6/9/06
Want a free speed part? Want to get your car in the magazine, want to see yourself in the magazine, want to get your team, car, or sponsors some publicity? Well, read on friends and find out how we here at DRO are going to help you do all of that.
Here at DRO we’ve been thinking and talking about tech stories lately. And we came to the conclusion that many of the tech stories you see in drag mags are somewhat bogus. We concluded that in many cases tech stories are written by professional journalists, more often than not working in some professional shop or at the manufacturer’s mega-million dollar R&D center/shop. The photos (or in the case of the TV shows, the camera) shows a usually fairly cleaned up guy or girl with a lot of “tats” and a halter top cleaning, and then rebuilding a transmission or engine, installing a set of headers or putting on a set of disc brakes in just 30 minutes and never getting dirty or in trouble.
What you never see in the photos from the magazines or on the TV screen is the full-service machine shop full of technicians in white lab coats cleaning the trans, pre-assembling the parts and fixing or modifying anything that has to be tweaked to fit. The viewer or reader gets the impression that swapping out your drum brakes for a set of disc
brakes or rebuilding that crud-covered, seized-up ‘glide you got out of the '76 Malibu in the back yard will be a snap.
Any of you who have bought speed parts and installed them yourselves know it almost never works out that way. Bolts break, cases crack, holes don’t line up, the parts just plain don’t fit, or you didn’t realize you were going to have to drop the trans to install the part.
So we came up with what we think is a great idea. We are going to start a new monthly tech feature here at DRO called “Real Driveway Tech” -- but here is the twist. We will furnish you with a free speed part to put on your race/street car, but you have to install it, photograph the installation, and then test it -- and write at short story about doing the job. We want an honest story.
If the part doesn’t fit, if the instructions that come with it are hard to follow, if it doesn’t do what it is supposed to do, we want you to tell us. On the other hand, if everything works as advertised we want to hear that. We’ve talked to a lot of our advertisers and they like the idea and are willing to give the parts away.
So, if you want to participate in this new deal here is what you have to do: Write us a proposal here at DRO telling us what part you want and why. Convince us that you will install the part, shoot usable pictures, write a story your friends can read and understand, and get the story to us in a reasonable amount of time. You have to sell us on your idea in an email of 250 words or less and you have to send us a photo of your car. We plan do at least one of these projects a month, depending upon the kind of responses we get. Here is your chance to get into the magazine. The line forms at the right.
Send the emails to info@dragracingonline.com, the subject is Real Driveway Tech.
