Hot Rod Magazine Dragweek 2023…. Where do we start? To begin with, we completed our first drag and drive event. We’ve built all kinds of street cars to all kinds of racing. Yet this was our first time building a drag and drive car. We are a Fabrication shop along with being a performance shop. From cam swaps, EFI installs, to building 25.x chassis, such as this one. Jack’s car is cert to 6.0 in the 1/4. Jack Brooks knew when he bought this project he wanted to do Dragweek. That was his goal. Coming from motocross, he didn’t understand why you have to trailer your car to the drag strip. He wanted a street car to do burnouts in, drive to cruise inns, then race it. Jack is co-owner of a small business, Enamel Brand . He also works for us 3 days a week. So it’s not like this car was built with an open wallet. Why does Jack work for us, when he owns a business? To feed this addiction he had to build this car. See, Jack didn’t have the experience of building race cars. What he does have is a never give up attitude, a work ethic of “I can learn anything”, and he doesn’t care to put in the hours. The only way Jack was going to be able to complete drag and drive events, was to know how to fix things. How do you learn that? Either by breaking things or surrounding yourself with people that have broke things and know how to fix them. So many nights we had conversations of frustrations because he didn’t know what he was doing. Feeling like at times he was in this alone….. Yet, if you’re going to learn something, you’ve got to physically do it. He was given direction as needed. He knew with his car at our shop, we were looking over what he had done the night before, or the early morning hours before business started. So he had help all the way around. He could attempt things, we could look at it, then decide to trash the idea and/or correct it. 4 years ago, Jack didn’t know how to weld, much less fabricate things. Back to, do you have the money to pay someone, or do it yourself? Now you’ll find Jack welding and fabricating anything a customer imagines. He has vision. Jason would guide Jack instead of doing things for him on this build. Then when Jack would have things tack welded, Jason would come in and decide to weld it or show Jack what needed to be done differently. No different than building the engine, wiring the car, Etc. Jack had Shawn over his shoulder guiding him then leaving him direction going forward. This is why Jack can passionately talk about this car. He has been hands on from the beginning to today. If we had built this car completely for him, he would not be able to have the conversations he has or handle the interviews about it. He also wouldn’t be able to trouble shoot and fix things on the fly, like we did all week. We’re proud of Jack. We’re proud of our shop and all the employees that have helped Jack be a part of this. We had built Marcus Wooden’s Chevy 2 and helping him with drag racing. He unfortunately had a crash that caused us to rebuild his car. He chose new parts and Jack would jump at the opportunity to ask Marcus for his “scrap” parts. That’s the reason the car is carbon fiber interior. It started with Marcus rear tubs and Jack panal bonded them to work in his car. So you can see, Jack surrounds himself with good people. The car is a 1964 Chevy Nova. 25.1 chassis. Twin turbo 5.3 LS, 400 turbo transmission, Hudlow Axle rear end with 3.08 gear. How fast do we think the car will go? Really don’t have that information yet. This is a brand new combo, and went into drag week untested. Hence all the issues we fought daily and nightly. Was the 8.16 at 173 mph pass a good pass? We had hoped it would run 7’s all week. So as excited as we were at the 8.16 pass, we know there is more to be had. Footnote. Besides Frank Hawley’s Drag Racing School to get his NHRA license, where Jack drove a Super Gas car. Other than that, Dragweek was his 1st ever 1/4 mile passes and his first one in this car. He’s still learning the transbrake, bump box, scramble buttons, Etc. So yes, we’re happy with the 8.16 at 173. Let’s break down the days of Dragweek 2023 for us. Day 0 of Dragweek is tech along with much needed test and tune. We passed tech to only have test and tune rained out. We needed to test so bad. Day 1 is Darlington Dragway. We go into the event with zero passes. We bumped through the lights, then transbrake didn’t hold, so Jack just goes down the track with no time. We test the 2 step and make changes and get back up there. Coming out of the burnout, John Sears stops us (saving us), as he sees oil on the track. We get back to the pits to find the diaper is completely full of oil, and rear main seal leaking. John’s keen eye really saved us there. We come up with a rear main seal, so we go to work changing it. While Jack is tearing down the car, Shawn is looking over data. He notices the voltage was low and plugs up the battery to the charger, then joined Jack to changing out the seal. Pull the interior carbon panels out, passenger seat, etc., so that they can slide the transmission back car enough to get the flywheel out. This all sounds easy enough, but the only ones that can work on the car is the 2 registered to it or any other competitor. By the time they had it changed out and the silicon drying, the track was pretty empty. We had met Steve Brack (Kansas City Steve as we called him) at the hotel on Saturday about noon when we arrived. He did Dragweek alone in his LS turbo powered S10. He’s completed multiple Dragweeks, Rocky MTN Raceweek, and others. His personality fit right in from the beginning as we had dinner together that evening. But now it’s Monday and day 1 and there’s a 176 mile route with check points to hit. We had told Steve to go with everyone earlier in the day, but he chose to stay back and