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As Always
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Associate Sponsors, and Friends:

Bill Colwell Ford..........................................Diamonds Body Shop
Tags-N-More............................Re/Max Home Group-Rick Bauer
Andersen's Automotive Service.........Red-E/Midwest Synergyn
Management Consultants.......................Midnight Machining Inc
Quick Fuel Technology..........................Transmission Rebuilders
Undercover HotRods.....................................Quick Performance
RACINGJUNK.COM

          James R. Borcherding.......................Ackley Veterinary Center
          Animal Jim Racing...................................Arnie Beswick Racing
          Atech Motorsports..........................................Calico Coatings
          Comp Cams.......................................................Crane Cams
          Dakota PartsWarehouse.................................DART Machinery
          Diamond Racing Pistons.............................DragNewsMagazine
          Dyson Oil Company..............................Eagle SpecialtyProducts
          Engine Works-NPW.....................Fragola Performance Systems
          Hal Lees Enterprises................................Holcomb Motorsports
          Hovey's Four Directions Gallery.........................ISC Racer Tape
          MagnaFuel......................................................Nitrous Express
          Performance Automatic........................PTC Torque Converters
          SCE Gaskets.........................................................T&DMachine
          TotallyStainless.................................................VSI Warehouse
          Move America Forward.......................Wounded Warrior Project
                                              ProudPatriots


          ..................................US ARMED FORCES.............................

