I stumbled upon what was probably the biggest culprit of my worsening cooling problem quite by accident. With only seven days until "hell week", I was finishing up the install of the new water pump. I tightened the alternator down with the belt as tight as I could get it, so I could use the belt to grip the water pump pulley while I tightened the four bolts down. The first one was barely above finger tight when the water pump pulley slipped in the belt. I pushed down hard on the belt and tried again, but the pulley slipped easily, while the belt gripped solidly to the alternator and engine pulleys.
I removed the belt and inspected it closely, the sides were burnt quite severely, and the inside of the pulley groove was polished to a brilliant shine. I went to a wider belt, which rides high in all the pulleys, but nothing was available in between, as the O'Reilly's salesman explained that the choices in V-belts were drying up considerably...yet another reminder that my car and I are quickly becoming dinosaurs!

The quicklatch problem was remedied by replacing the latch piece, I had banged it around some trying to remove the hood by myself and it felt completely different than the other three, or a new one, but this didn't leave me extremely confident in them.

When I loaded the old girl on the trailer for the trip to Oklahoma, I still hadn't addressed the alignment, or vibration, or transmission issues, but this was the first Drag Week trip that I drove it on the trailer in Phoenix under it's own power, and I wasn't sure that was a good omen, or a bad one!