We made it, mostly. After scrambling to get the Laser back together on
Thursday (more on that later), we hit the road first thing Friday morning;
met up with Kris, dropped the dog off with Erica's parents, and headed over
to Lincoln Oasis to meet up with the rest of the caravan. We ended up with
us, Kris Hicks in his white 2g, Tim Lang in his "champagne" 1g,
Albert with his purple 2g on the
trailer, Mike Puglisi in his black 2g, Nick Andersen with the green Galant
VR-4, Jeff Harrington with the other trailered purple 2g, and Mike (didn't
catch his last name), with another purple 2g. We made it most of the way
to Norwalk with Tim's loose lugnuts being the only real problem, until we
hit a huge squall of rain, and Nick's car sucked some water up and
generally had a bad day. He managed to limp to Norwalk, but it stayed in
the parking lot that night. We grab dinner at the local Pizza Hut, and
almost don't make it back to the hotel: battery is dead, and not getting
a charge from the alternator. We park and call it a day in our incredibly
over-sized room at Best Western, and Kris decides to make use of our room
since Albert and Mike's room at Amerihost is already pretty packed.
Next day, we hit "The Inventor" restaurant for waffles, and came back to
see Nick and a bunch of other folks working on the GVR4. Meanwhile, we're
trying to diagnose the problem with the Laser, so we limp it over to the
Amerihost where everyone else is and set up shop. We swapped in a new
alternator from the local parts store, no dice. Turns out the problem was
a crossed wire from the only piece of ghetto-rigged wiring in the car: the
boost guage backlighting that I slapped in at the last minute. GRR. Around
the same time, Nick and company have finished basically doing a complete
timing belt job on the Galant (thanks to our tensioner tool and a spare
tensioner pulley that Kris had), and we all head over to
Buscher's shop for the car
show and dyno contest.
As usual, there was an incredible turnout for the meet at the shop.
John Shepherd had his 8-second
machine out with the hood popped for everyone, and just about every
"big name" in the DSM world was there. There were problems with the dyno;
all cars were getting entered with the same weight, dyno pulls were being
cut off at 80mph, and other similar little issues, but we got to see a
few impressive pulls (and Mike and Albert strapped their cars down late
in the day). After the meet, Mike nearly got us kicked out for setting
up and testing his antilag setup behind the shop (a 30psi stutterbox
makes for a lot of noise), and then we all packed up and headed back.
Nick's car had more misfortune, stripping the bolts on his driver's side
motor mount and having to very carefully limp the car back to the
hotel before we headed out for dinner. Afterward, we went back to the
hotel to drill and tap new threads for new motor mount bolts for him, and
then Erica and I called it a night. Sometime overnight, Steve and Justin
drove in from Chicago after work and crashed with us; personally, I think
they're nuts. ;-)
Race day on Sunday was a mix of great racing and crappy weather. The
event was shut down twice becasue of rain, with about an hour and a half
of follow-up track preparation each time it happened. John Shepherd did
an exhibition 8-second pass to wow the crowd, and we got to see some
incredible racing; Yusef Begic in the
Devotuning Evo II made an
excellent showing, beating the gorgeous Pruven Performance car twice,
but going down to a red light against "Dynoflash Al". The guys from
Victor Research ended up taking the day in Quick 16, and it was amazing
to see how much faster everyone as a whole was going this year, including
a few unbelievable automatics. After racing, we headed back to the hotels
so most folks could check out, and we headed for dinner as a group. By the
time dinner was finished, everyone had decided not to head back, and they
collectively grabbed a room at Best Western. I crashed, and everyone else
stayed up and watched a bootleg copy of the unreleased "Family Guy" DVD.
(No, I don't know where they got it.)
So, it's Monday morning. After everyone finally crawls out of bed (Steve
and Justin have already headed back, since they had to work Monday night),
we hit the road for Illinois. Near the edge of Ohio, we have to pull off:
Nick has finally killed his car (we later learned that the spool in his
center diff basically exploded), so we quickly unload Albert's car from
the trailer, get Nick on it (it was Nick's trailer anyway), and Kris
runs to the nearest station for regular unleaded to put in Albert's car
after draining the C16 from the tank. We hit the road, and pull off
fairly soon at a roadside travel plaza; five minutes later, the upper
coolant hose on the Laser ruptures, spilling coolant everywhere. We swap
the upper coolant hose from Nick's car with ours, Kris has a bottle of
coolant that we dump in the car, and we're back on the road. That was
the last major problem anyone had until we got back to town; we split
off from the group, picked up our dog, and fifteen miles from home, our
transfer case emptied itself of fluid. We limped it home, and collapsed.
I can't believe how much wrenching and general roadside engineering we
did this year, but I wouldn't have done it any differently; I think we
all had a blast, and I can't wait until next year.