We put Dad on the charcoal grille, since Mom had driven over to Darren's to pick up the pop-up camper.

I remounted the 750 holley on the Belvedere's M-1. The only real surprise I had found was a PV in the secondaries, which didn't correlate to the jet size back there. I was always accused of running the nitrous too rich because the car used to belch black smoke at the hit, but I think this was more likely the problem. I also dropped the N20 tune-up down about 8 sizes, figuring with the 3.55s in place of the 2.76s, it wouldn't need as much. A quick drive around the neighborhood was enjoyable, the gear change made it feel the part of a hotrod instead of a cruiser, and the 440 felt crisp and responsive.

When I returned, I pulled the MSD distributor out of the Valiant, and took it over to Dale, who had begun the process of the removing the old carbs from the Dakota's Zeeker tunnel ram. He gave me a quick review of what the process entailed to lock it out, and I took it over to the table on which I had went through both carbs, to take it apart. Boone came over and told both of us it was time to eat, so we dropped everything and had our Labor Day picnic and bull session.

By the time we ate, and I put the distributor back in, fired the engine, reset the timing, re-adjusted the idle settings, and topped off the trans fluid, it was getting dark. Last year, most of our activities were in Dale's shop, which Boone had cleaned out in order to get the Barnyard in. This year the shop was practically out of play with Michael Beeler's purple Duster taking up the space, parts scattered everywhere, and only half the lights working. So our cars were scattered over the back yard, and there seemed to be a marked shortage of drop cords and lights. As such Boone and I decided to call it an early night, sensing it might be our last full night of sleep anyway. I decided to spend the night at Boone's house, and as we headed to his car, Dale had a drop light under the hood of the Dakota and was bolting up the new E-85 carbs on the 499.