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Monday Night Tales from the Dez - Doofus and Whiny, Part 11

Discussion in 'The Hokey Ass Message Board' started by C9, Nov 29, 2004.


  1. Monday Night Tales from the Dez



    Part 1: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=557476&page=1&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=14&fpart=1


    Part 2:
    http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=565969&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=14&fpart=1&vc=1&PHPSESSID=


    Part 3:
    http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=575166&page=2&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=14&fpart=1


    Part 4:
    http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=584127&page=5&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=14&fpart=1


    Part 5:
    http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=UBB1&Number=593549&Forum=UBB1&Words=Part%205&Match=Entire%20Phrase&Searchpage=0&Limit=25&Old=2weeks&Main=593549&Search=true#Post593549

    Part 6:
    http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=602861&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=14&fpart=1#Post603271


    Part 7
    http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=611519&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=14&fpart=1


    Part 8
    http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=UBB1&Number=620304&Forum=All_Forums&Words=Monday%20Night%20Tales%20from%20the%20Dez&Match=Entire%20Phrase&Searchpage=0&Limit=25&Old=2weeks&Main=619716&Search=true#Post62030

    Part 9 http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=UBB1&Number=628357&Forum=All_Forums&Words=Monday%20Night%20Tales%20from%20the%20Dez&Match=Entire%20Phrase&Searchpage=0&Limit=25&Old=2weeks&Main=628354&Search=true#Post628357

    Part 10
    http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=UBB1&Number=638432&Forum=UBB1&Words=Monday%20Night%20Tales%20from%20the%20Dez&Match=Entire%20Phrase&Searchpage=0&Limit=25&Old=2weeks&Main=638432&Search=true#Post638432

    Initial Intro:
    Go here for a little more info: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=557391&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=14&fpart=1





    Doofus and Whiny - Part 11, Section A



    Whiny put in time on the coupe’s engine swap whenever he could and we gave him a hand when we could.

    Like all long term projects, at least for those who stick to it, the day of reckoning arrives.
    Although in this case, there wasn’t much to be reckoned and it wasn’t too long term either.
    Seems the swap took about three months to complete. It would have been a lot sooner, but all of us got tangled up in other projects and other things now and then. We were patient and what would be would be. Easy for us to say since it was Whiny’s coupe, but we were anxious to see it run too.

    The only thing that spoiled the sleeper image, at least as far as Whiny was concerned was the four speed shifter. It was one of the dependable and slick operating Hurst shifters. We figured if a guy couldn’t speed shift with that thing, he’d better find a new hobby.

    When the shifter was first installed, it was obvious it was going to conflict with the seat.
    Neatly solved by the shifter handle made for the 57 Chevy’s. It came off the shifter stub, turned horizontal, ran forward a ways and the started it’s sweep up and to the back. With a little adjusting, Whiny had the shifter to where it followed the front contour of the seat pretty well.
    In fact, when it was in 2nd or 4th, the lever was pretty much hidden by the driver’s knee.

    Once the Hurst shifter was in, Whiny decided to remove the stock shifter. His definition of removal consisted of pulling the shift lever and that was it. Removing the shift lever was easily done on the Fords by depressing the two spring loaded pins on the socket and sliding it out. Course, as fate would have it, it was a little stuck so Whiny gave it a yank and the pins went flying. We never did find one of them. Didn’t matter much, there were plenty of them at the junkyard.

    After looking at the now useless shift tube on the steering column for a while, Whiny decided he’d make a steering column of his own and completely replace the stock Ford column.

    It turned out to be a fairly quick project and looked pretty good when he was done. I don’t know if Whiny had a set plan or not. Seemed like he bought a couple of things he needed and just kinda winged it, building as he went. Funny part was, he never had to backtrack or do anything over. More than I can say for some of the projects I tried. Seems there was always a bit of R&D on those.

    Whiny bought one of the neat little Moon steering column drops and a 1 3/4" diameter, 48" long bell-mouthed chrome plated scavenger pipe from J&L Mufflers. The scavengers had very nice chrome and were normally used as short tailpipes that exited under the rear axle and went about a foot beyond it. They were popular for a while, but some of the shorter installations created quite a bit of resonance inside the car and they fell by the wayside after a few years.

    The Moon column drop was bored out on the lathe so it would fit the scavenger. The scavenger pipe was cut to length. The stock Ford steering column was removed and about 6" cut off the bottom of that. Whiny slid the Ford column piece up inside the chrome pipe and welded it together. That allowed the column to be clamped just like the stock one had been. The column was marked, taped off and painted black for the short length that was inside the engine compartment.

    The chrome pipe fit the Ford rubber gasket at the toeboard with no problems and the stock Ford rope looking seal that doubled as a dry bushing of sorts was removed from the stock column, inserted into a piece of thin tubing and the whole assembly was tapped into the top end of the bell-mouthed chrome pipe. That took care of the shaft rotation at the upper end.

    When fully assembled, it was one of the slickest looking steering columns I ever saw.
    Too boot, it was like no other steering column any of us had ever seen. He did a great job
    figuring it out and then making it.

    Whiny thought for a while that he’d put one of the neat three spoked vinyl metalflake impregnated steering wheels on it, but decided it was a bit much. The stock Ford steering wheel was re-installed and looked right at home on top of the chrome plated steering column.

    Turn signals would have been nice, but the control box would have ruined the lines of the clean looking column. The car didn’t have turn signals anyway since that was a dealer installed accessory on the 50 Fords. In the end, turn signals turned out to be a non-problem. Doofus made a small underdash panel with pilot lights and a pair of double throw-triple pole toggles, cut into the stoplight wires, split em, ran em through the toggles and Whiny had a nice turn signal setup.
    The pilot lights were bright enough that he seldom forgot to turn them off.

    The steering column and the turn signal install were part of the reason why it took us a while to get to fire-up day. Whiny could have fired the Hemi several days back, but he wanted the car to be complete and ready to roll for that first trip around the block.

    It seemed like all of our projects ended up getting lit off on a Saturday afternoon. This time around a little later than we planned, but no big deal. Just another one of those crazy Saturday’s and we didn’t get the last customer car out until after one o’clock.

    Once the shop was shut down, we rolled the coupe outside, spun it around and stuck the nose back in the shop. It had been parked nose out all this time.

    Whiny pulled the spark plugs, Doofus dragged the big floor fan up and I dragged out the water hose. That, along with setting a couple of the shop’s fire extinguishers near the car and we were ready. Whiny got in the drivers seat and spun the engine over until oil pressure was up.
    We’d already pre-lubed the engine on the stand and verified oil to the rockers, so this last little bit was just a touch of insurance.

    Doofus replaced the plugs, pulled the air cleaners and checked both of the Carter AFB carbs for gas from the accelerator pumps, replaced the air cleaners and we were ready. Whiny got back in the coupe, hit the starter and the Hemi lit right off. Oil pressure came up right away and looking under the car showed that it wasn’t leaking oil or coolant. Doofus shot the timing and verified the advance working and where it should be. Nothing left to do but screw in the idle stop on the back carb so the engine would run at 2000 rpm and give it a 20 minute run for camshaft break-in. Probably not too critical given the fairly mild grind on the cam as well as a reasonable set of valve springs. Reasonable being, just a new set of the good quality Chrysler stock springs.
    Whiny didn’t plan to wind the snot out of the engine so he figured heavy springs weren’t needed.
    Which was pretty much what the guy at Engle cams told him. They figured the stock springs on the mild cam should work just fine provided Whiny didn’t rev it over 5000 rpm. Not a problem for Whiny, he liked the Hemi and planned to make it last. He figured too that the four speed ought to keep the rpms right in the middle of the power band with no problem.

    Everything went great for the 20 minute break-in run. When the idle screws were backed off, the engine idled right down to 600 rpm and it looked like it would idle like that all day.
    The Hemi was a smooth runner for sure. The mild cam didn’t seem to hurt the low end as far as smoothness went. Pretty much how Whiny had figured it. Even with the chrome plated steering column and four speed shifter sticking out of the floor, the coupe still looked very much stock.

    Whiny was all smiles, right up until he winged the engine a couple of times and it started running rough and wouldn’t hardly idle. Doof had him shut it off and didn’t seem worried in the
    least. Whiny had a case of the big eyes though. He felt like he’d done a good job on building the Hemi and had thought it out well.

    Turned out, he did and there was no real problem. Just part of the tinkering and tuning to get the car where you want it. Doofus and I yanked the air cleaners off the dual quads and started pulling the metering rod covers. I got one off and Doofus said that was enough. He’d found one with a very subtle bend that was sticking. It looked straight to me, but when Doofus hung the bent end over a piece of 1/4" glass that he used as a surface plate to check things flat or straight and rolled it, you could see the bend very easily. A couple of careful tweaks on the rod and it was straight as a die. We put the metering rod back in and I replaced the one I’d pulled. We left the air cleaners off and Doof had Whiny start the engine again. It fired and idled down smooth as silk.

    Doofus winged the throttle a few times and each time it returned to that nice smooth idle.
    We shut it down and changed the oil and filter. Changing the filter made easy since Doofus had machined an adapter and we’d stuck one of the Fram remote filters with high pressure lines up on the firewall.

    The little coupe was quiet too. With the factory cast iron exhaust manifolds dumping into the big truck mufflers and the short glasspack resonaters about all you could hear from it was the slight ticking of the solid lifters. You couldn’t even hear them unless you listened really hard.

    Well . . . not much else to do but take the coupe for a test spin around the block. Course, the test spin, like a lot of test spins went further than just around the block. It was more of a replay of the test spin we did on the first tryout of the Chevy engine in my 53 Ford coupe.
    Santa Barbara wasn’t that far away, we were hungry and the Blue Onion had great burgers.

    We called the girls and told em we’d be a while. Then Whiny got the bright idea of having the girls meet us in Santa Barbara for dinner. We called the girls again, they thought it was a great idea and they’d bring us some clean clothes and meet us at the little restaurant on the pier at seven o’clock. That would give us time to make reservations if necessary and run around Santa Barbara for a while.

    Santa Barbara was one of our very favorite places to go. We’d spent many a nice day up there, surfing and swimming at some of their well groomed beaches or just hanging out. East beach was one of our favorite places to go.

    We took off our work coveralls that we wore in the shop, put our levi’s back on, grabbed a clean white t-shirt out of our lockers, closed up the shop, piled into Whiny’s coupe and took off.

    It was just like the first time out with the 413 engine swap, we cruised through town feeling guilty as sin although I don’t know why. I guess having the Hemi up front made a guy feel a little sinful. Or at the least like he had a heck of a secret. I guess we did considering the Hemi and all.

    Like before, nobody paid any attention to three guys cruising through town in a tan 50 Ford coupe. And like before, we figured that Whiny did have something with his sleeper themed coupe.

    Once again, we got on the coast highway going north and the Hemi was just like the big 413 in that it was a smooth runner. Torquey too, although nothing like the 413 was. A lot to be said for cubic inches. Like the guy said, the more the better.

    The more the better seemed to be an unwritten rule of hot rodding, but when you were talking about cubic inches, whoever said that one was right on the money.

    The little coupe ran along smooth and quiet going up the coast highway. No noise, no strain, it just loafed along.

    There’s a lot of ways to break an engine in. Most of them ok I suppose. A few, more than strange, but regardless of what method you like it usually works out just fine. For us, we’d pretty much settled on the 20 minute cam break-in run which usually got the rings seated fairly well and we just started driving the car. Driving it about like you’d normally drive it. No lugging it and no high revs was the rule. And change the oil after the first 20 minute run, at 100 miles, at 500 miles and then at our normal 3000 mile schedule. We never had problems with any engine that we’d followed that regimen on.

    A few argued against the first couple of oil changes, but we felt it made good sense. It gave the engine time to flush out any contaminants, grit or detritus from the machining processes. Kind of interesting sometimes to cut open a filter and see just what had been running around in the oil system.

    First stop was the Santa Barbara pier at the bottom of State Street. We made reservations for the six of us and then took off for the Blue Onion.

    Once we were there, we realized it was almost five o’clock and we were meeting the girls on the pier at seven. Burgers were out. Settling for the Blue Onions signature dish of onion rings and a coke was enough for a short while.

    It was fun to sit in the car, have the food brought out on the window tray and then the tray was hung over the glass. Eating and watching some of Santa Barbara’s neatest cars cruise through the drive in was always a treat. Quite a few of them ended up parked with the guys and gals ordering food. Or at the least, cokes and fries.

    The Blue Onion was a lot like Merle’s Drive In was in Ventura. A place for car guys to meet up, somewhere to bring a girl after a date and just a neat place to hang out. Seemed like something was always going on at the drive ins.

    I think the most interesting car we saw in the short time we were there was a tan 50 Olds coupe that rolled in. The good looking blonde girl driving, and her equally good looking glasses wearing black haired female passenger parked right next to us. It had a mean sounding engine and a four barrel carb just barely poking through the hood. The Olds looked a lot like the one we’d seen on the trip to Santa Barbara when we were trying out my 53 Ford coupe’s Chevy engine for the first time.

    Whiny didn’t think so though. It looked just a touch different to him. Doof and I thought he was wrong and decided it was the same one.

    Granted, the Olds we’d seen before was driven by an older guy, older guys to us being anybody about five years or more older than us. This time though, the girls driving it looked too young to have been driving when we first saw the Olds coupe. Course, people sold cars all the time.

    This car, a blown Olds driven by a couple of girls was a bit out of the ordinary. Whiny, never bashful got out of the car and started talking to the girls. The blonde driver was a little reserved at first, she probably thought Whiny was trying to make time with her. The dark haired girl though, she gave Whiny some strange looks until it was obvious to both girls that Whiny was interested in their car and not them.

