Hagerty Video: Can Our Street Freak 700hp Pontiac Survive 1k Miles and 4 Dragstrips?! – Tony Angelo’s Stay Tuned

Hagerty Video Transcript

– Welcome back to “Stay Tuned,” and we are on the coolest trip ever. Sick Week 2023, a drag and drive event all through Florida. We left cold Pennsylvania for sunny Florida in February, and we’re ready to rock. We’ve got my ’74 Street Freak Firebird and it all starts right now. – You, sir, are loved and hated by me. – Okay, a it’s good start. Let’s start with the hate part. – Doing a “Die Hard” test. – Uh… – All right, it’s time for our first run down the drag strip with my ’74 Street Freak Firebird. We are here at Sick Week. It is tech and test day on Sunday before the event. Everyone’s got their cars out. They just opened up the lanes and I’m ready to rock.

We’re gonna try to take it easy on the first one. It’s my first time driving like, a four speed stick drag car ever. So I’m excited, mildly terrified. Ready to rock. The butler motor’s up there making, you know, 600 wheel horsepower, just about. Got the old NASCAR T101 4-speed

And this nine inch outback and we’re gonna see what it can do. I’m excited. Hell yeah! That thing was getting ‘er! That was awesome. What! First run? Just ripped down the track. – All right, sweetie, I gotta tell you something. This is a warning. Do not roll your windows down when you’re on the track. – Oh, sure. – All right? – Yeah. Hell yeah. Yo!

First run, 11:60 on a very conservative everything at 117, 118 mile an hour. Awesome. Felt pretty stable. I was like, it really throws you back pretty hard. But man, that was sick. This car hasn’t been down the track since the ’90s, if ever. So we have changed every moving piece

And to line it up, launch it, and rip down, it felt pretty incredible. So I was like, so pumped, so pumped. And it shifts through the gears (snaps fingers) as quick as you can do it. So it was awesome. – You put a show on with that burnout. – You liked that?

I looked at Zach, I’m like, “Am I done? Was that good? I don’t know!” He goes, “You gotta do a pretty big burnout.” And I’m- – Yeah, I remember you- – A pretty hefty burnout, right? – Yeah. – Yeah. – I was like, I’m just,

They’re doing it and he’s just filming with his phone and I’m like, “Are we good? Is this good?” He’s like, “Yeah, it’s good.” – A lot less burnout. A lot more speed too. – A lot less burnout. Got it. I got it. – I’ll wave you. I’m not filming or anything.

And windows up. – Yeah, windows up. I know. – Look at this (beep). – Then pick it up. – That’s a wheel in the air, baby. We’re doing the damn thing. – Hell yeah. See this (beep)? That’s some air down there. – Wheels off the ground. – I stood on it and I punched it. It just- – You need more.

– Yeah. – Yeah. It’s too low. It just fell on his face. But I just let her go. – We’re on the right track. – I let her go. – Yeah. Wheelies, baby. – Yeah, we did a wheelie! Let’s go! If he wants to go.

I mean, it has a ton of tracks in. I’ve never done anything like this, but it feels like, like, I was like, bang! And then I immediately was like, “No.” It was like, not enough juice. But yeah, that’s something. – It’s doing the thing. – Around to say, yeah, it’s just wet.

– And they pulled the wheels up. – They pulled the wheels up, ran 11 and a half, 11:60 something. – 11:60 to 1:20. – Hell yeah. – Three mile an hour. – Nice. It picked up to the eighth too. Yeah. It’s sick. – There! – That’s sick. So what is Sick Week exactly?

This is the deal. There’s a few really cool events that have popped up in the last few years that are called drag and drive events. Essentially you take your race car, you go to a drag strip, you lay down a fast time, a bunch of other people are in your class

And then you’ve gotta drive the car with no support beside your co-driver from here to a track a couple hundred miles away, wake up, do the same thing, get yourself with this car to the next event. It’s super grueling, it’s super hard. There’s limited sleep, there’s tons of parts breaking,

Everybody’s kind of helping each other out as far as races go. You can’t have any support vehicles, you can’t have like a truck pulling a trailer, any of that stuff. The car’s gotta make it under its own power to every single event or you’re totally disqualified.

And it’s so cool because the deal is, you can take a super, super worked up car to track and set a fast time, but it’s not gonna idle and it’s not gonna cruise and it’s probably gonna break down and it probably doesn’t steer right, any of those things.

But that’s the beauty of this. These cars have to do it all and it’s really hard. But where did it start from? So this is the thing, back in the late ’90s on “Hot Rod” magazine, they started doing a thing called the Fastest Streetcar Shootout. And this was,

I think they were running like high eights, mid eights, brutally fast cars for the time. Incredible stuff. And the guys at “Hot Rod” garage set up a simple challenge. You had to drive 50 miles or whatever it was, you had to idle for a certain amount of time.

You had to drive from track to track and of course you had to lay down a fast time. So they set sort of the idea of having a really fast drag car that could also be a street car right then and there. I talked to Freiberger, he’s not claiming that event totally.

He’s like, he was part of it, of the creation of that, essentially. Then David had the genius idea, what if we had a huge group event with all of these fastest street cars and anyone who wants to come can enter? And that’s how Drag Week was born.

