My last race at Bonneville and El Mirage Dry Lake after 23 years

[Avanti kid]

Hi everyone, here is my latest status on my racing career,

First of all I want to thank all the friends who came to see me race on that Saturday Nov. 12th, it was great visit and they got to see my procedure for racing my car at El Mirage Dry Lake, the weather was great, in the 70's and no wind, but what we did not know that when we set the idle mixture on the mechanical fuel injection system we set it at 12.8 ratio on the Wide Band O2 system, but because I use very cold spark plugs they got fouled at idle which on that Saturday would not let us start the engine, later on Saturday we installed new plugs and leaned out the idle mixture to 13.8 and the engine showed 1000 degrees temp at idle on both sides of the engine and it was happy and ran very good with no fouling of plug, so we got in line, but we got half way to the starting line when the race officials stopped the race, it was torn up to bad to race, so they moved the course over to the backup course for Sundays race, so early Sunday morning we got in line and got to the starting line around 10:30am, I was suited up with race suit, HANS device, helmet, wrist straps, 5 point harness, then I notice the removable steering wheels three main Allen bolts were loose, I told my crew chief, he got some Allen wrenches and tiegthed them, problem solved, then they pushed me off up to 40 mph, then I took off in 1st to 5,500 rpm, then in 2nd to 6800rpm with 5 lbs boost, then in 3rd to 6800 rpm with 13 lbls boost, then 4th to 5600 rpm with 15 lbs boost (we wanted 25 lbs boost) and at the finish line at only 153 mph because of low boost tune, but it was a fun ride and good traction, chute worked great, it his hard at -1.2 Gs (5000 lb force) on rear of car, engine water temp was only 180 degrees, so they towed me back to our pit area and got our timing slip, then found out the 3rd round was being called to race, so we packed the chute again and got in line to race again, but now I moved the waste gate controller to full max for more boost and we gave the engine more fuel, we got 4 cars from the starting line and I'm all suited up inside the car to race when I notice some race officials all gathered together talking, then the president of SCTA Bill came to my car and said, "Dave the track is really toure up at the 3/4 mile to the finish line and some cars have almost spun out and even some motorcyles almost went down, so I suggest you think about not racing under these conditions," so I thought about it for a few minutes and told him, "I'm not going to race" so we pushed off the course back to our pit area, and called it a day to head home, You may wonder why I made that decision not to race, Where is why, I was thinking about the safety for me and my car, I was thinking about what my wife Barb would want me to do, I was also thinking about Ted Harbit and his Chicken Hawk car that he would love to have intact for the Studebaker Musuem, so considering all that, I did not make that last race of my 23 year career of Land Speed racing at Bonneville or El Mirage. So my plan is not to sell my car but see about putting my car in the Studebaker Musuem for the public to be able to see and let them have all my record cerificates and tropys and timing tags for the car history, I hoping to get the car there in May or so if there is any Studebaker/Avanti conferences going on at that time, then while being there, later we can go to Ohio and see our daughter and grandchildren and great-granddaughter in Newark, OH. So after making all my goals, (Bonneville 200 mph Club and 3 records) its time to quit racing at age 77 and still needing another heart operation (my areto pig valve is 13 yeas old) that my heart doctor is keeping an eye on, so I happy with the decision and really look forward to other racers to continue racing at Bonneville and El Mirage, take care everyone and thank you so much for your support and interest these many years, Dave Bloomberg "Avanti Kid Racing"