ELpolacko
08-24-2004, 12:24 PM
I got home last night at about 2am exhausted and full of good time just had. Even though the demise of my MSD ignition system prevented the entire AZ crew from attending the Drags.
Here is the break down with pictures at the end;
Wednesday: all full of excitement for what lies ahead of us. The only hitch is the company that was chasing a shimmy out of the COE wasn't done yet. Pushed our departure time up to three in the afternoon, but no one was complaining.
Picacho peak, half way between Phoenix and Tucson we blew a tire on the trailer behind the COE. We had a spare on board and were under way without much delay.
Tucson, we picked up Metalshapes (Alex) and his gear. It was sprinkling a bit. Alex did a doughnut at the end of the street to get the car aligned better for loading in the trailer, perfect. Headed East on I10 things were going really well and making good time. Somewhere along the New Mexico boarder it started raining pretty hard. 55Safari and I got a little wet but more importantly the radio got soaked and shorted out. We lost our music, so had to rely on the 502 just below our feet to entertain us.
We stopped for the night.
Thursday:
Things are getting fuzzy in my memory already but this leg put us through El Paso, then on through the Pecos and into Weatherford. For some stupid reason when we looked on the map for what was ahead, change from i-20 to I-30 and then pick up 75 North through the heart of Dallas seemed like a good idea. Miles and jerry did an adimiral job piloting the worst roads in the free world! I can't belive how the locals don't get involved in huge pile up accidents on an hourly basis there, what a shit hole freeway!
We stopped just North of Dallas to catch our breath and choke down some questionable food from a Scholotsky's. I think I had a Mustard and Rye with a trace of Pastrami,, the others had simmilar comments, FUCK DALLAS! The push was on to get the hell out of Texas. We gave up in the Southeast corner of Olklahoma, South of Muskegee.
Friday;
Ok this is one long roadtrip. Pretty easy drive from this point. I was almost glad to see the turnpike, it meant the goal was in reach! Now we were getting wound up to be there.
Joplin KOA, stopped and dropped anchor. Unloaded the cars and trucks from the trailer and even took a nice shower at the KOA facilities. Almost felt like home.
Fired up and headed out to the host hotel. The fun has begun! We missed the shop crawl by an hour or two but did catch up with everyone headed out to JimC's place for some much needed food. Microwave burritos just weren't cutting it any more. We had a great time, good people and the weather was just perfect. As the sun started to set we bugged out and headed back to camp.
Filled with excitement we couldn't sleep so we sat out on the picnic table drinking a much needed beer.
Saturday:
all cleaned up and ready to take on the day. We rolled out to the host hotel again to meet up for the Route 66 cruise. No signs of trouble ahead, we forged on for the great drive.
I started haveing problems with the ignition system cutting out. We thought some of the secondary trigger wires were touching so some excellent HAMB roadside assistance and some black tape we were mobile again.
A while down the road it cut out again, suspecting a bad fuse it was replaced and mobile agian. Outlaw gave me a set of pliers thinking the fuse holder was weak and causing the intermittet connection. We made our way out as far as Afton OK before it surged like we ran out of gas and then that was it. I pulled the ignition switch apart, ripped out the dash and probed every connection on that thing before I found a loose ground to the MSD. It was tight but this truck shakes from the engine vibration pretty good. One of the locals whos house we stopped in front of asked us to pull off the highway and into his drive. The HAMB Scramble was on. At least a Dozen hard core DIYer car guys were on this think like stink. We poked and prodded everyting we could. At this point the MSD Digital 6 ignition system would energize and as soon as the engine fired it would shut off. Like the internal relay was not staying latched. The home owner let Outlaw pry the HEI distributor out of his derby car in the back forty to no avail. It was rusted in place. However Outlaw spotted a SBC intake and carb in the guys garage, looked and found annother distributor. Meanwhile jerry ripped out the MSD and distributor our of his running truck to give to me, while he put in his back up system, the guy is ultimatly prepared. I declined the offer because of the wiring involved at that point. Metalshapes and MilesM headed back to Miami (pronounced My-am-a, as coached to my by our host) to pick up a new module and rotor. While they were gone, all but the core AZ crew needed to move on to the Starbird Museum. KC Mongo left me his tool box and the others their best wishes.
At this point we are at wits end. With the HEI in place we got no fire either. Plenty of fuel but no spark, it seems the pickup coil in the HEI was shot. MilesM picked up a new 6AL just in case this happened. 55Safari jumped right in and wired it in place. Still no fire.