Drag Week was the first official drag and drive event. I think it started in 2012. It is gnarly. I’ve done it with Mike Finnegan a few times. We won our class in 2019 and it got me hooked on the idea of how hard it is just to make it through the week, right?

Like, it’s hard to go fast, but it’s harder, I’m telling you, just to get to every stop. To crew and to fix the problems and repair the car and stay awake and stay focused. It’s brutal and it’s fun and when you get it done, it’s like the best feeling of accomplishment ever.

So that’s it in a nutshell. Sick Week. This is year two for them. The first one was huge, this one is enormous. Talking 350 cars, 350 lunatics who’d rather, you know, stay up all night, grind down the highway, sit in Florida traffic than, you know, just live their regular lives.

So appreciate all of them and I’m super stoked to be here. – Sick Week day one starts right now. – Listen to this. – All right, so all the really fast cars have run. it’s now time for C group. That’s cars have run 10-0 to 1150. That’s where we are stuck. We’re gonna put down a run. We tested to 1160 yesterday

And that was pretty conservative. So we can go a little bit faster. We’re gonna just pack it up and hit the road. We’ve got more RPM in the launch on the two step and I’m just gonna let her fly, see what happens. Very excited.

Goals for the week, if I haven’t told you already, is to average, number one, get to every track under our own power and put it in a time slip, finish Sick Week. And then goal number two is average 11 seconds for the week and goal number three,

Which would be insane and we’d be thrilled, if we can get it to run a 1099 or better on the last day. We’ll put the party fully on it, we’ll turn everything off and let it go. All right. Two steps set at 4500 RPM. I’m gonna let this thing go.

Rev it up (hums) bang and hold on. Trying to find second gear clean. I’m excited. We really haven’t launched with any real aggression yet. Let’s see what happens. Just blew the tires off and I stayed in there ’cause I expected to do a wheelie and it didn’t and it just, (trills) it just ripped the tire up for a long time. First 60 foot at least. What do you wanna do? Less RPM? I could just drive, I could just drive one.

– Less RPM. – I’m sure I could just drive it myself too. – In just a few minutes. – I don’t care. What you wanna put in there? – I mean, I’d rather adjust the car to work every day instead of you trying to make it do it. You know what I mean?

– I got it. All right, well let’s do one more. Let’s get in line. You wanna get a 4,000 ship? I also can be prepared for it now to not just hook and I will back out of it and I can get traction a little bit, ’cause I went hard.

I just went bang and floored and it just spun. – At one point- – But we know it’ll take it at 4,700 or 40, whatever it is. 45. – Yeah. – So that makes you feel good. – Yeah. All right, go down with the chip and let’s try again. 12:25. Not cool.

We had 11:06 yesterday just goofing around. So I wanna like, that was when it was like, dead hooking immediately just like bogging and going, so we could go even better than that but I just, I was prepared for and in my head I’m like, “You’re gonna let go of the button here,

You’re gonna pop the clutch and it’s gonna launch you in the seat and just floor it and hold on.” So I just floored it and held on but it just spun the tire. But I was like, ready for lift off and it just didn’t do it, so. All right, that’s one. It’s fine.

Knocking in all the gears and did the thing. It’s fine. – 1188. – All right. I don’t know, it’s still spun. – This close. We almost had it! Close. – A little spin? – Turn some knobs. We’ll have her right where we need to be. – So I just dropped off our 11:08 time slip and that gives you the route, tells you,

Essentially every one of these cars are gonna hit the highway, start driving to Bradenton. But you have to turn in your time slip to make it legal. That means you have to run in class. You can’t go faster than your tech four. Once you have a time slip,

Hold on to it for dear life. Hand it to Tanya Turn on the third floor and then you get the route and that’s what keeps this whole thing moving. And then we’ll get ready for tomorrow after we drive what looks like about 160 miles, something. – Yeah. All right, let’s go.

– All right, so we ran an 11:08 on the second run of the day. We had waited so long to run that we’re just gonna pack it up and hit the road. Our goal for the week is to average 11, so obviously 11:08 gets us in there. We’d like to go quicker

But there’s definitely more speed in the car but we’re not gonna find it here. I want to hit the road, just start driving to Bradenton, put down some highway miles, cool off a little bit and see how it does. Just want to get to the next one.

All right, so we have gone approximately six miles, about three of them in the wrong direction. And the car’s seeming to run out of gas. We put five gallons in it and it is getting no fuel pressure. We’re on the highway. I just got a bunch of gas in my eye

But I’ve removed essentially this line we had going up to a filter and then back down to our pump. It was filled with a big air pocket, pulled off the tailpipes and swinging outta the way. And now we we’re gonna skip the filter for now, but it seems like we already tried it.

It has fuel pressure. I’m just running right from the sump to the pump on a pretty level line and we’re on the side of the Florida highway so I wanna get outta here. Just gonna fire right up. We’re gonna hit the road. All right, now,

Now we’re on Sick Week officially ’cause we missed the turn. We’re not gonna see any other racers. We’re like a mile off the route and we are on our own. It’s just us and a whole bunch of cows over there. Show ’em the cows.

