Bakersfield, CA May 1-3, 2009 – The second edition of the Rod & Kulture Dragfest was in a word, fun. They had something for everyone. If you are a drag race fan, hot rodder, rat rodder or just a lover of a party atmosphere laced with nitro this is where you wanted to be this weekend. In spite of being rained out most of Friday, the racers and fans who did attend saw everything from Nostalgia Top Fuel dragsters to old drag racing "drive-in" movies and a live 60s style "surf band"

Keep in mind that the idea behind Dragfest is to put on a real nostalgia drag race. When you looked out across the track and roam the pits (discounting the necessary modern improvements), they tried to make it resemble a real, early, 1960’s drag race. To do this, they made Famoso more period correct and tried to make historical cars their main focus.

Headlining the action part of the show was eight booked in Nostalgia Top Fuel dragsters including reigning World Champion, Troy Green and the High Speed Motorsports team. Since the crew had planned to do some testing before heading back to Bowling Green, KY for the National Hot Rod Reunion in June, this was the perfect opportunity to offset the costs and put on a show for appreciative fans.

As it turned out, the weekend proved to be invaluable in prepping for the NHRR as a timing problem was found that would have cost valuable time to find in Kentucky. It took four runs but after eliminating several suspect parts, it was found that a faulty magneto hold down clamp was allowing the timing to retard when there was a load on the engine (i.e. when it was on a pass).

Nonetheless, the guys did have fun and are now ready for Bowling Green where they hope to score their fifth win at this annual event.

Photos by: Bob Brown, Steven C. Wallace, Darrell Conrad, Pam Schavrien and Don Ewald.

With several of the team including driver Troy Green and crew chief Brett Johansen in transit, Friday morning was pretty low key.

Wanting to find a starting point, Shelar jumped into the seat and Sean Bellemeur oversaw the first warm up of the weekend.

By mid afternoon Green had arrived and so had the rain. At this point they still had high hopes of getting the first qualifying session in so the car was warmed up again.

This was the first race for the newest member of the Green family - little Ava Claire. Troy and wife Lara's only complaint was they had to pack more for her than both of them together. All weekend Ava was the center of attention and by all accounts really took to drag racing like a duck to water.

Saturday dawned sunny and dry and the first order of business for the High Speed bunch was a team meeting in Dale Singh's motorhome.

With two runs scheduled for Saturday the car was once again warmed up for session one.

Unlike an actual race, this event did not have stringent who runs when and where rules. For his first run Green took the right lane and was all by himself.

Green stopped the clocks with an unremarkable 6.04 at just 238 mph which should have served for a decent baseline pass. However, it would prove to be the only run of the weekend to require a chute.

One of the cool aspect of this event was the fact they had all the cars that ran return to the pits in front of the stands so the spectators got a closer look at everyone.

Into the night the team tried to find the problem. They replaced everything in the ignition system including a borrowed magneto from Rick White.

Whatever the problem was, they had not fixed it and Green had another abbreviated run. Since the two quickest cars from this round would come back for a "final" this left the HSMS team done for the weekend.

On the way back to the pits Green and Shelar went over the run in hopes to nail down the gremlin.

As the car count dwindled down due to eliminations, there was more than enough time for anyone who wanted to make test runs. After making even more changes the guys tried again to get from A to B.

Once again the the car was a "slug" and once again Green shut it off very early. As was stated in the opening, back at the shop a careful look at the computer graphs revealed that a faulty magneto hold down clamp was allowing the timing to retard when there was a load on the engine (i.e. when it was on a pass). This has been fixed and they are ready for Bowling Green. Hope to see you all there.