I jumped out, and walked around to the front of the car, to see how much damage was done. Boone, Darryl, and Dale joined me a few seconds later.
"What the hell happened?" Dale looked at me with a shrug.
"I just pushed the hood down when we moved up, and didn't latch it....then I forgot about it."
"I see where it tweaked the hinge mount down on the inner fender, and maybe a little pulling at the hood bolts, but nothing really bad", Boone decided.
"Try to shut it, we'll watch the corners" Daryll added.
The hinges didn't move freely at all for the first two or three inches, and a lesser hood that was without 3 body lines and several multi-planed curves might have buckled under the effort, but 50 year old DDCP metal was more than up to the strain. It went down fine until within a few inches of closing, the back of the hood was now sitting about a quarter of an inch lower, and while that didn't cause a problem in the corners, it was rubbing on the underside of the cowl a little. I gave it a final shove, and it latched into place.
"Guess it could have been worse!" I shrugged.
"Like the Camaro, who blew his 'glass hood off today, and came back to the pits with a small piece attached to each hinge?" Boone laughed as we prepared to take off again.
"Yeah", I agreed upon recollection, "that sure was ugly!"

The rest of the run through Arkansas on I-40 was pretty mundane, and soon we were crossing the Mississippi River into Tennessee. 5 miles later we turned off on US51/TN3/Danny Thomas Blvd. for a 9 mile trek to Memphis Motorsports Park. This little jaunt was through an older part of Memphis, and as we worked our way through at a little after midnight, we stumbled upon the fact that apparently Wednesday night at midnight down in the Memphis river bottom, was Corvette VS Crotch Rocket night among the locals! We drove past an area with about 20 Vettes on the right side of the road in a small lot, with an equal or larger number of bikes on the other side, with small crowds lining both sides of the street. It felt like every eye was on us as we idled past, so I dropped the Valiant into 2nd, and blipped the throttle a couple of times...
"What the heck are you doing?" Boone looked at me incredulously.
"Saying hello, were you flying the duece while I was doing that?"
"Umm, no...had my hands in my lap, and looking straight ahead thank you very much!"
"We should go back, might be some money to be made!"
"You should try to get us to the motel in one piece, you moron!"
I seem to have a gift for picking motels on the opposite side of the track from our entrance point, so we drove 4 miles past and came up to our destination. There, in front of the motel, parked under the lights, was Jeff Lutz and his 57, holding court with about 15 other Drag Week competitors all standing around with red solo cups in thier hands.
I looked at Boone, "Where do they get the energy? I can't wait to put my head on a pillow!"
By the time we settled in, and were ready for bed, it was 1:30AM...another very long day in the books!

I found myself staring at an alarm clock that clearly had not went off, and it showed 7:10 AM. Didn't seem like the light coming through the window matched what the clock was telling me, so I pulled the curtain back and looked outside. Rain, I turned the alarm off and crawled back under the covers.
Darryl called and woke me up at 8:00, "We've been talking to some guys out here, the rain has stopped, and the track says they will be ready in 30 minutes."
"I guarantee a car won't make it down that drag strip for 2 hours!" I replied angrily.
Oh well, the damage had already been done, I wasn't going to get any more sleep at this point. I hastily grabbed a shower and dressed, Boone followed. Then Dale and Darryl barged into our room and started bring thier bags in.
"What the heck are you doing?" I glared at them.
"Gave our room away", Dale replied.
"What for?"
"Some of the Drag Week guys just rolled in, they had prepaid for rooms, and just wanted thier rooms long enough to catch a wink and a shower, but the management told them they would have to pay for another day because they didn't register in time! So I gave them ours."


I wasn't the only guy with hood problems, here is the result from Sean Fling's mishap on his 63 Ford, earlier in the week!

You oughta try rolling through there in a '5.oh' with the t-tops out.

I kept my head straight and did not make any sudden moves.

I grabbed one of the motel hand towels, went out in the light mist, and gave the Valiant it's only bath on Drag Week. I noticed quite a few guys seemed to be milling around the area next to our cars and rooms, as I worked on wiping the car down. Before I knew what was going on, Dale walked out with my bags and said, "Where do you want these?"
"Now what are you up to?"
"Just gave your room away too!"
"Nice! What the heck!"
"They were helping the other guys, that's why they were late too, didn't seem right leaving them in a bind!"
I helped Dale load all the bags into the Valiant and went to the lobby and grabbed some breakfast. Dale walked in a few minutes later with an armload of dirty towels, "Need another towel service for our other room this time", Dale smiled and stuck them out towards the counter person. She scowled and gave him fresh ones. He walked by and wispered, "2nd towel exchange in 15 minutes, she knows what we are doing, but she can't say anything about it!"
Rachael came in, fixed herself something and sat down next to me, "Dale gave our room away...Boone borrowed my phone charger last night, and now I'm not gonna get my smart phone fully charged!"
"Those guys worked all night to get here with no sleep".
"We are talking about my phone!"
"I know dear, we'll figure something out."