– Yeah, we’re driving, all of a sudden, no power. It’s outta gas but it read a quarter tank. I fill it. We had five gallons. We put it in, no pressure, no pressure. Decide we gotta take off the tailpipe on the one side and level the line. We had the line,

The feed was going up and then down to the pump, creating like a big air bubble. It couldn’t suck the feed through. So we ditched the filter and half the line. I got covered in gas, I got it in my eye after we took the tail pipes off and it’s now very level.

It’s working. All right. So we have not made it to the first checkpoint. and we’re already completely disabled again. First time was ran outta gas, this time I think the fuel pump is dead. I think they’re related. I think we ran it dry, it then committed suicide,

And now we’re gonna try to swap it out. We have a spare pump. – Wow. – Yeah. Get it. Do I need to put extra lead on this? How long is it? – No, you’re good. – To the ground. Can the ground be six inches? – Yeah. – All right. Well, it’s been spinning and doing nothing. You know the motor is shot, probably. Watch your hair. – Hot warm fuel. – Wow, it’s hot. All right. – Hit me with that up. – All right, thanks. That’s a bet. – Yep. – This says that’s it. – Yeah. Fresh pump, got pressure. Guarantee it fires right up. – Woo! – Thanks, boys! – There we go. Let’s go. Sick Week, step one! – Oh yeah, she’s running now. It likes to have fuel in it. – Sweet. Checkpoint number one, we made it. Just had to change a fuel pump and run outta gas. So the deal is they give you places to be with your car. You take pictures of it, post it on social, show them proof. That means you’ve gone on the regular route

That’s like, you know, prescribed. – No, let’s get out of the way. Somebody else can do it. ♪ Take what you want ♪ ♪ But know that I’ll give it ♪ ♪ ‘Cause I just want you and me ♪ ♪ Do what you want ♪ ♪ We will find an answer ♪

♪ And I know we can work this out ♪ ♪ One more time ♪ ♪ Sorry for the hassle but ♪ ♪ But now you’re asking me to ♪ ♪ Baby come back ♪ ♪ Baby come back ♪ ♪ Come back ♪ ♪ Come back ♪

♪ No you can’t call it just a comeback ♪ ♪ If you come just to take it from me ♪ ♪ Gave what you want, now I can’t take it ♪ ♪ And I’m down on bended knee ♪ ♪ Say what you want ♪ ♪ Never give an answer ♪

♪ And pretend that it’s all my fault ♪ – After another couple hours of street driving, we arrived at Woody’s River Rue. The final checkpoint of Sick Week, day one. (upbeat rock music) ♪ Baby come back ♪ – All right, day two of Sick Week. We are outside the hotel.

We came here last night, we crashed out at about midnight or so with some very late night fast food that is not sitting well with me but we’re ready to rock. We’re here at Bradenton, which is supposed to be a stellar track. Zach, smoothest track in the country. – Apparently.

– Apparently it’s the smoothest one so we’re gonna hit it hard. We know the prep’s gonna be good. We have been dealing with this fuel issue like all night, not getting fuel pressure, finding a bunch of junk in the lines from the first pump that went bad.

So we are pulling the bowls off, which is not something we felt like doing, cleaning that out. I’m gonna take the regulator parts, see what that looks like, and just try to get ourselves in the best shape to go forward with a little bit of success and maybe go quicker than 11:08 today.

So here we go. ♪ Baby come back ♪ – What have you got? – Got some pump guts. – Okay, something. You’re dripping on the paint, son. – Get it on the paint? – Yes, you did. It’s all right. – What you got there? – We got a little pump remnants in the bowls.

– All right. Well, that’s not great. Hopefully it stays the bottom. – It’s very fine. – Yeah, I don’t like that part. All right, we’re gonna, I think, need a new filter. – Yep. – You’re gonna need to lay down a fender cover or I’m gonna karate chop you.

I’m looking right now, buddy. Honestly, it looks very clean. I’m just gonna hose her out and put it back together. I don’t see anything on here but it did, clearly was our issue when it went “tink tink” and then all of a sudden it picked up all that fuel pressure.

Yeah, this looks fine. I’ll just go through it, but man, this is nice. – Just a little blast. – Let ’em rain. There you go. – So big. – They’re flowing. They’re flowing. All right. Oh, you got one last one? – Yep. – I’m about six pounds now. – Hell yeah. – I flooded. That’s why I didn’t wanna spin. What’s that? – Jesus. – Yeah. – It is oil. – Beautiful. – It’ll work now. – Carburetors are back together. They seem to be working. We’re gonna fire it up and roll over to the track. Try to get a run in.

Top band’s making a little bit of noise maybe on this side, but we’ll run the valves tomorrow. We got a super long drive so let’s go get, if we get one pass, we’re gonna just hit the road. All right, let’s pack it in. All right. We’re at Bradenton.

This is track number two for Sick Day Tuesday. And we are ready now to make a pass. Ran 11:08 yesterday. Pretty solid launch, was a mess, spun both times. Couldn’t get traction. I think the track here probably is a little more sticky and we’re just gonna basically turn it down just a hair

And send it. So here we go. Thank you. 11:09 at 105. Damn! I just like, shifted early. I was just dying, so. – Throw plugs in it. – I think we can throw plugs in it, bump the fuel pressure up a little bit and see what it does. – Rocket flying around and we’re working- – 11-90.

