LOST 10mph AND ABOUT 6 TENTHS

[Adger Smith]

I forgot about the water pump. My V-6 is a Cam trigger and the magnetic pickup is on top, behind the water pump. I had a pump start leaking as we were loading the car. When we got to Ennis we made one run with a towel taped to the pump. It was leaking too bad so I took the Cheaper brand pump I carried as a spare and put it on. The car popped and missed at high RPM. We looked at plugs and ignition and all the electrical. We had one more shot of qualifying left and as I was doing my burn out the car popped on the chip... It hit me that the pump was what we changed and the problems cropped up. As I staged I turned the pump off. Good run, no 9000 RPM miss. Got back to the trailer and took the other pump apart and robbed the seal out of the electrical gremlin pump. Finished the race with no pump or miss problems. I figure that pump motor was a small radio station tuned to my ignition frequency. It wasn't playing any tunes my ignition liked...It seems like the simplest fixes can be the hardest!