In one of Dale's many bench racing sessions with Matt Blasco, the subject of torque converters had come up, and Matt had laughingly teased Dale with the line, "when you get one in that Gremlin that will handle the torque, you'll start breaking transmission parts!"
The words proved prophetic as the Gremlin came to a halt during a July test and tune session while Dale was trying to get the car to hook and work properly with the tighter converter. Broken front pump gears proved to be the problem.

As the Challenger was in the finishing stages of ready to run, Dale shoved it out front and brought the Gremlin in for a quick trans re-build with the plan of running both cars at Tulsa Raceway Park on Saturday Aug. 4th.