Well, you know it’s something, but we can go, if we can put that launch with yesterday’s actual engine performance, this thing will be flying. – So I’m not gonna change anything. We’ll just do plugs and- – We’ll do plugs and take it back out. – Yeah.

– I think the launch is right on and I did baby it out a little bit but come on, it would’ve took it. All right. Freshen the plugs and hopefully there’s no more fuel issues and we’ll be all right. – They’re looking all right. – They look like they were pretty fouled

And then I ran ’em pretty hot so I think this is gonna help. Second run, here we go. – Turbo charge. – Probably dumb ’cause we already have an 11, but- – Right back around. – Wanna see what the problem is. – Closer to 8:50. – If it breaks up again,

I’ll back out of it. I want to see if it’s just some (indistinct). – Tony, I can’t leave the track and not get a picture. With you looking like this, brother. – Yeah, I love it, dude. (chuckling) – He’s got the chaplain doing it. – Hell yeah. – You got a Go-Pro? Let’s see that (beep). Just turning the boost down for the street. We put a little bit less stress on this blower and maybe the engine that we don’t know is in tip top shape just yet, so. So if by putting a bigger pulley on here,

It’s gonna spin this thing slower, meaning less boost, less stress on these engine parts so we can hopefully go through. We’re gonna set the valves, we’re gonna play with the carburetors, try to get this thing working right. – What’s up? – Waiting for our squad to call. – How you feeling?

– Like a million bucks. – Atta boy. Beck’s behind the wheel for the first time. All sorts of noises coming outta the engine and exhaust area. – It’s fine, everything’s fine. – But water temp is rocking at like 180.8. Good oil pressure. It’s drumming down the highway.

We’ve got like 8 million miles to the next checkpoint. We’re up against it a little bit on this one and we, like I said, we’re probably gonna go through the valves. I might clean those carburetors out. We got a lot of work to do. Anyway, let’s go trucking. Sick Week day two.

All right, so we parked the Firebird last night. It’s running erratic. We couldn’t get a good pull down the track, just pulled the valve covers off ’cause this side’s been super noisy. Found here, if you look, we’re looking at, this rocker’s about to fall off the thing.

It doesn’t look like it backed off. So I don’t know if we’ve done a push rod but we’re gonna pull it out now and have a look at it. We have a couple spare push rods, a couple spare rockers and we’re gonna get this thing back together. For the record,

This thing cruised happily 300 miles at like 65 miles an hour. We’re here, didn’t let us down. Do my official push rod and check her air? Yeah, it’s pretty damn straight. – It’s as straight as Cupid’s arrow. – Oh, I think the end collapsed. Or broke off, right? That’s not how it looks.

– Think so. – So not a good sign. I mean, it’s good that we found a problem. It’s bad that this much metal is in the engine somewhere. Couldn’t have just worn it down. Yeah, we’re gonna run through all the valves, so we’re gonna pull a bunch of these bad boys.

See what’s good. I think it just collapsed because it’s hollow in there. – Yeah, it didn’t break off. You would know if it broke off. Yeah, this one looks fine. – Oh, good. – No, I think it might either be from backfire or rev limiter or something. – Mm-hmm.

– That valve may be bent, I guess. I don’t know. We’re gonna slap her together and see what she does. Well, you did bring two spare push rods. I’m gonna drop one in now. I don’t think any other ones are crushed so we’re just gonna drop it in,

Change the oil, set the valve lash on all of them, which is something we want to do anyway, and hopefully it fires up and sounds back to normal. – All right. You want start running around? – Yeah, nothing else was crazy. None of the other valves were super outta whack.

But we did run through ’em all. It’s like it wasn’t running good and it’s not like you wanna find problems, but it feels good to find problems you can fix. You’re like, “Oh, that’s a problem, let’s fix it and try it.” As opposed to being like, “Oh it just mysteriously,

We keep working on it and it doesn’t get any better.” That is the worst. What are you saying, buddy? – I just need to pester someone when you’re available. – Oh, hit me up. – Mall management sent me out. Unfortunately, I mean, it looks like you’re doing detailing service or something similar.

– Detailing service? – Or are you doing mechanical service? – Mechanical stuff. – Oh, it break down or something? – It broke down, yeah. – Okay. That’s fair enough. – Okay. – No, ’cause they said it looked like someone was detailing their car, which is something- – I wish. – We don’t allow.

– (laughs) No, I’m changing push rods in the engine. – Okay, that’s fair. – And then we’re gonna go back to the racetrack. – More than understandable. – Thanks, man. – Gotta get the car moving, huh? – Like 300 people doing it. Okay. Fair enough, fair enough.

– Yeah, man, we shouldn’t be too long. – Oh no, no, you’re perfectly fine. Like I said, if you’re trying to get it moving, that’s good enough for me. – Yeah, we’re on it. Thank you, man. I appreciate it. What a nice guy. Wish we had some hats or shirts. – Yeah.

