It’s the end of Day 2 on the salt, and we are about to push the car back to the staging area so we can make another run in the morning. The car had an awesome first run, and after a gear change and a little cleanup we are ready to hit it hard tomorrow.

In the meantime we would like to thank all the Spectre Speedliner Society members who signed at at shows to have their names on the car. Thank you for the support!

After months of hard work and weeks of 20 hour days, the Spectre SpeedLiner made its first run at approximately 2:10pm on Friday October 9th. As we began to push Kenny down the salt in the Double Dually push truck, the car coughed, stalled, and then fired to life in a roar of twin-turbocharged Cadillac fury. He quickly pulled away and said the motor provided incredible acceleration, with endless torque.

Since this was the shakedown run Kenny was supposed to keep the speeds very low, but the way the car kept acceleration we knew he decided to tickle the throttle a bit. Then over the radio we heard the announcement: at the 3 mile mark (the full course is 5 miles) the car was going 287mph and accelerating hard. At n early 300mph, the SpeedLiner instantly became the world’s fastest Cadillac.

Then Kenny reported a malfunction in the fire system, which caused one of the fire bottles to empty all over the cockpit – soaking Kenny and making it very difficult to see. He pulled the chutes and coasted to a stop. The crew is feverishly working on the car now, inspecting all the hard parts, pouring over the data stream from the engine management system, cleaning all the fire supressent agent out of the cockpit and fixing the system itself. We’re hoping to have the car ready for a second run this evening or first thing tomorrow morning, and this time we’re going for the record.

Here we go, about to make the maiden voyage. Kenny is suited up and climbing into the car. Between the Top Fuel fire suit an the black paint is about 120 in the car, so we are using an easy up to try and keep him cool. T-minus 10 minutes and counting.

The car ahead of us in line is the polar opposite of the nine liter Caddy powered SpeedLiner. The Hudson Brothers (www.thehudsonboys.com) out of Seattle are running The Worlds Fastest Geo, a chop top Geo Metro with a 1.0 liter motorcycle engine. So far the car has run over 155mph!

While we wait in line for our first run on the salt, let’s pause and reflect on how this whole thing started.

The first land speed racers in the ’30s drove stripped down street cars. Shortly after WWII when airmen returned home from the war with a thirst for speed, a little cash in their pocket and lots of plentiful military surplus parts floating around, land speed racing got serious.

The first streamliners were leftover “belly tank” auxiliary fuel tanks from P-38 fighters that were stuffed with a basic chassis and a hopped up flathead engine. The tanks were designed to go over 300mph, so they worked well. As time progressed and speeds increased, complete custom bodies shrouding the wheels showed up on the scene, but even today any streamlined car with exposed wheels is called a Lakester.

Bobby Green from Los Angeles California is a hard core traditionalist, and while his “Old Crow” racer isn’t an original ’50s era car it was built in exactly the same way and is one of the coolest cars on the salt. This car represents the soul of Land Speed Racing.

We are on the salt! Finally. Today we passed tech. This is a big deal because if you don’t pass technical inspection, you go home, plain and simple. The inspectors don’t mess around, they check everything and there are many of them. From all the driver apparel: helmet, gloves, arm restraints, suit, shoes, socks… you name it, they want to see it and check the SFI tags on everything. Make sure you wear clean underwear!

They go over the car with a fine tooth comb making sure that anything and everything meets the letter of the Rule Book. Because each vehicle is a custom creation, many of the items are subject to interpretation… and all inspectors err on the side of safety, so if there is even a question about how a part is welded on, or the thickness of the steel, or the age of the component, they can not let you run. As it turns out, they spent a long time looking over every nook and cranny of our car and came up with a couple of very minor easy to remedy items, which we took care of quickly. I don’t think a car has ever been built that didn’t get sent back for “something”.

