By George Tsagrinos Vegas Volks roving reporter & VW Activist

Feb 9th 2007

Race season is starting sooner than you know it..... or so I thought. The Las Vegas Motor Speedway has started its late night sessions of " Midnight Mayhem" again. To those of you who are not aware of what this is I'll explain. LVMSW opens up its track to any and all who would like to drag race. The unfortunate thing is.....any & all do show up. It's reminiscent of the illegal races except the EMT's are on stand by, only two cars race at a time, and the lights are on. People bring a variety of vehicles to this event spanning from full street-legal race cars to Moms Volvo. The idea is awesome but the reality is tiresome. The stockers out number the racers 4 to 1. But I must commend the LVMSW, they do a great job of controlling this chaos, considering the amount of spectators & participants that do show. (350-400+ cars)

Knowing this event was on the horizon I decided to bring the 55 Oval (AKA "The Green Rocket")up to par and try and lose the 14.11 Sec stigma that has tarnished her since the Las vegas Bug in. Having not driven the car since Dyno Day in Nov I knew she would need a tune. I also decided to get her a little more "Track" worthy. I repaired and shortened all the leaky oil lines that have bothered me from day one, checked the valves, and changed all 7 qt's (yes SEVEN)of oil. I also removed the rear drums and had John at RC Trans drill and press them with full race exposed studs. I also had Aaron Gerber,also from RC Trans, check my Air Fuel ratios with his bolt on wide band Oxygen sensor. Thinking all was well I headed to Jeffe's, picked him up, and we headed to the track.

Upon arrival I sensed what we were in for. The event was scheduled to begin at 8:00pm, we showed up at 8:15. The line was at least 100 cars long, two rows wide, no exaggeration. We unloaded the car from the trailer,and took our place in line. ( For those of you who are about to talk some smack about trailering my car to the track........you drive this car 30 miles one way on surface streets feels like 200 highway miles)To avoid wasting all the VP C-12 Race gas, purchased from Nevada Off Road Buggy for about 11$ a gallon, we were pushing the car through the line. After a 1.5 hour wait in line we made it onto the track. With Jeffe in the Passenger seat we staged, and went. 1st gear went great, nice launch, not too much slip, and a good solid pull. 2nd gear started with a bang and went out with a sputter. 3rd gear, I knew we were in trouble. The car was lacking the pull I was used too. It was as if I was running out of fuel at the top of every gear. 4th gear........YAWN . I could have assembled a jigsaw puzzle in a dark room with my feet by the time we went through the traps.15.3 @ 85MPH On the return lane I could not get the motor to idle or clear out. Something was wrong and I just hoped it was not something serious.

We returned to the staging lanes to inspect the motor. With the motor turned off, I hit the center linkage arm. Instead of both carbs opening, the linkage was twisting on the fan shroud. Awesome!!!!!! Easy fix no big deal right, Wrong!!!! In my excitement and the additional prep work I was doing, I did not bring one tool. I'm opening myself up for some serious criticism by admitting all this. So Jeffe borrowed a crescent wrench from a cool guy (Sorry I do not know your name) with an 11 sec Black Grand national station wagon, plates reading DRA6ULA. Jeffe tightened the linkage only to notice the carbs were now out of sync. Steve Chambers & Chris Marsh were out there racing Chris's Subi , so Steve and Jeffe tuned the linkage as best they could with no synchrometer.

I should have packed up and left after the first run because the second was even worse. I wont bore you with details but it was slower than the first run. At this time, which was close to 12:30 AM, I was done. Let me tell you,there are few things more embarrassing than loading a 15 sec car on a trailer. All in all it was a learning experience. If a car does not run great on the street, it will not clear up on the track. I will never go to race at the track without tools again. I will also never attend a Midnight Mayhem again just because of the number of vehicles that do show up. Over 4 hour invested for 2 disappointing runs.

I would like to thank those who helped me in any way. John & Aaron @ RC Trans, Ron Jones @ Nevada Off Road Buggy,Dave @ Butches Speed Shop, the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Steve Chambers for helping me when I was broke .A very special thanks to Jeffe Angel who helped me pit & load & unload the car. Even with the bad times run on the track, it was good times with a VW and friends.

Here are some pics from that night. Clik on pics to se full size

Click here to witness the blistering speed of a 15. sec pass