    The driver was nice enough to get out of the Olds and pop the hood. No secrets I guess with the carb sticking through the hole in the hood. It was a 335" Olds engine with Engle cam and kit and a three V belt Isky blower drive spinning the 4.71 blower.

    The Olds ran a reworked Hydramatic up against a set of 4.33 diff gears. Kinda low we thought, but like she said, she hardly ever drove it out of town and went to Santa Barbara city college. Besides, she had the original carrier sitting in a box at home if she decided to do some long distance traveling.

    Kinda surprising, a lot of gals we knew were pretty astute where hot rods were concerned.
    Especially so Jill. This girl was a walking encyclopedia to say the least.

    Her dark haired friend was also out of the car - as Doof and I were - and still not saying much. The Olds was a nice car and it looked like it was probably a hard street runner. The blonde admitted that she didn’t race the Olds much anymore, just a few times at the freeway stop lights on 101 and that was about it. She figured that most locals were probably afraid of it or confused it with her dad’s Olds.

    That brought a new one into the conversation. When asked what she meant, she said that her dad had owned a blown Olds for a long time and it was a lot faster than the one she drove.
    After we described the blown Olds we’d seen in the Blue Onion and described the driver, she figured that more than likely it was her dad.

    What had happened, her dad ran his original Olds coupe with the engine, 4.71 blower and all that was now in her coupe and decided to go all out in the local horsepower wars. He pulled the good running 335" engine, built a 6.71 blown .020 over, just a clean up bore, 398 inch engine. With a set of 7/0-1 pistons and a slightly overdriven blower driven by a 2" Gilmer timing belt. The Olds was the scourge of just about all the Santa Barbara street runners when it ran the small engine that was now in her car. She had no idea what it would do at the strip with the big engine. All she knew was what she heard. Her dad’s Olds had to an extent scared all the street racers off and as far as she knew, he didn’t street race at all. For the most part the Olds only came out on weekends. Even though her dad didn’t race it, he still liked driving it.

    Since he liked the Olds coupes so well, when she started driving, he bought one for her. Her Olds went through a couple of engines and then the 335" blown Olds sitting in the corner was stuck in her coupe and she’d been driving it that way ever since.

    She took a casual look at Whiny’s coupe and spotted the shifter sticking up out of the floor right away.

    Whiny, seeing that she’d spotted the shifter blurted out, Do you want to see mine?”

    That little bit brought a strange look from the dark haired girl. It didn’t seem to faze the blonde though, she knew what Whiny meant.

    Whiny popped the hood, stuck the brace under it and stepped back. The big Hemi was an eye catcher for sure. The blonde took her time looking it over.

    Funny thing was, a lot of times when a hood is popped at a drive in, most guys will wander over and take a look. I guess the guys there had decided that Whiny’s tan Ford coupe was just a stocker and what could possibly interest them. All except the two guys in the dark blue 53 Ford two door station wagon that looked totally stock except for the black TJ tuck and roll. They’d been eyeing us a bit, not saying anything at all, but when the hood was popped on Whiny’s coupe they got out and wandered over. They looked and listened, didn’t say much and wandered back to the wagon. Ok guys I guess, kinda quiet though.

    It had been more than interesting checking out the Olds coupe driven by the two girls, but we were running late. It was darned near seven o’clock, the time we were supposed to meet the girls at the pier and we were about twenty minutes away.

    We told the girls goodbye, got in the coupe and Whiny fired the engine. When the 12 volts hit the starter and the starter took off with that characteristic Chrysler starter motor sound, more than a few heads turned our way. They were listening hard, but thanks to the very quiet coupe, all they could do was wonder. There were no distinctive sounds to be heard.

    We had to wait a few seconds before we could leave though. A couple of guys in a black 55 Ford two door with black wheels, blackwall tires and little hubcaps stopped right in front of us and the passenger leaned out, looked at the blonde and said, “Hi Princess.”

    He was smiling when he said it, but it looked to us like the blonde didn’t care for it. She gave him a steady glare until he pulled away.

    That was kinda strange, the blonde seemed like a more than nice girl, but who knew? We weren’t from Santa Barbara, didn’t know too many people in town and hadn’t a clue as to what the Princess deal was.

    Didn’t make any difference anyway. We were running late. Going down State Street would just make us later. Whiny cut over to the 101 Freeway for the run down to the pier.
    Calling it a freeway was a bit of a misnomer with Santa Barbara’s penchant for stop lights at several locations going through town. The stop lights were a necessity. The town had dragged their feet for a long time figuring that Santa Barbara was a sleepy little Spanish village and they didn’t want a freeway through town. They paid the price though, the stoplight’s created one heck of a traffic jam on weekends and going home from work times. Not much else they could do though. Overpasses across the freeway were not on the agenda and the cross streets needed to cross the freeway somehow.

    As it turned out, State Street would have been the better route of the two ways to go. It was seven thirty when we parked the coupe on the pier. Doofus went inside to see if we could still eat there, but it was too late. We’d missed our reservations at a great little restaurant. At least the girls didn’t end up waiting. They were late too.

    DeeDee drove our station wagon in with Dinah, Jill, little Billy and Anna inside. They’d planned to drive up in Jill’s coupe. Jill loved driving it, but nowadays she called it her hot rod coupe. Mainly in reference to flashing the converter and drilling Mickey off the line in their little stoplight Grand Prix a while back.

    She thought it would be the perfect complement to drive the Chevy coupe home with Whiny’s 50 Ford coupe following along behind. Trouble was, the baby sitter was ill so they brought the kids along. Not a problem, both Billy and Anna were good kids.

    Billy was like his dad, he loved hot rods and he loved tools. To the point where he had a good scar on the back of his left hand when Whiny’s handsaw slipped and cut him a good one.
    Course, Billy wasn’t supposed to be using the tools without supervision, but it was apparent that Billy’s need for tools was real. He was forever making something out of old wood scraps he drug home.

    Anna though, she was her own girl and thought the hot rods were nice, but truth to tell, she’d rather be doing something else.

    Well, here we were, early in the evening in one of our favorite places and we couldn’t get in. We figured, if nothing else we could go back to the Blue Onion and have dinner there. May as well, our good clothes had gotten left behind in the shuffle and here we were in the official California outfit of T-shirts and levi’s and the girls were most beautiful in their summer dresses. Heck, even the kids were dressed better than we were.

    We’d been there before. It wasn’t too long ago that T-shirts and levi’s were the uniform of the day regardless. We’d been on more than one date dressed that way. At least until the girls civilized us. The civilizing probably being only skin deep, but we passed for civilized anyway.

    On the way up State Street, Doofus spotted what looked to be an Italian restaurant with a short line of people standing outside. Good enough for us. We all liked Italian anyway. We parked about a block away, walked back and got in line.
    Waiting in line was tough duty. We were all hungry, it was a little after eight o’clock when we got in line and standing outside and smelling the good Italian cooking smells coming out of the restaurant made it hard to wait.

    We finally got in and just in time. It was getting close to nine o’clock and the owner shut the door, hung the closed sign up, seated us and handed out menu’s. Whiny and Jill were driving so they ordered coffee, the kids ordered apple juice and we ordered wine. Orders were taken and it didn’t seem long at all until we had our food.

    You could see why the restaurant was such a popular place. It was small, had great food and most fun of all, the owner was a bit of an amateur opera singer. He had some Italian opera on the stereo, had a glass of red wine and stood behind the counter and sang along. We didn’t know much about opera, but the guy was really good. The best part was when he hit a high note and the waitress back in the small kitchen broke a glass. It was obvious that no guy was going to hit a high enough note to shatter glass, but it was a neat touch.

    All in all, a pretty nice dinner. Pretty late though. Both kids fell asleep when we stuck them in the wagon. The trip back was pretty uneventful too. Whiny’s Hemi engine just purred along in the coupe.

    The next Monday - with the Saturday trip to Santa Barbara just a fond memory - turned out to be one of those life changing days that happen now and then.

    It didn’t happen to me though. Mickey Merc was the victim, if you can call him a victim.
    Like always he was a victim of his own doings.

    We needed a set of plug wires for a Chevy as well as some other stuff that was at the Chevy parts department. I volunteered to run down and get them since Doofus and Whiny were tied up. I hadn’t seen the Chevy parts guys for a while and besides, they had great coffee.

    Since Whiny’s coupe had run so good on the Santa Barbara trip and I’d been mostly driving my pickup, I was in my 53 coupe. Kinda felt good for a change. The pickup had most of the new worn off and getting behind the wheel of the coupe was always a pleasant experience.

    I ran south down to Meta St., hung a right went up to the Avenue, hung another right going north, went up to Main Street, hung a right there heading east and ran down to where I could park across the street from the Chevy dealership. Kind of the long way round for sure, but I enjoyed driving the coupe.
    I checked the rear view mirror before I got out then looked up the street to the east and sitting there at the light, in the inside lane was Mickey Merc in his maroon Mustang. Sitting in the outside lane was a white Camaro.

    This looked like it could be more than interesting. We’d heard through the grapevine that Mickey had stuck a Paxton Blower in the Mustang in a quest for more power. Not to mention the little fact that there were a couple of very fast white Camaro’s kicking around town.

    I figured that staying in the coupe until they passed was the best thing I could do. Along with buckling myself back in with the just removed seat belt. I had no desire to be on the street on foot in case Mickey decided to blast on by the Camaro.

    It sure looked like a street race was about to go down. Mickey had a golden opportunity to beat one of the hated Chevy’s and best of all, it would take place in front of the enemy camp.

    Once it started, the whole thing seemed to happen in slow motion. The light changed, both cars sat there for a second, the white Camaro started to leave, Mickey nailed the throttle and dumped the clutch. The Mustang’s tires were really frying and the Camaro started to pull away. The rear end of the Mustang started coming around to his left and then the nose of the Camaro went down as the driver let off the gas.

    No stopping Mickey now, he was on a bit of a tear for sure. At least he was until the rear end of the Mustang started coming around. A normal reaction on any car spinning the tires and about all you had to do was back out of it a bit, steer left and roll the throttle back on. I don’t think Mickey had finesse or anything like that imprinted on his mind. It was on or off with him.

    Mickey steered left, but he kept his foot in it. Looked like he figured he’d just drive around it. Something that we’d seen that didn’t work too well most times. At least not if the driver kept his foot all the way in it.

    Like all the other drivers I’d seen lose it, Mickey kept the left turn in too long and now the Mustang’s rear hung out to the right, the rear bumper just touched the Camaro on the drivers door and then the Mustang shot over into the outside west bound lane. It wasn’t enough that he crossed the white line, he took the whole darned road too.

    To top it off, he was losing it badly and still had his foot in it. The Camaro, long ago having given up any thoughts of racing, if in fact it was racing at all, came to a dead stop with tires smoking and watched the whole thing go on.

    Now that Mickey was in the outside west bound lane, the Mustang hung the rear end out to the left taking up all of the bicycle lane and darned near hitting the curb and coming right at me.

    Kind of interesting watching the Mustang running down the street at about a 45 degree angle, covering both the bicycle lane and the outside lane and headed right for my car. I remember grabbing the seat belt and tightening it really tight, but the whole thing was an absolute fascination and I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

    It figured, I was the only parked car on that section of Main Street and Mickey was going to total my 53.

    He finally backed off the throttle, the Mustangs tires got some traction and shot him across the street at the other curb. The weird part was, the throttle went back to wide open. I don’t know if he thought it was the thing to do or tried to hit the brakes and missed or what the heck.

    It didn’t do him any good. The Mustang hung the rear end back out to the right, hit the tall curb going sideways at a pretty good clip, flipped and sailed upside down and sideways right through the big front windows of the Chevy showroom.

    It looked like an explosion when he hit the windows. You couldn’t see anything for a few seconds. When the dust settled, although in this case what settled was mostly glass, you could see that Mickey’s Mustang had smacked a brand new Corvette in the front and sent it flying backwards into the brochure rack. There was broken glass, dust and flying brochures everywhere.

    Along with a couple of salesmen standing there with a couple who’d been looking at a new Chevy wagon. The couple, with brochures in hand were just standing there. All of them with dazed looks on their faces.

    It was the darndest thing I’d ever seen. Traffic on Main came to a complete halt with the exception of the white Camaro. It just idled up close to where Mickey had hit the curb and stopped. It took me a couple of seconds to get out of the 53. I’d forgotten about the seat belt and tried to get out with it still on.

    I was surprised to see Carol in the white Camaro. I didn’t know that she still owned it.
    I got across the street and through the destroyed showroom window in time to see Big Bill, the owner of the Chevy dealership come down the hall and into the showroom about the same time that Mickey started to crawl out of the passenger window of the upside down Mustang. Bill wasn’t in a panic, scared or anything like that. He was one calm guy.

    Kinda surprising though, you’d have thought that launching a car through the front window of his showroom would have set most guys off.

    Bill just kneeled down and told Mickey to wait a minute. Good advice for sure. There was broken glass everywhere. Mickey was kinda dazed and stayed there, kneeling on his hands and knees on the headliner of the Mustang. Didn’t make any difference now. He sure wasn’t going to hurt the Mustang anymore than he already had.

    One of the salesmen grabbed a big broom and started to clear broken glass away from the floor where Mickey was going to have to crawl. Bill stopped the salesman and asked Mickey if he was alright. Mickey had a bloody nose, but not very bad and shook his head up and down.
    Signifying he was ok I guess.

    Bill recognized me and asked for a hand. Between the two us, we got hold of Mickey’s arms and dragged him out of the Mustang and onto his feet. We had to hold onto him though. He was still a touch dizzy. The salesman with the broom brought a chair over and we sat Mickey
    down on it.