offered to help if needed. Plus he has a ton of experience and insight he shared about drag and drives with us. We finally fire the car up about 7pm and realize the alternator wasn’t charging. Being a 16 volt, our minds were marsh and didn’t know what to do. So we told Steve we were going to just load up and go home since we were still where the truck and trailer was parked. Steve reluctantly leaves, and Jack calls the u- haul place we rented the trailer from to tell them we were bringing it back. They were closed so we would now have to get a hotel in Darlington for the night and return it back Tuesday morning. That created a ton of phone calls to Josh Manning (who we leaned on for refocusing and help all week), and Shawn tried one more thing. Actually a few things, but something worked! Crisis averted and now it’s just getting dark and we’re on the route to day 2 in Rockingham. (Hey Kansas City Steve, wait up!!!!!!) We ended up driving all into the night without any problems. Putting us in the hotel about 2:30 am. We had to make sure no oil leaks and put a diaper back on before racing, so we needed to be at the track when it opened at 7am. Day 2, Rockingham we get everything completed and in staging lanes in time to make 1 pass. 3 seconds into the run, the Holley shut off and Jack coast to a 12.77 at 71 mph. Better than the 20.00 we took day 1! We chased issues, found some things like waste gate line burnt, to many other small things, but we get back on the route to Bristol for day 3. The route to day 3 was brutal for the cars, but beautiful scenery! The checkpoint on top of Brown Mountain Overlook was stunning. The Drive into our hotel in Bristol (over 275 miles) ended up taking us just over 9 and half hours so far… We could see the hotel, less than a 1/4 mile away and the fuel pump cable drive snaps. Luckily we brought a spare as it’s after midnight! A closed dark gas station parking lot would be where we spent the next couple of hours by the time we unload the trailer, finding the tools and cable to fix it. That put us into the hotel just after 2am. At 6:15 am Jack and Shawn are pulling out of the hotel to put the car in race mode for Bristol, day 3. First pass at Bristol the car shuts off coming out of the burnout. Shawn hits the power shut off and pulls it back on. Jack fires the car up and Shawn sends him into the beams. Jack launches and the car shuts off. Track officials come to check and Jack ask them to kill the power and pull it back on. The car then fired back up and Jack goes on down the track back into the pits. Shawn puts out a racer needing call out for a kill switch, as maybe that’s been part of our many issues. A fellow racer has one and we are waiting for open session. Meanwhile Shawn and Jack are tracing all the wires they can, and Jack sees the alternator kicked sideways. A bolt has backed out and stripped, pulling the bracket out. Glad to have found that at the track rather than on the route to Carolina Dragway for day 4. So we take another 20 second time slip…. Luckily we had someone bring us a bolt we needed to fix the alternator. The 274 mile route out of Bristol was as tough as coming in. The first 70 miles were what seemed like straight up. Never ending climbing….. although beautiful scenery really all the way into Aiken, SC. Day 4 at the House of Hook, we missed A class call due to waiting on parts from Summit that we had ordered at Bristol from the on-site Summit team. Fed Ex never delivered the packages, and open session is called. Shawn and Jack have changed many things as so much is going on. We know we have to make big changes because we don’t have the luxury of making passes back to back usually on Dragweek. Jack gets down the track without the car shutting off, although it wouldn’t shift. They make the call 15 minutes till staging lanes close, and we start making changes to hot lap. Jack lights up the scoreboard with a 9.16 at 148 mph. We finally have data to build off of! Never been this excited for a 9 second time slip…. now to figure out why the car isn’t shifting. Fix 3 things, find 4 other things to chase down. 
Drag racing….. don’t forget we love this stuff. The long days seem like they pay off when you let go of the button. End of day 4 and beginning of the route back to Darlington. We decided to reward ourselves when we found an open restaurant (something we haven’t accomplished all week), and pulled into Logans Roadhouse. Of course Kansas City Steve is still with us. Why don’t you believe us? 
Can you believe he’s put up with us this entire trip? We finally leave Logans with a full stomach and have an uneventful ride all the way into Darlington. So thankful to at the least be in the same city as our truck and trailer was now. That means we’ve almost completed the week. Actually we had completed the 1,000 mile drive, just have to finish by making a pass at Darlington. First pass down, Jack runs a 8.36 at 163 mph. Let’s go baby! Let’s turn it up finally! The transmission is still boggling the shifts, but we are headed the right direction. A little rain sets in but looks to be clearing back out and hoping to get another pass or 2. The track crew at Darlington worked hard to get the track back after the rain and we have 1 more shot at it. 8.16 at 173 mph. The transmission still isn’t acting right. Did we burn it up pulling a trailer up and down the mountain or could it just be the fluid? Maybe the convertor? We didn’t even think of bringing any to change. We learned a TON of things and built friendships that are irreplaceable. Especially Kansas City Steve, John Sears, Dan, and so many others than we can name. Thanks to EVERYONE that followed along this awesome journey! Sickweek 2024, January 28th, we are coming to try drag and drive again!! #TopEndFab+76
Dragweek 2023 Recap
