What is MoparStyle Racing?

MoparStyle Racing, Ltd. is a Texas Limited Partnership owned by semi-retired businessman and entrepreneur, Dave 'Old Hippie' Schultz. After decades of the 6AM to 11PM grind as a corporate executive (and later an owner of quite a few businesses), Dave sold his businesses and decided to spend his time and energy with his family, and doing the things that most interested him.

Cars, Motorcycles, Drag Racing, and the Internet are Dave's main interests.

• MoparStyle Racing is a Web Designer: MoparStyle Racing is a web designer that likes to specialize in web sites dealing with collectible cars and auto racing. Dave has certainly done sites for other types of businesses, but cars and racing are the most fun. Click the Web Sites link for more details.

• MoparStyle Racing is Sunoco Race Gas Dealer: We are an authorized Sunoco Race Gas Dealer located on the West Side of Houston — in the Katy/Richmond/Rosenberg area. Click the Race Fuel link to learn more.

• MoparStyle Racing is a Drag Racing Team: We own and race cars in the Nostalgia Super Stock and Nostalgia Muscle car classes of the NMCA. Click the Racing link for more details — or follow our team blog below.

• MoparStyle Racing is operates the Mopar Internet Community MoparStyle: The Best Damn Internet Community on the Internet. Clicking the MoparStyle link will fill you in on that.

• MoparStyle Racing is the owner of the Registrar and Web Hosting Company Southern Star Hosting: Register a new or transfer your existing Domain names, secure inexpensive and dependable web hosting, fax by eMail, Web Site Tonight, Virtual Servers, Dedicated Servers, photo albums, and a lot more. Click the Hosting/Domains link to learn more.

•  MoparStyle Racing is an Internet Registrar/Hosting broker: For less than $200 a year, you can own a business selling Domain Registration, web hosting, fax by email, Virtual Servers, Dedicated Servers, SSL Certificates, eCommerce stores, photo albums and a variety of other Internet Products and services. Not this is not too good to be true — just a rare open window of Opportunity. Are you interested in coming through it? Click the Make$$ for more information.

• MoparStyle Racing is a T-Shirt and unique gift designer: Check it out or Gift Shop by Clicking Here.

That's a quick summary of what we're about. click on the links for more specific details. Take your time as browsing is welcomed here.

South and West of Houston, Texas

Katy, Sealy, Columbus, Richmond, Rosenberg, West Houston, Sugarland, Stafford, Hempstead, Waller, Brookshire, Simonton, Fulshear, Damon, Pleak…

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Leaded & Unleaded Race Fuels

We loaded up the stacker and the motor coach last week and left Wednesday for the 1000 mile trip to Bowling Green. We arrived there Thursday noon and set up the pits.

Thursday night and Friday morning it rained, and we took the cars to tech in while it was only sprinkling. We were the second and third cars to tech in. We immediately put the cars back in the trailer and wiped down. At about 3PM, they had the first part of the track dry — so the opened it up for 1/8 mile Time Trials — hoping the exhaust and hot tires would dry the top end enough to start qualifying at 5PM. The top of the track was seeping — and so they kept with the 1/8 mile until about 6PM — when everyone was warned that a major storm was coming in — and the track was closing at 6PM to batten down the hatches. We personally passed on making any of these 1/8 mile passes.

It rained like Hell all Friday night and was sprinkling Saturday morning. The weather forecast was for rain through Sunday — and I was expecting the NMCA to hold the race over to Monday. I rode the scooter up to the line at 10AM — and there wasn't a NMCA official to be found. No doubt they would have been pummeled with questions they didn't yet have answers for, so they hung out in Race Control. There was a rumor by someone who is a pretty good friend of the track owner — that Charlie was waiting until noon to see if the forecast would change — and would announce if they'd run, cancel, or reschedule. At 11:30, it was announced over the speakers that the race would be rescheduled. A couple of us NSS guys snickered that it wouldn't be rescheduled — but if they announce it was cancelled, there'd be a run on people getting refunds, which the NMCA didn't want to deal with at the moment.

We pulled out of the track and noon — and drove the 1000 miles arriving home at 3:30AM

We were notified by NMCA that the race will not be rescheduled.

There's a Mopar club from the Fort Worth area called Cowtown Mopars, which has an event at the Texas Motorplex in Ennis, TX, called "Mopars at Motorplex". The event this year was to be held on April 18th — but that was rained out and the rainout date was April 19th.