I didn’t realize he came up. I was down here going, “I don’t have anybody.” – (chuckles) It’s (bleep) up. Yeah, we’re gonna do a little tow and go. It’s one of the tie rod adjusters broke loose and it feels a little wishy-washy, so we’re just gonna check the tow in front.

Also, my calibrated eyeballs say, might be looking a little tow out. May have a little tow out in her. That’s good. That’s good. You there? – Yeah. – Right here, we got this drag length sitting on the tie rod. Let’s put a jack in on this side.

I wanna see where it clears up, please. – You want a lug washer? – Let me see if this will get over the shaft enough to make this rig job work. Yeah, I think that’ll do it. – Oh that’s nice. Yeah. This is not what you wanna be doing with your suspension,

By the way. In case somebody’s at home thinking that looks sketchy. That is sketchy. This was a scenario where you finally got the right drag link, the push rods weren’t right and then we really wanted to go racing. All right, we have the new push rod in and played with the front alignment.

We did change the fuel filter, hopefully stop some exhaust leaks. I’m gonna fire it up. I feel good about it ’cause we did find a problem and were able to hopefully eradicate all of our issues. If not, I’m gonna be elbows deep in those carburetors on the track. Sounds pretty good to me. – Sounds good! – Yeah, she’s sounding real good. Oh yeah, I think we might be in business here. – After nearly 300 miles of street driving and one intense parking lot wrench session, we had arrived at South Georgia Motorsports Park for day three of Sick Week. – All right, so we just got here at South Georgia Motorsports Park. I’s a really nice track. It looks very new.

People are definitely going fast. Track prep seems good. Pits are nice. We’ve got our car here. We just went through, changed the oil. I pulled the valve cover off ’cause Freiberger hit me up and he was like, “Make sure that thing is flowing oil.” It is. That’s good. Put it back on.

Change the oil, put the small pulley on, put the slicks on and we’re just gonna set the floats in the carb and hit it and see what it can do. But here’s the deal, we missed our run group already. C group ran this morning,

So their only chance we’re gonna have to run today is what they call “all call” at the end. It’s after all of the proper groups run, they give everybody that’s still hanging around one more shot just to get out there. Likely not enough time for even two runs.

So we’re really like, betting it all. It goes down, runs something halfway decent. We’re probably gonna be stuck with whatever it runs. So I’m basically just gonna give it a big kiss, couple words of encouragement and just send it and see what happens. So fingers are crossed. – Well, we’ll take it.

– All right, well, it’s still nosing over at the top. Not quite as bad. It went 110 in a quarter. So I think we have a fueling issue, but at least the engine seems better. I don’t wanna run it again and risk it. Our goal is to run 11 for the week.

This is 12.1 seconds, so our average is probably still just cresting in the 11ths. I think that the smart move is pack up, get on the road, get to the hotel, tear these carburetors apart, maybe change the regulator in the morning and keep on rocking. – Not over there.

– Lining up late tonight. – I got pizza, of course I got pizza. Let’s go. – Got the track! – Track-side, Georgia South Motorsports Park. Hi! Let’s give her a bite. – Go down the right side. Top end for Gil, 9:41 at 154 miles. – Honestly not bad. – Take it.

– Could it stand up at home? Probably not. But side of the track in Georgia, I’ll take it. – Yeah, we’re in Georgia. – Rolled out of Georgia to find another Sick Weeker broke down. This was a sweet ’55 Chevy running a 250 cubic inch inline six cylinder with full modern engine management and turbocharger. Turns out that guy was dealing with the same sort of fuel starvation and fuel pressure issues that we were.

So we gave him a quick once-over, he had a spare, we were sure he was good to go. And we hit the road. We just hit Ol’ Bubba’s handguns and, handguns and I think it was lace underwear. I don’t remember what they said. They sold life size alligator statues made outta rubber for fight practice and yeah, also for sex practice. Anyway, we’re still having a fuel delivery issue.

We’re putting the gas we have in it in it. So at least now we got something in the tank. We’re going right to KSR 60. We’re going to KSR, that’s the second checkpoint. But also our boy Kevin at KSR Performance is gonna let us throw this on the dyno

And hopefully get this thing figured out and making horsepower again. As we can tell. You know, I just gave it a little gas out of the crawdad shack and it like- – It slipped off the clutch. – Yeah, it felt good for a second and then it stopped like, running altogether.

So we’re clearly having, I think it’s fuel delivery, so it’s pump regulator, whatever it is. We’re gonna try to figure it out. We made it about another 40 miles and we had no fuel pressure again. So we tried all sorts of banging on parts and loosening them and tightening them, screaming and swearing and doing whatever we could just to get back on the road and it finally seemed to work.

All right, so adjust your wrench, bang on that thing and jump in. – You think? – Yeah. Right by the dumpster or- (screaming) – That’s fine. Oh boy. Quite a scene you got going on here. (chuckles) But yeah, we get that in, then we get at least thrown on a dyno and see with fuel pressure, if it tunes right, everything is right. – Yeah, you’ll have to use the dyno lift. ‘Cause all the other ones- – That’s perfect anyway.

