The Big Thrash

Both Boone and Dale work Mon-Thurs., but Dale had taken Thurs. off. I flew in on Friday after working a half-day in Phoenix, and arrived in Tulsa at 6:00 PM.

Boone's 67 Belvedere was finished out with new additions of an 850DP on a M-1, NOS big-shot plate system, new Carter mechanical fuel pump running to a t'd line with fuel pressure guage. The new Dr. Diff axles were ready for the abuse, and a pair of ancient 28X9 M/T slicks were on 8-inch Pro-Stars and ready to go in the trunk. One MAJOR snafu, the alignment shop on thursday had left the right front lugnuts loose...the American racing acorn style aluminum wheel was wallowed out, and the lug studs had loosened in the hub and destroyed the hub and drum. He had went to our home town and picked up a spare, very rusty hub, but we still had to deal with the wheel, and put it together.

Dale had decided that he could run low 12's with his 66 complete with low compression 440 smogger, a plate, and 2.76 gears if he only had the right converter. My attempts to explain that didn't exist landed on deaf ears, and he settled on a 10' 4000 stall that he installed 2 days before my arrival. It was painfully obvious immediately that it was too loose, and was a heat creator of the first order!!
It puked Tranny fluid out as we arrived at his house from the airport, and there in the pile of parts he had yet to install on it was a mondo-huge tranny cooler, and the requisite Big-shot plate system. A pair of 29.5X9 M/T slicks mounted on 7" police wheels were ready to load in the trunk.

My Valiant looked close to the untrained eye, but I knew an uphill battle was ahead. Boone had finished installing the interior, including the second plastic front seat. He had removed the old wiring going to the shifter, and installed wiring under the carpet, the leads were coming out near the shifter, and under the dash, but nothing had been re-wired..no trans brake, no nuetral safety switch, no rev limiter, no line lock. In addition the stock wring had never been tied into the race car wiring, so the car had no head lights, turn signals, tail lights, brake lights. only one set of the 4 8" electric fans had ever been wired in, and the denso 60' amp alternator had not been wired in. Dale had condemned my tranny cooler lines, and had new 3/8 steel ones he had yet to bend up.
Our biggest Challenge was the Cheetah SCS shifter. When my tranny builder had rebuilt my blown up 904 into a new case he got a little overzealous and cut off not only the front ears to clear the CSR Sheild, but also the back ear...the one that mounts and locates the Cheetah cable, so now a 5 minute bolt-in job was going to require fabbing a trans-pan mounted cable bracket strong enough to do the job.

"Thought you were gonna build my shifter bracket yesterday" I commented to Dale.
"Spent all day yesterday putting Darren's Stealth headed 440 together" he mumbled. "Dammit, you know he's not close, and now he's using up resources and time these other cars need" I shot back. He just smiled and shrugged, We'll make it...".