You thought I was going to leave something out of the story, didn't you, Hartmut? Ha! Ha! Fooled you. Not a chance.

Hartmut's second tow up ended like this. He hit the skid lever on his exit from the cockpit again. He didn't break the lever off this time, but he did manage to move it to the up position. The liner fell over on it's right side! We put Black Lightning back on her wheels by putting the skid lever to the down position. With the help of the skid under pressure it's easy to roll her back up on her wheels. No damage was done.

I commented, "Now that you have mastered exiting my liner in the crashed position I guess you are fully qualified to make a run. Don't you think?" He gave me his German version of the thumbs up gesture again. We were really communicating well, I thought.

Day three of the meet started at 0600. I wanted to fire it up one more time to check the ignition. We were having a bit of difficulty with the front engine point set up. The design was faulty in that the bearings that supported the shaft were to close together, causing the point cam to wobble a bit. The ol' saying, "The wiggle wire to the wobble shaft is working perfectly," somehow fit what was going on. One of the two sets of points had to be opened up to a .040 gap to bring the cylinder into time. It was number two cylinder. Anyway John and Hartmut got it as good as it could be got, so to speak. The engines were fired and by the cylinder head temperature gauges, they were all firing about the same. That being checked, it was finally time to take the liner to the line for it's first run of the meet.

Everybody did their thing and we were soon in line. There are short lines, long lines, and then there are really long lines. I'll let you guess which one we were in. four and one half hours later we were next to make a run when the wind picked up and we were given the option to wait until the wind was below five miles per hour or wait until morning and we could make the first run of the day. The wind usually doesn't come up until mid morning so there were my options. I chose to wait and see if the wind would die down a bit. After about another hour wait, the wind was down to about seven miles per hour I talked to the Line Judge to see if I could make a run, telling him that we were limited to a 150 mph run and the run would be made with the skids down. He said under those conditions he would allow the run. So Don suited up, got in the cockpit, buckled up and I hooked up the tow truck and started the generator.(We use two 800 amp hour 12v large boat batteries, plus the booster start on a large battery charger) The 24 Volt Diesel truck starter has never failed to start the beast. The transmission is placed in low gear prior to start up. The drill would be to signal Don when to push the clutch in and I would start the engines; John and I would walk slowly to the tow truck, giving the engines a little warm up time, get into the truck and tow Don away. That was the plan and on paper it worked perfectly. The drill had never been practiced in real time.

The Line Judge got word from the tower that the track was clear and Black Lightning owned the course. He pointed to me to fire her up. The signal was given to Don to push the clutch pedal down. I got the signal that Don had the clutch disengaged and guess what? I hit the starter and the starter would not turn the engines over. I tried it again. Same thing. The Line Judge gave me the signal we were done, and brought the next car to the line. Nothing to do but take the liner back to the pit and see what went wrong. Back at the pit we pulled the plugs, blew the engines down. I thought there was a hydraulic lock (a load of fuel in the cylinders). There was fuel, but not that much. Don told me that it was probably his fault. He said he didn't think he pushed the clutch in far enough. "What a revolting development this is" as Amos used to tell Andy on the radio show back in the 40's.

We checked Don's theory out and found that that was what had happened. He didn't push the clutch in far enough. This was not Don's fault. This was my fault as Crew Chief. Things like this are supposed to be ironed out prior to going to the line through practice drills, for which I am responsible.

Day three was over. It was around 7 o'clock and another 13 hour day on the salt had been logged. Back to the ranch with all thinking, "We'll do better tomorrow."