– Yeah, it works out really good. – Perfect. All right, thanks buddy. These headers, I thought it was not installed. I thought like, someone just laid, like, a motorcycle header on top. I didn’t even notice what I was looking at. – Oh. – That’s wild. We are at, we just got to KSR.

This is Kevin Smith Racing. I spent a week here putting a 2J in an old charger with Finnegan. Super cool shop. Kevin is crazy knowledgeable and a super good fabricator. So he’s got a dyno. We’re gonna throw our car up on the dyno. We just broke down twice in the last five miles.

Still fuel delivery issues. He’s got a pump we can use. We ordered some stuff for tomorrow but the idea is this. One way or another, get this thing to hold seven PSI fuel pressure and run on the dyno so we know the tune is good and then if we have to change

The pump or filter or whatever tomorrow, we can do it knowing once that happens, this thing’s gonna rip. That’s the plan. And honestly like, we’ll just put the party pulley on it and run seven pounds. I’m ready to just go. – I love it. – Yeah, I think we just send it.

We’ll send it. – You like that plan, Timmy? – I love that. – Or like, we could try. – You too. – So what you wanna do with this thing? – I think. – I guess I stopped at the (indistinct). – No filters. – We got rid of the pre-filter ’cause the pre-filter, this line used to go up when we decided to put tailpipes on it

And like, the filter was up here and so it was just a, it was just killing it. – No gravity feed. – So now we’ll put yours in. At least for now. I have one coming tomorrow but like I said, I just wanna get on the dyno. So we’ll put yours on.

– Does it got a regulator up front? – It does, yeah. – Okay. – Yeah, I assume it would with that thing on there. – Yeah, we’ll just start there. – Ooh. Whoever put that in there, really strong. – All nine. – Probably super handsome. – It was me. I did it.

Yeah, in a parking lot somewhere. – Kevin has a holly black pump. This is an old school pump. It’s a little bit happier. It gets to ingest any garbage from our tank and we’re gonna throw it in and see what it does. It should be enough. Essentially the goal is

To get this thing to hold fuel pressure, run on the dyno, and make sure we’re making the kind of power we want to be making and if not, if we have to pull carburetors apart and clean ’em out, rebuild them, whatever’s gonna happen.

Just so we know that this thing has that low 11, maybe high 10 seconds pass in it. We get to see it this week. – Alright, you ready to have some fun? – Hit me with a zip tie for here. – A zip tie? We don’t have one of those with us.

Beat my record. – Oh, (beep)! (men chuckling) – Could have moved the bucket, maybe. – Hold it, I didn’t know I was supposed to do that. Get it on the thread. – I’m (bleep) trying, dog. (men laughing) – It’s fine. Everything’s, yeah, probably. – Not now, dog. – Leave the lighter alone.

– All right. There it is. – Not bad. It’s the 15th time I’ve taken a gasoline shower since we got here. – Do you feel sanitized? – I’m telling you at some point, at some point I’m going to gain a superpower. – There’s a reason. – It might be cancer. I don’t know. – Yeah! – Give me a thumbs up. – Yeah. – Lauren, do you wanna lift, and then soon as you lift, I’ll hit the brakes? – Yeah. – All right. I’ll leave it in gear until- – Ready for this? – I guess. Dude, I’m gonna stand all the way over there

If Tony’s driving. – I was gonna say it’s fine. – Yeah. – Sounds very good. – Lorraine? Hell yeah. That’s what I’m talking about. – That’s back! Yeah, and it looks- – Good! Wow! – That’s what I’m talking about. 5:12 5:06 6 on the small, that’s only about four and a half pounds of boost. – Yeah. Yeah. Turns out cars need gasoline to run. – I thought you learned that already. – I thought I learned it but I forgot. I learned it 14 times this week. Is that AFR? – I think it’s clean. Nine under, It’s not a lot of boost though. – This is like four and a half pounds. – I mean, I hear it. – All right, so it’s finally making good power.

It’s running pretty much what it should be doing. I think we made 5:30 at Brad’s dyno. I would say 5:12 here at the tires. Climate’s a little bit different. Air’s a little bit different and it’s saying it wants a little more fuel.

So we’re gonna go up in the jet size and run it again. – Got the jets, dude? I got the party pool. Look at this thing. – We’re going from, like, what’s on that thing? 52? – 56. – 56. From a 56 to a 48. – Excellent. That’ll work.

– That one might be better. – We got 87 in here, it looks like. – 87? You want 89. – Is that right? – Yeah, let’s do it. – Think it’s gonna be same in the other one or we’ll just wait? – Yeah, it’s the same. – All right. – I would think.

Party time. – 570! Hell yeah. Take it. – All right, where’s the boost? – Safer with more boost. – I know! I saw the air fuel with more boost is way happier. – Perfect. I love that. – All right. – Yup. It’s like dead even. Well, it’s little a little on the lean side.

But – – Better. – How much boost was it? – I don’t have a gauge. – It’s perfect. – It should be like seven at red line. – Okay. – That’s sick. – Through the middle, it was… – Basically, it picks up 50 horsepower with the pulley swap. – Yeah, so.

– We running that pulley tomorrow? – Hell yeah. As long as it doesn’t bleed on there. Dude, it makes the tune way better. It makes the tune way better. – Yeah. – Man, now I gotta try and get it to hook. (laughs) – Bro, my neck. Wild.