GOD BLESS AMERICA

    The races at Brainerd were as great as ever! The weather was fantastic, even though it looked abit questionable one day it worked out just fine!
     I even got the chance to speak with Richard Maskin (the owner of DART Manufacturing- where our new engine block was manufactured) about backpain / surgery of all things. We had noticed that Bob Glidden was on the startingline with the Justin Humphrys Torco sponsored Pro Stock GTO, which is owned by Richard Maskin. So I had to go over and see about getting all three of their autographs back in the pits!   Justin seemed like a great guy, Bob was as humble and gracious as ever, and Richard really suprised me with his willingness to talk...we talked about the fact that we were running one of his blocks in our car finally and we compared backpain stories for awhile as well as he had just gone through surgery a few weeks earlier.
     As I said in the last FlashBack Report, Jim from Diamonds Body Shop went up as well and he patiently waited more than a few times for me in the pits as I wandered around seeking out the autographs of some of my favorite drivers. I think the Jim Head FunnyCar's paintjob was his favorite!
     Back home a week later we headedout to Cedar Falls Raceway for another T&T session with some good results! We put down one of our best 60 ft times in a long time as well as one of our best quarter-mile ET's in recent memory...a 10.32 pass. The MPH seems a bit off but we're in the process of trying to get a handle on that as well.
     We hit the Harleys & Hot Rods event next. We were a little worried that the track wouldn't be in too good of shape as far as traction goes but it's a charity event and what could be better than racing a car and raising money for kid who need some help?
     Actually the traction ended up being much better than expected but the heat was keeping the MPH down a bit. We tried some tuning changes on the car but after making a few passes we were back where we started from, as usually seems to be the case. All in all it was a good time and the turnout of cars and spectators was very good!
     Then it was off to Cordova to see a couple of legends in the drag race world, and two guys that I consider to be friends, 'Animal' Jim Fuerer and Arnie 'The Farmer' Beswick face off at the World Series of Drag Racing. Unfortunately the bullet in Animal Jim's car had developed quite a water leak and he wa unable to make a pass...you could tell he was very upset that he was unable to put on a show for the folks but he stuck around all day and night to autograph t-shirts, pictures, parts of someone's body, and other assorted items the fans had that they wanted signed.
     Arnie made a couple of great passes in his all new Tameless Tiger against a replica of his old Mrs.B's Grocery Getter station wagon.  He was also very busy back in the pits dealing with the fans, signing a wide variety of items as well.
You guys are both great!!!!!!
     We had one more Test & Tune to hit before the next race on the CFR schedule and we made the most of the three passes that we got in on that Friday night. I had reaction times of a .000 / .008 / .008 (the .000 was a perfect light!) things were looking good!
     Next Saturday morning things took a turn for the worse. Heading downstairs to get ready for the days racing a slightly wrong step set the pain-o-meter off the scale from my back clear down to my toes and I was fresh out of pain-killers!
After a few phone calls I had a backup driver (Pat Weber) lined up in case I couldn't physically get into the car once I got to the track.
     Now, getting in and out of the car was no fun at all but once in the ride was just fine!We nailed the tree with a .011 reaction time the first round and ended up losing the next round, even with a better reaction-time, when I tapped the brakes abit too hard trying to avoid 'breaking out' and our competitor got passed us and picked up the win. He was right on his index and after calculating the numbers I would have been three hundreths off of my index had I not tapped the brakes...it was just one that I was not going to get!
     Sunday morning the gameplan was to hitch a ride to the track with Terri, bring the truck/trailer/car back to Tags-N-More, and then head home to lay down the rest of the day. The back was feeling worse and I could hardly even walk again at this point...three steps maximum. Once we got to the track though the need for speed outweighed the pain-factor and we stayed to race. Scott had to handle more of the workload the whole weekend and did a great job. If I wasn't in the seat of the car I was laying down on the pit-mat in the trailer...as standing or walking was out of the question.
     We ended up making it clear to the semi-finals where our day came to an end when we ran a 10.424 of of our 10.44 index. The car was starting to go quicker each successive round as the air was drying out. We had run a 10.45 the round before and so we set the dial-in at a 10.44 and figured we'd be close, but even on the brakes we ran a too quick 10.42 and lost. Not a bad day as far as the racing goes...Monday morning I couldn't get the doc on the phone soon enough!
     The Midwest Open Comp Series race was up next on the schedule. I was marginally better after the doc had given me a shot in the back to relieve some of the pain. We ran two qualifying passes in order to set our indexes and to determine the run order. Our .020 reaction time netted us the #2 qualifying spot and our best pass was a 10.43...so, under the Open Comp rules our index would be a 10.33 as the rules say that your index is one tenth under your best qualifying pass.
     To be honest, there was no way I was going to be able to run a 10.33 on this day...I thought we had seriously put ourselves in a bad spot with this index. But we don't race on paper, we race on the track...and anything can happen.
     We won the first round by getting the holeshot on our opponent. The second round we had the bye-run and got to make a solo pass...it was getting cooler out and the FlashBack did manage to run a bit quicker, but I was sure that it wasn't going to be enough to win another round.  The semi-final round would have us up against the current points leader in the MWOC series, John Miller. I was pretty sure our day was done at this point as John is a very consistent racer and great on the lights too. My reaction time that round was nothing short of horrible and I ran a 10.404 off of our 10.33 index...in contrast John had a .003 reaction. Fortunately for me, unfortunately for John, he ran a 10.68 off of his 10.70 index and 'broke-out' (ran too fast) and I got the win light. I couldn't believe it but we were headed to the finals where we would be racing once again against Mark Weerheim and his red Mustang GT.
     Mark and I have finished 1 & 2 in the points alternately the last three or four years so I knew it was going to be a tough race. Mark knew that I couldn't run the number and he had just run an 11.444 of of his 11.44 index the round before...I figured we were toast once again, even if I could get the holeshot Mark's usually very good on the tree as well so there probably wouldn't be enough of a holeshot to make a difference.
     I did manage to get a slight holeshot at the start, not enough to make a difference as I figured would happen though.  Mark was clearly ahead as we neared the finishline, I was coming up on him but it looked like I would end up short.  Mark may have been thinking that I wasn't going to run any better than my previous 10.40 and he had to be worried about breaking out as it was getting cooler as the rounds went by...and so he hit the brakes to avoid breaking-out and I had enough to squeek passed him at that point by running a 10.378 pass and just barely took the win by .004 of a second!!!
     The next race was a season ender for us. After a less than stellar performance during time trials and the actual race (our reaction times were terrible all day long...I'm blaming the medications) we tore up alot of hardware at the end of the day on a last minute Time-Only pass. We had run a lot of mid 10.30 passes at just over 130 mph all day long, some of our best passes of the year actually...but our last run the car ran a 10.41 and I wanted to see if we couldn't hit a 10.20 before heading home. In a pass early in the morning we ran a pass where we didn't get the quarter-mile time or mph on the timeslip we were handed and based on the eight-mile and 1000 foot times it surely would have been a 10.28 to 10.29 pass...I wanted that 10.20 timeslip to put up in the trailer so we went out to make one more pass after a slight tuning adjustment.
     So we lined up for one last pass and unfortunately we broke the rearend, the driveshat, the transmission, and quite possibly some of the rear suspension pieces as well....it was ugly toput it mildly. We'll tear into it this weekend and see what we need to do for sure. We've already talked to Don at Transmission Rebulders about taking a look at the tranny for us and Doug at Quick Performance is working up a deal for us on a new center section and axles. He'll also take a close look at the rearend housing and brackets to decide what we need to do there...These guys have always taken good care of us in the past and we should be in good shape when their done. We've got the carover to Diamonds Body Shop where he's going to let us work on the car as it'll probably be down for longer than we could leave it at Bill Colwell Ford, which is where we usually work on the car. I'm hopingthat we can get the motor out and run it to make sure that it's all okay before everything goes back together too, Joe up at Midnight Machining may be able to line us up some dyno time to get that done.
     Well, we should be in great shape for '08...we were running great this season when I could get in the car and I'll keep up the physical therapy this winter and hope that by next season the back pain will be under control enough to be able to get in the car without so much discomfort. We'll have some real stout pieces on the car so it's ready to go for many, many, years.
Hope for a mild winter people...I do not look forward to shoveling!!!!!!!