The week prior I ran the Big Red Ram in Florida, and the week after I would need to run it in Bowling Green, KY. The morning after this race, my wife and I were getting on a plane for a week in the Bahamas to celebrate our 30th anniversary. I didn't want to chance breaking Big Red Ram on a non-points race and not having the time to repair — so this was a time to try out my recently completed backup car, Texas Black Magic.

Texas Black Magic was my car while Big Red Ram was being built — but I windowed the motor in it about three years ago. The motor that I use to run in Big Red Ram was pulled and rebuilt as a 580CI, and put into this black car. Other differences are that this car is an automatic vs. 4-speed, a 4-link vs. ladder bar, and runs 33" slicks vs. 31" on the red car.

The car had no test time — and the race was the actual first time out in three years. In Tech — it was leaking water. Back in the pits we found it to be a gasket between the water pump, block, and elephant ears. I missed the first T&T fixing that — with the help of Damon, Cruise, Slim, and Dallas.

In the second (which was the last) T&T, the car launched great — but broke up at about 6800. To make things worse — it had been three years since I had raced an automatic — and I yanked the shifter hard like a 4-speed and skipped 2nd gear. Worse yet, it is an automatic reaction of a 4-speed racer to kick the shifter up into neutral when he crosses the line. That same reaction will get you second gear in an automatic — for a brief second, which thankfully didn't appear to hurt the car. I passed the shack to get my time slip — and was told that I was leaking oil at the line. I did a 10.1 @ 139mph missing 2nd gear.

Back in the pits I'm cleaning up all of the oil under the car and tightening bolts and fittings — and had to miss my first of two qualifying passes. I decided with the car breaking up — to put an A/NSS on the window — for a 10.0. I make the second qualifying pass — and did a 10.1 with steam coming through the hood. It turns out that all of the hands helping me with the water pump gasket, the one in charge of the top hose never tightened the clamp. The hose blew off and the water blew out. Back in the pits I'm looking for clean water and slowing adding it back into my hot engine. I'm also finding that my 4-year old batteries are weak and not holding a charge well. I'm putting a charger on between rounds — but the car is still cranking slow.

Getting the worst qualifying number in my only pass gets me running the Top Qualifier in the first round of Eliminations. I beat him on the tree for the win — but when I get the car back to the pits — I'm leaking oil again. I get that all cleaned up and we find it is between the oil pump and the block — no way to fix it at the track. Since I was running the Top Qualifier in the first round and won — I drew a Bye in the second round because of an odd number. Because of the car being so sick — I didn't do a burn out or run the car hard — but just drove it down the track.

In the Semis I was going against a much slower car, and he cut a near perfect light while I waited for mine. The car was just too sick to run him down — and so I got third place.

My wife, youngest daughter, crew chief/shop rat, and I left at 6AM on Wednesday for the 1100+ mile trek to Bradenton, Fl. I managed to sneak my 84' rig through the Florida Port Authority without an oversize license and had many a stressful pass of a Florida DOT cop sitting in the median looking for truck violations. My son (Dallas) no longer races with me — and so I had to do all of the driving. I stopped at a Flying J in Tallahassee and spent the night.

On Thursday morning I took on 200 gals of diesel, dumped the waste tanks, and on to Bradenton. We got there at around 1PM parked the rig next to Skip Koester and Kurt Neighbor — and set up in the sand pits.

Friday we teched in the cars and made our first T&T pass. My car had a lot of changes done to it over the winter — and we'd not had one opportunity to T&T it. On the first T&T pass the car turned hard left and started to break up between 5000-5500 RPM. Back in the pits we checked under the valve covers and all looked well. I put it on a hard surface (all pits are sand) and rev'd the motor and it broke up at 5400 — which happened to be where my launch chip (I'm a 4-speed) was set. I turned the chip up to 6800 and the motor broke up there. OK — obvious the MSD box was stuck in the launch stage. Further diagnosis showed the the line-lock button was wired wrong when the transmission/shifter was swapped. That was fixed and we focused on the Aspen Preston was running in NMC.