After some our home owner had us drag the truck up the hill to his garage and we pulled the plugs. He cleaned them up as best he could with a wire brush wheel but still didn't solve the problem. Every once and a wile we could get a sputter out of it but stile DOA. MilesM and Metalshapes headed back to base camp to get the COE.
While we waited I talked with our home owner and promised him a couple of Tshirts for his troubles. Hung out and enjoyed a few beers and shot the breeze. I even tuned his 66 F100 for him while we waited.
By the time we got the truck back to base camp and reloaded the Little one it was 10pm but were working on the assumption there would be night drags and a big party at the track. We saw everyone headed back and called Tman only to have the wind shot out of our enthusiasm, the drags were over.
we headed back to the hotel and proceded to get liquored up. I felt bad for letting everyone down this year, but the condolences and warm greatings from all that attened made it fade away pretty quick.
Sunday:
Loaded back up we pulled stakes from our home away from home. Pulled into the hotel for some breakfast and to say our goodbyes to anyone that was still there.
That sausage tasted bad.......
On our way south, somewhere in Olkahoma my skies turned green. Did the hundred yard dash into a McDonnalds only to polute their bathroom for a while. Yeah that sausage was bad, real bad. I traded my driving duties to jerry for a horizontal place in the coach. I slept for a couple hundred miles and rode the throne for a while. I felt better after a while....
Monday:
I think we stopped outside of Fort Worth for the night, I can't remember exactly because of the bad sausage coma I was in. But back on our way we made the push homeward. Retracing our steps.
Pecos Tx we lost annother tire on the trailer. Annother quick fix and we were on our way with a nice senic tour of downtown Pecos.
Out in the desert past Pecos the COE sputtered out. I had taped up a hole in the floor and thought I knocked some wiring loose but turned out I was out of gas. Two five gallons of last years HAMB Drags gas that was still in the big trailer and we were mobile again.
Just a hard push, one stretch Miles and I pulled over 300 miles without a stop. We made Tucson by 11:30 pm and pulled into Tempe by 1:30..
Home safe, not as many pics as I would like but we had an adventure to remember...
THE PICTURES (http://groups.msn.com/ZekesHAMBerChat/elpolackoshambdrags04trip.msnw?Page=1)
Here is the break down with pictures at the end;
Wednesday: all full of excitement for what lies ahead of us. The only hitch is the company that was chasing a shimmy out of the COE wasn't done yet. Pushed our departure time up to three in the afternoon, but no one was complaining.
Picacho peak, half way between Phoenix and Tucson we blew a tire on the trailer behind the COE. We had a spare on board and were under way without much delay.
Tucson, we picked up Metalshapes (Alex) and his gear. It was sprinkling a bit. Alex did a doughnut at the end of the street to get the car aligned better for loading in the trailer, perfect. Headed East on I10 things were going really well and making good time. Somewhere along the New Mexico boarder it started raining pretty hard. 55Safari and I got a little wet but more importantly the radio got soaked and shorted out. We lost our music, so had to rely on the 502 just below our feet to entertain us.
We stopped for the night.
Thursday:
Things are getting fuzzy in my memory already but this leg put us through El Paso, then on through the Pecos and into Weatherford. For some stupid reason when we looked on the map for what was ahead, change from i-20 to I-30 and then pick up 75 North through the heart of Dallas seemed like a good idea. Miles and jerry did an adimiral job piloting the worst roads in the free world! I can't belive how the locals don't get involved in huge pile up accidents on an hourly basis there, what a shit hole freeway!
We stopped just North of Dallas to catch our breath and choke down some questionable food from a Scholotsky's. I think I had a Mustard and Rye with a trace of Pastrami,, the others had simmilar comments, FUCK DALLAS! The push was on to get the hell out of Texas. We gave up in the Southeast corner of Olklahoma, South of Muskegee.
Friday;
Ok this is one long roadtrip. Pretty easy drive from this point. I was almost glad to see the turnpike, it meant the goal was in reach! Now we were getting wound up to be there.
Joplin KOA, stopped and dropped anchor. Unloaded the cars and trucks from the trailer and even took a nice shower at the KOA facilities. Almost felt like home.
Fired up and headed out to the host hotel. The fun has begun! We missed the shop crawl by an hour or two but did catch up with everyone headed out to JimC's place for some much needed food. Microwave burritos just weren't cutting it any more. We had a great time, good people and the weather was just perfect. As the sun started to set we bugged out and headed back to camp.
