After the trauma of Thursday night this week, when I thought the engine had a rod knock, and the relief I felt having that possibility dismissed on Friday afternoon, I had a hard time getting too much done on Friday night. Steve was over to give a hand around 6:00, but I had hardly slept a wink on Thursday night so I told him to go home because I needed to rest for a while. We figured we could get everything packed up on Saturday morning and head out around 9:00 or so. After crashing in the house for a couple hours I got back out to the shop, and put the car in race trim in preparation for putting it on the trailer. I also readjusted the four link setup to where I thought it needed to go, based on the last test and tune results, and then worked on some minor issues (grilles in the hood, and a seal to the hood around the top of the intake) until 11:00. I went to bed and set the alarm for 6:00 because Steve was going to be over at 6:30.
Even though the alarm came on early I still felt better than I had in a couple of days. By 6:30 I had packed all my clothes and headed out to the shop to start getting all the stuff ready for the trip. After a bunch of years at Drag Week I have a three page checklist that I go through to make sure I don't forget any tools, spare parts, or other important stuff. Each year it is a little different based on the car I take, but I'd been working on it during the week to make it up to date for this car, so I got started with it right away, just as Steve showed up. There were a few spare parts that I was bringing along that required disassembly; for example, I brought a spare pair of SOHC cams, but these were bolted into another set of heads so the cam caps had to be removed before I could get the cams out. Also, I only have two complete sets of the T&D rockers, so I had to take one of the heads that's on my Galaxie apart to grab some spares. After 2008 I will always take some spare SOHC rockers LOL! All the spares, tools, and chemicals got collected in one spot of the garage, and then Steve put them in boxes and started getting them loaded into the back of my pickup. We had already loaded the Drag Week trailer into the truck, so after that was tied down a bunch of stuff went right into the trailer. As usual all this took longer than expected, but by 10:30 we were ready to hit the road for the 11 hour drive to Tulsa. Here's a picture of the truck and trailer; that's Steve by the passenger door:
The drive to Tulsa was long and boring, thank goodness
We got in right about 9:30, and are now at the hotel. We expect to be at the race track by 7:30 tomorrow morning for registration, and should be able to get through registration and run the test and tune by around noon or so. I'm looking forward to seeing some of my Drag Week pals again, and getting some pictures of other people's cars. I'll post another update tomorrow night.