    About that time, Carol, with her Camaro still sitting in the street, stepped through the opening where the showroom window had been, walked up to Mickey and asked him if he was alright. Mickey, still with a faint trickle of blood running out of his nose nodded that he was.
    Once he said that, Carol launched into a tirade. The gist of it all, that Mickey was so damn stupid that she couldn’t believe it and if he wasn’t already bleeding she ought to beat on him hard enough until he did start bleeding.

    Bill motioned to me to take Carol outside. She was pretty wound up and I don’t blame her. Aside from having Mickey as a bit of an offbeat father in-law, she’d gone through a few terrifying moments when Mickey lost control of the Mustang and darned near taken Carol along with him.

    I got hold of Carol’s arm, but she wasn’t ready to leave yet. She just stood there and glared at Mickey. It seemed like Mickey was coming around ok, but the full gravity of what he’d done hadn’t hit him yet. He didn’t even see all the spectators who’d crowded into the showroom from the offices, the shop and the parts department as well as people who were standing outside on the sidewalk.

    When Mickey started to realize where he was and what had happened, Bill leaned over and said, “Geez Mickey, there’s plenty of parking out back.”

    It was dead quiet for a couple of seconds and then the people who were standing there and taking it all in, realized what Big Bill had said and started laughing up a storm.

    Poor Mickey. He’d stormed the doors of the enemy camp and instead of emerging heroic and triumphant, he found himself cloaked in the suit of the court jester. The little fact that he didn’t mean to storm the actual doors of the enemy camp didn’t mean a thing. It was the results that counted to the crowd that was there.

    Mickey would be a long time living this one down.

    If ever.....

    -<>-



    Mickey Merc’s launching his Mustang through the Chevy dealers showroom windows was probably the highlight and the low point of Mickey’s street racing career. All at the same time. I don’t know what the heck he got out of it. Didn’t make any difference anyway. There wasn’t much we could do about it but watch and wonder. It was a wonderment, that was for sure.

    Big Bill wasn’t the kind of guy to rub salt in a wound. A genuinely nice guy, he had the Chevy tow truck brought around, they pulled the poor little Mustang out of the showroom window, loaded it up and took it to Mickey’s Ford dealership. Just a professional courtesy as far as Bill was concerned. It was probably a good thing that Mickey wasn’t at the Ford dealership when it was delivered. That really would have been the end for him.

    Mickey, a little unsteady after the crash was taken to the hospital for a checkup. Not in an ambulance, but in Big Bill’s very own Impala convertible. Thank God the top wasn’t down. I don’t think Mickey could have handled it. Turns out he just had some bangs and scrapes and his wife took him straight home. Mickey was a bit of a workaholic, but he’d had about enough for one day.

    Murgy dropped by a couple of days later and filled us in on the details. Carol never was racing. When she started to drive off, Mickey lit up the tires, the noise scared Carol and she floored the throttle on the Camaro. As soon as she figured out what was going on, she let off the throttle and when Mickey’s Mustang dinged the drivers door, she slammed on the brakes coming to a halt in the street and watched the whole extravaganza.

    She went back to work that afternoon, but was so bothered by the whole thing that Murgy took her home. I guess Mickey wasn’t the only one who’d seen enough cars for one day.

    The wrecked Mustang was taken to it’s old and familiar parking spot in the basement and covered up. Covered up, I don’t know why, didn’t seem like it could have been any worse. It stayed there for a long, long time.

    Carol and Mickey came back to work the next day. She was at her desk when Mickey walked in. He looked over at her and smiled. She looked up at him and glared. He turned and went into his office. She returned to what she was doing and the incident was never discussed again. Even so, it was a long time before Carol would ride in a car that Mickey was driving.

    Life at the Ford Dealership got back to normal for about a week. Then, late on a Friday afternoon, Mickey got the phone call he’d been waiting for. It was the chassis shop in L.A., the 40 coupe was done and ready to be picked up. Mickey had almost forgotten about it with all the crazy stuff that had been going on. All the crazy stuff courtesy of Mickey of course, but you gotta admit it was downright distracting. At least it was for Mickey.

    Murgy and Carol hooked up the old T-Bolt trailer to the shop pickup and took off for L.A. early on Saturday morning. Mickey wanted to go, he was pretty enthused about the project and for the most part it had been his idea to build the 40. Like Murgy said, he wasn’t going to complain. Murgy was a car guy just like us and having a killer 40 coupe to take to the races was something he was really looking forward to.

    Mickey was torn between two desires. The annual best ball tournament at the golf course and picking up the 40. He got it figured out easy enough. If Murgy picked it up on Saturday morning, he could see it at the shop in the afternoon. Far as Mickey was concerned, it was the best of both worlds.

    We were just closing the shop down when Murgy pulled in. He’d dropped Carol off at home and came by to show us the 40 before he took it to the dealership. It was a work of art as far as we were concerned. It had a complete tubular chassis, aluminum floors and panels, plexiglass windows, a gasser style rear bumper and some front nerfs cut out of 3/8" aluminum plate with cool looking lightening holes that would have been at home on most any roadster. There were so many neat details that it kinda boggled the mind.

    The 40 had a broken warranty engine installed for mockup purposes. Murgy said the plan was to build up a blown FE 427 engine and have the automatic beefed up at a San Fernando Valley shop that specialized in C-6's.

    The front suspension, with rack and pinion steering was out of a wrecked Pinto. The rear end, a narrowed nine inch Ford out of a late 60's station wagon with Summers Brothers axles and 14" wide slicks that sat inside the fender wells and part way into the trunk. The rear suspension was a nicely done ladder bar setup. The whole car sat very low. In fact, lower than a couple of 39 and 40 Ford full customs kicking around town.

    The nine inch rear axle was a more than sensible choice. Quite strong and parts readily available. Especially so for a Ford Dealership. What made it nice was Murgy’s small collection of Detroit Lockers that were still packed away in the back of the parts room and ready for use. With the Summers Brothers axles, the nine inch looked to be darned near unbreakable.

    In our eyes it looked like it would be a good looking, good handling, lightweight little car with a virtually bullet-proof drive train. It was the best built and nicest drag racing car we’d ever seen. And that included some of the great fuel dragster’s we’d been privileged to see. Granted, we leaned toward the street cars, at least the ones that appeared streetable, but the little 40 kinda took your breath away.

    It still had the stock tan paint although a few dark gray primer spots were evident. Next stop, the Ford paint and body shop. There was no doubt that Mickey had put a chunk of change into the 40. Ok with us. We approved. Didn’t make any difference who owned the car. It was something else.

    Murgy drove off, headed for the Ford Dealership and we figured we’d see the 40 when we saw it. As far as Mickey was concerned it was a secret. A secret from who, we didn’t know. Most every car guy in town knew what was going on. There just weren’t many secrets about hot cars around town. The grapevine worked and it worked very well.

    About a month went by and we heard that Mickey had the 40 trailered down to the big scales at the wharf and got it weighed. Surprising to us, with all the lightweight stuff, it only weighed 100# less than our 39 Chevy coupe.

    A fiberglass front clip, doors and trunk probably would have helped, but Mickey wanted to keep the 40 all steel. Sounded ok to us. It didn’t seem like fiberglass saved that much weight anyway. Especially so when you figure in the weight of the metal braces required, the tendency to make the glass front ends tilt and all that. Along with the little fact that the 40, as well as a lot of other drag race cars didn’t have inner fender panels.

    One thing we could see. The 40 and the 39 looked to be tailor made for a match race.
    Maybe, just maybe....

    Lord knows, it would be more than interesting.

    This time around, both cars would be in the same class. Some may have thought that Mickey planned it that way, but I didn’t think so. Mickey could care less what class a Chevy was in as long as one of his Fords could win the race.

    Seemed like the little 40 went together pretty fast. The engine had been built while the coupe was still in L.A., the C6 had been back from the San Fernando Valley transmission shop for several weeks and the bodywork and paint finished a few days back.

    The car was assembled, plumbed and wired in the Ford shop and pronounced ready to go.

    The 40 was rolled outside late on a Tuesday afternoon, fired and run for the initial break-in. A few checks were done, the car shut down and rolled back inside. From what we heard, the blown 427 was a good sounding engine.

    Wednesday morning, Murgy trailered the 40 up to a dyno shop in Santa Barbara. The shop, run by a long time local named Joehnck who did some sports car racing now and then was a bit of a specialist with Chevy small blocks and the Chrysler Hemi. Regardless, he knew what he was doing and got the big Ford engine running really right.

    Far as we knew, nobody had heard the horsepower and torque figures, but everybody figured it was gonna be one fast little car. Sure looked that way to us.

    We were as curious as anybody and when we heard the 40 was going to make the trek to Palmdale Dragstrip, we figured that would be a good time to run the 39. We weren’t looking for a race and we did realize that the 40 could probably outrun our home-built car, but like every other car guy in town, we were curious to see how it would run.

    Palmdale, located out in the desert east of Palmdale and situated at about the 2500' level was a great dragstrip to go to most times of the year. It got tough during the summer sometimes, but for the most part it wasn’t any worse than some of the valley strips had been during the hot months of the summer.

    San Fernando’s heat was hard to handle at times. With summer temps over a hundred and wandering through the pits on the black asphalt, the heat reflected right back at you. Times like that, more than a few keeled over from simple heat exhaustion. When that happened, somebody would drag em over to the water fountain behind the stands, run water over their arms and head in an effort to cool em off. It worked most times. They would come around, a bit groggy to say the least and either go back to what they were doing or just go sit in the car. Most times it was the car. The shade inside the car with all the windows down made for a reasonable place of escape.

    Funny part was, it was almost always guys who darned near passed out. They’d go until they fell down. Seems the girls had more sense, wore hats and would get out of the sun, get some water or at the least go sit down in the stands.

    We figured Palmdale would be pretty much the same as San Fernando had been and planned accordingly. Most times anyway. Some times, we went, no matter the weather. As long as it was dry, it was good enough for us.

    -<>-



    For us, spring time was just about the perfect time to go to Palmdale. We were lucky as well. The whole Mickey, Murgy, 40 Ford coupe, us ready to run the 39 again deal pretty much all fell together late in spring.

    We left Ventura early and got there early. Even so, it seemed like the guys who lived in Palmdale and Lancaster were already there no matter how early we arrived. Early being all relative. Palmdale was a Saturday night strip, opened the doors around noon and we usually got there around one or two o’clock. Racing went into the night hours and didn’t stop until it was all
    over. About the only thing that did stop it was when the desert winds popped up. When they blew it was usually across the track and anybody running over a hundred could have their hands full. At times, the winds blew pretty hard and there was no way around it. The strip shut down and everybody went home. For the most part though, Palmdale was able to run the complete program and shutting down was a somewhat uncommon experience.

    When we got there, we paid the admission and pit pass, got the 39 unloaded, parked the trailer and grabbed a pit. It was nice operating out of the pickup. The girls set lawn chairs in the bed and we set up the big patio umbrella in the stake pocket holder we’d made. With an old wooden 7Up crate for a step, the girls stepped in and out of the pickup bed with ease. They had their iced tea in a cooler right next to them, could see most of what they wanted to see and were definitely in business.

    Like always, Doofus got in the drivers seat, fired the 39's engine, warmed it up, we checked it over and with everything looking good shut it down. We’d been looking around to see if we could spot Mickey, Murgy or the 40 and even standing in the pickup bed we hadn’t spotted a thing. No big deal, either they’d be there or they wouldn’t.

    Jill got behind the wheel of the 39, Doofus got in the other side, the engine was fired and she drove it into the staging lanes and shut down. Whiny and I walked over to the staging lanes, talked with Jill and Doofus and watched the racing while standing next to the car.

    Palmdale was a neat strip. You could walk up to the front of the staging lanes and as long as you stayed out of the way and behind the line, you had a pretty good view of the start line.

    When it came time for our line to get run out, Doof got out of the car, Jill lit it off and idled up to the wait line. When the next pair was run off, the staging lane guy motioned her out to the start line.

    One thing that was new to Jill, was the water box for burnouts. She didn’t have any problems with it. She drove around it, backed into it, spun up the tires, allowed the car to leave the box with tires spinning hard and came to a stop behind the start line. A short backup, a dry hop to make sure the tires were dry and she was in business.

    One nice thing about running an A/GS car at Palmdale, they usually had them run singles during time trials. Unless there was an interesting car to match them up with. Which is what happened this time around. Jill got paired up with a single carb, small block Chevy engine dragster. We figured she’d get swamped by the lightweight rail and were interested to see how it would go.

    They staged, the lights came down, Jill drilled the rail off the line, led the way all the way down and won the race. The 39 ran 10.44 at 127 mph. Darned near as good as the best time it ever ran before. The best time being a 10.40 at 128 mph.

    We figured, pretty darned good. Palmdale made the cars run slow due to the higher altitude. Somewhere along the line somebody had told us that horsepower levels drop about 2% for every 1000' of altitude gained. Sounded reasonable to us and we were surprised to see the 39 run so good the first time out. Maybe the blown cars didn’t lose horsepower as fast as the naturally aspirated ones did. Seemed like they ought to, but to us it didn’t look like they did.

    We walked back to the pits to wait for Jill. She drove into the pit and was all smiles. She knew what the times meant and was pleasantly surprised - as we were - that the times were better than expected. We figured leave the car just as it was and make no changes. One more time trial would show us if the first time around was a fluke or what.

    We were getting ready to head out to the staging lanes when we heard a strong running engine fire up. I got curious and climbed up into the pickup bed and saw Mickey and Murgy’s 40 Ford coupe backing off the trailer. From what I could see the little coupe looked great. The painter at the Ford Dealership had laid on a nice dark metallic blue and the doors had the Mercury Ford logo painted on them in white. Except for the logo, the parachute on the back bumper, slicks and a few decals on the quarter windows, the 40 looked darned near like any other 40 Ford coupe you’d see running the streets.