Below is a pic taken from the tower at Memphis. Here is my summary of what you are looking at. BBR felt really guilty about bailing on Mopars, so he found it necessary to dig up the most pitifull, ugly, patina'd Fox body he could possibly find. I'm sure he has one of those tear jerking "rescue dog" type stories to go with it.."I was walking through a junkyard in Amarillo and this poor thing was 2nd in line for the crusher"... I mean, cheap foxes are everywhere but you really have to dig to find a t-top, 4 eyed 83!!
Then he throws 545 inches of tractor motor in it...notice his hand location...this is one of those cars you stage, hand at 12 o' clock, now crank the wheel to 8 o'clock before the tree comes down, and lock it against your leg, by about 80 feet out you can begin to unwind it if you are back in the groove after it tried to drive you into the wall! Be ready to grab another handfull at the 1-2 shift!

ROFLMAO!!! BBR you just got owned.

Boone and I were in the Valiant before the others were quite loaded up, and decided to leave ahead of them.
"Everyone says these M/T ET STREET bias tires are pretty marginal in the rain, so we may be driving pretty slow", I told them.
"Yeah, if you end up in the ditch, at least you won't be taking us with you", Darryl laughed.

The rain was gone, the road, while certainly wet, didn't have standing water in it and the car felt fine to me. We were halfway there when the phone rang, it was Dale. "Belvedere won't start, no fire".
"Is Darryl still there, do we need to come back for you?"
"He's here, we'll figure it out, you go ahead."

We pulled into the pits at Memphis Motorsports Park, dodged all the puddles of standing water, and backed in next to the back of the last set of bleachers. We had all the stuff unloaded, and the tire pressures set when the Dart and Belvedere showed up.
"What was it?"
"Ignition box", Dale shrugged, "Had to go pick up a stock one at the parts store."
Now I was nervous, I may not always have a nitrous tuneup dialed in, or have the bottle pressure perfect, but I learned years ago, you want as much ignition as you can get. Now we just went from a Chrome Box to stock on a high cylinder pressure, high load combination, not good.

I was hood up, tools out, and valve cover bolts loose when the first few drops of rain came down.....thats when I decided I could lash the valves in Tulsa and quickly reversed the procedure.

Only decent pic I have from Memphis, taken from chic-fil-a as we waited the rain out. It wasn't but a mere 6 or 7 hours before this pic was taken that I was standing in a car wash scrubbing this thing like crazy, only to have it rained on for the first time in a long long time.

I had an 86 4 eyed T top when I was in college and I loved it, don't listen to Billy!

And Holy tongues of fire above the baracuda in that picture!

Another shot of BBR's machine getting it's daily dose of type F!

Today was birthday number 48 for me, so after a 4.8 mile run and a full day on the job, I'm not up to much writing tonight, but Boone took a whole bunch of photos at Memphis, so I might as well share some of those. I spent about 3 hours last night watching the replay of the live feed from the 4th day so I could try to remember how it all played out.


Where ksj? picture

Darryl was (as usual) the first of our group in the lanes. He knocked down an opening shot of 11.40-116 and came back around grumbling something about the driver, and hotlapped back around. The next run was 11.272-118 (Personal Best ET for the car), and before I had even turned a tire in the waterbox, Darryl was finished making passes in Memphis! Considering what the rest of the day would hold, I'm quite sure he'd have been better off to load his stuff and get the heck out of there!

Happy Birthday Billy.

Eddie Miller in Memphis

the pyramid

Not sure if the rash of hood incidents affected Ray's decision, or if he just wanted a better view of where he intended to lift before the finish line, but HOT ROD picked up this killer shot of the Barracuda sans hood, on his way to an early shut-off 10.01 at 124.

Apparently focus was lacking in Memphis, as my first pass didn't go as planned. Decent launch, then first to third, then yanked it back to second, then back to third. The result was 11.55-114.6, and a drive straight back up to the lanes!
The next, 19 minutes later, was far from perfect as well, as I managed to carry 2nd gear about 3 hundred rpm further than it obviously wanted to go, and managed an 11.46-114.9.
Back in the pits I told Dale we needed to add jet, the MPH should be better.