The F150online / Performance Products Rally Rocked. I HIGHLY recommend it for all who can make it next year.

I want to send a BIG THANK YOU to The fine folks at Performance Products for all their hard work and especially to Mike & Anita Troyer for the gracious hospitality.

The tour of the F150 Assemby Plant in Norfolk was awsome. It turns out that they (Ford) was changing over production to the '03 model yr on the very day we toured and that could have made things very dissapionting indeed had it not been for Rock who decided that since we (Ford lovers) were family, the tour would go on. BTW, I heard one of our group mention that 'it had all the emotion of watching your child be born without the pain' lol

I want to give a Big Thanks to Raoul who without, I wouldn't have been able to 'run' my Expy on the track at Virginia Motorsports Park. And Run it I did. Of course he thoughly whipped me like a track virgin needs to be whipped on my first 1/4 mile run ever (even ecusing my super slow "Hey, does he have it P or D" 1.523 second reaction time) I did manage to improve with each run though (six runs in one hour equal alot of fun I'm sorry I had to leave early )

FYI, my best run, a losing effort against an awsome 67 Torino 429 CJ was:
ME HE
.762 reaction time vs 1.205
2.329 60' time vs 1.733
16.369 1/4 time vs 12.219
82.46 mph vs 111.03 mph

 

Your are absolutly correct, it was a great time. I would also like to thank Mike & Anita for the weekend. It was a blast. They were the most gracious host possible. It was fun meeting everyone, look forward to doing this again. The track was most interesting, found out I could not get my truck to hook up. First time out I spun tire past half track. 2nd time better, 3rd time no traction. Thank you to the guys from EVELOPE[Lightning Club] for letting me barrow some slicks. The last run was my best, but still spun the slicks. I know I need to get rid of the open rear end and go with a 3:73 in limited slip. Wittom, had some great runs, it was also nice meeting you guys and Andthensometoo also. Hope everyone gets home okay.

 

Hopefuly I can make to the one next year if i can get my vacation at the time of it.

 

What an awsome time! Meeting you folks made the arduous drive well worth it!

The Norfolk Ford plant tour was a real eye opener. It was amazing seeing how they make these trucks come together from millions of pallets of parts. It was cool to see the drivetrains waiting for thier introduction to the chassis. The assembly line workers were made up of a diverse group of people who all worked hard and seemed to take pride in thier part of the operation. Roc, our guide made us feel very welcome. I don't think he regularly does the tours but he did show us things that a regular tour group might not see. He said that we were family, and made us feel that way. I am so glad I got to do this! Heidi, who isn't really into the whole "truck" thing enjoyed the tour too!

The show and shine was really cool. A bit of time to mellow out and chat with some of our fellow members. MHZMAN had the best looking truck by a long shot. It was great just to see all the trucks together. My truck is showing it's age. It got low miles but the body is statring to suffer. I had it cleaned up before we left MA but the rain on the way down brought me back to normal.
I'm glad that signmaster made it too. You could have brought your truck up too. It was great to talk with you. It helps to understand where you are coming from in your posts.

The strip was a blast. I had a great time but there was a bit of dissapointment too. My goal was to make it into the 14's (if I did a friend said he would buy me a case of beer). I wasn't even able to beat my previous best of 15.060. 15.193@89.54 was the best I could do that day. I'm not sure if it was the heat and humity (one of the Lightning guys said he was a couple tenths off) or the fact that my first three runs were on the non performance side of the chip. Mike did throw me a few pointers and I was able to improve my technique. I think I have found the best launch rpm and shift points. I'll have to try it again with better weather. I'll be watching MHZMAN to see what times he can get. He's got the ATI. I'd like to think that I am faster but he not only has a great looking truck, I think it has much potential on the strip!

It really was a great time. I am so glad I got to meet you all. Raoul and his orange mohawlk j/k. Truely a great bunch of people! Mike and Anita did a wonderful job of hosting the event. You two made it even more special for us! Thank you for everything!

Heidi and I stayed a couple days and enjoyed Virginia Beach. I got a good old Virginia sun burn to take home with me. It is a beautiful place. Atlantic Ave. is especially nice at night. We ate some really good food and enjoyed the warm sea water. We don't have warm sea water here in New England.

I hope that more people consider going next year. It is well worth it!

 

Mike,

Thanks again for the great time at VMP!!!!

