We arrived at Dale's the next morning, and found him and Kelton still plugging away on the Gremlin. We learned from talking to Jacque that they had slept about three hours each. They were getting help from Dylan Samaroo, of DS Race Cars, who had been working on Beehler's car. When Beehler pulled the plug on his effort, Dylan had been fully invested and was planning to ride shotgun. Since Dale didn't have a co-pilot, he invited Dylan to ride with him. The frustrating thing for me was that the biggest problem they were fighting was making the tunnel ran linkage and fuel delivery system work with his two 4500 big shot plates mounted and plumbed. Dale is the only brother that has yet to win a plaque for top three in his class, despite usually bringing our fastest car. When we looked at the 2017 entry list we were encouraged that a couple of the guys who have dominated Modified NA weren't going to compete in that class this year, so we had all agreed this would be Dale's best shot. So if he was on board with running NA, why all the extra work to mount the nitrous when we were clearly running out of time. "Why are you putting in so much time to make the nitrous functional when you already agreed to run NA?" "Well", he gave me a dead eye stare, "I'm certainly going to spray it when I get home, and I don't want to do all this twice!" "Monte made it quite clear to you that plates under the carbs was a bad idea with a tunnel ram, you should've just waited until you had time to do a proper fogger!" "This is what I've got, and this is what I'm going to use", he shook his head. "What about the 3.73 gears?" "They are going in, I can't make another trip on the 4.10s." "This is about the same time last year that you decided we didn't have time to put them in. All year you've whined about needing parts to fix the engine and needing parts to fix the front sheet metal and I've told you over and over to put the gears in and here we are right back in the same predicament!" "It is what it is", he shrugged, "load your stuff and head that way."
I did exactly that, so Rachael and I had everything secure and ready to roll in about two hours. It was already noon, which was the time we had agreed upon leaving. I was helping Boone load the Duster on his trailer when he brought up something I'd been trying to avoid. "You know Mom and Grand Mother are in the Motor Home over at Darren's, you better swing by there and at least tell them goodbye". "You know that will take every bit of two hours to escape them", I complained. "But it gives you a good excuse to get out of here", Boone smiled.
We went over to Darren's, listened to him fire his up for the first time, Mom fed us, we visited with Grand Mother, and were just getting ready to leave for Illinois when Boone called. "The little trailer won't fit behind my trailer with the Duster on it, so we need to load the trailer on your two car!" "You've pulled it behind there before", I protested. "With the Gremlin...the Duster overhangs too much and the trailer hits the Duster bumper before the tongue makes it to the ball", he explained. "Then load the Gremlin on your trailer!" "That would mean I would have to wait for the Gremlin to be finished, and I'm driving by myself, so I need to leave just as bad as you do!"
"Livin' in a powder keg and givin' off sparks"
4 Street cars, 5 Race engines
