Sisters teams face adversity in chump cars

Two teams from Sisters failed to get traction at the Chump Car World Series race in Portland over Halloween weekend.

"Fire Chicken," built by Jeff and Jerry Taylor of Sisters, continued its downward slide from a year ago when it took 7th out of more than 70 cars in the 12-hour race. This year, the bird car lasted about three hours before the engine let go in a cloud of smoke at the end of the main straight at Portland International Raceway.

A new entry this year was "Romance Driven," a project by the Willitts family of Sisters, owners of FivePine Lodge. Another Firebird, the car looked good, sounded good, but ... didn't run so good after a couple of hours. After trying several times to get the correct starter motor from a parts house on the other side of the freeway, the team that included Bob Frack, with Andre Cornalus and Darrel Tewalt working the wrenches, finally had to give up when what seemed like a cracked piston was at the core of their problems.

Greg Willitts did get to drive the car for the first hour or so, and showed excellent skill from 9 a.m. in conditions that were terrible. The track was wet from rain, fog and oil from one of the other $500 crap-can race cars that had laid down most of its crankcase in turns four through 10 of the 12-turn

course.

In other words, over most of the track.

The Chump Car World Series offers a chance to race very cheap old cars with minimal modifications for long hours, often in bad conditions. In other words, to have fun.

Eric Dolson had the first stint in Fire Chicken. He was, in a word, slow. Slow on the straights, slow in the turns. He was being passed by Pintos and Chevettes. Hondas. Pedal cars. Shopping carts. Passed just about everywhere.

"It doesn't go, it doesn't stop, it doesn't turn," he finally told the Taylor crew during one of the frequent pauses for an adjustment. It was discovered that the timing of the engine was off by about a quarter turn of the distributor, the tires were hard as bowling balls and the last modification required braking with two feet on the pedal. Still, Dolson's prowess was called into question.

Until fellow hot shoe David Kunicki of British Columbia got in the car. "I don't know how you drove that thing in the wet," Kunicki told Dolson. Then things got worse. As the Chicken went by the pits, Jerry Taylor said, "You can't even see the back of the car through the smoke."

Fire Chicken did not complete that lap. Or any other after that.

When the sun finally came out, the two cars sat broken and unable to run. Bill Willitts did not get his time behind the wheel of "Romance Driven." He almost seemed relieved. After surveying the damage done to some of the cars by some of the other cars, and hearing tales of motorized pinball on the track, Willitts said that he intended to take a driver's school before he would seriously consider going out with the crazies who race in Chump Car.

But he said the opportunity to put the project together with three generations of his family was worth the effort to get the car built and running.

Kurt Kallberg of Sisters, who had jumped from the Taylors to Team Willitts, was last seen trying to sell fuel out of barrels on the back of his truck to anyone walking by with a gas can.