Rybo's Lair

Last year, many people heard the stories of the tragedy that happened to NHRA Funny Car driver Eric Medlen.  For whatever reasons, at the end of a testing pass, his car experienced a severe vibration which caused him head injuries that lead to his death several days later.  With this in mind, we spent the last few weekends making sure our safety equipment is better than good, and helps to ensure that  I can keep my head intact in the event of an accident.

The company chosen by an increasing number of teams to provide the additional head support that is needed in situations like this is Innovative Safety Products (www.ispseats.com) in Harrisburg, NC.  They are currently offering a line of custom driver head surrounds that provide an SFI rated level of impact protection.  I contacted ISP several weeks ago, and after speaking to Kris & Rick we decided to give it a go.  While their instructions left a us with a large number of questions, they were more than helpful, and walked us through getting the necessary plating, and bracing installed in the roadster to get their product installed.  We're currently waiting on the finished product to be shipped back to us (each product is custom fitted to the specific car) but here is a photo from their web site of what the finished product will look like.  We will almost certainly be the only Super Gas car with this level of driver head protection installed.  Hey, I only get 1 brain, and I am rather fond of it in its current state. 

More ramblings next week

My first blog, yay!!!!

Well here we are, less than 1 month from the start of the 2008 NHRA Division 4 season.   The roadster was forced after we worked on it last weekend, to make way for another paying job.  We should be good to go this weekend to get 'er back out, and continue our normal maintenance.

All-in-all we're just giving things a thorough "going over" and clean-up.  We did take all of our removable interior panels, wheelie bars, and spoiler panels to Longhorn Powder Coatings for a nice coat of glossy black with a hammer-tone finish.  Thanks to Joe Wade for sponsoring us this season with this service.  The interior of the car really looks slick now.  There was one change we had to make to the car to keep it in compliance with the new SFI chassis cert.  A couple of bars were added beneath the driver's seat, and braces were added to each of the roll cage bars to help improve rigidity in the event of a direct impact.

Our engine remains at Reher-Morrison Racing Engines waiting on its refresh, and upgrades.  At last check, we were going to end up getting an entire new rotating assembly to help punch the engine out to 572 c.i.d. (9.37 L) and hopefully make about 950 horsepower.  Given the cylinder head combination we have, we will be slightly limiting the top-end horsepower and RPM figures, but this should lead to a "torque monster" that will pull incredibly hard through the low range where most Super Gas cars pick-up most of their E.T..  When we dyno the engine, I'll snap some picture if I can.

I'll check back in next week after we make some more progress.

- Ryan