The electric bill at Billy Glidden’s Whiteland, Ind., shop is bound to be a little higher than usual next month and with good reason.

Glidden believes he and wife Shannon have logged nearly 18 – 22 hour days since leaving Rockingham last month in preparation for next weekend’s ADRL Len-Mar World Finals at the Texas Motorplex.

The defending ADRL Extreme 10.5 champion understands the challenge he faces in defending his title and believes this kind of effort in shop time and attention to detail is what it’s going to take if he hopes to have even a modicum of a chance.

ADRL Champion Leaving No Stone Unturned in Championship Defense …

The electric bill at Billy Glidden’s Whiteland, Ind., shop is bound to be a little higher than usual next month and with good reason.

Glidden believes he and wife Shannon have logged nearly 18 – 22 hour days since leaving Rockingham last month in preparation for next weekend’s ADRL Len-Mar World Finals at the Texas Motorplex.

The defending ADRL Extreme 10.5 champion understands the challenge he faces in defending his title and believes this kind of effort in shop time and attention to detail is what it’s going to take if he hopes to have even a modicum of a chance.

“When I left Rockingham I didn’t have an engine that I would care to even start much less race,” Glidden admitted. “Right now we have six engines together.”

Glidden raced at last year’s Shakedown at E’town event, a major doorslammer gathering held annually at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park in Englishtown, NJ, but he’s not about to leave the shop this weekend.

A focused drag racer, reared in the revered Glidden pedigree, the plans are to drop in a track along the way to Ennis, Texas, for some testing.
    
“We’re trying to get the last of our engine stuff finished here so we can hit the road,” Glidden said.

A man can never have enough bullets and next weekend he’s bringing seven fresh engines to the Texas Motorplex. Ask him and he’ll tell you that preparing seven race ready engines is no small feat, especially when you are a perfectionist, as he readily admits to being.

“We’ve had them back apart and back together several times because when I go from one engine over to the other, I find areas that we can make better or fixes an issue, then we have to take the others apart and update them.   

The engines are almost identical, displacing in the neighborhood of 404 cubic inches, varying only in displacement by 10 cid. The Hemi is the largest at 498 cubic inches.

On Tuesday evening Glidden was elbow deep in his seventh engine, the venerable Hemi, triple checking every aspect.

Glidden hasn’t determined at this moment which engine will be between the fenders of the Mickey Thompson-sponsored Pontiac next weekend.

“Last year it was with ‘Tester’,” Glidden said, as his voice hinted at excitement. “We haven’t named the one for this season because we have to first figure out where we are at. That’s why a test session before Ennis is going to be crucial.”

The engine presently in the car is the same one he ran a 4.04 elapsed time with in Rockingham.

“And that’s the worst one of all of them we have,” Glidden said.

There’s a good chance that engine will be yanked out and revamped before they leave, too.

“We have very rarely left this shop,” Glidden said. “I think that should tell you a thing or two about how serious we are.”

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