    It was getting to be the rage for drag racing cars to plaster decals all over the body work.
    In most cases, hiding a very nice paint job. We didn’t care for it and aside from a Crower decal in each quarter window on our 39 that was about it. The 39, at least to our eyes still looked very much like any other hot rod you’d see on the street. It didn’t sound like one, even with the mufflers on, but it sure looked like one.

    The 40 rolled into the pits and more than a few eyes were cast it’s way. No doubt about it, it was a nice little car. We were surprised to see Mickey get out of the 40 and Murgy driving the dealership pickup into the pits. Mickey looked over at us, gave a half hearted wave and went back to whatever it was he was gonna do. Murgy parked the pickup, saw us and walked over. The question was so obvious that we didn’t even get to ask it. Murgy walked up and said that his dad was going to drive the 40. Wow, coulda knocked us over with a feather. Mickey driving the 40 was one we hadn’t thought of and for sure didn’t hear on the grapevine.

    You’d have thought that Murgy was the ideal candidate as far as the driving end of it went. At least it seemed that way to us. Murgy told us that they’d never really discussed who the driver would be until it was time to load up the car.

    All Mickey said about that was, “I’m driving the 40."

    If nothing else, it looked to be interesting. Mickey seemed to have his hands full with his poor old 64 Mustang running a stock 289 and a four speed. When he installed the blower, he really had his hands full. We had no idea how things would work out with him driving the 40. It sure didn’t work out for the wrecked Mustang. Mickey’s money and Mickey’s decision I guess. Not our problem and not our worry. At least it wasn’t until Mickey lined up in the staging lanes right behind Jill.

    Counting the cars it was easy to see that Jill and Mickey would get paired up when the time came. Easy to see too that Jill had already counted em off and figured it out.

    Whiny walked over to Jill and started to say something.

    Jill held up her hand and said, “I know, I know, I’ll take care of it.”

    Well, Whiny was smart, he shut up and stepped back. Even so, you could see that he was still thinking about something. Doofus told him to just let it go.

    We had a lot of faith in Jill and her driving abilities and more importantly in her ability to figure things out and make decisions. She was part of the team and probably the most important member. In fact, she pretty much made life easy for us. She was an excellent driver, knew the car well and we listened to what she had to say. After all, she was the one hanging her fanny out on the line in the potentially 130 mph Chevy coupe.

    It didn’t take long until our lane started moving. Jill waited until the four cars in front of her were out and she fired the 39 and moved up to the wait line. Mickey had fired the 40 when the first car moved and was sitting back there with the big blown Ford engine picking up heat unnecessarily and probably gnashing his teeth.

    Jill wasn’t trying to dink around with him or play games Waiting for part of the line to clear out and only firing and moving the car when you had to was how it worked. If she’d wanted to, she could have tied Mickey in knots psychologically speaking. Mickey was easy. Even so, it wasn’t her way.

    Fair was fair and Jill was more than fair. Too bad for Mickey if he didn’t know the rules.
    He could either figure them out and play by them or suffer the consequences.

    When Jill got to the front of the staging lane, she motioned the staging lane guy over and talked to him. He nodded his head and motioned for her to pull out and park next to the fence.
    For Mickey, he motioned him through and pointed him toward the burnout box.

    We were surprised a touch when Mickey idled up a little ways behind the burnout box and stopped as directed. When the two cars on the line left, the starter motioned Mickey into the burnout box. Mickey, to our surprise, pulled back a few feet, drove around the box and right up to the start line stopping just short of the first staging light. He didn’t clean the motor out or anything. He pulled into the first staging beam, checked the instrument panel, lit the second stage light, all the time with the engine idling and when the tree came down he nailed the throttle and the big 427 responded right now.

    It flashed the converter, the car launched hard and ran straight and true. We were amazed. We figured that Mickey would have his hands full with the powerful little 40 coupe. Looked like the L.A. chassis shop really knew what they were doing. Probably a good thing for Mickey. I guess he’d never heard the bit about making a few moderate runs to check the car out and get the feel of things. It was a full-on blast all the way.

    The 40 ran a 10.22 at 132 mph. Geez, right out of the box. A 10.22. We were a bit boggled.

    We were still standing there a touch slack-jawed when the staging lane guy motioned for Jill to fire the 39 and head for the burnout box.

    She did the burnout and the dry hop, staged and launched. The coupe ran straight, sounded good and turned a disappointing 10.50 at 126 mph. A bit down from the first run, but all things considered, pretty good. Even so, we were gonna have our hands full with Mickey.

    Running A/GS was pretty straightforward. There were only six cars in the class. One broke in time trials and Mickey drew the bye run. When eliminations came, we got lucky and Jill put a good hole shot on what turned out to be a slower car. We didn’t know it was slower until the race was all over. She ran a 10.48 at 126 mph. We’d been pretty engrossed in watching Mickey’s 40 run as well as paying attention to our 39.

    Mickey did the same thing he did before, he idled around the burnout box, staged, launched, ran straight as a string and ran a 10.21 at 133 mph. Pretty consistent or else Mickey was lucky. Mickey’s luck was something else. Seemed like it was either real good or real bad. The stuff in the middle seemed to be missing from his life sometimes.

    We figured he was lucky when he got a bye run during the first round. Then unlucky when he was paired up for his first race in the second round. He was up against what was potentially the class winner - a 33 Willy’s coupe with a blown small block Chevy that ran in the mid-nines. Then lucky again when the Willy’s wouldn’t start. It didn’t backfire, pop, try to run or do anything other than just sit there with the starter spinning the engine over. The little Willy’s was deader than the proverbial doornail. That gave Mickey, in effect, another bye run.

    The Willy’s crew rolled their car up against the north fence, swung it around and started pushing it down the staging lanes toward the pit. For Mickey, a big grin on his face. He recognized for sure that he’d missed a bullet with the dead Willy’s. At least he had some sense this time. The starter had him line the 40 up and stage, the tree came down and he just motored calmly away. The little 40 rolling through the traps in 16 flat at 87 mph.

    Jill ran against a yellow 52 Chevy coupe with a blown 394 inch Olds. The Olds was a fairly strong runner, but the 52’s chassis wasn’t up to the job. He ran a losing 11.05 at 122 mph and Jill ran a 10.47 at 127 mph. If nothing else, the 39 was pretty consistent.

    After some cool down time and with a little better air than it was late in the afternoon when the first eliminations were run, the cool night air that came in looked like it might help. Trouble was, it was gonna help everybody. And too, the night air wasn’t all that cool considering we were in the Dez.

    We’d checked the 39 over just as Mickey and Murgy had checked the 40 over and when the call came for A/GS to the staging lanes for the next round we were ready and so were Mickey and the 40.

    This looked to be interesting. Especially so since this would be Mickey’s first real race at a for-real dragstrip and none of this lighting the tires up BS.

    When the time came, the staging lane guy motioned for Jill and Mickey to fire em up. Both cars lit off with no problems. Jill idled up behind the burnout box and stopped. Mickey stopped behind it just like before. When they motioned the cars into the burnout box, Jill drove around it, backed in, did the burnout, did the dry hop, and like before Mickey idled the 40 around the water and up to the start line.

    Both cars staged, the tree came down and both cars left. Jill got a couple of feet on Mickey, but it was nothing we could consider a hole shot. It was one helluva race though. Both cars went through the gears pulling hard and from the back it looked like an even run all the way down.

    Looks aren’t everything though. Mickey’s 40 had pulled our 39 by a little more than a car length at the top end. It was apparent the big Ford was putting out some serious horsepower.
    Jill ran a losing 10.42 at 128 mph and Mickey ran a 10.19 at 133 mph.

    Well . . . it was all over but the shouting. Although we weren’t shouting and neither was Murgy.

    All he said was “tough luck guys”.

    When Mickey rolled into the pits, he got out of the 40 with a smile on his face, removed his crash helmet and looked over at us. He threw us a salute, which we took to be a sign of respect, turned around and started gathering up stuff for the trip home.

    Jill wasn’t mad, but she walked off and sat in the pickup by herself for a while. Doofus went over and talked to her, told her that she’d driven great and done all she could. It was the car that didn’t have the horsepower.

    Jill looked at him and said, “We’re going to have to do something about that.”


    End of Section A


    Murgy’s coupe painted black

     

    Attached Files:

  2. Start of Section B


    On the trip home we stopped at a coffee shop and were trying to figure out how come Mickey did so well at the drags and couldn’t drive worth a damn on the street. I think Jill had it pretty well figured out. The 40, as noted, ran straight as a string, was a good handling car and as long as nothing went wrong, more than likely most anybody could drive it. Probably true and all in all, an interesting and educational night.

    We drove home with everyone pretty quiet. Not quiet from losing the race or even because of losing to Mickey. Truth was, we were all a little worn out. It didn’t mean we weren’t thinking. And were still thinking long after we got home.

    Losing to Mickey was one thing and to tell the truth, it grated on us a bit. At least it did me. Funny part about this time around was that Mickey was a gracious winner. Even so, we’d been burned enough times so we just figured he was on his best behavior and that it probably wouldn’t last.

    Gotta admit, he sure was fun to beat. Maybe that made us as bad as Mickey and maybe not. Maybe Mickey was good for us. We did our best thinking and best work when we knew we were gonna go up against him.

    Next morning, Doofus and I got to the shop right on time. Funny thing was, Whiny was already there. He was a pretty punctual guy, but it was apparent he’d been there for a while.
    He and Jill had been thinking about how we could make the coupe a little faster. And both of them knew that we had a one to one set of gears for the blower as well as a 5% overdrive set.
    Jill figured we ought to just stick in the 15% under set reversed for 15% over and be done with it. Whiny thought the one to one set was a good place to start. The one to ones were pretty much what Doofus and I had been thinking about.

    We thought too that the slicks were probably a touch hard from just sitting around for all that time. That one solved to an extent by Jim, our circle track racing friend who owned a tire
    durometer. The durometer, an interesting little gadget used for testing the hardness of rubber.

    Granted, we didn’t know what the hardness on the tires were when we first got them so we didn’t know what they’d changed to, if at all. Jim thought the tires were about where they ought to be. We were fairly sure they’d gotten harder. Sure seems to happen to regular tires when they sit around for a long while. If the old slicks had hardened up, it wasn’t enough to make for any great changes. Especially so in view of the little fact that the coupe had ran about as hard as it ever did when it was at Palmdale. Even so, we decided to invest in a new pair in a softer compound. Not to mention a little wider.

    The old 12" slicks were replaced with a pair that were the same diameter, but 14" wide. The wider slicks came out just about even with the outer edge of the fenders. All of which, made us glad that we’d radiused the fenders back when we swapped the 396 into Jill’s coupe. Then swapped the radiused fenders to the drag racing coupe when we returned Jill’s coupe to street duty with the six banger. Nice part was the slicks wouldn’t hit the fender if the rear suspension bottomed out.

    The only other changes done were to stick the one to one blower gears in, jet the carbs up a bit and install a parachute. As well as get a leather jacket for Jill. We figured we could find one at the Thrift Store, but they were nowhere to be seen. The lady told us that they used to have them all the time and the occasional motorcycle rider would come in and buy them. Seems like somewhere along the line, the leather jackets and their low prices were “found”.

    We ended up buying a light duty war surplus leather flight jacket at Korb’s, the military surplus store in Montalvo, just outside Ventura. The jacket was pretty big for Jill, but it was alright with her and she didn’t mind the rolled up sleeves at all. She figured that one of us could wear it if we drove the coupe. It’s a good thing we didn’t get one of the fur lined with fur collar bomber jackets designed for minus 40 degree temperatures. She’d have been totally lost in one of those. Not to mention wearing a bomber jacket in summertime temps could get tough.

    We’d talked about the changes we did long before we did any changes to the coupe. Realizing it really was a fast little car, we decided to invest some money in the safety end of it.
    Leather jackets had been required on the roadsters for quite a while, although now, a lot of open car guys were stepping up to a full-on fire suit much like the fuel dragster drivers wore.

    The parachute looked like it would be a valuable addition. Especially after we’d watched a very fast full fendered Model A roadster running in the nine’s get loose on the top end. We were down in the hot pits at about the 1000' mark at Palmdale looking over the dragster’s and altered’s when the A roadster came down. We’d made a point to watch since the A sounded really good on startup and a couple of the dragster guys told us it was a strong runner.

    When the A got near the traps, the rear end started fishtailing a bit. The driver seemed pretty calm about it all and tried to steer out of it, but each swing was getting progressively worse. He threw the chute out, the roadster gave a couple of quick oscillations, straightened right out and got stopped just fine.

    We figured, if nothing else, the chute would be a good ace in the hole for Jill. The 39 had always gone straight, but you never can tell, it was always possible to get sideways a bit somewhere along the line.

    The chute was a cinch to install. A couple of brackets bolted to the original bumper bolts held the small plywood pack board and a nice aluminum release lever was mounted on a pivot close to the driver on the roll bar lateral that went forward to the right front corner of the floor.
    An anchor point for the cable sheath was welded onto the roll bar lateral, the release cable run and tied down, a touch of paint and that was pretty much it.

    We were more than ready to hit the races. The drags were always fun, but whenever we’d made changes in the car we really looked forward to going. This time around though, we thought we’d give Famoso a try. Famoso being the old WW2 Bomber airstrip about 20 miles north of Bakersfield and just off Highway 65. Famoso was also known as Bakersfield. Mention either one and most knew where you where talking about.

    We’d made a point to schedule only a couple of cars in on Saturday and closed the shop at ten o’clock. Something we rarely did, but we were able to take care of all the cars that needed to be taken care of during the week.

    When things slowed down, Whiny and I hitched the trailer to my pickup and loaded up the 39. Doofus was finishing a tune-up on the last car and we all got done about the same time. The girls rolled in with a couple of ice boxes stuffed with lunch and cold drinks, jackets and a bunch of other stuff. All neatly packed into the back end of the Chrysler wagon.