What a testament to Steve Schmalz and the crew at Performance Fabrication (shameless plug: San Carlos California 650-595-3663) as they built one hell of a car. After tech we brought the car back to our pit and set up our camp. First, the tarp gets bolted to the salt with 8″ long 3/8″ Lag Bolts that are driven in with an air powered impact gun. Then everything goes into place; tables, chairs, generators, air compressors, all manner of tools and devices… think of it as going camping on the moon and bringing everything that you might need to fix the moon buggy should anything on it go wrong.

At around 2:00 pm Ken Rappaport, our aerodynamicist, and I made sandwiches for everyone. The crew has grown to 15 or 16 people. Next was getting Kenny fitted to the car. As we were building it, we made sure that I fit into the car, and I do, barely. Land Speed Racing is a unique motorsport in that in case there’s an accident, help doesn’t show up for a long time… because you’re going 300 MPH, or 400 MPH, and they are traveling in fire trucks and ambulances doing, what, 80? 90? So it takes them a while to get to you, assuming they find you quickly. You can cover a lot of ground at 400, or even 200 MPH, it’s not so nice and neat like at race tracks where they get to you in seconds. The biggest danger from a time perspective is FIRE. So in order to pass tech you need to demonstrate that you can bail out of the car in 20 seconds, give or take. No easy feat, this.

So back to the car; Kenny is shorter than I am, so a lot of time was spend making sure that he fit into the car, could operate all the controls, have a good line of site, and of course be able to bail. We did this so that Kenny who has an unlimited license and is far more experienced than I am can shake the car out, give us good feed back so it’s dialed in and fast. As for me, all I need to do is rip out all of the padding. I fit fine that way, sitting on steel.

At 5:00 pm the car was ready and finished, I placed the remaining decals on it and we rolled it onto the salt. The plan was to place it in line, but it looked so cool out there….. finally!……. that we had to stop and take pictures. We rolled it into tomorrows run line at around 6:30 and went back to clean up the camp site/pit area and get off the salt by 7:00 pm as required of everyone. There are no humans on the salt at night. It is forbidden. Everyone leaves their stuff and gets off the lake. There is probably $100,000,000 worth of cars, tools and equipment out there every night, as safe as can be. Amazing, but also one of the really cool things about Bonneville.

Dinner was a lot of fun… hey, we’re in Wendover in the middle of nowhere. Let’s face it, no one drives out here for the food. Our conversation included talk from Crew Chief Steve who wanted a nice and mellow initial shake down run, maybe in the 150 to 200 MPH range. Kenny, on the other hand, felt that if the car was going in a straight line, and felt stable, he would go much faster then that. I can tell you what I would do if I was driving the car tomorrow… And I think I know what Kenny will do too. We’ll see. We’re already counting the hours to breakfast! Nine to be exact. The car is in line, tomorrow we will make at least one shakedown run, and hopefully there will be time for a second slightly faster run. Can’t wait to see what the car will do.

Thanks,
Amir Rosenbaum #86

It’s 5:40 and they just shut the course down for the day. Didn’t make it out, but we are on the ground and ready to go first thing tomorrow. Kenny wants to take it easy the first run, which means faster than the terminal velocity if any Ferrari or Lambo street car but slower than a biz jet. Stay tuned!

It takes a surprising amount of electronics to make a giant cad stuffed in a missile work. FAST XFI handles engine management, Stewart Components control the water pumps for the onboard cooling tank and intercooler tanks. Relays control the CO2 air shifter. The double box is a Race Optics 3-channel onboard camera system, and we will have lots of high speed video when we hit the salt.

We passed tech and safety, the chutes are packed, time to run the big turbo Caddy through the gears before our first run.

At tech inspection they only had one major note before our first run. They asked that we shroud the fuel line with steel just in case the flywheel grenades. Here crew chief Steve Schmalz comes up with a last minute solution using parts we have on the trailer.

What kind of air filter can support a 2,000 horsepower twin turbocharged, 528 cubic inch Cadillac? Spectre hpR.