I called Darryl as I waited to get zerks installed, and the front-end lubed, and asked if he and Rachael could re-trace my path and look for the dust-cap. I knew it was a long shot, but I doubted I was going to find a replacement at this point.
When they arrived in his Dart, I showed Darryl the now 8 inch diamater puddle of oil under the car. "How much oil did you put in it?" he asked.
"'bout 7 and a half..." I recalled.
"I've always been told Milodon calls those an 8 quart pan, but that windage wise, they do better at 6.5, maybe we drain out 2 quarts, dump in a quart of that Lucas seal conditioner stuff, and give that a try", he reasoned.
"Might as well", I agreed " If I drop that much on someone's starting line, I'll be done!"
We stopped at the O'reilly's across from the lube place to grab more supplies, and got a "Good luck on Drag Week guy's" as we went out the door. This is the closest parts store for all my brothers, so they were quite aware of what was going on.
Rachael jumped in with me for the ride back, intently watching her side of the road for the missing wheel end cap. Half-way through the drive back, she looked over at me, and said, "You're gonna drive this thing 1400 miles? I'm glad I'll be in the Belvedere!"
Girls just don't understand the cool factor these days. I turned a corner about a half-mile from Dale's house, and whacked the throttle about 80 percent. The old girl jumped up on the tires in approval, and I grabbed 2nd early at about 5800, it felt good but the black smoke was rolling.
Once back at Dale's, Darryl demanded to tear into the carb, "If you drive it around that rich, those new plugs will be dead before you even make a run with them."
Dale's favorite thing to do on a car is play with Holley carbs, so as soon as he saw Darryl taking a bowl off, he had to come over and jump in. I just got out of thier way, jacked the car up just enough to pull some oil out and started dealing with that problem.