My 31 Plymouth coupe didn't get finished in time for Drag week this year again. Last year, I took my 67 Olds, and Mopar Billy or someone was giving me a hard time about wearing my Hemi Joel racing jacket, while driving an Olds. So this year I decided that I for sure needed to be driving something with a Hemi. Every Hemi powered car I own is in a state of disassembly, restoration, or broke, except my 67 GTX Hemi/torqueflight convert, so that would have to be the one. I had never had it to a dragstrip before, and was concerned that it would be embarrassingly slow if there were any unknown problems, plus it was bone stock with 3.23 gears.

Jeff (Jerico GTX) had signed on as Trunk Monkey, and we packed up and left on Saturday morning. Before we left, I put new points and condenser in the original dual point distributor, changed the oil, and swapped in some head pipes that had exhaust dumps on them.

ready to go:


We decided this was going to be a fun Tommy Boy road trip, and that we would see the sights on the back roads. Jeff brought some M&M's and set them on the dash, and the jokes and Tommy boy quote flew back and forth.

Owatona MN:


We stopped for lunch at Arbys in Iowa and discovered a leaky valve cover gasket. My Trunk Monkey in training promptly tightened the bolts and stopped the leak.



In Brandon Iowa, we discovered an amazing attraction, the largest fryin' pan in the state, real cast iron and over 9' diameter!


The first night on the road, we enjoyed a beautiful sunset.



Sunday was tech in for drag week, which was held at the oval track at gateway. I had purchased a tachometer, and used the time in line to install it, as well as visiting with old and new friends and checking out a bunch of cool cars. Also while I was in line, a videographer from Hot Rod asked me to put the top down, and he would film the car for a youtube video. I forgot to take the boot out of the top well, so the top wouldn't go all the way down, then I had to put it halfway back up, dig the boot out, and then put the top down. He filmed the whole bungled up procedure and put it on Youtube. Yippee, I'm gong to be a star!



As usual, the line was long and slow moving, but the weather was great!



I had previously corresponded with Tricky Steve from the HAMB, and when I saw this coupe, I knew he was here at Gateway, I sought him out and introduced myself.


Later, after tech, we moved to the dragstrip, and I made a pass. I was cautious, launching just off idle and shifted at 5700 rpm, and was pleasantly surprised with a 13.70 timeslip at just over 101 mph. Not to bad for a bone stock car with a 4225 race weight I thought!
My Friend Jay Brown (whom I have Trunk Monkeyed for 5 times) brought his FE Cammer powered 69 Shelby, and had a new Trunk monkey, Steve Peasly. My Trunk Monkey from last year, Kevin Rolf, brought his 428 Cobra Jet powered 68 SHelby GT 500, and was running solo with out the benefit of a trunk monkey.

Left to right: Jay Steve Kevin Jeff, Jays Shelby behind.

You will notice that Steve has a beer in his hand, and has never been know to not. When we were discussing titles, such as Trunk Monkey in training, Trunk Monkey extraordinaire, etc, Steve announced "I'm the Drunk Monkey!" We all had a good laugh over that and the name stuck.

Kevins Shelby has a cool snake on the hood from back in the early 70's.

I told Jeff that I hoped Jay would get his Shelby into the 8's, and finish the week. Jay has DNF'ed or didn't make the event for the last 4 years with a string of bad luck, and he had yet to lay down a good pass since he built the car. Jeff said no way would the car go 8's. But this is Jeffs first Drag week, and he doesn't know Jay, so he took a bet with me on it. We bet dinner.

Jays first pass earned me a nice plate of shrimp and ribs! Here is Jays time slip: (left lane)



More to follow.

Glad you put a tach in it.Good to see you again and you introducing me to Dudek.Caught up to Jay on Friday.Talk about a happy camper.Now to get that Dusey done.

The Barnyard Viper showed up at the time slip shack, while the Drunk Monkey and I waited for Jay to show up so we could congratulate him on the 8 second pass.



One of the best things about Drag Week is seeing Friends from other parts of the country that I seldom have the opportunity to see.

Here is my pals Dave Dudek and Rick Callahan, working on Ricks Road Runner.



This is the Road Runner that Dave used to own, the first F.A.S.T.
legal car to run 9's.