We had a December to remember!!!
Actually it started in November when we found out that we were one of the three finalists in the RacingJunk.Com Giveback To The Racers Tour Sponsorship Giveaway. This meant that I'd be getting a trip to Orlando, FL to attend the award presentation at the PRI Trade Show along with the other two finalists to find out just where we finished 1st, 2nd, or 3rd Let me backup a moment and explain how this all came about.
Last year we'd signed up to be eligible to win some cash from the folks at RacingJunk.Com and to be honest I actually had forgotten about it by the time April 13th rolled around. That's the day that Matt, from RacingJunk.Com had left a message on our answering machine. Terri called me at work and said that someone from RacingJunk had left a message and that I should call them back as soon as possible. Now, having forgotten he fact that I had signed up for anything I had no idea of who - what - why was going on and when I got through to Matt and he told me that we had just been picked as the Week#7 Winner I was extremely happy!! We had just gotten ourselves an enclosed trailer and the $1000.00 winnings would make a nice payment on that loan! Then Matt informed me that at the end of thirty weeks all of the 30 Winners would have a picture of their car put up on one page for all of the RacingJunk members to cast a vote for their favorite car. The voting was to take place from October 15th until November 15th. Then the top three vote getters would win some more cash! 2500.00 Or 7500.00 or the Grand Prize of 15,000.00 it sounded good to me!!
Well, October 15th rolled around and I was telling everyone I worked and raced with to make sure to get to RacingJunk.Com and sign up (if they weren't already a member) so they could cast a vote for our car. A lot of the guys we race with were already members and most said that they had already cast a vote for us. One of our Mopar buddies, Ted, had

recruited some more “Mopar-Votes” for us from some of his buddies…they all thought he was nuts for voting for a Ford but they followed his lead anyway. It wasn't until a few weeks into the voting that I really got wound up about 'campaigning' and being that the voting was only going to last for a few more days I was sure that I was in the game too late. There were thirty very cool cars in this group and I was sure that we'd be lost in the shuffle…..
On the night of November 15, when the voting was to end, I was up until just after midnight sending messages back and forth with another one of the thirty finalists and at that point I decided to head to bed and just check my e-mails in the morning.
After getting the morning chores done I quickly fired up the computer to check my messages…there were no new messages. I was bummed but decided to go to RacingJunk.Com to check and see who the big winners were and e-mail my congrats to them. Once I had gotten logged in I noticed that I had a message waiting to be read. The message was from a fellow NMCA racer 'elkyman'…his message was “Conratulations”……….I went back to the front page and clicked on the link to see the three finalists…….the first car that popped up was mine…..YES!!!!!!
I grabbed the cell-phone and called Terri right away, who at that point was just getting to work herself….I blurted out “We're going to Orlando!”….I was all wound up by now and was leaving phone messages to a whole lot of people, it was about 6:45 am at this point….sorry if I woke some of you. By the time noontime rolled around I had received at least a dozen phone calls and e-mails of congratulations from people that had voted for us and were following the whole deal on the internet themselves….Thank You All!!!!!
Then it was a flurry of phone calls between the folks at RacingJunk, my crew, and airlines/hotels/rental car companies. I must say that the help that the RJC crew offered really made things easy and within just a few days we had the whole deal sorted out and were ready to go! None of our team had been to the PRI (Performance Racing Industry) Trade Show since it had moved from Indianapolis to Orlando a few years ago, so we were all jazzed about going…not to mention that the weather here at home was all ice and snow all the time!
The show was great and we got to catch up with a lot of the warehouses and manufacturers we deal with throughout the year, even with three days at the show there were a few of you that I missed and I apologize for that.
We stopped at BB King's Blues Club, Don Garlit's Museum of Drag Racing, took in a big car cruise at Old Town, and took in the

dinner/show Arabian Nights while we were in town for a bit of the tourist thing.
I keep saying it but it bears repeating: The whole RacingJunk.Com crew was fantastic to deal with. They made us feel very welcome and really laid out the VIP treatment for us all. I'm sorry that I don't have all of your names here to say Thank You to each and everyone of you but I'll single out Ian, Emily, Ryan, Jerome Gavin (PINKS announcer), and Cruz Pedregon (NHRA FunnyCar Driver and former World Champion) you all were great!!!!!
And Congrats to my two new RacingJunk.Com teammates: Mary Baltzell and Gail Whisnant (the Grand-Prize Winner)…I hope that we all have great '08 seasons!!!!
Well, we have a lot of work to do on the car and the season will be here before we know it. So, to all of our current sponsors…I hope we can count on your continued support in '08 and to those that we've contacted about joining us for '08….it's going to be a great season!!!!