Shortly after breakfast, Dad showed up with a portion of Darren's column shift linkage, which needed to be cut, and lengthened. Apparently everything that worked fine with the factory 400 in the car, was now refusing to bolt up to the RB. Darren had elected to re-use the same small tube headers because they cleared the power steering, the column shift, and fit nicely, but now, they didn't fit anything.
To complicate matters the 66 440 block had no provisions to mount the power steering, and this late in the game was no time to attempt to drill and tap the blank boss on the front of the block. So, the sanden ac compressor, and the power steering pump were thrown to the corner in favor of a more conventional belt alignment for now.
Dad made it sound as though real progress was being made. "Once Darren quit trying to put the filler neck from Jamie's 74 Satellite in the car, and found the one for the 73 Charger, it slid right in!"

Mike had chased down my brake light wire, hooked it up, and bent the bracket back in place. He had it working perfectly by hand, but every time he touched it with the brake pedal, it blew the 10 amp fuse he was using in the power wire he had ran over from my existing race car wiring.
"That switch must've had a plastic piece on the end at one time", he determined. He cut down the insulator off a blue butt connector and slid that over the plunger on the switch, now we had brakelights and no blown fuses!

Rachael walked over a few minutes later and reported, "The Belvedere is filthy inside and out, I need to go to a car wash and clean it. Got any cash?"
I dug for a twenty as Mike laughed, and told her to ask her uncle Dale where the nearest car wash was.
"I spotted one on the way to the grocery store", She shot back as she jumped in and the 440 fired to life.
"Ya know", Darryl added "she might not like that car so much when she's the one footing the gas bill.."
"I don't think she has any intention of ever doing that" I mused.


"Livin' in a powder keg and givin' off sparks" 4 Street cars, 5 Race engines