Monday I made another pass in the GTX, I launched a little harder, and shifted at 6000, and it went 13.42 at 103. That was too quick to be legal in a convert with no roll bar, so I had to make another pass and sandbag to get a timeslip slower than 13.5 to turn in. Each day at Drag week, we have to turn in our fastest legal time slip. If the slip shows an ET quicker than your safety tech, they won't accept it.
So I figured I was in for a week of sandbagging. But never the less, I was very pleased with the car.

Backing up a little, Sunday night I noticed that the amp gauge on the GTX was indicating a lack of charging. A little diagnostics revealed that the problem was the voltage regulator. Tricky Steve, the guy with the blown Hemi Coupe, offered to help me find one when the parts stored opened in the morning. I made it back to the motel on battery power. At 7:30 AM Monday the phone rang and it was Steve. He had called every parts store around, and the nearest regulator was 30 miles away. He hopped in his coupe, and drove the 30 miles to get it, then back to the race track where I met him. I tried to pay for his gas to go get it, but he adamantly refused. What an awesome new friend I have!

At drag Week, we have to photograph our cars at various checkpoints to prove we followed the route. One of the first was a cool space ship!



I think I saw heffalumps and woosels there too. Or maybe the Drunk Monkey took this picture?


This is the back of my Trunk Money in training, and the Buick has a 455. It belongs to my friend Randall from Ely Nevada. Randall was following us to the checkpoint, and we made a wrong turn, going onto the freeway instead of the frontage road. So then we had to go north 6 miles to the next exit, then south 12 miles to the next open exit, then back north 6 miles to get off the freeway and back onto the proper route. Randall didn't follow us anymore after that.



Another check point:



I phoned Kevin to see how his Shelby was doing with the 4.56 gears and no overdrive. He didn't answer, but then 10 minutes later we caught up to him, and he was stopped and checking the car over. He had heard a weird noise while driving, but could not locate the source of the noise, so we continued on, and the noise was gone.



The next time I phoned him, the same thing happened. The car made a weird noise, but then it went away.



The next day, when I phoned him when he was stopped somewhere, he figured out that the weird noise was my ringtone that he had programmed into his phone!

No Drag Week is complete without at least one stop at wally world for supplies:



more to follow

Cool picts Joel. Jeff had some fun posts on Facebook throughout the week too. Good stuff!

When the sun came up on our motel near Indy, we saw this 2012 Z28 in the parking lot. They say that it has all the stock accessory's like air and power everything, but still goes about 180 in the quarter mile.



They were checking the valve lash:



A pair of Hemis in the pit at Indy:



My trunk monkey was awesome In 10 minutes he'd have the trunk unloaded, the slicks on and the mufflers uncorked. A new rule at Drag Week this year is that NO street tires are allowed on the track, so I brought some old DOT stickys that I had laying around.


This AMC Javelin was going over 200!



I liked this 57 because it has a Lenco:


At Indy, Jay made another 8 second pass, but the car died on the return road. It turned out to be an electrical issue. Jay is an electrical engineer, so he builds his cars really complex in the electronic department, but he knows how to fix it. Give me a set of points any day.




The Drunk Monkey thought he was dumping drain oil into a proper receptacle, but it turned out to be an upside down trash barrel! Oops.



Jays 8 second SHelby:

Ricks Road Runner developed a gas tank leak. A major thrash ensued.



Even though we felt welcome, we didn't want to stay TOO long.



You can't stop at a gas station without seeing another Drag Week car:



Another check point down!




The biggest little red Radio Flyer in the world!



I tried to make friends with this cow:



She even let me ride her:



But when I tried to milk her, I found the she was a he:



He got mad and gored me pretty bad:



Mighty mouse on an elephant.
So there is 2 elephants in the picture, plus one mouse and one trunk monkey.

This is a great post Joel thank you for sharing. I never get tired of looking at '66-67 B cars...especially convertibles.

Quick question - does your car have subframe connectors? Our '66 Coronet started to have signs of body flex with a mild 440 running low 13's.

Also, how in the world did you become friends with someone from Ely, NV? I think the entire county has about 50 people in it lol.

Carry on and thanks for the fun read!

The GTX needed a bath very bad by the time we got to Kenosha. My dutiful Trunk Monkey made good use of the Hotels hose. Kurt Johnson, Winner of Street Race BBNA, is in the back ground with his BBC powered Mustang. Runs; low nines/high 8's.



