NHRA Crew Chief Mike Kloeber's Secret Weapon

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KLOEBER'S NEW CHALLENGE
Written by Bobby Bennett; Photo by Roger Richards
www.competitionplus.com


Mike Kloeber’s dismissal from Bob Tasca’s Funny Car team left him on the sidelines for much of the 2008 season. A call following the NHRA Fallnationals in Dallas, Texas, put Kloeber back in the ranks of the gainfully employed.

Kloeber’s resume isn’t exactly chopped liver considering that he tuned Clay Millican to six IHRA Top Fuel world championships and among other accolades as the first-ever 300-mph Funny Car run while working with Jim Epler.

Mike Kloeber On The Job

“I had been calling all the big teams to try and find myself a home with a good team with a lot of funding and good parts,” Kloeber said. “Kenny’s been one of the guys that I have been talking to off and on all year long. Kenny’s been trying to stick with the guys he’s started with and that kind of stuff. Kenny was trying to do what he thought was best for his team so even though we talked a lot he didn’t elect to hire me and finally after Dallas he gave me a call. I got on a plane and came straight to Memphis.”

The time on the sidelines provided Kloeber with an opportunity to carefully script his plan for the next gig whenever it arrived. Bernstein’s call couldn’t have come at a better time for both parties.

“It’s made me bored but hungry as well,” Kloeber said, speaking of the effect time on the sidelines had on him. “I’ve had a high desire to come out here and perform well and prove that I can still make a car run the way that I have in the past. It was a chance to stop, start over and just to think about everything. I wanted to not make the same mistakes I would have made here in the past with a new opportunity.”

Kloeber’s agreement with Bernstein extends until at least until the rest of the season.

“This is for the rest of the season because Kenny isn’t sure what he has, as far as sponsors and stuff for the 2009 season,” Kloeber said. “We’ll just take care of these four races and see what happens after that.”




TOUGH SITUATION

Kloeber placed himself into a tough situation by taking over the tuning for a team who hadn’t won a round since March and had DNQ’d eight times in 2008.

The first order of importance was to take inventory of the situation and begin steps to implement his combination.

“I just wanted to see how they did things, how they serviced their engines and how they serviced their clutches,” Kloeber said. “I had to see what parts they had and when Kenny told me I could do whatever I wanted I got my Comp Cams Camshaft in the cars and some of that fuel system stuff that Pete Jackson’s made for me that I’ve had for years and years. So I put my slide valve on the car and my camshaft, there were some things on the engine that didn’t need to be changed at all. So we changed some of those basic components and we made significant changes to the clutch, different kind of pressure played in.”

The end result was three consecutive qualifying runs before the team smoked the tires during the NHRA Mid South Nationals in Memphis. In two of the three runs, driver Tommy Johnson ran within the five fastest of those sessions.

Friday night’s session in Memphis provided the team to run back in the pack in optimum conditions. The feat may seem insignificant to many, but to this team it was important.

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