So after leaving KSR, we crashed out for a while. We just got to Gainesville. We’re running a little bit late. We just jumped into C Group. We’ve got our car now making 569 wheel horsepower. We just left the party pulley on it and we’re gonna send it and see what happens. I’m excited.

First time this thing’s really making that, I know it’s making power. So let’s see what happens. We’re going. We’re going full send a day early, but I don’t, whatever. I don’t wanna wait anymore. Also the car, the car loves the party pulley. Put it on, it ran like 100 times better

As far as the air-fuel mixture. So gonna leave it. It’s only seven pounds. Seven pounds. Fine. I can pick up seven pounds, no big deal. I can pick seven pounds right up. It did great, but it fell right on his face right there. – Where? – At the lawn. – Yeah, I know. Didn’t need higher. – You wanna put more in it? Okay, do it. – Hell yeah! That’s what I’m talking about! That feels like something! – Hella cool! – Hell yeah! You’re the best. I appreciate the (bleep) outta you. – Yeah. No, you too. Thank you. That was cool. Did you do the pass? – I think we did good. – Nice.

– I’m gonna go see what it did. But yeah, that was my best one by far. – That was cool. When they were pulling us up, I was like, “Hey Cap’n, my car’s been shutting off,” and I’m like, “Man, I really wanna make this pass with you.” – Did it work? – Yeah.

– Yeah, looked great. That car is a (bleep) rocket ship. – (laughs) Thank you. – All right. – Have a good day. – Good luck. Yeah! that felt good. (upbeat rock music) – 86, definitely. – Beautiful. – Yeah? – Yeah. Thank you. – Hell yeah! Yeah! 11:02. Woo!

What do you know about that? Head tuner right here. I told him, I said, “You gotta let me do my thing.” He wanted to do it on his own. No. Dumped it. – It got dumped? – Mm-hmm! – I told you! Woo! – Dude, you almost had her, too. – I know! – It was close.

– I thought I could reel her in a little bit. That was sick. – I was gonna tell you, if she’s not there by 1,000 foot, look out, she’s coming by like a tree. – Yeah. (men chuckling) 11:00! (sighs) – The 60? – 168. – Yeah, that’s right where…

– Dude. – We’re good. – Patty’s killer. Oh my God, I was screaming. I was like, “Finally!” Like, I left and it was like, “Ugh!” I was like, “Yes!” Awesome. That is kick (bleep). We are knocking on the door of 10 second times running 124 in the quarter mile.

That is sick. (exhales deeply) That’s sick. I feel awesome. Day four. Better than ever. Fastest time ever. 11:00. We could probably still go quicker. We are right there. That feels good. I’m very excited. Man. 11:00. (groans) – What’s the plan now? – Let’s hit the road! – Crack her up,

Get out of here. – We’ve been here for a total of like one hour. Let’s go hit the streets. – In and out, baby. – In and out. 11:0124. Running like a champ. I gotta send this to Kevin. He’s a, (sighs). That’s a beautiful man. Kevin Smith. Oh, I’m stoked. (upbeat rock music)

– Don’t tell anybody I’m using this. – I won’t. – Checkpoint one on day four was a jam-packed ice cream stand. So we took our official pictures for social media and then set off to find our own sweet treats. – What have you got? – Everything. – Yeah, clearly everything. Rum raisin sounds amazing. – We’re getting coffee and ice cream.

Cookie dough. Good selection. – We are now one track away from finishing Sick Week. We’ve got an 11.06 ET in the can and we are looking good for tomorrow. Rolling with the Vice Grip Garage squad into Orlando. We are back in Orlando for the last day of Sick Week. We ran 11:06 yesterday.

We’ve got the hot tune back in this car. We’re gonna try to go a little bit faster in C group. Just launch it as hard as I can. Basically just try to do a little bit better job. We’re not making any crazy mechanical changes, but we’ve made it here.

As soon as we break the lights there, we have finished Sick Week street driving and track driving and then we can just keep going faster. I’m so stoked. Our average is 11:07 at this point. So as long as we lay down an 11 anything, we’re in business,

We will have made it through the whole week and kept our average at 11. The only one thing left to do will be to hit a 10:99 or better. And I’m gonna try to do it right now. She’s doing it. How’d we do? How’d we do? 176. Little spin, little spin. – Thank you. – 11:09. Damn! Right there. 11:09. – You got it! – We’ll get there. We’ll get there. – I’ll see you later. – All right, buddy. At 1:25. (groans) Get close. 11:09. Spun a little bit.

– No, it didn’t. That was clutch. – That’s clutch? – Yeah, dead. – It was proper? – Dead hooked. – Yeah? – Yeah. ‘Cause the track, I should have went up like a pound and tire pressure. – Okay. – Because it’s radio prep so it’s wasted here. – Okay.

– Smell a little clutch in there? – I didn’t. – You didn’t see any smoke? ‘Cause it was definitely smoking. – No. Yeah, okay. – Like, Kevin came up to me right away and he’s like, “Not enough tire pressure.” Okay, I was like, as soon as I walked down the starting line

I was like, (beep). – Yeah. Well, they said that Corvette was having an issue with the radio prep. – Yeah, yeah. – Okay. – So same deal. – 11:00! We’re 11:09 right there. – Now we can play. – Yeah, 100. Yeah, exactly. This locks in our 11 average for the week.

