Tryin' to get my race car finished for the Hotrod Reunion this weekend.......Made a custom draglink for the car and had it chromed..of course I left it wrapped up till I was ready to install so as not to scratch up the damn thing.......**** ! The chrome plater musta dropped the thing on it's end and ******ed up the threads ( left hand ) prior to chroming it......... Sunken Ditches ! Had to rely on a new source since it's not every day someone has one of them taps for ford tierod ends. What's goin on with your deal today or a nightmare story from the past...........
We put my coupe together the week before HRW and it's maiden ride was downtown to the car show. Half of it was tie wrapped together, but we made it three hours before the end of the show. Last minute (and I mean minute) problems were include doors not fitting or shutting, made a throttle cable bracket from sheet metal (lost the original), no fitting to make cable attach to carb, fuel pump hardlined backwards....five guys with about 3 hours combined sleep. First time the car was ever fired, we drove it to the show. Now, when I look back, we never shoulda made it.
When my Dad took the 36 to the Street Rod nats in Detroit in 72 he installed the motor the night before. Dropped the motor in wired it, timed it, and was done at 5 am. Left Buffalo at 6 made it to Detroit with no problem.
Well, not a Hot Rod story but a car story none the less. I was getting ready for a Bug-In at OCIR in the early 80s. The auto part store I worked for did inventory the Friday before. I got home at Midnite. My motor was completely dis***embled. I worked on it until 2:00 am. Went to bed and woke up at 7:00am went out to the garage and started working on the car. Worked striaght through til 7:00 am Sunday morning, fired up the car and drove it to OCIR.
After 22 months and a couple thousand hours work we were ready to drive the blue roadster out of the shop under its own power for the very first time, two days before setup for the '96 GNRS. The motor had logged about 10 hours on the run-in stand before going into the car, Terry Griffith's electrical system was perfect, the motor lit on the first cylinder, I gave it a minute to develop a little heat, then snicked the transmission into first gear, got a group thumbs-up from the pals who were on hand, eased out the clutch, and . . . began to move backward! What the . . . I tried second gear and got the same result, avoiding putting it in reverse as long as I could because I didn't want to know what I suspected. Sure enough, it began to move forward in reverse. As it turned out, the perfect NOS magnesium Halibrand V8 QC center section I'd purchased from an old-time speed shop owner was for a front-drive axle. Now it would seem reasonable that this is the sort of thing one would notice when ***embling the center section, but unless you're doing them all the time rather than maybe one a year it's an easy thing to miss. While three of us pulled the rearend out of the roadster, Tardel pulled an old V8 QC section off the shelf and gave it a careful inspection to make sure the many repairs that had been made to it during its early life as a dirt-car QC had been done correctly. He then took over the dis***embly and I tidied up the QC in the blast cabinet. With ****m and a die grinder we carved away at the most-recent TIG repair "worm" for ring-gear clearance, and had the rearend ***embled, lubed, and back under the roadster in a couple of hours -- this time with three speeds forward and only one in reverse! We promised ourselves we'd replace the old QC as soon as we found a fresh one, but truth to tell it's still under the roadster and working just great!
Damn !.....I don't have to stay up into the wee hours another nite. In the morning I can put the hood on, wipe her off , throw the trailer underneath and hit the road for the Hotrod Reunion in Bakersfield . Done , Finished, Over and...........Sooooooo *****in' ! Come by the MOONEYES display toward the stating line ( behind the bleachers) and check out Fred L****n and Don ***mins' # 115A Modified Roadster........Very fine..... See ya there.
The Jalopy Journal
