Alas, to put the "saltines story" in proper context I must go back cronologically and bring everything forward from DragWeek 2012. When I left off, both cars drove themselves onto the trailer. They returned to Phoenix and were unceremoniously pushed off into the drive and carport without making a peep. They sat while I spent October, and the better part of November crafting my tale, clacking away at the keyboard night after night. Rachael and I did manage to talk my wife into approving the purchase of "some aluminum heads" for the Belvedere, since it had a blown head gasket for the third time, and I didn't know the history of the 906's on it. I ended up purchasing a set of NIB CNC Stealths from another member on Moparts, saving a couple hundred, and immediately thinking, "Those are too good for the lowly 440, I'm gonna save these and do a stroker". Yep, see how easily we are led astray?
It was within this time frame that Phoenix had their bi-annual "Cruise on Central". As I've commented before, in the 4 years since I decided to convert the Valiant from a drag only car to street use, I've broke it several times, and never once driven it on an Arizona public street, despite completing 2 Drag Weeks, so I really wanted to do this. The day of the event, I pulled the headers off and replaced the blown header gaskets, charged the batteries, and screwed in new plugs, turned it over, and it stopped. tried it again, same thing. I remembered one of the back 2 plugs on the driver's side, looked a little rusty, so I pulled them out and spun it over, sure enough, it spun easily, and then shot water all over the inner fender! Foiled again! This is a standard bore X block, cometics, and 45 year old production heads that had the snot ported out of them in the 90's, and abused ever since...I think I know what the weak link in that chain is.
"The Shop"! Good News, you buy a cheap house, you have money left over to spend on lots of cool cars, and cool car parts! Bad News, you have no decent place to work on said cars, or store said car parts!!
