Armed with my new tire guage, I pumped the Goodyear 315/60 Drag Radials all the way to 24lbs., desparate to stop the "isolating", or "wobbling" of the body from Monday's pass. I pulled into the burnout box, ran it up to 6, and came out fairly agressive, it felt decent. 3500 against the trans-brake. Rattled the tires hard, no attempt at anything remembling traction, I lift to half throttle, slowly open it up, at 5800 it starts popping and breaking up, shift to second, and the body starts rocking side to side again, I short shift to third and try to ride it out, at 1000' ft I have to level out my speed, and just try to get to the stripe without wrecking or completely lifting..what a freaking joke, this is as frustrating as anything I've faced before. 13.30-101.15. I told Boone upon my return, "I've managed to turn a 10 second racecar into a 13 second street car, unbelievable"!
Dale turned out a 12.44-112.48, followed by a 12.469-112.04 and called it good. The three of us went to the tower, showed them our pics of the previous days check points and turn in our timeslips. For our trouble we received a map and mapquest type instructions showing a 3 checkpoint, 336 mile jaunt to Amarillo!
We set about changing back to Street tires on the 2 B Bodies, and resetting everyone's timing back to driving mode.
"You want to try those other shocks", Dale asked.
"If not now, when"?? I shot back "We'll be too tired, and it'll be dark by the time we get to the hotel, then it's morning, and get to the track..."
"Yeah, this deal moves much faster than I expected" Dale explained
"177 cars, and a 4 hour window to make runs, I don't think it's like anyone expected, this is a different DragWeek than any in the past".
"Everyone is rolling out, if we don't load up and hit it, we won't get to make the drive with everyone else", Darren piped in.
"I could CARE LESS about driving with everyone..I wanna fix this thing and make a decent lap at some point..."
I didn't want to take it out on them, that didn't serve any purpose, but they could sense how far over that slippery slope I already was.
The eyelets on the new shocks were correct width, but the rubber bushing and bolt sleeve were too wide, so each shock got considerable time on the angle grinder. Upon finally bolting them in we discovered the passenger side lower shock mount appeared to be bent, or mis-aligned. you had to grab the shock and physically shove it into place.
"The old shock on this side was toast, and appeared to be binding, maybe it took more of a hit in that accident than you thought", Dale surmised
"Or the driveshaft explosion", I added, thinking aloud. "I should have pulled this entire rear suspension out and checked every single component..."
We dropped her down, and pushed on the back a few times, it felt a little better. We started to load up, and took a look around. Joe Barry had his 56 still up in the air, the hayseed boys with thier straw hats and overalls were changing a head gasket on the 4 door catalina (aluminum headed BBC with ports the size of a fist!!). The orange camaro I posted a pic of was having problems with the disc brake setup on thier Dana 60, a seemingly stock appearing 95 Mustang was on a roll-back. We checked with everyone before rolling out in case something we had might make repairs easier.
When in Great Bend for Divisional races we always stopped at the China Buffet before leaving town, so we didn't buck tradition. With stomachs on the full mark, we rolled out of town around 4:30...it was going to be a long night!!

Bang,...bang, bang...Ugh, we had bottomed out the suspension quite often on the drive from Topeka to Great Bend, but with the 1/2 longer shock it was much worse...darn near just crossing paint stripes. I had added the watter wetter earlier, but today seemed to be worse than the first drive, the temp charged to 220 fairly rapidly, as we drove into the small town of Larned, I saw several competitors pulled over under shade trees appearing to be just allowing thier rides to cool.
"What're we gonna do" Darren asked, "It's climbing"
"I don't know yet".
By the end of town, and sitting at 225, I made up my mind and pulled over with Dale and Boone in tow.
"What's up", Dale asked as he approached.
"Runnin' Hot, let's put some timing back in it"
"It's at the same place it was"
"Yeah, lets try more"
He loosened the holddown, but couldn't budge the distributor...finally got a wrench but still couldn't get it, then just leaned over to two hand it....
"AyyAyy", he screamed, and yanked back in pain. The fenderwell exit headers had claimed another victim. I iced up a rag in the cooler as he finished up, his forearm was going to have a momento of this trip!
"42"
"From '31' to '42', that's all the options I get"?
"Yep, until you get a motor with the distributor where it's supposed to be"!
Several caravans of DragWeekers had went by, with us giving them the "Were OK" thumbs up...surely we were last by now.
Back on the road, the temp seemed to level out at 210, and the engine sounded a bit happier.