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Oct 4 we had the truck drags at SAC RACEWAY and we were surprised when the legendary Bill Fletcher showed up with the legendary "ERNIE" after battling snow and ice on a 14 hour drive down from Stanwood WA.
Ernie is a 2nd gen 2wd Dodge with a 12valve Cummins that has made passes in the mid 9 seconds on fuel only and was a street-legal daily driver. IN fact, Bill told me that his son had planned to use the truck the night before to take his date to the local Homecoming dance.
I had never met Bill before and he shows up just as time trials are ending driving a brand new (not even license plates on it yet) massive Freightliner
hauler and drives the whole combo right into the staging lanes. They unload the race truck and his driver whose first name is Taylor (CRS old man syndrome, but I cant recall his last name) drive back and forth in the staging lanes 3 or 4 times and then he heads for the tree and lays down a smokin 10.66 at 132 MPH run on a cold engine right off the truck. Twenty minutes later Taylor goes back to the line for a by-run and launches hard, halfway down the track, a freeze plug lets go and the truck waters down the track, causing it to lose control, the right rear came around and he went across the other lane, hit the wall and rolled a couple of times, then skidded on the drivers side down the track for a couple of hundred feet.
The ambulance safety crew were on scene almost before the truck stopped skidding and had Tayor out and into the ambulance immediately. He suffered bumps and bruises and posted online today that he was really sore, as to be expected but was otherwise OK
The truck was totalled, no one got any video, but there are a couple of pics on the
NWBOMBERS
website, just look in the COMPETITION forum.
Everybody should take a lesson from this,
NEVER EVER SCRIMP ON ANYTHING SAFETY RELATED
everything safety related worked on this truck and a young man was able to walk away, go home to his family and live to race another day.
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