    We stuck the ice boxes into the bed of the pickup, adding that to the big patio umbrella and the four lawn chairs that DeeDee had me put in there the night before. Tools were already in the trailer tool box, the rest of the stuff got loaded into the big trunk of Whiny’s Ford coupe and we took off. It sure looked like a nice day for the races. Early spring, bright and clear and just a touch warm.

    The trip over the grade wasn’t much of a struggle for the 390 in the 56. DeeDee and I were in the pickup and the rest of the gang were in Whiny’s 50 Ford coupe. We never did get dragged down slower than 50. The pickup was a darned good tow vehicle.

    Whiny didn’t say anything, but it sure looked like he brought his Ford coupe along so he could make a couple of passes with it. Doof and I figured that was what was up when Whiny brought in a nicely rolled 6" wide, 1/4" thick piece of steel along with a couple of other pieces a few weeks back. One long piece to run between the frame rails and underneath the bellhousing had a slight arch in it and the other piece was to cover the top rear of the bellhousing. He’d pulled the transmission floor cover and was going to stay after work one night to get the scattershield in. Doofus and I stayed around to give him a hand and it went pretty quick.

    The scattershield had been rolled at an oil field fabrication shop out on the Avenue and was a work of art. It was a nice loop of 1/4" bent in a half circle with short vertical legs. Another piece, a little more than a quarter circle with the point cut away had been rolled to match and this was the piece that covered the back section of the bell housing top. The quarter circle, not welded to the half circle loop. The thinking being, fit the half circle loop and trim the quarter circle to fit and then weld. It all went pretty much as planned. The half circle loop was set in place covering the top and sides of the bellhousing, blocked in place, the bottom slightly arched piece cut to fit, drilled to fit the tabs and the tabs welded to the frame rails. A pair of angle pieces were tacked to the bottom piece so the half circle could be bolted onto that.

    Once everything was figured out and tacked in place it was all removed for welding. Once re-installed, it was easy to see that Whiny had things figured out quite well. The only fly in the ointment was a small one. The sheet metal floor cover had to be bumped up a bit to clear the scattershield and that was about it. If you didn’t know the coupe had a scattershield, you couldn’t tell it by just glancing inside. Whiny’s sleeper theme was still working well.

    We were a little surprised to see Mickey and Murgy and the 40 coupe there. Doofus had talked to Murgy the week before and it didn’t look like they were going to make it. Mickey had a tee time at the golf course for his regular Saturday morning game. Turns out that Friday night a couple of Mickey’s golf buddies canceled out and so did he. Murgy told us Mickey didn’t know we’d be there. As far as he knew it was just an impromptu deal. A day of racing the 40 and just getting out of town for a while. And Mickey, like us, wanted to give Famoso a try.

    We’d been there before as spectators and could appreciate what a great dragstrip it was.
    With the large pit area and the absolutely huge paved area left over from WW2 operations, there was plenty of room to go down to the empty S/W corner of the strip and make a short low gear launch in the car to see how things were working. For the most part, ok with the strip operators as long as you didn’t overcook it or pick up too much speed coming back up to the pits.

    The real interesting part about Famoso was that it was large enough to contain the drag strip, the pit area and spectator parking as well as an airstrip on the east side. Kinda funny to see planes land, taxi to the north end, park and then see the pilots and passengers walking to the ticket office like any other spectator, buying a ticket and heading in for a day at the races.

    We entered the pit area, unloaded the 39 and set up. The nice part was, the trailer remained attached to the pickup and there was room for Whiny’s coupe on the other side of the 39. The patio umbrella was set up on it’s stand, the lawn chairs set around it and the girls were sitting pretty. Bringing shade along was a darned good idea at Famoso. We’d seen a lot of novel shade setups in the pits when we’d been there in the past and figured it was a good idea now.

    Nothing left to do but get in line and run a couple of time trials to see how the one to one blower ratio and jetting swap was going to work out. Things were a little different this time around though. Whiny got in the 39's passenger seat and Doofus and I walked over to the grandstands. DeeDee and Dinah stayed in the pit, sitting in the pickup and talking.

    Our pit location made it easy for them to look between the grandstands and see the 39 when it went past. At least that’s what they thought. After they’d seen a few cars go by, they decided they’d be better off in the grandstands with us. Fine with us, we liked their company and they always liked to see how it was going with Jill and the coupe.

    It didn’t take long. Jill drove the 39 into the A/GS line and was the only car there. About five minutes later, the staging lane guy sent her to the start line and it was off to the races in a manner of speaking. He paired her up with a nice 51 Olds coupe from the Ventura area that we found later was running a near stock 425 Olds with T-400 trans. It was pretty much the way the strip did it sometimes. The hard leaving and faster cars would be paired up with a slower car, they stayed separated fairly well and all in all it was a pretty safe deal. Provided the slower car’s driver knew what was up at the top end and the turn offs. No problems this time, the Olds driver had done more than a few runs and knew exactly what was expected of him.

    Jill did the water burnout and the dry hop. The Olds driver did the same. Jill rolled into the first stage light beam. The Olds did the same. She let the Olds roll into the 2nd stage light beam then she rolled into the 2nd stage light beam. The tree started down and the Olds left on the next to last amber and got the red light.

    Jill did great and the Olds leaving early didn’t affect her. All of her attention was focused strictly on the last amber in her lane.

    At first I thought the Olds had put one heck of a hole shot on her. Then I saw the red light and realized he’d totally screwed up.

    Jill left at the right time, the car hooked up and launched hard. It went to the right a tiny bit with the left rear of the car hung out slightly.

    The Olds didn’t stand a chance. The red light hole shot didn’t help at all and Jill ran him down at about the 1000' mark and blew by him like nobody’s business. The 39 turned 10.20 at 131 mph.

    The best part was when the chute popped out with a big puff of white baby powder. The chute manufacturers usually recommended talcum powder packed into the chutes, but we were like all the rest and used the easily obtained baby powder. The girls liked the smell of it and decided they’d be the parachute packers in the crew.

    Jill liked the way the chute pulled the car down on the top end. At the speeds she was running, you had to get with the program right away if you wanted to get the car hauled down to a reasonable speed for the turnoff before you ran out of dragstrip. There was a dirt runoff strip at the end which ran off the strip property, but it was pretty short and it wasn’t long until you were out in the bean field.

    We were more than happy with the 10.20 and especially happy with the 131 mph. It looked like the new slicks were just what the coupe needed. The 39 was running darned near the exact times that Mickey’s 40 was. Picking up on the mph proved that the blower pulley swap to a one to one ratio had been a very good idea. We didn’t say it, but it was easy to see we were thinking about it. Look out Mickey.

    Jill was, by far, the better driver. At least we thought so and past experience had proved us right. We figured Mickey was at the least on the endangered list.

    Interesting part was, the Olds that Jill raced turned a red lighting 14.22 at 100 mph flat.
    Since he was pitted just a few cars away, we wandered over to take a look at his car. We didn’t even ask. The Olds owner knew who we were and right off he told us he’d been looking at the wrong amber light. No excuses. No recriminations. Just a good old fashioned screw-up. He’d been around the dragstrip’s long enough to know better. The Olds wasn’t the fastest machine around, but it was fun to drive it to the races, race it without too much hassling around, spectate for a while and drive home. For a lot of guys that was pretty much how the casual drag racing end of things went.

    The Olds was a typical good running and good looking street machine. It was painted Pontiac lime fire green. The lighter 1957 version of the two lime fire greens that Pontiac brought out in 57 and 58. 1958 had an equally good looking, but darker colored version. Both lime fires looked good, but to our eyes the early version was the best and was the color chosen by most who’d painted their cars with the lime fire paint.

    The interior of the Olds was the result of a trip to Tijuana, Mexico like so many California kids had done. It was all white with gray carpets and looked good. The body was nosed and decked and that was it. It had black wheels that normally ran the 55 Olds Fiesta wheel covers which were the small bladed version.

    The 56 Oldsmobiles were the ones that ran the larger and flashier big blade covers and they were the most popular. Even so, we still liked the good looking 55 Fiesta’s. The covers we knew about because we’d seen the car running around town a time or two, but this was the first time we’d seen it at the races. Turns out the owner didn’t live far from Ventura at all. He was a Casitas Springs guy. Casitas Springs being a very small town on the way to Ojai from Ventura.

    The best part about the Olds was the very well done 1967 Olds 425 engine swap complete with T-400 and home made floor shifter. The engine was all stock with the exception of a Holley carb sitting on a home made aluminum adapter on top of the stock cast iron manifold. Needed because the Holley is a different bolt pattern than the stock Quadrajet carb. He’d done some thinking about it and had a machine shop mill out the dividing segments inside the carb mounting flange ending up with a big plenum chamber. He said that it worked pretty good. After tearing his hair out trying to get the Quadrajet running the way he wanted, he picked up a good used Holley vacuum secondary four barrel and adapted it to the Olds.

    Kind of a familiar story to us. The Quadrajets could back you into a corner at times, but we’d found they were a very good and very misunderstood carburetor. Whatever works I guess. The Olds was interesting, but we were here to run the 39 and didn’t spend too much time wandering the pits.

    Jill had already removed and replaced the #2 spark plug when she was down at the end of the track. That’s the one that always seemed to run the leanest on our 427 and the one we looked at for information on any needed jetting changes. Most guys preferred to look at all of them, but we’d found that checking the always lean cylinder worked pretty good. The jetting looked right on and we left it like it was. Same for the timing. We weren’t going to mess with success.

    The only thing we did do was check the tire pressures and found the left slick at 8# and the right one at 10#. Whiny bled the right slick down to 8# and we figured that would take care of the slight drift it had done on the first run.

    I wasn’t sure when Mickey and Murgy had come in. Granted, the Famoso pits were big ones, but even so, we’d been keeping an eye out for them. Murgy told us they’d be there and we were looking forward to racing them. And maybe getting a touch of revenge. Not so much the Ford vs. Chevy thing like Mickey did, just a good race against some good rivals. Although Mickey was far more a rival than Murgy was.

    Jill wasn’t into the Ford vs. Chevy thing either. Plain and simple, she just wanted to beat Mickey. That was enough for her. She was beyond trophies, but pinning Mickey to the wall would be nice. She didn’t say it, but you could tell.

    Once we had the 39 buttoned up, Jill and Whiny headed for the staging lanes, DeeDee and Dinah headed for the grandstands and Doof and I walked over to the staging lanes. It was getting a bit crowded now and we figured there would be a bit of a wait.

    Waiting in the Famoso staging lanes was one of the best car shows around. Just about everything was there. From H/Stock to double A fuel dragsters. Funny part here was, the line we got into was loaded with altered roadsters running on gas and Jr Fuelers. So far we were the only A/GS car there.

    For a few minutes anyway. Whiny was still in the 39 with Jill, Doofus and I were a few cars ahead looking at a nicely built Jr Fueler running the typical injected small block Chevy engine in a lightweight chassis when we heard a familiar sound. We’d been marveling at all the weight cutting efforts the Jr Fueler guys went to when we heard Mickey’s 40 coupe pull into line right behind the 39.

    We couldn’t quite put our finger on it, but the blown FE 427 had a sound all it’s own. Whiny and Jill heard it too. Whiny got out of the 39 and walked back to talk to Murgy. He would of talked to Mickey too, but Mick stayed in the car when Murgy got out. So did Jill. She’d been disappointed too many times when she tried to be nice to Mickey. She didn’t hate him, she’d just kinda written him off.

    It took a while to run the altereds and Jr Fuelers out, but the 39 eventually got to the front of the line. The staging lane guy matched Jill up with a more than familiar car. It was the old five window Deuce coupe we’d run against at San Fernando and Long Beach several years back.
    It hadn’t changed much at all. The only real change we could see was a little larger set of slicks. Other than that, the same old stroked small block Chevy and all the rest. They were still running the Deuce in B/Gas.

    Like before, Jill staged the 39 in the first beam, waited for the Deuce to roll in and light the first stage lights and then she let the Deuce stage in the 2nd beam. When the Deuce lit the 2nd stage light, Jill staged and the tree started down.

    Jill was a killer on the lights, but there wasn’t any grass growing under the Deuce driver.
    Both cars launched on the last amber and it looked so close that I thought we’d see a double red light for sure. Not to be though, it was a clean start for both.

    The Deuce stayed with the 39 for about a hundred feet and then the blown 427 big block started pulling hard. Once at the lights, the deuce had fallen behind several lengths. He carded an 11.40 at 115 mph which seemed to us to be just about the same as he ran at San Fernando and Long Beach. The 39 ran a 10.09 at 132 mph.

    Mickey, no dummy, at least most of the time had watched Jill stage and leave with great interest. Even so, when his turn came, they lined him up for a single and like always, he drove around the water and straight to the line. He staged, the lights came down, Mickey left on the last amber, cut a good light and the 40 ran straight and true like always. It turned a 10.18 at 133 mph.

    So far, it looked like an even match and our money was on Jill. She was a better driver and the 39 was cutting a slightly better ET.

    Apparently Mickey had been paying attention to the times we ran. After we’d been in the pit a while he walked over and had that famous smirk on his face. The one that set the girls off like nobody’s business. We didn’t care much for it either, but had always let it go.

    He walked right up to Jill and asked her if she thought her little Chevy was a fast car. An ok question I suppose, but the way it came across was a touch insulting. Whiny picked up on it right away and came up out of his chair a little too fast for a simple greeting. He didn’t go far though, Doofus had a hand on his arm and Jill held up her hand for Whiny to stop. It was apparent that Jill figured she had the situation well in hand and in truth she did.

    She said, “What do you mean by that . . . Mickey?”

