ABRA Columbia Cup

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TRI CITIES COLUMBIA CUP
July 28-30, 2007

After the successful maiden launch and runs on Lake Washington - June 7th, we were confident that we'd be able to put on a great show for the Columbia Cup. The vintage boats had seven scheduled course times so we thought we'd learn a whole lot about the boat. Well, guess what? MISS THRIFTWAY turned into a real race boat. SHE DIDN"T WORK!!!! It turned out that the hotter temperature caused some issues. She acted like there was a fuel problem so we change the carb on Saturday morning. STILL not working! So we thought it might be the magneto. Rob changed that. Then around lunchtime, Jerry Hopp comes by and asks what's going on, so we tell him. He asked to see our fuel setup. After studying it for a few minutes, he started asking questions which led to a return line from the fuel pump. He just asked a simple question: "How do you know it's not pulling air back through the line?" We had just ASSUMED (making and ASS...) that because it was a return line it would only allow fuel to go to the tank. We put a check valve on the line with about 10 minutes left to launch time. It was just like the real boats...scramble, scramble, hurry up! Way too much pressure for a bunch of old guys! That's why we got in to Vintage, not suppose to be pressure! WRONG! The end result was Saturday afternoon, MISS THRIFTWAY, MISS BARDAHL and MISS BURIEN made a beautiful three lap exhibition run with one of the laps averageing around 92 MPH. I guess you can do that when you have the nice long straight aways like Tri-Cities!

Sunday morning brought all teams together to get the Oberto running so we make wholesale changes, Carb, mag, plugs, fuel... test session at 8:30 sent the boat out and Dane got her up and going, made two laps a speed and came in...WE WERE READY! At 10:40, off all four boats went. Right after the start, Larry slowed down and came in. We had blown a water jacked gasket and he could not tell where it was coming from, he just knew it wasn't suppose to spray water from that area! Alan replaced the gasket, and on Sunday afternoon for our "final", all four boats went out and put on a very noisy, exciting show for the fans. Check out the video and you can watch the final "heat".

Once again, Chris Denslow has put up an awesome photo gallery of our activity at Tri Cities...Check it out!

At Snoqualmie Summit	Wednesday afternoon at KNDU TV	Hotel parking lot	In the pits
Columbia Cup winner Dave Villwock	HARM Executive Director David Williams	Greg and Jerry Hopp	Jimmy King was looking for the Master switch!
Miss Tri Cities Kristin Cox with her court	Ronald McDonald and Peter Orton	Gold Cup announcer, KONA Radio pit reporter and Seattle pit reporter Brad Luce	All four boats at speed
What a sight!
Photo by Craig Barney	Photo by Craig Barney

E-mail comments or questions to: Steve Compton