It was great to see familiar faces and meet new ones.

There was no new times for me, but I did run consistent.

Mike (w/ATI) get that rear fixed, some gears and drop me a line. We will meet up at VMP and put those hOOsiers back on and see what they will do.

Congrats to Billy Matthews for running an 11.94 @ 113 MPH. That was on a 75 shot...

For a few videos, check out the NVLOPE site at:

http://www.nvlope.org

or click:

http://www.nvlope.org/_video/billy119.mpg

^^ Billy Matthews 11 second run

http://www.nvlope.org/_video/theotherwhitemeat.mpg

^^ Unsuspecting Dodge with a blue bottle in the bed

Later

 

Thanks Tom for the comments, I think you have that 14 in there for sure. I was hopping you would get it. Brian K thanks for the use of the slicks. I will get the rear end taken care of for sure before I head back out there. It was fun, even if all I did was spin . Petro, thanks for being so kind, Look forward to doing this again.

 

That sounded like a great event. I wished I had known about it. I sure would like to try and make it next year just sounds like alot of fun plus a great reason to get away. How many people were there?

 

Hello To Everyone!!!

Thanks to all of you for making it a great event, even if turnout was a bit low with the rains nailing us for the second year in a row!

And so far, it's almost impossible to believe that everyone isn't ribbing me (as I so richly deserve) for my boneheaded losing/not losing of my keys just before the rains came at the drag strip.

Thanks to Rock Blount of Ford Motor Company at the Norfolk Light Truck Assembly Plant, as well as the Norfolk Assembly Plant Manager Mike Hom, and Marc Carpenter of Ford Motor Company's stamping plant for doing all that Ford did to accommodate our tour on what was, exactly and precisely, the very worst possible day for them. We toured on DAY 1 of JOB 1 for the 2003 Ford F-150, with the very first 2003 model starting the line at 4 am that morning, and having rolled off 17.5 hours later, at 9:30 PM that night (if all went according to schedule after we left, and I'm sure it did).

The tour went off without a hitch, and thanks even more to Rock Blount, as he will be publishing the article we are sending him about the tour and helping to further publicize F-150 Online throughout Ford Motor Company.

Rains came of course, and rained until about 30 minutes before the Show-n-Shine, but that didn't keep Mike Houk from showing up in his award-wining '99 F-150 show truck, along with a number of others who graciously came, like Raoul, Signmaster (Hi Bob, great to finally meet you!), Andthensometoo & her family, wonderful people who have made the trek EVERY YEAR all the way from Michigan and back (hello all, hope the trip back went OK!) and who we would like to have been able to spend more time with, Tom Witkop (wittom) from MA who has made the last 2 Rallys, Brian Kimmel who was such a wonderful help to everyone at the drag strip, and so many others, thank you one and all!

Tom managed to knock down his 15.86 ET all the way down to 15.19 after switching over to our hotter program and making some changes in technique. Given the 90 degrees+ and the (no kidding) 98% humidity, being able to run a very low 15 like that was an excellent result, and certainly much quicker than the truck started out that day, dropping almost 7 tenths. If we could have had the same temperatures but just had say, maybe "only" 70% humidity, you probably would have cracked into the high 14's, so don't be discouraged that you didn't set your best ET ever under those conditions. Run like that in Spring or Fall and you'll be in the mid-14's! In fact, when you were running those 15.8's & 15.7's early on, I wanted to data log the truck to see just what in the world was actually going on, but as soon as I realized you were running on the Side 1 program, once that was changed you hit a 15.19, and that made it obvious that nothing was wrong, so we didn't worry about logging it. You just needed more tune, which it got with the program on Side 2, and it responded with a big improvement in ET. Nice job on your technique, by the way!

The kill-em-all 11.94 second blast by Billy Matthews was the high point of the day for the Lightnings, that was done with a 75-shot of nitrous as Brian mentioned. Billy was actually very nonchalant about it all, saying "ahh, it just felt like it was Spring or Fall, nothing special" but I think he was grinning from ear to ear down inside, as he blew us all away. Nice job, Billy!

Thanks to Brian Kimmel, who, as he has done each year at the Rally, worked so hard to let everyone in the Lightning & NVELOPE community know about the event and helping so many people during the drag strip outing, including even lending others his slicks, etc.