Which was our goal. So street driving done, we finished Sick Week, done. Now we’re just hunting for that 10:99 or better and we are 0.095 seconds off so we’ll get there. Less than 100. It felt like nothing, it didn’t go anywhere. – Yeah. I had a lot of tire pressure. – Okay, slow down. Let’s try it again. – Probably don’t, I would give it a little bit. – Anybody else that’s happier to be on a track.

– The track wasn’t as good as it was the first time. – You wanna find out more about Gear Benders, check out www.gearbenders.com. – I was going for it. – And you can find out more about that (indistinct). – I was also going for it. – I talked to Kevin, I was like,

“Yo, how much tire should we put in this?” He goes, “Go up.” – Yeah. Okay. – But I didn’t wanna tell you that it might spin. – I don’t give a (bleep), dude. You don’t tell me (bleep). – Well, I know. That’s why I- – I don’t know anything about it anyway.

– Yeah. Well, I didn’t want it to be in the back of your head that it might spin. – It doesn’t bother me. I’ll just go, I don’t need to know whatever. I don’t know what it means anyway, basically. – Yeah. – Talking about lowering the front tire pressure, don’t tell me.

Doesn’t matter. I’m gonna go up, put on that ship and let the clutch fly. – All right. – It’s fine. – All right, well, I didn’t even run it hard, so I figure I would leave it cool. – Yeah. – All right. Well, where you wanna put it?

Just put it over here for a minute? – Yeah, that’ll be fine. – All right. – Both cars and trucks. Like for example, coming around right now, (indistinct). – And I just blew the tire off the last one, so… Gotta find that happy medium. And I did a little,

I did a little bracket race trick here. I dropped this front tires to 25 so we get more rollout. I need that 10. – So some more interesting and unique- – So I don’t know how well they’re gonna prep the track, but this morning it was too sticky. Tire pressure was too low

So it wadded it up, bogged the motor down. Think of the 60 foot we wanted to, and the second one, the track wasn’t as good. I blew the tires off. So now I’m trying to decide if I wanna leave it where it was. They’re scraping.

So they’re gonna be prepping the track here in a second. They’ll scrape the old rubber off and then they’ll bring the tractor out and they do rub her down. Trying to find that happy medium between blowing the tire off and dead hooking and bogging the motor down. Gotta have just that little bit of slip coming out and it should go 10:9999. – He wants to make sure that… – Yo, we decided, they did a little prep,

So we’re gonna go up 2/10ths of a pound in the rear tires. Hopefully that helps our situation. We went on radio prep this morning so it was real sticky. And now we’re trying to find that spot. – Go to check out The Motor Trip channel on YouTube and you can find it. – All right. Well, that wasn’t it. – Track’s not there. – Nah.

– That’s the same tire pressure I had in it this morning. – That’s crazy. – Okay, let’s go down, but it was spitting fuel outta the front carb for the first time ever. So I’ll make sure the floats aren’t stuck. But also it bogged on the burnout.

Could be my fault letting it go. I thought I could like, let it go down more, and then it like, really stalled it out, so. – So once again, shout out to Michael. – I got it turned down a lot, so. – It was just barely sticking on the hood.

It was like forward thinking and the forward push to (indistinct). ♪ Life will never be the same ♪ ♪ Like a crumpled paper airplane ♪ – Actually- – He’s already pissed. – Willie pulled back into the lake. – He just wants his car to work. And I can’t provide for him. – I keep spinning off the line doing the two-step

And the clutch popped. So I’m just gonna go drive one with just me. – That will bring up- – I’ll just do it. – The little Ford hot rod and the Volvo. – Move on top. Frustrated with this drag race. (bleep) – Volvo station wagon. ♪ And time is running out ♪ ♪ Time is running out ♪ – No fuel pressure. There’s nothing in it. ♪ No more tomorrows ♪ ♪ Time for a change ♪ ♪ Time is running out ♪ ♪ Never be the same ♪ ♪ The world is passing you by ♪ ♪ Crumpled paper airplanes ♪ ♪ Time is running out ♪ – Yeah. All right. – Well, it’s torn gas out of both carbs.

– Oh like, and then it fell flat? I was like, “I’ll just stand on it.” And then it just still fell flat on its face. I don’t know. Floats are sticking or whatever. I think we wrap it up. – Yep. – Feel good. All right, that’s a wrap on Sick Week.

Give it up. (bleep) job this week. We made it to every track. We averaged 11:57, I believe. So that’s two big goals in, and we just about got that 10-second round, 11:06. And what we found out is, a car that weighs 3,913 pounds with me in it.

So we were hauling and we kept scratching at it, couldn’t get it. And we’re having some carb issues, some other nonsense. But this is a huge win. I’m very stoked and I’m gonna give myself the best trophy of all, an ice cold beer right now. – Don’t mind me, excuse me. ♪ No more tomorrows ♪ ♪ No more tomorrows ♪ – We do whatever we could.