Once returned to Dale's back yard, I unloaded the Valiant, hopefully it wouldn't go back on the trailer until after Drag Week was completed. The yard was a flurry of activity, Dale and Dad were working on the Gremlin, Boone was working on the second down bar, so I walked over to help him.
"You seem a bit agitated", I commented
He quickly looked over toward the Gremlin, then thumbed me over towards the makeshift "prep and paint area". Once over there he showed me the freshly painted bed fenders, and hood. "Dale ran out of paint...these look terrible! I've cut a bunch of corners on this thing trying to get it done on time...but, I don't know.."
"The H-brace in the hood looks good". I tried to change the subject. The night before we finally figured out, after carefull measuring, that a hole wasn't going to work. The Weiand tunnel ram sits so close to the firewall, and the back of a sweptline hood rotates forward as it opens on the hinges. This meant the entire back of the hood had to be opened up for clearance, which removes a pretty substantial brace, so we had come up with an h-brace which seemed to stiffen it back up, but until it was mounted...who knows.
For the last 2 weeks, Boone's focus had squarely been on paint and finish work, every peice was getting massaged and shot before it was allowed to be bolted back on the truck. I had tried to convince him when the fenders showed up, to just shoot the remaining parts in primer and bolt them on but he would have none of that. Everyone else just wanted to see it run, but Boone's vision was something completely different, and the time for comprimise had already passed.