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The car was just sitting there waiting for some devious minds to think of something to do to it.
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What, no pictures of getting the car running? That whole "timing chain" thing turned out to be uneventful. After we put a battery in, and dumped some gas down the carburetor, she purred like a kitten.
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We weren't quite as pressed for time as we had been on previous occasions, so we decided to do a little something extra with the paint. Also, Mark and Chris needed something to do for a week in the cities while they couldn't work on the car itself. The Buick symbol here is a rendering of the hubcap center.
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The car was already painted and running well mechanically that now we had time to work on this new and ingenious battery box that Mark had engineered. Our battery boxes had in the past left something to be desired. Here Mark is working on fabricating the box.
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Is that Amanda doing wiring on the car that Chris is supposed to feel safe in?
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This clears things up a lot, she is only holding the bolts on the top side as Mark is putting the nuts on the bottom side, securing the battery box down.
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This is a pretty good shot of the battery box and our wiring set up. We have sworn by the side post battery for years now. We have previously jumped the factory GM solenoid and added a Ford solenoid along with a switch and a pushbutton to our wiring system. This leaves a lot less "hot" cable running everywhere. Notice how the box is fully adjustable?
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This car was a two door hard top that was quite weak, so here Mark is welding in a pipe behind the driver's seat to "keep the seat upright," so it says in the rules, but we all know that Chris is chicken ever since that incident with the two foot wide LeSabre back in 96.
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Amanda was the lettering person for some of this car. She isn't that bad at it, but she really needs to work on her aim.
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There she sits about to be backed off of the trailer in Glenwood.
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The car is off the trailer, ready to perform. This is a good shot of the finished product right before it is about to be smashed.
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Chris is making sure the last few finishing touches are done. Everything must be just right in order for the driver to be calm, have fun, and put on a good show.
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All lined up ready for the first hitting of 1998. That's Doug lined up to the right of Chris in the picture.
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Early in the heat Chris lost his bumper, but he was still going strong. Again Doug is to the right of Chris in the picture.
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Chris and Doug are still both going strong. You notice the head official ready to flag someone if something goes wrong.
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The flag man is stepping in here to shut things down because something is wrong.
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Things are up and running again, but Chris is in trouble. He lost all the water in his car right away, and the heat had drug on a long time. Shortly he will get hooked on a dead car and not have enough power to get unhooked.
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That was the end of the heat. The old special was pretty beat up and had to be pulled off of the track. Doug didn't need to be pulled off because he won the heat. It was his first trophy earned.
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The special is back out there for the consolation round minus one hood. We got clearance to run with out a hood because we couldn't get it back on. The only reason the head official let us get away with it was because we don't have an engine driven fan.
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Since the car was so beat up, Chris didn't care about what happened to it. That lead to a pretty good show.
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The steering went out on the car almost right away in the consolation, so Chris had to steer with the throttle, but that didn't stop him from winning.
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Since the hood was off, everyone checked the car out right away to see what caused the steering to go out.
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Notice how the car doesn't want to follow the tractor? Chris had to hold the brakes while the tractor jerked to get the car to slide enough to get out of the gates. The car woulndn't make it back out for the championship because the steering was locked so hard that the linkage broke when we tried to free it.
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Chris went over right away to make sure that he got his trophy and check.
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To the victor goes the spoils. My fan club wanted a picture with me. The guy beside me is Heather's little brother Aaron, who likes to help us with the cars.
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We didn't have any more cars ready, so the next week we had to take that beat up special to Willmar.
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We got those front wheels steering again by getting some parts from Lonny, and using a porta power to push the frame rails back apart. Everybody loved that beat up little car in Willmar. Chris put on a good show with it, lasting out everyone but those big Imperials. He found out first hand why they are banned almost everywhere.
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Chris drove that car almost sideways back onto the track for the consolation round, as the rear axle had been twisted quite a bit from the hits. The crowd loved it!
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After the derby, we had to do quite a bit of wrenching and modifying just to get it back on the trailer. That car was definitly done, the steering had gone out again.
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We took that car home and rolled it right in the shop. It was late, and we were tired, but we needed that motor out quick, as it had to be in another car the next week.
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Doug is manning the torch here to cut the front clip off. That really aids in the removal of the engine.
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It shouldn't have been that hard to get the clip off, but we were dead tired.
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The clip is off, and the motor is ready to come out. It will show up again in a very similar car!
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