    The Mickey part said with a bit of a disgusted sneer on her face. I guess Mickey wasn’t the only one who could sneer.

    Jill’s response cut right to the heart of where Mickey lived. He’d been doing the sneering and smirking bit for so long and getting away with it that when it was turned on him he didn’t quite know what to do. You could see though, he got mad right away, turned red and started stumbling over his words. Jill was smooth for sure. She’d slipped one right through the chink in his armor.

    What Mickey finally came out with was, “Let’s put a little money on it and we can see how fast it really is.”

    That was Mickey for sure. A lot like the times when he picked a for sure victim with his little Mustang during his street racing episodes. To our way of thinking, Mickey couldn’t count very well. The 39 had a tenth on the 40 in the ET department and if he didn’t know that Jill was a better driver, we sure as hell did.

    Jill looked him straight in the eye and said, “How much?”

    She had a great poker face and was in fact a pretty good poker player. Always taking home her share of the winnings when we played cards. For a second there, I thought she was bluffing, but when I thought about it she was dead serious.

    All Mickey said was, “Three hundred bucks and two out of three wins.”

    We were shocked and tried our best not to let it show. It didn’t matter, Jill was the only one Mickey was paying attention to. She was just standing there, calm and cool and not moving. Even so, three hundred bucks was one whole heck of a lot of money. At least to bet on a race.
    Best two out of three or not.

    We’d heard of some of the local street racers betting a hundred bucks on a race and there were stories of two hundred dollar bets. Three hundred bucks though. That was pretty amazing.

    Jill didn’t bat an eye. She told Mickey that she’d meet him at the staging lane wait line in ten minutes and they’d have the starter hold the money.

    DeeDee and Dinah were sitting in lawn chairs next to the pickup and hadn’t said a word.
    Their surprise was evident on their faces.

    Once Mickey walked off we started dragging the money out. I knew that we could probably cover it since Doofus, Whiny and I all had what we called rat-hole money stashed away in the recesses of our wallets. Surprising to us was the little fact that the girls had rat-hole money of their own in their purses. A new one on me, but it made sense. In the end, we each tossed fifty bucks into the pot and gave it to Jill. She and Whiny walked up to the staging lane wait line, met Mickey, talked to the staging lane guy and when things slowed down a bit, Jill and Mickey walked out to the starter, explained what was going on and asked him to hold the money.

    Not a problem for the starter. He’d held more than a few bets for some of the racers. Seems that more than a few had put their money where their mouth was. We’d seen it happen a few times ourselves. As had the track announcer, a cool guy named Hot Rod Bob.

    We didn’t know where he picked up the nickname, but it was a good one for a track announcer.
    He saw what was going on from the timing stand, talked to the starter on the intercom and got the full story. If nothing else, it added a bit to a particular drag race and for some in the stands, it made it all the more exciting. It wasn’t unknown for spectators to lay a few bucks on the line to back their favorite race car.

    When Jill got back from talking to the starter, she told us the rules. The best two out of three wins. Mechanical breakage didn’t count. There would be one hour between runs just like the way the regular drag racing program went. If you couldn’t make a race, it was all over and the money was forfeit to the car that showed up on the line and ready to race. Sounded fair to us and to Mickey as well.

    I think most anything would have sounded fair to Mickey. His lust for revenge was legendary.
    Although we didn’t have a clue about why he’d chosen us, the 39 or Jill. It was probably just the Ford vs. Chevy thing carried to an extreme. For Mickey, doing battle with the Chevy’s was a lot like the crusades. A war not to be left unfought. At least not until the last foe was vanquished.


    End of Section B

     
  3. Start of Section C


    Jill, Whiny and Mickey went back to the staging lanes and talked to the staging lane guy. When Jill and Whiny came back to the pits, they told us the race was all set up. The staging lane guy was going to run out some stock cars from the inside staging lane and leave it open for Jill and Mickey if they’d bring their cars up right away. Not a problem for us and apparently not a problem for Mickey either. We heard the 40 fire up from several rows over and it was obvious Mickey was headed out to get lane choice.

    Same for us, Jill and Whiny got into the 39, she lit it off and drove over to the staging lanes.
    This time around DeeDee and Dinah walked over to the staging lanes with us. They didn’t want to miss a thing.

    The race was a bit of a shocker. Mickey chose the right lane, drove around the water box like always and then backed up into it. I guess he finally got it all figured out as far as heating the modern slicks for the best results. Lord knows it took him long enough. We figured great, what a time for Mickey to get the hang of things and start being a good driver.

    Jill did a fairly long burnout in the water box as did Mickey. She did a dry hop. So did Mickey.
    She rolled the 39 into the first stage beam. So did Mickey. Then he rolled into the 2nd stage beam. It looked like he thought that Jill had a set routine on who staged first and since he’d watched her stage first in her two time trials he thought he’d throw in a little bit of psych-out on her. It didn’t really do him any good. Jill didn’t have a set routine and whichever way it went was ok with her. She didn’t get rattled or psyched-out either. She ran her own race in her own car and that was that.

    Jill rolled the 39 into the second stage beam, the tree came down and both cars launched dead together on the last amber.

    We were surprised to say the least. Apparently Mickey really had been paying attention. We didn’t think he was doing any fake-out stuff. Just learning as he went, but it sure seemed like the learning curve had taken a steep climb where he was concerned.

    It looked too like the burnout had done a lot of good for Mickey. He went through the lights just in front of Jill and a ran a 9.98 and 134 mph to Jill’s losing 10.11 and 132 mph.

    Well . . . that was a bit of a bummer. All of a sudden the 39 went from the front runner to second best. It was obvious we were gonna to have to do something and it better be quick.
    Jill’s first thought was to stick in the 15% overdrive blower pulleys. Whiny was willing to go along with that, but Doofus had a good point when he advised against it. The 427 was a well built engine, but it didn’t have the strongest rods in the world. Especially considering it was a blown engine. We liked our blown engine and didn’t want a “blown” engine if you know what I mean. Doof made sense, losing the three hundred bucks was one thing, but rebuilding the 427 would take more than that if we ended up scattering it all over the place. Even so, we needed to do something to pick up a little bit of horsepower so Jill could keep up.
    The reasonable answer was simple. We still had the 5% over pulleys with us and it looked to be a simple and quick changeover.

    Sounds easy, but by the time we were done with the pulley change, jetting the carbs up a touch was going to take too long. Didn’t make much difference anyway, we didn’t have any experience with jetting the 427 with the blower at 5% over. We had just long enough for Doofus and I to stick in a set of slightly smaller metering rods into the front carburetor which would richen it up a touch. The front was where the lean cylinders were anyway. One of the reasons we liked the Carters was that many times, just a change in metering rods would do what we wanted.

    We stood back, Whiny slapped the front air cleaner on, stepped back from that and we closed the tilt front end. Jill fired the 39 and drove out headed for the staging lanes. DeeDee and Dinah walked over there with Doofus and Whiny. I volunteered to stay behind and pick up the tools and put em away. It didn’t take long and I could hear Hot Rod Bob on the loudspeakers talking up round two of the runnin for the cash A/ GS match race showdown. Gotta admit, Hot Rod Bob had a way with words.

    I was involved for sure, but he was getting me excited. I threw the rest of the tools in the trailer box, locked it, took off running for the grandstands and got there in time to see both cars roll into the first staging beams. Once again Mickey was in the right lane.

    Since we were pitted just about dead opposite the 1000' mark I had a primo view of the whole race. Just like before, Mickey rolled into the 2nd stage beam first and Jill was right behind.
    The starter hit the button, the tree came down and both cars cut a really good light. It looked to me like the 39's bumper came up first although it could have been my imagination with a little wishful thinking tossed in for good measure.

    The way it turned out, it didn’t make any difference. About a third of the way down, both cars were pulling strong and even. The crowd was on it’s feet and it looked to be one heck of a race.
    I had my fingers crossed. This was the one that counted for Jill and it was going to be tough to pull off a win.

    At the half way mark, Mickey’s 40 spun the tires in high gear. Just for a split second. It looked like maybe he hit a spot of oil or something. The tires gave off a short puff of smoke and that was it. At least that was it until the 40's tail started coming around to the left. It was double deja vu’ for sure. From my vantage point it looked like a replay of the main street drag race with Carol’s Camaro that left Mickey’s Mustang upside down in the Chevy showroom.

    Mickey corrected and to his credit he didn’t overdo it this time. The 40 then hung the tail out to the right a little bit and started drifting toward the left lane. It looked for a bit like he was going right into the left lane and into the 39. Jill, to her credit didn’t even lift. I could see her glance in Mickey’s direction, turn her head straight ahead and move ever so slowly over to the left side of the left lane. It was a subtle move and one that went unnoticed by most. When she got close to the left guardrail, the dust under the guardrail started flying out as the 39 passed. That wasn’t seen by most since Mickey was the best part of the show.

    He ran right up close to the center line cones, never touched a one, straightened out a bit and the 40 hung the tail out to the left and the 40 drifted back toward the right side guardrail. Once again, he got it back and once again the 40 hung the tail out the other way.

    Gotta give Mickey credit, it looked like he was being very calm about the whole thing. Even so, he should have shut off long ago, but the blood-lust for a Chevy-kill was probably running strong in his veins.

    Strange thing was, the sliding 40 never got any worse and it never got any better either.
    Both cars went through the traps with just about identical ETs and mph with the win lights lighting up in Jill’s lane.

    It didn’t get any better once Mickey got through the traps. Jill popped the chute on the 39 and started slowing down. Mickey let off the throttle and just kept sliding back and forth from one side of the lane to the other. I don’t know how the heck he did it, but he never went outside of his lane or touched the guardrail. Sure looked like Mickey’s guardian angel was along for the ride. What I couldn’t figure out was, he never did throw out the chute. It would have straightened him out right away and made getting stopped a lot easier.

    He finally ran out of dragstrip and ran off the end of the track onto the short dirt road leading to the bean field. About the time he sailed off the asphalt, he pulled the chute lever. I guess it helped since he was probably going well over 80 when the chute popped open. After that, who could tell. All we saw was a giant dust cloud.

    Jill got slowed down ok and took the last turnoff. She knew that getting out of the way was the important thing and to let the track emergency guys do their stuff. She was a really calm and collected person. Kind of amazing really. In view of all that was going on and had gone on, she still had the presence of mind to cut the engine in the traps, let off the gas, pop the trans in neutral and coast down to the turnoff so we could get a good read on the plug.

    Jill was as curious as anybody, but she stuck to business. She’d run the 39 down to the last turnoff, turned in, coasted to the return road and up it a ways then moved over to leave room for any other cars to get by and then stopped.

    She wasn’t immune to curiosity though. Once she got out she looked at the giant cloud of dust where Mickey had disappeared and a few seconds later saw him emerge from the dust cloud driving up the stip going about 25 or so with the drag chute fully inflated and come to a stop on the strip. The emergency crew got there shortly thereafter.

    I have absolutely no idea how Mickey knew where he was going. It was apparent that he’d spun out and switched ends in the bean field, but why he kept going was beyond me.

    Famoso is situated in Central California’s San Joaquin Valley which is one of the world’s largest agricultural valleys. It had small and large rivers as well as canals and ditches crisscrossing it’s entire breadth and length. It was entirely feasible that Mickey could have driven into one of them.
    The big thing that saved him was that there were no rivers or canals close to the end of the dragstrip. Even so, it was a dumb stunt to say the least. Not to mention the 427 had more than likely ingested a whole lot of dust since Mickey didn’t run air filters on it.

    By the time the dust settled, Hot Rod Bob called it with Jill the winner at 10.02 and 134 mph. Mickey had a losing 10.09 at 132 mph. The slightly better mph for Jill indicative of a touch more power with the overdriven blower.

    Jill got the plug changed and headed for the timing shack. After that, she was headed for the pits when she passed Murgy in the dealership pickup headed down to tow Mickey back. She waved and smiled as did Murgy. Although, as she put it, it more of an embarrassed wave from Murgy than anything else. I don’t know how Murgy put up with some of the stuff that Mickey pulled.

    Murgy probably thought like us and figured that driving the 40 really was beyond Mickey’s capabilities. Trouble was, it was his car and who was going to tell him anything different. The sensible thing to do was stick Murgy behind the wheel. He had better reactions, was an experienced driver and wouldn’t leave the car hanging out until the last dog was hung. Not so Mickey. He’d hang on until the bitter end. Proven by his little excursion off the end of the track.
    Sometimes it seemed like a brick wall would not be enough to stop Mickey.

    Jill pulled into the pit, got out and handed the spark plug to Doofus. He took a look at it with the Champion flashlight/magnifying glass viewer and pronounced it good. We figured so far, so good. Until Jill laid the little fact on us that Mickey was pulling the 39 just a little bit after the darned near dead even start.

    We weren’t sure Mickey would make the bell for the last round, but we figured we’d better do something and do it quick. Life had suddenly gotten very simple. We needed more horsepower and there was only one way left to get it. Nobody said a word.

    Doofus and I got the tools out, Whiny drug out the 15% under pulley set, DeeDee and Dinah sat Jill down and told us to ask for what we wanted and they’d get it. Whiny, never one to miss a chance to make a quip figured about 50 horsepower ought to do it.

    Doofus started to say something, but it all calmed down when Jill said, “Shut up Whiny.”

    A simple phrase that always worked with Whiny whenever he got on a roll. It worked this time too. He shut up, smiled at Jill, she smiled at him and he went back to work.

    We had the 39 up on jackstands, Doofus was under the front end swapping the lower pulley out and Whiny and I were up top doing the same with the blower pulley.

    When we were ready for the new pulleys, DeeDee handed the big pulley to Doofus and said with a smile, “This one goes on the bottom.”

