Alex Laughlin Prepares The Screw Blown Corvette For Lights Out 10!

It’s the first week of the year, and in just a few short weeks, the de facto season kickoff for small tire racers will take place in the Deep South. Lights Out X, the tenth running of Donald Long’s radial extravaganza it coming up Valentine’s Day weekend, and racers all over the country to getting to work on changes, upgraded and maintenance on their rides.

At his shop in Texas, just a couple of hours outside of Dallas, our very own Alex Laughlin set about pulling the engine out of his screw blown C6 Corvette, the car that carried him to within a couple of hundredths of a second of winning No Mercy 9, Lights Out’s late-season twin, back in September. Laughlin mowed down the competition en route to his first final round in the radial ranks, only to come up just short against the always-tough nitrous Camaro of Jeff Naiser.

Laughlin and crew spent the time between the semifinal and final round of that race trying to remove and replace a lifter that had jammed itself into the lifter bore and refused to budge. Finally, they managed to coax the busted lifter out and had just enough time to drop and new one in and button everything back up before the final, but tuner Frankie Taylor didn’t really have time to check out the data from the previous run and make any changes to the tune. They laid down nearly identical passes on both runs, proving the car was fixed, but given time, Frankie likely could have pushed the car a little harder to give Naiser even more of a race.

Check out this video, a time lapse style capture of Alex carefully removing all of the bolts, connectors and hoses from the intake so it, along with the massive supercharger and injector hat, can be removed. It all comes off as one unit, which can then be broken down further on a work bench, while the rest of the engine will also be pulled apart and checked over. Any parts that need to be replaced will be swapped, and then it will all bolt back together and the car will be ready for the trip to South Georgia Motorsports Park to once again take on the biggest names in small tire racing!

 

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