Skip to main content

Stories from the Salt: Back After Blowing an Engine

As you May have heard, VW set a very specific record with the brand new Jetta that meant it went over 210 mph. Kindly, VW offered to fly us out for the record attempt and while we were there we talked to some of the VW owners who were around for the racing—normally that’s the part where we arbitrarily say that these are the coolest cars at X, Y, or Z, but forget it, everything and everyone at Bonneville is the coolest.

Most of these conversations happened while teams were in line, waiting for their turn to run the salts.

Who? Jeff Volk and Robbie Giroux

Jeff: We’re originally from Oklahoma, but we live in Colorado now. This is our fourth year with the same car. We’re running the big block challenge. It’s everything but the 36 horsepower engines. Once you step up, even a forty horse would be bigger, I guess. It’s got a Type 1, 2390 cc engine. It makes about 200 hp, naturally aspirated. We’re shooting for 150 mph. We’ve seen 136 in this car.

VWV: Who drives?

Jeff: I drive, Robbie isn’t curious about it, but I keep trying to get her behind the wheel. You don’t feel like you’re going fast. You can feel it in the seat of your pants. That’s how you feel it. We land race, too. We do the Colorado mile, and race motorcycles. Racing a motorcycle is alright on asphalt, but I don’t race my motorcycle on the salt. I would race somebody else’s.

VWV: You care more about the bike than your own safety?

Jeff: I’d probably just slide for a while. People get killed out here, but it’s a freak thing when it happens. People who go over 400, that potential’s there. It’s not an easy crash no matter what. You catch an edge, it’s over. And then there’s those guys who just kind of slide on the top.

VWV: Have you ever had any scary moments?

Jeff: The engine blew up last year. The oil pump lost engagement to the camshaft, lunched the motor. It was a 2440 cc, too. So this is a brand new motor.

VWV: What was that like?

The engine just went *boop.* It just went *waaaaaah, boop* and the car filled with smoke. WE lost a cylinder, it knocked the camshaft in half, it broke a couple of cylinders. We didn’t have many good parts left. We even lost the rocker shaft, lost a couple of exhaust valves.

VWV: What brought you to the Salt Flats in the first place?

Jeff: The 36 horsepower challenge brought us out. We always loved VWs. We race motorcycles and ‘Vettes, too, but this is our passion. We’ve got the bug for salt flat racing. It was, like, on my bucket list. And then there was talk years ago that there might not be any racing someday because the salt was so thin, until the save the salt organization got with the miners and everybody got on board and now the salt’s twice as thick as it was five or six years ago. These are the best conditions I’ve seen.

VWV: Alright, thanks. Good luck.

Jeff: Thanks

The post Stories from the Salt: Back After Blowing an Engine appeared first on VWVortex.



from VWVortex https://ift.tt/2zsWHu8
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Watch: The Story of the Ads that Made VW Big in America

The ads for the original Beetle are almost as famous and well-loved as the Beetle itself. Looking back now it’s easy to forget, though, just how easily things could have wrong. A new short from Dial M Films tracks the history of those early Volkswagen ads that sold America on the people’s car. The story, of course, begins with the visionary agency that made the ads: Doyle Dane Bernach (DDB). As a popular agency for Jewish products, no agency was more aware of the implications of Volkswagen, and no one, it seems, was more skeptical of the brand than DDB. “Remember Those Great Volkswagen Ads?” from Dial M Films on Vimeo . William Bernbach, though, was adament that the firm take the client, probably as a way of attracting other lucrative automotive clients. Saddled with a client that he didn’t want, art director Helmut Krone says in the film that he originally came up with ads that were all wrong. Krone tried to do what other manufacturers did and was intent on selling the Beetle ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Watch: The Stig Drives (nearly) Seven Generations of Golf GTI

With Volkswagen announcing “major” updates to the Golf, it seems an appropriate time to look back on what we’ve had so far. And who better to guide us through the rich history of the most popular European car ever made than Ben Collins, the former Stig? Some say he’s never met a GTI he doesn’t love, and that he can’t grow any of his own facial hair. All we know is … Ben Collins is actually a pretty solid presenter. Working his way through seven generations of the GTI (skipping over the Mk6) Collins tells us a little bit about each one and matches each mark to its corresponding facial hair craze. The Mk1 GTI for instance, is light and quick, but can lose traction under hard acceleration (in heavy rain). Despite that, Collins calls the Mk1 a “pure gem.” The Mk4, meanwhile, is a powerful return to form after the perhaps too sensible Mk3. Collins ends in the only way he could, with the Mk7, which accelerates faster than a Lamborghini Countach and is all kinds of wonderful. Watch, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Volkswagen Golf GTE Wins Top Honor at the 2015 Business Techies Awards

Golf GTE wins Green category in the 2015 BusinessCar Fleet Technology awards Judges praised the Golf GTE for its performance, ease of use and economy Golf GTE launched earlier this year with plug-in hybrid technology – priced from £33,755 204 PS performance combined with CO 2  emissions of just 39 g/km Volkswagen has added to its growing list of 2015 automotive industry accolades by winning the Green category in the annual BusinessCar Fleet Technology Awards – the Techies. The prestigious title was awarded to Volkswagen for the Golf GTE, an innovative plug-in hybrid that combines sporty dynamics with exceptional fuel economy and low CO 2  emissions. Now in their seventh year, the Techies are judged by both BusinessCar’s experienced editorial panel with help from TRL’s technology expert. The industry’s only technology-specific awards, the BusinessCar Techies reward the use of technology to make business car fleet operations easier, cheaper, cleaner, safer and more straig...
Post a Comment
Read more