    Dinah did the same for us, she handed over the little pulley and said, “This one goes on the top.”

    A great little joke from both girls. We knew as well as they did which pulley went were, but it was a great tension reliever.

    Once the pulleys were in, we came up against a small problem. One that we’d not thought about. The idler pulley was on the outside of the belt and adjusted close to it’s inner limit with the 5% pulleys, but there was no way it could adjust in any further to the inside to accommodate the 15% pulleys. Great, screwed now I figured.

    Whiny and I were looking at it when Dinah said, “Why not put the idler on the inside of the belt?”

    Dinah was a smart girl, but she’d hit the jackpot this time. It sure looked like her suggestion was a workable one.

    We slid the blower belt forward enough to slide it over the idler. The belt was slid back on, the idler was slid to the outside of it’s adjustment slot, tightened down and we ended up with the belt snugged up only a touch with the idler where it was. It wasn’t really tight enough, but we’d have to live with it. The belt didn’t look like it would come off, but we sure would have felt better if it was a little tighter.

    We figured we just had time to swap the metering rods in the carbs and stuck in the skinniest set we had. Bigger jets probably would have been a good idea, but we just didn’t have the time.

    It went against the grain for Doofus to blindly swap metering rods with nothing to go on but a guess, but we needed to do something. Frying a piston at this stage of the game was something we didn’t want. We got it all together still had ten minutes left when we got the 39 back in line for the last race. This one for the trophy and the three hundred bucks.

    We were a little surprised to find ourselves the only one in line. Mickey’s 40 was still amongst the missing. When the time limit came up, Hot Rod Bob called A/GS cars to the line. We were still in front and still the only car. The staging lane guy and the starter were both motioning for Jill to fire the engine, line up and make a single for the money. Well, fair is fair and winning by default wasn’t Jill’s way. Ok by us, we didn’t like winning that way either.

    She told the staging lane guy that we would wait for Mickey’s 40 to pull into the staging lanes and then we’d line up for a race. He shrugged his shoulders, said ok by him, talked to the starter and the tower on the intercom and we hunkered down for the wait.

    About a half hour went by and still no Mickey. Doof and I had walked down far enough to see Mickey and Murgy working on the 40 and walked back to the staging lanes. We were still of a mind to wait it out. All things come to he who waits I guess. Running about an hour late, Mickey pulled into the staging lane and parked behind the 39.

    Murgy got out and said, “Thanks for waiting guys, we appreciate it.”

    Mickey stayed in the car and gave us a little wave. What that meant I hadn’t a clue, but we decided to take it in the spirit it was offered. At the least we hoped it was offered as a small thank you. From most, a small gesture. From Mickey, a big one.

    It wasn’t late as far as the racing went, but it was getting close to nine o’clock.

    The staging lane guy saw Mickey pull up and shut down. He talked to the starter on the intercom and motioned for Jill and Mickey to fire up. He must have talked to Hot Rod Bob too.
    Hot Rod Bob came up on the PA system with the little fact that here was the race with the big money bet on it and this was the final run for the whole magilla. The trophy, the money and who has the fastest A/GS car. This week anyway.

    It wouldn’t have been unheard of to have Big John Mazmanian, a San Joaquin Valley guy pull in with his beautiful candy apple red Willys and maybe the black Willys of Stone-Woods-Cook would come in as well and we’d have been on the trailer long ago. Seems like most times one of them showed up at the races, the other one did too.

    Jill lit off the 39 and rolled into the right lane. For some reason most had been choosing the right lane when they had a choice. Mickey’s little one lane Fandango experience notwithstanding.
    Jill decided there must be something to it and did the same. Mickey drove around the left lane water box and backed into it for his burnout. Jill did the same on her side.

    It was a race eagerly anticipated by the crowd and especially so by us. In a small way, it was getting eerie. Hot Rod Bob was totally silent. The crowd was already on it’s feet and not a thing to be heard there. Most of the cars in the staging lanes were empty and the drivers were standing next to the north fence and on the line at the front of the staging lanes. This was a race that everybody wanted to see. It sure had all the elements. Ford vs. Chevy. Male vs. Female. The third race in a two out of three. Not to mention a bet that would be sizeable to most. It was a big bet to us for sure. Each person in our little group had fifty bucks invested in the bet. None of us had ever bet anything like that kind of money. Let alone a three hundred dollar bet. Interesting? You bet. And we were the most interested of all.

    Like I said, it was eerie. All you could hear were the cars spinning the slicks in the water and the engines straining as the cars pulled out. Both Mickey and Jill backed up at the same time and did the dry hop at the same time. Moths were flitting in and out of the lights at the starting area.
    The starting line crew was just standing there, watching and not moving. The crowd still dead silent. It was a weird, weird night to say the least.

    Mickey rolled forward and lit the first stage light. Jill did the same.

    Mickey rolled forward and lit the 2nd stage light. Jill did the same.

    No psych-out, no tricks, no screwing around, just some flat out good racing about to take place.

    Seems like the starter hesitated a little longer than usual. Not much, just enough to make us think there was a difference. It was probably just an illusion. We’d never seen him do anything but a top notch and fair job of running the starting line.

    The lights came down and Jill drilled Mickey off the starting line. She had a half length on him right up front. Mickey spun the 40's tires a bit, but it grabbed traction pretty quick and lunged forward. It remained to be seen if the 15% overdrive was going to deliver enough power to overcome the slightly stronger blown 427 Ford in Mickey’s 40.

    It didn’t make any difference. Right off the line, the 39's engine made some funny “bruup-bruup” noises and shut down. Mickey’s 40 started to pull on by when it stumbled, emitted a couple of small backfires and then one big explosion. The engine was shut down on it too.

    It was absolutely, positively quiet. All you could hear were the tires of both cars rolling softly on the pavement and the whine of the rear ends.

    We didn’t know what had gone on with the 39, but it was a good bet that the blower belt had come off. As for Mickey’s 40, who knew? It sure sounded like some of those very expensive sounds that drag racing is famous for.

    Both cars were probably going no faster than 15 or 20 mph when the engines went and both were coasting quietly and slowly down the track side by side.

    And still not a sound from the crowd. It was really strange. About all we did was look at each other.

    The cars had coasted to mid-track when Hot Rod Bob came up on the PA and said, “It’s still a race folks. First one across the finish line wins.”

    The crowd exploded into cheers and whistles. This had to be the weirdest drag race anybody ever saw. Two cars coasting slowly down the track and up to now, the quietest crowd that had ever attended a drag race.

    It was truly strange, the cars got slower and slower until they were almost at walking speed and they still had a ways to go. Finally though, they came to a stop at just about the same time. We couldn’t tell who won since the win lights hadn’t come on. The yelling and the cheering from the crowd had returned to dead silence as all waited to see what was going on.

    What had happened was that Mickey’s 40 had come to a halt with the front wheels in the beams of the first mph light. The 39 was just short with it’s front bumper in about the same spot.

    Jill got out and looked around.

    Mickey got out, looked around and being ever the smart ass smiled and commented, “Too bad little girl, I guess you lose.”

    Jill didn’t say a word. She walked around to the back of the 39, sat down on the rear bumper and put her head down. Mickey walked around to the back of his car figuring she was going to sit there and cry.

    For a few seconds there, Mickey was on top of the world. At least he was until he realized that Jill was not sitting on the bumper, but instead had planted her fanny against the lower trunk and was pushing the car using her legs instead of her back. She knew that the win lights were 66 feet away at the ET marker lights which were right at the finish line. Mickey, for his part figured the first mph lights were where the finish line was. By the time he figured out what was what and what was going on, he panicked.

    Realizing what Jill was doing and that the race was still on, he turned around and started pushing the 40. It wouldn’t budge. He’d left the transmission in park after the car came to a halt.

    It didn’t take long for the crowd to figure out what was going on and the cheering and yelling was getting louder and louder. It was more like a high school football game than a drag race.

    Mickey ran up to the 40's driver door, yanked it open, got the trans in neutral, ran around back and started pushing. Jill had almost two car lengths on him and it remained to be seen whether she could keep it up. She was a determined young woman, but she only weighed 100 pounds soaking wet. Mickey, even though short of stature was a strong guy. Made all the stronger by his penchant for walking the golf course and carrying his own bag most times.

    Hot Rod Bob added to the pandemonium sweeping the crowd when he said, very quietly and very simply, “The race is still on folks.”

    Mickey started pushing the 40 and it wasn’t long until you could tell he was gaining on Jill.
    It didn’t make any difference. She only had a little over 66 feet to go to the finish line when she started and Mickey never stood a chance. She got the 39 over the finish line and still had two car lengths on Mickey. The win light came on in her lane and for some reason the crowd totally shut up.

    Hot Rod Bob came on and said, “The winner, Jill Winster with her 39 Chevy coupe running an ET of 88 seconds and who knows what the mph was!”

    The crowd went nuts. You would have thought it was the top fuel finals at the Nationals.
    DeeDee and Dinah went into the pits to get the pickup. It didn’t take them long to get through the open staging lane where the staging lane guy directed them to the start line. Murgy was right behind them in the Ford shop truck. The starter waved both pickups through and pointed down track at the coupes.

    We stood there and watched. The girls had done their part and we were happy to see them get some recognition. They were smart too. They’d towed their share of broken cars now and then and knew what to do when they got there. When they got to the finish line, they talked to the track safety guys who helped them push the coupe around until it was pointed back up the track. DeeDee turned the pickup around, backed up to the 39 and Dinah tied on the tow rope.

    Murgy and Mickey didn’t bother. Murgy tied on a rope and towed the 40 off toward the first turn off road. Not for the girls though. They had the 39 pointed back up the track, the rope tied on and Jill sitting on the toolbox in the bed of the pickup. Dinah was behind the wheel of the coupe and DeeDee was driving the pickup.

    Gotta give em credit, they towed sedately up the track, this was Jill’s moment and they knew it.
    They were determined to see her get the credit that she deserved. Jill, for her part, was a little embarrassed by it all, but she went along with it.

    DeeDee stopped just across the start line, right next to the starters box. Jill didn’t even have to get out of the pickup. The starter handed her the six hundred dollars, three hundred of it ours and three hundred of it Mickey’s.

    They towed the 39 around the water box, made a turn and towed it back down the return road in front of the stands. It was pretty wild for a bit. The crowd stood and applauded, whistled and cheered while Jill cruised by sitting in the back of the pickup. They knew they’d seen something special. A few spectators knew about Mickey’s Ford vs. Chevy thing, but most didn’t. All of them realized that they’d seen a very special race and one that would be talked about for a long time.

    Of all the races we were ever in, this by far was the best and the sweetest. We got the money. We got the trophy and we didn’t even break the car. Like we figured, the blower belt had come off due to lack of tension. Even so, it had done it’s job and then some.

    We never did see Mickey and Murgy leave. One of the spectators told us that Mickey’s 427 had swallowed an intake valve and the result was that the intake charge in the blower ignited from the burning mixture in the combustion chamber backing up into the intake manifold. The resulting explosion blew the blower all to hell and gone and a few other parts probably went to parts heaven right along with it.

    Gotta admit, we were some happy campers while we were loading up the coupe. Beating Mickey was one thing, but just taking part in drag racing was what made it all worthwhile.

    Usually one of the long ways away from home drag races and returning late at night would have most of us pretty quiet and some of us sleeping from the long hot day in the sun. Not so this night. We had many thoughts and many things to talk about. We knew that running a small scale operation like we did with the 39 would never offer more than a good time. For us, a good time was what it was all about. We had no vendetta’s and no revenge to be taken.

    Granted, Mickey made it tough and we did enjoy beating him, but we did realize that for every winner there’s a loser. In fact, several losers. We’d been there and knew we’d be there again. It’s all part of the great sport of drag racing. Up one day and down the next. It was enough for us just to take part.

    For Mickey though, an entirely different story. I don’t know what he thought he’d get out of it.
    Some more winning perhaps. It seems to be an overwhelming obsession for some. For Mickey, winning was the end all and the be all.

    Last we heard, the 40 was unloaded, the battery disconnected, the radiator drained and it was rolled into the basement next to the wrecked Mustang and covered up. If nothing else, Mickey had a start on an interesting collection of cars. Bent and broken and otherwise.

    After a while, Mickey went back to playing golf. A nice sport in it’s own right. At least there, out on the golf course, where he felt most at home, he knew where the finish line was. To top it off, after all the hard work that Whiny did, we were so engrossed in running the 39 that he never did run his Chrysler Hemi powered 50 Ford coupe.

    Another day perhaps. For sure, another day we’d run the 39. And perhaps get some answers to some questions about both cars. Maybe we wouldn’t like the answers, but answers are what we wanted.

    Every day is different and every drag race is different. It sure was this time around. For us and for Mickey as well. Even so, what’s around the next corner is always interesting and we were always willing to take a look. Especially so, Doofus, Whiny and me....

    -<>-





    Epilogue

    The big race - and maybe I should call it the really strange race - with Mickey was a topic of conversation for a while. Quite a while in fact.

    We made good use of the money. The original fifty dollar investment was returned to everyone and Jill was given the remaining three hundred dollars to hold. We decided to use it for a special dinner once a month until it ran out. We still did our regular Saturday night out dinners, but the once a month dinners were special. We dined at several of the nicest restaurants in the county as well as a very nice one in Santa Barbara. The Santa Barbara one done last when just enough money was left for one more fling. It was a fitting end to Mickey’s money and we toasted him well. Why not, he’d supplied us with more than enough cash for a once a month dinner for three couples. The money lasted for four months.

    Mickey was still playing golf and as far as we knew had pretty much given up on drag racing. He was seen around town and the golf course driving one of the new Ford station wagons with all the bells and whistles. It was a nice car, no doubt about it.

