Well, I finished my season off by attending the Jammin challenge at Pleasant Hill, MO. It was extremely cold that day, actual temps were around 35 degrees with wind chills slightly colder then that most of the day.

During my first practice run, I caught a rut which threw me into a wood post on the side of the track. 100% my fault as I should have let off when the car was thrown, but thought I could drive out of it. No luck there. Ended up breaking the front arm, steering knuckle, upper camber link, and losing the kingpin bushing.

Luckily, I had everything except the bushing which Steve Hale was kind enough to supply me with another brand that I was able to make work with a washer.  Having reassembled the car, I went back out to practice again. The track was very hard and unforgiving since the top 4-5 inches had to be scraped off with a bobcat because of all the rain leading up to that day. Coupled with the low temperatures, it became a very challenging course.

I struggled with my car as the engine seemed to be idling a little strange- at first I blamed it on the cold temps, but after during my second heat I had a run away on the straight that led me to believe I had something else wrong. After speaking with Steve about the symptoms, he suggested I might have an air leak, which sounded very plausible with all that had happened. Apparently, when I broke in practice, I hit hard enough to actually crack the case on the OS Speed I was running. This was in large part due to the cold temps I'm sure, as this was the first time I had broken anything on my 801X, it has been spectacular all summer on durability.

That basically ended my day and my season here. I very much wanted to attend the RC Pro Series Finals in November, but due to commitments at home I won't be able too. Now I have the long wait until I get to race nitro again, but it's always worth it.

I can't say enough about how great the 801X did all summer. Besides this cold day I never broke a part and everything showed very minimal wear. I can't wait until next season now that I have several months experience with this car. I need to work on a rough track/high bite setup as that's one area I seemed to struggle with, but I'm sure with a little tuning I can find something that just as good as my dry track setup is.