Carnage A Plenty

How many wagons in our fleet can simultaneously fail? 1, 2, maybe 3? All but 1 seems to be the way its been going. Remember when I said there's been all kinds of carnage, details to come, here's some details.

Pretty ain't it? Graham's 413 max wedge clone, right at home in her freshly painted and detailed engine bay cross ram and hi-flow exhaust manifold equiped. Just Installed thus spring with many a late night and early morning to make it happen. So we get er running, tuned relatively well and decide a few passes down the strip are a perfect plan. The Boys from Vashon (the original Wagons of Steel in case you didn't know), are racing in Spokane for one of their division 6 stock eliminator races, so we figure some friday night test and tune passes are the perfect plan.

Oh plans, how they elude us sometimes. Poor Graham gets just south of our local border crossing at Nelway and that ever so pretty 413, well, lets just say, fails to procede. Squeaked to a halt one might say. Later surgery would reveal a spun rod bearing. Bummer.

So Pat and I spring into action as is customary, load up his 67 Polara (as in Polara Pat) and take off to the rescue.

Almost. Head gaskets let go in Pats trusty 440. Luckily as we coasted off the side of the road we stopped next to a beautiful mountain stream. So we filled the rad back up with glacier fresh water and limped back home.

Lets recap, 1 413, and 1 440 down, did I mention that we weren't racing Demonica at this particular event because of that lil bent valve issue? So 3 big blocks down, we switch to plan D and swap all our gear into the mighty Atomic 6. Equiped with the leaning tower of power 225 slant 6 she makes a hell of a grocery getter, dog hauler, highway unit. Maybe not the best drag racer (Yet He He) but running counts for a lot at this stage of the game.

The ol Atomic did well for us however, made it to Spokane and back drama free and delivered some spectacular fuel ecomomy.

So why are we pushing the Atomic into my shop? Seems once Demonica was race ready it was time for some Atomic carnage. The morning before we left for race 1 at Thunder mountain a rogue boulder bounced up off the highway and met up with the ol girl`s soft white (black, whatever) underbelly and made about 6 really solid collisions with multiple metal parts, the most critical being when it broke the transmission case.

Lots of mopar tranny practice in the last while, but who doesn`t enjoy being elbow deep in a tranny I ask? Three A-904 automatics became one that morning before we left to kick as in kelowna. Been running like a top ever since.

As for Graham, we got him back on the road with a spare stock 440 stuffed between the hi-flows for temps with a single 4 barrel. Looks like a Nascar option. Functional for the moment at least. Pat's Polara has a fresh set of gaskets installed and all appears to be well there. Perfect.

Of course Demonica just decided not to back up. Every bidy cross your fingers and hope its just another broken band strut. Thank you.

Dangerous