Back to the sad stuff, our first show of the year was Council Bluff, IA and we went in to the bitter cold looking to start our year off with a bang. We got a bang or pop in the wrong area. Daron was run the finals and blew a .45 caliber hole in the cylinder head put him out for the weekend. David went on the remainder of the weekend and finished in the top half of the field over all. Back home we came to get the Matador up and running again. With a new set of heads of the truck we took off to San Antonio for two glorious days of rain and racing. At least we were inside for this one!!! It was a good weekend for Flame Motorsports, minimal damage and two running trucks.

Home town Houston, Texas was our next stopped on the tour of up and downs. It all started out good for us but could it stay that way………? NOPE!!!! Right before the freestyle portion of the show when they were checking our RII radios, David fired the truck to find what we thought was a bad magneto. He was unable to compete. However Daron laid a good run to represent the team. Back to the shop we go for more engine work. We pulled every piece of the ignition system our and replaced it and we were off and running to sunny California.

Anaheim started fine with an awesome pit party, I got the opportunity to hang out with my little buddy “Zach” for the day and sign a ton of autographs. Racing time cam around and David drew Gerber in Shocker for the first round. The light went green and the sky filled with smoke, great what now you say. Well let me tell you, a head gasket maybe??? After all what else could it be? NOPE, it was the heads; not just one but both heads were blown. Krunch again was out for the night. Daron on the other hand too Matador down the bracket in racing, but ended up taking himself out in a turn. Let’s load this junk up and head back to Houston. Back at the shop we installed new heads on Krunch and everything sounded great once again.

Back in Houston for the final show in Reliant with all the issues behind us or so we thought we were here to put on a show. Daron left the line and snapped the input shaft in his transmission right out of the box, so he was out in the pits installing a new trans with Jeff Hoy. Jeff helps every time he can and it is always much appreciated. David took Krunch through the rounds losing to Captains Curse in the Semi’s by a few inches. Krunch was running great. It all came down to the turns and Alex took it a little tighter and pulled of a nice win. Freestyle time came around and Daron was back in the mix ready to show what Matador could do. He laid out a nice run that put him on the leader board. David came out in Krunch and hit everything in his path including some really nice cross threads. He was finishing it all off with a blistering fast cyclone when all of the sudden the engine shut off. At first it was thought that they activated the RII unit in his truck, but after checking everything out we found the engine locked up. David had broken the crank. Once we pulled everything apart we found the pick to the oil pump had snapped off and starved the engine of oil. However due to our trusty TX-7 we did not even so much as spin a bearing. Our adventures continue in our next edition!!!

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