2004 Speed Week - August 13

August 13 2004, Inspection Every year prior to racing all vehicles have a date with the inspectors. These guys are concerned with track safety. They’re not looking to see if the car conforms to class specifications, that’ll happen later if a car challenges a record, they are looking to see that the car meets the safety regulations of SCTA/BNI.	August 13 2004 They’ll check the cars log book for past recommendations and confirm they’ve been completed, they look for flaws, big and small which could potentially spell disaster for our drivers. These guys are the drivers best friend.
August 13 2004 It’s quite a relief and a badge of honour to go through inspection and hear the praise of the inspection crew. Some of you will be familiar with this Stude, it had been built over the previous 7 months and came through inspection requiring only a radiator cap change. The story of the Stude comes from the RRT and is documented on Sumner Pattersons web site.	August 13 2004 Friday was also the day most of the rest of my family arrived on the salt, Susan had to stay home this year, she had spinal surgery in February and wasn’t up to the 17 hour drive. My daughter arrived with my mom though and as soon as she got there wanted to checkout the pits. My son jumped to the occasion and took her on tour in my A. Seeing them drive off in my A brought another happy tear to my eye, and a lump to my throat.
August 13 2004 Back at the pit N49 got a quick once over to ensure it would be ready to run the next day. This is Ted Allan running the valves.	August 13 2004 Along with my mom and daughter, my brother and his family had arrived. My brother had a treat in hand, we’d ordered a few sets of large decals of the beaver Jeff Norwell had designed for us and hadn’t received them before we left, Rob had picked them up. We set to work putting them on all of our crew vehicles.
We capped Friday afternoon off with a photo shoot with Jeffrey Conger. Here’s N49 all dressed up for the photo shoot. We ran with a new “nose job” this year. The new scoop should feed cleaner flowing air to our engine, it protrudes 10 inches ahead of the grill to pierce the bow wave of air in front of the car and pick up the straightest flowing air possible.
On to Saturday August 14, 2004

N49 Land Speed Racing Club

"North of 49" at Speed Week 2004

Speed Week 2004, Day by Day