    The wagon was a far cry from the wrecked maroon Mustang. And a far, far cry from the fast little 40. As far as we knew, both cars languished in the basement of the Ford dealership covered up and waiting for who knows what.

    Maybe Mickey learned something at Famoso. For sure he seemed calmer than ever. Even so, we weren’t getting our hopes up too far. We figured the other Mickey could come out at any time and we’d just enjoy what we had for now.

    Murgy and Carol joined us for dinner pretty often. Murgy was a good guy and we all liked him.
    We liked Carol too. They made a nice couple and fit into our group quite well. We’d see them running around town in the dark green 40 Ford coupe now and then and now and then we’d see the coupe parked out front at the dealership. It worked out just like Murgy thought it would.
    The little 40 got a lot of attention and pulled people in off the street. People who thought they’d just take a quick look at the absolutely cherry little car. More than a few found themselves leaving with a brand new Ford. No high pressure stuff, just that when you got into a new car dealership, the new cars could be hard to resist. They were for me anyway and I suspect for Doofus and Whiny as well.

    Even so, I doubted that we’d be buying any new cars for a while. We liked what we drove and the girls seemed happy with what they drove. All our cars ran good, looked good and were dependable. Pretty much what it’s all about in the car department as far as we were concerned.

    In a way, our cars sitting out in the shop parking lot were an advertisement of sorts. A lot like Murgy’s 40 coupe was for the Ford Dealership. Folks would see the nice old cars and figure if we could keep them running ok, then we could probably do a real good job on their cars.

    We were all at the shop, the whole gang including little Billy and Anna on a sunny Saturday morning near the end of summer when Tom and Amy drove in around ten o’clock.

    Tom, in the 49 Chevy pickup, loaded to the gunnels with stuff. Mostly Tom’s, quite a bit of it Amy’s. She was right behind in the Big Dodge. It was loaded to the hilt too. The stuff in the Dodge mostly hers and a little bit Tom’s. They were moving to Northern California. Amy had a teaching job lined up in a small town east of Sacramento in the Gold Country. She’d be teaching first grade. Tom was confident that he could find construction work up there. Along with being a heavy equipment operator he was a darned good carpenter.

    The big Dodge was up and running not long after he got it back from Jones. It sat for a while after the nice paint job that Carl had done. Tom thought he’d start driving it pretty steady, but it looked so darned good that he didn’t like the idea of it sitting all day at a dusty construction site.

    The Dodge ended up spending most of it’s time in his folks garage. It only came out on weekends and most times for a date with Amy. It’d turned into a very nice car and Tom was determined to keep it that way.

    We’d all been to the going away party at Amy’s folks house the night before, but Tom figured he’d stop by and say goodbye at the shop. He’d spent a lot of time there and so had the Big Dodge. In a small way, the shop was like a second home to him.

    Tom and Amy were married a couple of weeks back in a nice, supposed to be small wedding at a not too large church in Ojai with only family and a few friends there. At least they said only a few. When the dust settled, the church was nigh on to overflowing with all their friends who did show up.

    The best man was a Santa Maria guy who’d spent a year in Vietnam with Tom. Doofus, Whiny and I were proud to be ushers and in the wedding party. Granted, not much ushering required in such a small church, but we enjoyed it and the girls were proud of us. It wasn’t often that we wore suits and wearing a tux was an even rarer event.

    They honeymooned in Santa Barbara. You’d have thought they would have headed further afield, but for them, Santa Barbara was one of their favorite places. As it was for us. Living in Ventura and having Santa Barbara nearby was the best of both worlds as far as we were concerned.

    Tom and Amy said their goodbyes at the shop. Tom was surprisingly quiet and Amy had tears in her eyes. Whiny smiled at her and told her that she was the girl who’d finally tamed Tom. Amy didn’t say a word. She just smiled. One of those smiles about half way between sweet and wry. You know the one. The smile that only the girls can do.

    For us, we waved at them as they drove away from the shop and kinda took stock of where we were in life. All three of us well established, with great wives and nice families. Not too bad I’d say.

    We were car guys though. To the core. Family first, but we still loved the cars. Easy to tell when you saw what we had sitting in the parking lot. My black Chevy powered 53 Ford coupe. Whiny’s stock looking tan Chrysler Hemi powered 50 Ford coupe. And Doofus’ dark blue 41 Ford coupe with built flathead.

    Funny part was, we were more or less Chevy guys, but we drove the Fords too. Whiny still had his black Chevy Impala and Jill had her bright red six cylinder 39 Chevy coupe. Doof still with his black and orange pair of 57 Chevy’s. And me with the FE 390 powered 56 Ford pickup sitting at home along with DeeDee’s 54 Chrysler wagon. All in all, a pretty nice collection of cars.

    We’d found that specializing could be nice. Better yet to experience the full spectrum of what Detroit had to offer.

    Kind of like life I guess. Better to experience all of it you could instead of staying in one place doing the same thing over and over again. Maybe deep thoughts for a trio of tune-up guys and car enthusiasts, but that’s how it was.

    We watched Tom and Amy head east on Santa Clara until we could see them no longer, turned and walked back into the shop and went back to work.

    Tom and Amy were headed the wrong way to be sailing into the sunset, but sailing into the sunset is exactly what they were doing and doing it as good as any cowboy movie we’d ever seen when we were kids.

    Since they were headed east, it was truly the sunrise they were sailing off into. And maybe that’s better. The sunrise is where it all starts. What better place for a pair of newlyweds? A new life. A new beginning.

    Sunsets, many times most beautiful.

    Sunrise, many times even more beautiful.

    Sunsets though - sunsets always come after sunrise.

    As it is and as it should be....

    * * *








    So this book, like many others, is a compendium of true stories, made up stories and a few embellishments.

    The cars, for the most part true. The tech details as accurate as I could remember them.

    The characters, a pretty good match to some of the characters I went to school with and ran around with. In a couple of cases true names were used, but for the most part, the names chosen were fictional.

    I hope you enjoyed the book. I sure had a good time writing it.

    Thanks too, to Sweetie for proofreading and her always good advice.

    And a thanks as well, to Kerry Goertzen - a California Hot Rodder lost in the flatlands of Kansas - for the Hemi technical information.

    I’ve been on the edges of a couple of Hemi swaps, seen several more, but there’s nothing like the been there, done that experience that Kerry has.

    He’s in the middle of building a more than interesting hot rod coupe. A 31 Pontiac highboy with 354" Chrysler Hemi engine that he hopes will be on the road by next year. As do I.

    I admire what Kerry’s doing. It’s all about grassroots hot rodding at it’s best. A lot of work to be sure, but when it’s all done you really have something.

    Kerry may not realize it, but there’s a lot of him in Doofus and Whiny. Not so much the crazy things and adventures they got tangled up in, but how they got things accomplished and what they ended up with due to their willingness to work hard. I tried to show the things you can do and the things you can have if you work toward them.

    Hot Rodding is a lot like life. Nobody said it would be easy, but if you work toward a goal, most times you’ll get there. I know, you’ve heard it before.

    All I can say is, once you reach that goal, at least where hot rods are concerned, and get the car running it will seem like you’ve always had it. I’ll bet too, that you’ll be setting another goal. Whether with that car, building a new one or simply having a goal in a different direction.

    Family and friends first. I think we all agree on that.

    For the rest of it and for me, hot rodding’s not everything, but it’s way ahead of whatever is in second place....


    -<>-<>-<>-


    Jay Carnine
    Visalia, California
    April 2001







    A small PostScript from Arizona.

    You’ll note the book was finished in April 2001.

    I’m pleased to tell you that Kerry’s Hemi Powered Pontiac has been running for a while and now he’s in the middle of building a family hot rod as he calls it.

    Looks like it will be a nice one, bein a 36 Chevy two door and all. Knowing Kerry it will be a comfortable ride, good looking and fun to drive.

    Not to mention being a bit of an asphalt scorcher if past history repeats itself.
    More than likely it will.

    Some of us are born with lead in our right foot and some are not.
    Kerry got his share and then some....







    Pic - Kerry’s Hemi engined Pontiac coupe at the races.

     

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  4. The Hemi.

    Not as shiny as some, but a lot of well thought out and interesting things are going on with this engine.
     

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  5. Damn, page 4 I almost missed it.
    Thanks Jay
     
  6. Wow Jay, Thanks for the kind words!!! It means a lot coming from you. I must say that you made a big diffence in getting the coupe up and running. Your a good friend and sounding board. Not sure how long I would have taken without your motivation through our discussions and through your example.

    Building something from the ground up is just to much fun. The folks who don't get it are the ones missing out. If you have to explain it they won't get it.

    It does feel like she's been up and running forever. Hard to believe I almost ran out of steam about six months before she ran the first time.

    And you're right again about the next project. I'm dieing to get rolling on the 36 Chevy Sedan but it'll have to wait some. My dear wife wonders when I'll finish the 31. I think it's a lifetime thing. The coupe runs, drives, and is legal so the rest is no big rush. Little things like side windows are a luxury but they are on the to do list.

    As for the leadfoot, I do come by it honestly. My Dad had more than his share too. Since he died when I was a kid, I always wondered what we would have built together. Wish I had half of his fabication skills. No telling how early he and I would have started racing each other. :)

    Thanks also for the cool stories. Keep 'em coming! What's next to be published?
     
  7. 40StudeDude
    Joined: Sep 19, 2002
    Posts: 9,536

    40StudeDude
    Member

    Gotta tell ya, C9, Kerry's Pontiac certainly does RUN hard with that Hemi...he left me at the light (at the HAMB Drags) like I was parked, and I can cut a pretty good lite with the Stude...think he was running 14's while I was running low 15's.

    The car doesn't do too bad on gas either, especially when he forgets to switch tanks out on a cruise!!! Oh, Hiya Kerry...didn't know you were reading!!!

    R-
     
  8. chromedRAT
    Joined: Mar 5, 2002
    Posts: 1,737

    chromedRAT
    Member

    cool man saving it for tomorrow after work!
     
  9. [ QUOTE ]

    The car doesn't do too bad on gas either, especially when he forgets to switch tanks out on a cruise!!! Oh, Hiya Kerry...didn't know you were reading!!!

    R-

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Ha! :) I knew that would come back to haunt me. Thanks again for being a mobile service station! I did kind of wonder why nobody checked my tire pressure or washed my windows. I still highly recommend them!

    Yeah, the key to the good milage is to be able to block all sources of gas to the carbs. ;-)
     

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  10. 40StudeDude
    Joined: Sep 19, 2002
    Posts: 9,536

    40StudeDude
    Member

    [ QUOTE ]
    [ I did kind of wonder why nobody checked my tire pressure or washed my windows.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    After I brot the gas over, I was heading for the trunk of my car again to get the towels and Windex when I heard that Hemi fire up...figured then that the coming rain would at least take care of the windshield...and I don't do tires!

    R-
     
  11. chromedRAT
    Joined: Mar 5, 2002
    Posts: 1,737

    chromedRAT
    Member

    FINALLY got a chance to finish the story, what a wonderful end to a great story. THANKS alot, man, brought alot of enjoyment to more than a few mondays...
     
  12. Thanks for the nice comments.
    I had a good time writing this story . . . pretty much a step back in time for me and tripping down memory lane is always fun.


    [ QUOTE ]
    Thanks also for the cool stories. Keep 'em coming! What's next to be published?

    [/ QUOTE ]

    I believe you've read most of the stuff I've written and know that I like to introduce characters for upcoming books in the present book. Some of the characters are so interesting that they deserve a chance to tell their own story.

    Remember the blonde girl at Santa Barbara's Blue Onion Drive In near the start of this chapter?
    The one with the blown 50 Olds coupe?
    She'll be featured in the next book.
    I'm going to try and get it into print instead of watching it fade away into Cyberspace.
    It's strong with hot rods and has a coming of age theme - which I like to write about - but the story line is different from what you'd expect.

    I'll let you know what happens here.
    I'm doing the rewrites on it now.
    It's been interesting because I finished this book about 2-3 years ago and revisiting it for the rewrites is like reading a new book.

    (Fwiw - Kerry was a test reader to the "Pinky" book and had a lot of valuable input.)
     
  13. hotrodladycrusr
    Joined: Sep 20, 2002
    Posts: 20,765

    hotrodladycrusr
    Member

    Jay, I just wanted to take a minute and thank you from the bottom of my heart. I have been printing each installment without reading it (tough to do) for a very special reason. This might sound hokey but Roadstar really likes me to read aloud to him while on road trips and we've been saving this story for a special trip which we'll be taking next week. So even though I (we) haven't read this one yet I just wanted to say thanks for all the time and effort you put into not only writing but posting this story for all of us to enjoy.

    It funny sometimes how someone you haven't meet can have such an impact on your life. Roadstar and I talk about you and your stories as if you were an old friend. You make us smile and your bring joy to what could be long and boring road miles.

    We'll be waiting patiently to read about the chick with the blown Olds.

    Happy Holidays to you and sweetie.

    xoxoxxo
     
  14. Nice words Denise and thank you very much.

    Kinda surprised me to see Doofus and Whiny surface again.

    Tell Rudy (Roadstar) that I shared his letter with Pinky this morning.
    She enjoyed it a whole lot.... [​IMG]
     
  15. sodbuster
    Joined: Oct 15, 2001
    Posts: 5,040

    sodbuster
    Member
    from Kansas

    Another great read. Thanks Jay. I almost missed it also, I just dig thru the past few days and look for posts with names I recognize or posts with "Stars" next to them.

    Chris Nelson
    Kansas
     
  16. Upchuck
    Joined: Mar 19, 2004
    Posts: 1,576

    Upchuck
    Member
    from Canada BC

    Fantastic story C9!

    I looked forward to reading them each time you posted and sit in anticipation of the Blonde with the Blown olds as well [​IMG]
     

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