First off, I have to warn you, this is more of a personal story than it is a report of all thing Drags Week 2018. Other folks such as Mopar Billy are working on more complete coverage of the whole event. And also, I’m stealing pictures off the web, I only took about ½ of them myself. So credit goes to whomever it is due.
My trunk monkey Jeff and I recently finished Drag Week in my Hemi powered 1931 Plymouth coupe. For me, that was a major goal achieved after years of dreaming, then planning, then building and doing.
Here is the last day of Drag Week, a hoorah in celebration!
This whole thing started many, many years ago with a dream to build an old school hot rod coupe. Back when I was still just a high school kid in the 70's, day dreaming in class. Later, in about 1993, I ran a across a 392 hemi engine out of a 1958 Chrysler Imperial, and ended up dragging it home. Now I had a start! Then I started seeking a 30-31 Model A body. But in 2003, I found this 1931 Plymouth coupe in Indiana, and I hauled it home, and that was a major milestone.
This is what I bought. A body shell, frame, grill shell, front axle and springs, and a dash:
I didn’t do much with it at first, just played around mocking it up with the hemi and a few stray parts that I was collecting:
BUT THEN ALONG CAME DRAG WEEK!
In 2007, my friend Jay brown asked if I would be his co-pilot/pit crew on drag week, and I accepted, having no clue what I was getting into. At drag week, you run time trials at a different ¼ mile drag strip each day of the week. You turn in your best time slip each day. The racer in each class with the lowest average ET for the week, wins that class. Reaction time doesn’t matter. But you have to drive the race car from track to track with no outside support, and no chase vehicle. Jay entered a 69 Mustang Mach 1 with a Vortech blown big inch FE motor. And we drove it from Minneapolis to Cordova IL, raced at Cordova, Great Lakes Dragaway, Wisconsin International, Cedar Falls, and back to Cordova. Best ET was a 9:32, and we came in 2nd place in class. Along the way, we fragged a blower impeller, swapped in a spare, broke the powerglide, pulled it, rebuilt it, (stayed up all night), blew a trans cooler, (hunted one down), broke a shock mount and lowering block, (Had it fabbed/welded at a local shop) dealt with leaky slicks, and jammed an oil pump and twisted off the oil pump drive shaft (pulled the pan and fixed it in a borrowed shop) Then drove it home.
Jays detailed and interesting blog of drag week is a must read!
http://fepower.net/Drag%20Week/dw07.html After going thru all that, I was hooked. It was then I started thinking about building my coupe for Drag Week.
I rode along as Jays trunk monkey again in 2008 and 2009 in his SOHC cammer powered 64 Galaxie, DNFing in ’08
http://fepower.net/Drag%20Week/dw08.html and winning class in ’09,
http://fepower.net/Drag%20Week/dw09.html then in his SOHC powered 69 Shelby in 2011 where we DNFed, then again in 2013 where we DNFed.
Some video I shot of our 2008 adventure: part 1:
https://youtu.be/6F15sxPM1UA Part 2:
https://youtu.be/GZMcqQUN9nw Part 3:
https://youtu.be/rwzxdlae2J0With all the work on failed and broken parts, great ideas that didn’t quite pan out, as well as the taste of victory and a close, hard fought second place, I was stockpiling ideas of how I would and would not build my own car. By 2013, I started working on the coupe in earnest, with a 426 hemi that I put together out of mostly leftover parts from my old F.A.S.T. racing projects.
To be continued
