We pulled away from the "Land of OZ", and I noticed the ignition was acting up again, missing and breaking up over 3K, with the tach flickering. It only did it at night with the lights on, and for a little after initial start-up.
"We rushed the wiring on this thing, and I ran all the alternator wires through the same firewall grommet as the distributor wires, I think when the alternator is working hard we are getting interference in the signal to the digital 6", I commented to Darren.
"Yeah, it's definitely worse with the lights on", he confirmed.
It just didn't seem happy, the lifters seem to chatter more than ever, Little noises were popping up. There was a storm brewing ahead of us, with lightning flashes, the air was cooling off quick, and the car seemed to run worse, I started to develop a theory that it had to be lean.
We stopped in Guymon Ok. to fuel up, and my gas mileage victory over Boone was even larger.
"I think I'm bad lean, I got into detonation passing a few of those Semi's, and it didn't like it when the air cooled off" I said to Dale.
"What jets are in it"?
"I, do, uh not know.."
"WTH, what size is it"?
"I borrowed it from Darryl, supposed to be some Chuck Nuyten peice, like 1000 CFM", I didn't like the way this conversation was going.
"How many passes did you make on it"?
"I did a nice burnout with it, before the driveshaft broke...and this trip", I surmised
"Guess we should take a look" he agreed.
I backed across the parking lot to an abandoned station with nice canopy lights, Boone and Dale drove over also and we set up camp, and started tearing the front off the carb.
A big guy in his late 60's walked over from the hotel across the street, and started up a conversation. Talking to Darren mostly and looking at the cars. I heard him comment that he had been watching the cars drive by all day.
"My son called and said you guys would be comimg through,
You might know him, he's got the 59 Jag in Hot Rod magazine this month...".
"Yeah!! we saw him at the start of Drag Week, back in 06, he was at Cordova just spectating, and we drove behind him for a ways leaving the track"!
"He's crazy about that darn car, and he was excited about all the DragWeeker's coming into his old stomping grounds...I just live up at Kingfisher, I believe you guys will come by there tomorrow on your way to Tulsa, so let me give you my phone number, I have a shop if you need anything."
I couldn't help but think how the world of racing, and hot rodding seemed to get shrunk down and condensed on this week long celebration. Bill Fowler pulled up shortly afterwards, pulling his silver 71 Mustang convertible on an open trailer, he had heating issues within 10 miles on the opening drive, and now was just going from track to track, and making a run or two for the fun of it.
Darren, Boone, Mr. Henderson, Bill and his co-pilot stood around BSing while Dale and I checked the front of the carb out.
"82s, geez, that's like stock for a 750", Dale said as he peered down the throats, "and this certainly ain't no 750".
I dug some 88's out of the box, and we screwed them in.
"This will get us down the road, we'll change the back in the morning." I told him.
"Yeah, let's wrap this up, it's fixin' to get nasty out here". It was starting to spit a little rain, and the lightning was getting closer, we loaded up and headed out.

Several people at the station had commented, "I can't believe they are sending you down 136...that's a bad road!"
Now we had pulled up at a stop light to make the left turn onto 136, and a guy came running out of the Pizza Hut parking lot adjacent to the intersection, braving the weather to shout a warning at us. "Be really carefull on 136, there's a bunch of sharp turns...really watch the one at the State Line"!
We started off down a wide, rutted, redgravel asphalt two lane road, silhouetted against fierce lighning strikes, 5 minutes later the winds kicked in, and the sky opened up.
Darren is a clean freak...the guy pre-sprays his work clothes with Castrol Super-clean. When we started this trip, I told him I'd like to get a bottle of Meguire's quick detailer for the car...His eyes had lit up and he walked to the counter with about 4 chemicals and an armload of blue paper shop towels and microfiber towels of every color, darn near 40 bucks worth! This was one of those times I'm glad he did. He had liberally sprayed the windshield with the quick detailer before we left Guymon, claiming it would work as well as Rain-X...I have no wipers!
The wind, and the rain was coming at us from the passenger's side of the car, so Darren had to close his window wing and window. I had to leave mine open about 3 inches, and even at that, Darren was wiping fog off the inside of the winshield. The windshield gasket has spent 50 years in AZ, and it was not up to the task of keeping out the driving rain...we had drips coming in at about 5 places. I was running about 45 keeping my tire on the centerline, so as to stay in the high part of the road, out of the ruts to minimize hydroplaning the 315/60's any more than I already was. "Slow Down, were hydroplaning"! Darren pleaded frantically.
"Haha", I replied, "What's the worse that could happen, We've got a spool out back"!