Dale and I continued knocking out a few small things on both the Valiant, and the Gremlin, until Boone and Darren finally returned with the Dakota. Dale directed them to park it under his biggest shade tree, and we decided to just work on it on the trailer, so they disconnected the truck, and moved it free.
The first thought that ran through my head was, "This is a complete waste of our time, we need to concentrate on the four cars that ARE going on Drag Week!" What I said was, "Where are the bed sides and tailgate?"
"The painter wasn't done with them yet!" Darren exclaimed, tossing his hands in the air. "He said he'll bring them down to us on Thursday...I guess we will see!"
They jacked it up and put the back half up on stands, and Darren pulled off one wheel and tire as I took a closer look at the interior. There were no seats, carpet, gauges, in fact the dash was a complete disaster of wires that were spewing out like grass through a crack in the sidewalk.
I crawled under the rear-end, rolled on my back, and took everything in. No plumbing of any kind on either of the shiny new frame rails. No brake lines, no fuel system, no wiring, no battery cable...nothing, and we were sitting at roughly 8 hours short of a week before the tech line would shut off. This was not going to go well, at all.