The sign says it all:



Jeff needed a challenge, (among other things)and my car was easy to deal with, so he helped out Jay a bit. Jay made about 8 passes at Great Lakes Dragaway, because a loose wire was shutting the car off at half track. Finally he found the problem, and went out for another pass in the 8's. At this point, he was leading the big block naturally aspirated modified class.

Somebody left their tank parked alongside the road. A Kodak moment for sure!



Another cool check point:



We came across this memorial park with a big shooter.



We drove through the little town of Lanark Illinois. It had some neat old buildings from the 1800's, so we had to stop to enjoy the scenery and read the dates on the places.



We got off the path a few miles to see downtown Mt. Carrol.



They had another big shooter there, too. Is this thing loaded?



This is a haunted house called the Ravens Grin. We were too scared to go in, it was creepy.



After Union Grove, we went to LeClair Iowa, where I had booked a hotel room because it was close to Cordova.
I had asked for a room with 2 beds. The desk clerk looked at me and looked at Jeff, and said "how good of friends ARE you?" The only room they had left was the honeymoon suite:


Jeff offered to sleep in the hot tub, but they found him a roll-away bed. Lots of comments about Myrna Feltcher and a John Dear letter.


We ate at a place called Sneaky Pete's. The crew from Hot Rod was eating there too, so we had a chance to chat with them for a bit after supper.

At Cordova, rain was coming, so they tried to rush the program. The staging lanes were packed.





Somebody stole Ricks racing Jacket out of his car in Leclaire, so I lent him my Jacket so he could race legally. I didn't need it, a racing jacket is only required if you run quicker than 11.50 ET.



After we raced at Cordova, we stopped at the American Pickers shop in Leclair.



Another checkpoint down:



Jeff was perhaps getting a little weary of all the stops for silliness, so on Thursday, he offered up a bet that there was no way to make it St Louis by 6:30. Well, a free dinner sounded pretty good, so I laid into the secondary carb every chance I got. Jeff was starting to see that dinner tab money fleeing his wallet, so he said "look Joel, a castle!" He knew I couldn't pass up a castle! Then, when I slowed down and circled back, it wasn't even a castle, and Jeff admitted that he tricked me.


We saw Tom Baileys car at a little gas station in a little town.

When his trunk monkey had to crawl back into the car, he said "well, back into the sauna" The TH400 trans sits right between them, and he said the trans temp has been running at 200 on the road.





We made it to St Louis well before 6:30, so I got to collect on another dinner. We even drove past the arch, but couldn't find the parking lot to go in it.



At Gateway on Friday, Rachel Gebhart and I ended up side by side in the staging lanes:



I started thinking, since I can't accomplish anything with a 13.50 ET, maybe I should try for a killer reaction time. We run a .400 pro tree, and they do not use auto start. It seems that the moment both cars are staged, the starter presses the button to activate the tree. That would make it pretty hard to deep stage. So I asked Rachel if she would mind pre-staging first, that would give me time to deep stage before she staged. When we got up there, She pre staged, I went in deep, then she staged, and instantly I saw the yellows come on and I turned the Hemi loose. I expected to see Rachel blow by me, but it didn't happen. She broke a u-joint on the starting line. Bummer. I was pleased to see a .038 rt on the slip, even though my et fell way off to 13.90



More later

Awesome pics!!

Thanks, for all the great pics, and play by play. Really fun read! Say, is that "Felix the cat", Steve P? Good to see ya put Jeff to work😃

Yes that is Felix the Cat Peasley. He had us laughing all week. Wouldn't have been the same with out Steve there.

See that receiver hitch on Jays Shelby? While dumping the race gas to switch over to pump gas for the drive to Cordova, I firmly planted the side of my head into it. My first thought was "Who the F*%# puts a trailer hitch on a race car?" Oh yeah we were on Drag Week... I looked at Steve and said "That hurt". "Sounded like it" was Steve's reply.

Reading this, I can't stop laughing at all the fun things we saw, heard and did last week.

Jeff

Awesome pics, what an adventure. Very cool.

Think I'll retire from Drag Week story telling... no way I can top this! Joel always brings the best attitude possible to this event, and somehow maintains it throughout the entire week!!

Great read, thanks for all the pics!

Great pics, looks like a good time. Cant wait to give it a try when I get the Demon built.

Billy, your write-ups are a Moparts must. Retiring is NOT a option. Besides, Joel and I just goofed off. You and your family WORKED all DragWeek. That story needs to be told.

Jeff