Prston goes out and makes his pass and never returns to the pits. I get on the scooter and he's at the top of the track. He says that the oil pressure was fluxuating and now the car won't start. I get Skip to help tow him back and we start looking at what was wrong. The no start is because the neutral safety wire wasn't put on tight enough when Preston swapped in the new motor. The lack of oil pressure is explained as being "great" pressure and then the gauge drops to 0 fast then back up to "great" — all in less than a second. Damon and I feel like it must be a sender on the electronic gauge — because nothing bounces to 70+PSI to 0 and back in less than a second if a true oil pressure problem. Preston goes back out a again and make another pass. He comes back and says the same — and that is when we asked to define "great" oil pressure. He says it never got higher than 30 PSI. Far from "Great"! So I have him put the car on jack stands, pull the oil filter, and cut it open. Sure enough — gold flecks from the new crank bearings. The car goes in the trailer and he's done. Dallas pulled the motor apart yesterday — and it is trashed on the three passes with the great 30PSI oil pressure.

Back o my car, I make a second T&T pass and do a 10.5 slip sliding all over the track. I make a third pass and the car hooks — and I get a 9.56 pass — lifting a little. I'd declared B/FX — which is 9.5. My new Crew chief counts the number of clicks for my brand new Double Action QA1 shocks — and tells me there is something wrong when he's exceeded 50 clicks. Yes, it is true, he went fifty clicks on my left shock before mentioning that something was wrong. Great — the adjustor of the shock is now busted in the high position and the shock doesn't have a stop at either end. We put the car away for the night.

Saturdy is Qualifying Day. There is a terrible wind that shifts from head to cross wind — and to make it worse there is a farmer at the end of the track plowing the field so that there's a sand storm — complete with mini-dunes starting to form at the very top. It is obvious that the track and the farmer must be at war for this to coincidentally being plow day.

My first pass has me spinning the wheels badly for a 10.2 pass in a 14MPH head wind. Everyone appeared to be slow in the first pass as the weather stations said the air was 3000'. My next pass is a 9.68 into a 28MPH head wind. For the third pass, sand from the plowing is collecting at the top of the track, there's a bad headwind, and while we're in line they decide that this is the perfect time to run the jet car. After the Jet car fogs the lanes with unburnt JP4 and blows the sand everywhere — there are immediately two wrecks in the class running just before us. Many NSS drivers pull out of line and decide not to make their Third Qualifying pass. Kurt Neighbor, Skip Koester, Barry Camp, and two other cars pull out before me. Of those remaining — a couple (Doug Duell & Double O Joe) say they were going to make an 1/8 mile pass because they were still working out issues — and use the first pull off. I don't know who pulled out after me. We put the car away for the night.

Sunday orning is raining bad. It stops at around noon and they start to dry off the track. The first car goes down the green track at 3:30PM. I believe it was about 5PM when the 18 NSS cars started to run — and I drew Kurt Neighbor — both B/FX cars. I had a .062 light and saw the red bulb in Kurt's lane as I went by. We both aired the cars out to where I did a 9.4 and Kurt and 9.2. First round to me.

The secod round I went against the Black Horse Thunderbolt (A/FX). I left first with a .032 light and the Dark horse car caught me at the top and paced me. I decided I needed to put a fender on him and did. I got a 9.52 and he broke out with a 9.22. Second Round to me.

I got a be in the Next round. I wanted the left lane — but just before the five NMC cars that ran before us — it was time to fog the track with the Jet Car. We sat in the staging lanes while our cars filled up with jet fumes in the prerace burn. Thanx NMCA! I was going to take the right lane (I'd been put into it the first two rounds by the better qualify cars) but the jet car ran there — so I switched to the left. My low 1.3 60's turned into a 1.64 60' (a record worse for my car) and I ran a slip-sliding 10.5 on my 9.5.

The hot laped Semi's had me against the Princess, and Skip against Doug Duell. The track was still greasy and my car wouldn't hook — I went from close to the wall to close to the center all of the way down — hoping to get Stephie to break out (she'd had two 9.99s and a 9.96 on the brakes for the previous three rounds) — but she too was having problems. Even with her .320 light and 10.5 on a 10.0 pass — she had a better package than my 10.5 on a 9.5. I'm going to take some of the blame as I didn't have enough RPM when I launched — but the track was like an ice skating rink for a ladder bar 4-speed.

Skip's Wife Washed His Helmet In Hot Water The Night Before

So at 9:30P my night was over. I collected my $200, packed up and left. There was another bad accident after my pass, and Skip won the event over the Princess. I was whipped and only made it 135 miles the first night and 1000 miles the next day. Got home 9:30PM Monday night.