Filled with excitement we couldn't sleep so we sat out on the picnic table drinking a much needed beer.
Saturday:
all cleaned up and ready to take on the day. We rolled out to the host hotel again to meet up for the Route 66 cruise. No signs of trouble ahead, we forged on for the great drive.
I started haveing problems with the ignition system cutting out. We thought some of the secondary trigger wires were touching so some excellent HAMB roadside assistance and some black tape we were mobile again.
A while down the road it cut out again, suspecting a bad fuse it was replaced and mobile agian. Outlaw gave me a set of pliers thinking the fuse holder was weak and causing the intermittet connection. We made our way out as far as Afton OK before it surged like we ran out of gas and then that was it. I pulled the ignition switch apart, ripped out the dash and probed every connection on that thing before I found a loose ground to the MSD. It was tight but this truck shakes from the engine vibration pretty good. One of the locals whos house we stopped in front of asked us to pull off the highway and into his drive. The HAMB Scramble was on. At least a Dozen hard core DIYer car guys were on this think like stink. We poked and prodded everyting we could. At this point the MSD Digital 6 ignition system would energize and as soon as the engine fired it would shut off. Like the internal relay was not staying latched. The home owner let Outlaw pry the HEI distributor out of his derby car in the back forty to no avail. It was rusted in place. However Outlaw spotted a SBC intake and carb in the guys garage, looked and found annother distributor. Meanwhile jerry ripped out the MSD and distributor our of his running truck to give to me, while he put in his back up system, the guy is ultimatly prepared. I declined the offer because of the wiring involved at that point. Metalshapes and MilesM headed back to Miami (pronounced My-am-a, as coached to my by our host) to pick up a new module and rotor. While they were gone, all but the core AZ crew needed to move on to the Starbird Museum. KC Mongo left me his tool box and the others their best wishes.
At this point we are at wits end. With the HEI in place we got no fire either. Plenty of fuel but no spark, it seems the pickup coil in the HEI was shot. MilesM picked up a new 6AL just in case this happened. 55Safari jumped right in and wired it in place. Still no fire.
After some our home owner had us drag the truck up the hill to his garage and we pulled the plugs. He cleaned them up as best he could with a wire brush wheel but still didn't solve the problem. Every once and a wile we could get a sputter out of it but stile DOA. MilesM and Metalshapes headed back to base camp to get the COE.
While we waited I talked with our home owner and promised him a couple of Tshirts for his troubles. Hung out and enjoyed a few beers and shot the breeze. I even tuned his 66 F100 for him while we waited.
By the time we got the truck back to base camp and reloaded the Little one it was 10pm but were working on the assumption there would be night drags and a big party at the track. We saw everyone headed back and called Tman only to have the wind shot out of our enthusiasm, the drags were over.
we headed back to the hotel and proceded to get liquored up. I felt bad for letting everyone down this year, but the condolences and warm greatings from all that attened made it fade away pretty quick.
Sunday:
Loaded back up we pulled stakes from our home away from home. Pulled into the hotel for some breakfast and to say our goodbyes to anyone that was still there.
That sausage tasted bad.......
On our way south, somewhere in Olkahoma my skies turned green. Did the hundred yard dash into a McDonnalds only to polute their bathroom for a while. Yeah that sausage was bad, real bad. I traded my driving duties to jerry for a horizontal place in the coach. I slept for a couple hundred miles and rode the throne for a while. I felt better after a while....
Monday:
I think we stopped outside of Fort Worth for the night, I can't remember exactly because of the bad sausage coma I was in. But back on our way we made the push homeward. Retracing our steps.
Pecos Tx we lost annother tire on the trailer. Annother quick fix and we were on our way with a nice senic tour of downtown Pecos.
Out in the desert past Pecos the COE sputtered out. I had taped up a hole in the floor and thought I knocked some wiring loose but turned out I was out of gas. Two five gallons of last years HAMB Drags gas that was still in the big trailer and we were mobile again.
Just a hard push, one stretch Miles and I pulled over 300 miles without a stop. We made Tucson by 11:30 pm and pulled into Tempe by 1:30..
Home safe, not as many pics as I would like but we had an adventure to remember...
THE PICTURES (http://groups.msn.com/ZekesHAMBerChat/elpolackoshambdrags04trip.msnw?Page=1)