Petrol was a blast to hang out with, we all thought he'd never stop grinning, I think he had as much fun as the rest of us put together! He made pass after pass, & run after run at the strip, he put his Expy thru a quite a workout honing his technique & improving his ET's each time.

Anita & I had an absolute blast, nothing withstanding my less-than-happy mood when we had a flat tire already late on our way to the drag strip...... a HUGE thanks to Tom Witkop, who happened to be driving with us in convoy to the track, behind Anita's truck for spotting it, for stopping and for helping me to change the spare tire & get us on the road again. With Tom's help, we were able to get the spare on and back on the road in about 20 minutes. This improved my outlook to no end from what it was when I first looked at that flat tire, thinking about being rained on 2 years in a row, already being late for the track & with people waiting on us! Thanks Tom, you saved the day!

I also managed to make myself look particularly brilliant by losing/not losing my keys after giving up on trying to make my plugs fire thru about 97 octane & 98% humidity, what a buffoon! After cracking into the 12's just once (running slower than we used to almost 100 horsepower ago under hotter conditions), I realized that with the combination of the ultra-high octane, almost 100% humidity and at our boost levels, it just wasn't going to fire the plug gap we ran, and so we called it a day, it was just too miserably hot & humid for me to pull the plugs & regap them with less than an hour of Test & Tune left.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who helped the idiot (that would be me) find the keys he hid in his back brace, making Raoul late for his wedding in the process. I don't think I managed to tell Raoul that I had just found them not 2 minutes before he came back from checking with Track Info to see if anyone had turned in any keys. Thank you Raoul, I owe you!

I know I've forgotten some people that should be mentioned here, but I have to beg you to forgive me, we're trying to get caught up from the Rally & are a bit tired, but please know that we thank you one and all for coming and for being the wonderful people you are, what a great time & a great group!

 

Even though I just made a quick pass at the show and shine, it was interesting to put some faces to the names. For those that missed it we had Wittoms truck (the Magnacharged sleeper), and MHZMANs show quality ATI equipped truck flanking Mikes Lightning. Three different approaches to performance lined up in a row. In the middle was ATSTs truck, with a tarp hiding what we think may have been her boyfriends Ranger in the bed. I should have pulled my '95 up front with them... even with mud on the sides and who knows what inside it would have been the cleanest pre-97 there, since it was the only one as far as I know.

Most of the crew got along like they were old drinking buddies. Truly an easy to get along with group. Glad to have had the chance to meet you all. Someone mentioned how meeting people is often quite different than their "site" personality and I couldn't agree more. If this is the type of people that show up every year, then it will no doubt be more of a priority for me next rally.

Lou..... sorry to hear you couldn't make it this year. As fate would have it I had to go out of town Saturday so I couldn't make the strip run. The Race to Disgrace is still on for the next rally!! After all the ribbing back and forth it would have been great to line them up and see who the slowest truck really is. LOL


On a side note.... after mentioning that without Lew being there that I really had little chance against the newer trucks, Mike mentioned that Anitas Lariat would be a good match up. Hmm, a new Lariat with a 5.4 vs my 302. I couldn't help but mention that I DID KNOW where she works! The Lariat may be a heavy truck, but I don't think it's that heavy. Maybe me and Lew can bring some sand bags to load in it before we line up with Anita at the track......

 

Signmaster, you can't forget Raoul's F150 with the wood (nicely done, I might add) sides to hold the goats in.

 

man sounds like i missed a great time again....i actually thought about driving down saturday but i just couldnt get away....on a different note..both my son and sister are doing well after their respective surgeries...my sister's lymph nodes were clear which is a big relief and my son looks the best he ever has...

i am glad everyone seemed to have a good time..

 

It seems that a good time was had by all. I could'nt make it this year but will really try for the next one. The competetion sounds itimidating for a 1/4 mile run but I got a shot at "Best of Slow" With a few mods I might break into the teens !

I'll be be watching for the announcement of next year's event.

Lew B, best wishes and good health for your family.

 

Tom,

And all this time Raoul said his truck was stock. No wonder he ran such a good time in the fall, he's sneaking in a few SP (sheep power) on everyone!


Lew,

Glad to hear things are OK. We ended up scooting out of town Sat to deal with family matters ourselves. There is always next year. With all the race ribbing we might post some high ETs when we finally match up, but the laugh factor will be worth it.