Ditto what AndyF says. I have always been a one-man race team but this year my buddy asked me to drive his car. It is a 5.80 car so I had to get the license. First time out we had a broken roller lifter. He has a spare engine so we swapped them out. Second time out we make 4 passes for the license, car is slowing down with converter problem. We pull the trans and converter and send it in to have it rebuilt. 3rd time out after reinstalling converter and trans, same result, converter wasn't fixed properly. Pull converter again and my friend has some words with a well-known owner of converter company, converter is rebuilt again and reinstalled. I offered to purchase a new converter from another company but my friend wouldn't have any of that. 4th time out my friend drives the car to make sure everything is satisfactory. It goes 6.10 on a slippery track, so we feel everything is working now. Due to track conditions we went home, came back and I drive the car to 6.00 and a 5.99 to get my license signed off by the track tech man. We have been out once again to bracket race, I have run 5.94 at 113, no good on the tree yet with the delay box.

The point of all this rambling is that we motivate each other to get the work done. If I had tried to do all that by myself, a whole season would have been wasted. In the meantime, I had my Duster ready to race and I took it out a couple times while we were waiting for parts, only to have the rear shock mount break. I could have had my friend weld it up, but he had his hands full with his car and a street rod that he is building. So I took the Duster to a fabricator and we decided to rip out the factory shock mounts and fabricate new. He did a beautiful job and again it was a matter of trusting someone else to do the work. Fortunately I am better able to afford to buy parts and pay for services than I used to be when I had 3 kids at home. Now we have 2 cars ready to go and thank goodness the hottest summer ever is almost over!