it was still a good first race of the year!
:tree:
 
The wait wasn't NHRDA's fault. The racers were in the lanes almost all day, just waiting.

The track staff had some issues. This was a track problem, not a NHRDA problem. With the number of people in the stands during runs, I didn't think too many people were mad and seemed most had a great time.
 
Hope my post didn't imply that it was NHRDA's fault. The track had control of the racing and they go strictly by NHRA rules and the computers do all the laddering and match ups. Had the NHRDA officials had their way it would have ran much faster. I think a stand alone diesel event is not a good idea anymore. There are not enough racers to full the track all the time and our events need to run with other racers. Have an open T&T that runs between diesel classes or something. You don't have to let the entire T&T lanes empty, just run enough to keep something on the track between diesel classes and cool down times. Oil downs were also a problem, not much can be done about that.
 
This was the first race that I remember that they announced at the driver's meeting that test & tune would continue all day (and be used as a filler during the later rounds). I thought that was a great idea. At last year's Medford race, they did that after the fact when the race trucks needed more cool-down time (and I thought it worked really well). Like mentioned above, I think the big delay was when the computer-generated ladder got all messed up, and presumably the track officials were all too busy trying to fix it, so they could not run cars down the track during the downtime. Stuff like this happens, and unless they had "backup" track personnel to keep running while fixing the problem, I don't see many alternatives. I know at Medford they did resort to offering free test & tune runs, and it brought out a surprising number of trucks.

Overall I was very impressed with this event, especially with the spectator turnout.

Regards,
Michael Pliska
 
Yes we had some downtime, if you think it felt long, try being in our shoes. We see seconds as minutes & minutes as hours. The issue with the downtime had to do with the computer. Speedworlds computer can only do one thing at a time, so if they are printing ladders for one class, they could not be in another class running. This would normally only be 30-40 seconds while it printed, but they also had some issues with how the ladders were being generated. We are working on ways to make it better for next year.

I want to thank everyone again for their support of the event & the NHRDA.
 
In light of information contained in recent posts, Perhaps this would be a solution: The venue (in this case, Speedworld) could maybe address the issue at the driver's meeting for Test and Tune participants that if the computers are busy... computing.. that they will continue to run trucks paired up, down the track without time slips, in the interest of keeping the action going. I know we all want the empirical data of what our trucks are doing, but even without that, we are all still getting the thrill of racing our trucks, some exposure to the sport and to the fans, right?
This negative could be offset by the venue by a lower or "free" test and tune program mentioned earlier. I'm willing to bet there are people willing to participate in this, provided they get a time slip once in a while...


The only thing I don't know is if the tree still works when the computer is "busy".


Another suggestion is perhaps have a "street race" class, where no time slips are issued, and the first one across the finish line would have to be enough, and use that for filler. If the tree doesn't work while the computer is computing, maybe a flag man to signal the start of the race?

Lets face it, some people just want to race, period!

ALL fans (People who pay) want to see a race.

I'm just throwing ideas out there to see if they wash.

I understand NHRDA had little to nothing to do with what was going on, and they were at the mercy of the venue in this case, but if they went to the venue with some ideas to improve track down time, I think the venue would realize the benefit of the investment. Especially if the event grew each year.
 
I like the old flagging idea, way we use to race. A suggestion would be to make it a part of all our races, called it arm drop grudge racing or whatever. Cars, truck, pit bikes, anything that runs would have to sign up before hand and tech for a nominal fee, mainly to make sure they are safe and not likely to do an oil down. They would attend the drivers meeting and pair up amongst themselves before getting into the "Grudge Match lanes." They would have to provide the stage guy their sheet stating what the race is all about, ie. you took my girl, my rice rocket is faster than your rice rocket, etc. This would go to the announcer and he/she would set the race so the fans knew what was going on between that paticular pair, Race would be flagged and winner would be determined by someone at the finish line with a walkie talkie back to the announcer saying who won and by how much. Much like they do or did on the old Pinks show. A good announcer could keep the crowd in it and would fill all the dead time.
As soon as the delay was over, clocks, computer, cool down etc. they would have to stop and wait for the next opportunity. They could race as much as they wanted if there was opportunity. It could be a lot of fun and bring more peeple out to the races.
 
Congratulations!

Congratulations to Wes Anderson & Shawn Ellerton on setting new NHRDA records!

Banks-National-Record.jpg


Ellerton-National-record.jpg
 
Subman631 said:
I like the old flagging idea, way we use to race. A suggestion would be to make it a part of all our races, called it arm drop grudge racing or whatever. Cars, truck, pit bikes, anything that runs would have to sign up before hand and tech for a nominal fee, mainly to make sure they are safe and not likely to do an oil down. They would attend the drivers meeting and pair up amongst themselves before getting into the "Grudge Match lanes." They would have to provide the stage guy their sheet stating what the race is all about, ie. you took my girl, my rice rocket is faster than your rice rocket, etc. This would go to the announcer and he/she would set the race so the fans knew what was going on between that paticular pair, Race would be flagged and winner would be determined by someone at the finish line with a walkie talkie back to the announcer saying who won and by how much. Much like they do or did on the old Pinks show. A good announcer could keep the crowd in it and would fill all the dead time.
As soon as the delay was over, clocks, computer, cool down etc. they would have to stop and wait for the next opportunity. They could race as much as they wanted if there was opportunity. It could be a lot of fun and bring more peeple out to the races.
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Exactly. All track safety rules would be applicable, stage them in a dedicated lane, so they could "Go" at a moments notice, and be stopped when the main event was ready again.

Hope to see it happen...
 
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