Caldwell goes on to say, “The truck broke down, before we left Knoxville. The dealer did not have the parts to fix it so, 45+ years of mechanical/fabrication experience came into play. And off we went.”
“Saturday: It rained, and rained, and RAINED! Then about 1 PM the wind started to blow, and the sun came out. The track was dry in an hour! The track was smooth as glass. The new owner did it right!”
“I elected to do a T&T run, and I ran an awesome 8.02 @ 164+ MPH, only to end up in the sand trap at the end of the short track.
Should have saved this one, it would put me #1 in qualifying. Oh, well! Wow, that was a ride. The sand trap got bigger, bigger, and BIGGER! It buried itself in the pebbles and stopped. I got off, turned the motor off and the track crew helped me drag it back out.”
“We took the bike back to the pits and we disassembled it to clear all the rocks packed into every crevice it had.
I knew the belt was probably punctured by the rocks and it was. I installed a new belt, cleared the debris out of the shift linkage
started it back up and all was well.”
“We went out for the 1st qualifying run and made a decent pass at 8.14 @ 162 riding the motor down and sliding the 10” slick.
I can tell you the Sand Trap was on my mind all weekend! In the 2nd qualifying round I blew thru the clutch and had a shifting issue. The 3rd round of qualifying was held on Sunday morning, I ran another decent 8.11 @ 160 which placed us #2 in qualifying blowing thru the clutch in 1st gear.”
“The first round of eliminations, I had installed a new clutch pack and, and while staging my left boot STUCK to the track and would not let go! I finally got it loose and wound up staging cocked to the right and when I left it went towards the tree resulting with me hitting the rev limiter in 1st and missed 2nd gear. I rolled out of it and tranny shifted it down the track and little did I know that Joey Thompson had red lit and we earned the Lucky Dog run for the day!”
“In the 2nd round of eliminations, I killed the motor in the burnout box, rushed and got out of my comfort zone and was late and the win went to Billy Doherty.”
“Last weekend, it was really a challenge. Heck all of them are, but this one got the best of me. But, we will go for it again in Bowling Green in September.”