[Cglrcng]

I messed up, sry...Gainsville is next up, after a trip to Jacksonville to visit relatives, then back to Baton Rouge, LA.

On the way to Florida I start having road trip issues, do the key flop dance and read ECU Codes...My MAP Sensor is no good, find a dealership, they hook up their Diag tool and the MAP needs replacing along with the ECU. I keep my ECU core though. Back on the road, (about 3 days in Gainsville with family I had not seen in years (My uncle has a beautiful Red Cuda he has had since I was a kid, and he loves Drag Racing, so he will meet me in Gainsville for a few days later), I did not have the time to pull the converter and get it fixed in JAX at TCI, back on the road & ck into the HoJo in Gainsville Motor Hotel. I prep at the track, and another Stock Racer Bernie Cunningham approaches me and says are you really staying in a hotel/motel, yup...He says I have a motorhome, my generator, trailer and racecar, and have the empty bed over the cab, rent from me, we will split/ share the weekly grocery bills and generator gas /water costs, and food cooking together, and we will just stay at the track together and travel together if you want and we work out the details. I explain sometimes I will go off alone to other events on my schedule that are not together with his (some Div. events I was attending elsewhere and some E.T. brackets, but the Nat. Events it works out). I would just meet up with him at the next venue.

The car is running tops now on the road, lets see on the track. Gainsville, FL, my miss is now at 5,000 RPM in each gear when full throttle it leaves hard, accelerates perfectly and about 5,000 it just pops and nose dives like hitting a rev limiter, and picks back up and runs fine to top of each gear, shift and does it again...every pass! Lights are ok, but the E.T. suffers and cannot even dial it well this way. Glad no heads up races.

I try everything, putting all 3 of my avail. ECU's in 1 at a time...and it does the very same thing (only at differing RPM's consistently, 5,000 on ECU 1, 5,200 on ECU 2, and 5,300 on ECU 3.....Not consistent between ECU's though, so I think since all of them are rebuilds (as they do not make new ones as the 1984 TBI is a 1 yr only model specific ECU they just keep rebuilding and recoding and selling them...today I have a collection of 7 of them, and they all test good)...Am chasing a bug and chasing my tail, and burning dollars but, far from home, entry's are pre-paid, I am not giving up pressing forward, chasing under hood vacuum lines and wiring is not solving the issue, reading my multiple Hanes and Chilton manuals I have with me, but I do not have a full dealer Repair Manual set, and back then the dealer's only had those (I have a full set now! in 2023).

At Gainsville in the lanes at the Gators awaiting Q-3, a local fan approaches me and we get to talking about my slow sled, and he is a very nice friendly guy, and he says, while you are in town, if you need to do anything to your car, I have a dyno tuning, and repair shop about 3 miles from here downtown (and it is the slow time of year), and you are welcome to come work on your car in my shop if you have needs at all, I have 3 lifts, a roller dyno and maybe we can work out that issue you are having...yeah you could not help but notice.

And I told him I really needed to pull my converter out and send it to TCI at JAX then reinstall it, and in the meantime maybe we could together attempt to chase down this other issue that is costing me a ton of losses , but mainly all my passes are now junk except a lot of great tree practice (1 mediocre .026 light, and all the rest at Gainsville were -.004 to .006...and I can deal with all of those, but the E.T's were crazy slow just barely under the index, and 1 pass just over it.