Dis is My Ride!!!

Waggin, my Dawg, I didn't know you even had those pictures! Thanks! And to all my other friends, thanks for your kind words. I wish I could meet every one of you in person. Now....back to the Hemi adventures!
That 11.72 at Mountain Park Dragway in Clay City, KY, was the first time I had ever made a pass on the wrinkle walls, with the 4.89 gears, the Rat Roaster intake and the "Daytona AFB carbs". These were 750 cfm and I forgot to mention them. (Did I remember to tell you how that thing sucked gas?). That second pass when the pressure plate failed would have been much better than that first run. I was pumped and had no jitters whatever. On the first pass I have to admit that my clutch leg was doing a tremble. I had the starting line jitters. Has that ever happened to any of you? It felt like the whole world was watching you.
In spite of all the modifications made to the engine, I had never touched the stock distributor so we knew there was something to be gained there. We just bolted on those borrowed carbs and adjusted the curb idle and set the linkage 1-to-1. I wasn't smart enough back in the day to realize the value of the lowly vacuum gauge and we never really knew what the fuel pressure was. I only concerned myself with a tach and oil/temp gauges.
We got the car in the shop back in Ohio and pulled the clutch setup out of the old girl. It was immediately evident what had happened. Man, I thought this RR was going to put me in the poor house! Thank God my college costs were covered (I had a wealthy aunt who left a million dollar trust fund to cover the total cost of secondary education to heirs. At the time, only the interest had to be used to do it. I would have never graduated from U.K. if it wasn't for that.) I added a third job at a local auto parts store where I mixed paint and sold body shop supplies. I also learned to use the valve grinder and the Blanchard mill. It took about 2-weeks before I had the money for the new clutch outfit. The springs were loose in the disc hub so I just replaced everything. I called Ronnie and Jake and asked them what they recommended and they told me to get a Hayes outfit so we picked that up at Ken's Speed and Custom in Lexington, KY. I'll never forget the struggle I had laying on my back on the concrete shop floor trying to wrestle that heavy-assed 4-speed up in that thing. My arms would give out and I would have to let it sit on my chest to give them a break! I kept knocking the throwout bearing out of the fork because I really couldn't see. Finally I gave up and went and got my buddy with all the muscles. His name was Kenny Felix and he worked for his mom and dad at the sprawling B&J Truck Stop there in Aberdeen. With Kenny lifting and me guiding, we got the thing in. Jerry told me I "looked like a monkey trying to F___ a football under there! We celebrated with a few ice-cold Stroh's. Next came the test drive.
I cruised down the road from the shop and headed east on 52. First to second was great. Went to third and NOTHING was there! NOTHING at 4th! Back to the shop I went and back up on the jackstands. Luckily, Kenny was still there and we had the trans out in no time at all. There was nothing wrong with the shifter or the clutch so we pulled the side cover off the trans and found the 3-4 shift fork had broken off at the shaft and was laying in the bottom of the case. I guess that happened with the failed power shift. I was surprised to see they were made out of BRASS. I called Ronnie again and asked him if that had ever happened to him and he admitted that it did - more than once! He gave me the part number for replacement steel ones and advised that I replace the fork on 1-2 also because that's the one that usually breaks because it has to move that big heavy slider with the reverse gear on it. I ordered them from Carpenter Motors where I bought the car and had them in about a week. I had to borrow Johnny's Nova again and listen to my Grandmother preaching, "I told you to get rid of that hunk of junk but you wouldn't listen".
Needless to say, Kenny and I got it back together once again and all was really well. We had already put the slicks back on the Super Stocker and I decided I just had to get those 4.89s out of the Dana and get the 4.10s back in it. That was easy because we kept all the original shims with it. I also took off the Rat Roaster and gave back the big carbs. I could not make money as fast as that RR could spend it! I was lucky to have money to take Jane out for a burger or drive-in movie and that was getting old too. I was happy to have a little more "driveability" back in my car.
Jane and I were enjoying some chopped cherry Cokes at Bissotti's one Friday night after going to the movies and some guys pulled in around us and started some small talk. They were from Ripley, OH, a small river town a few miles west on Hwy 52. One of the guys asked, "Have you seen the baddest car around this area yet? He's coming looking for you". I replied that they found me so I wouldn't be that hard to find by him if he was really looking. I asked what the car was and they told me it was a '67 Camaro with a 327. I mocked them and said, "You've gotta be joking!"....but they weren't. Here I was thinking I'm "all that" with what the Hemi had done and I told them to bring it on for Saturday night at 11:30. We would race for $50. I didn't have $50 but Jerry and Kenny, Johnny and Perry put up the money. It was only after the money was trusted to a mutual 3rd party that we thought to ask who this mystery racer was. They said, "Roddy Milligan, Milligan Auto Parts and Machine". We had heard of him and we could feel our sphincters begin to tighten.
11:30 rolled around and I had taken Jane home at her appointed time and my buddies were there waiting at Bissotti's. The Ripley crew comes rolling in and guess what? It was a '67 Camaro, wicked black, on a TRAILER, 14x32s, full roll bar, gutted interior, Hilborn injected, roller cammed 331", Hemi 4-speed and 5.57 Dana. The heads were totally tricked and it had aluminum rods and Hooker competition headers. We looked at each other (my posse) and realized that our arrogance had cooked our goose. We were left with the choices of forfeiting and losing the money or racing and hope something would break on the Camaro. We chose choice number two.
Up to the track we went on 52 and as usual, there were probably 200 people there to see if I would enjoy public humiliation. We didn't do the rosin thing and I had felt so sure of winning agains't a 327 Camaro that we didn't put on the slicks. All I had were my big Englewood tires and the 4.10 gears and probably 1,000 lbs. of additional weight. On the very first burnout, Milligan carried the front wheels at least 2-feet through first gear. I knew I was toast! I didn't even have my headers uncorked and I could not even hear the Hemi run because of the noise the Camaro made. He must have had it around 8,000 rpm on the leave. The flash light came on and the Camaro lept like a big black frog. Since I couldn't hear my engine, it was all the harder to concentrate on rpm and I hit the tires. I spun all the way through first and 2nd and half way through third. Rubber smoke actually got into the car somehow around the back seat. In my misery, I watched that Camaro grabbing front wheel air in 2nd gear and drove away like I was tied to a tree. Roddy Milligan was a nice enough guy and he had built a C/Gasser that would run on the national record and that was out of my league. We went home and licked our wounds and learned another valuable lesson: look before you leap!!! Some of the locals kidded me about losing to a small block Camaro but the savvy guys knew I was stupid to have gotten myself into it in the first place. Live and learn and go on.
Sox and Martin were coming to Bluegrass Dragway in Lexington, KY, for a match race. I agreed that I would meet them there and bring the Maysville Hemi in race trim. I asked Ronnie if he would make a pass in my car and he said he would. He told me not to leave anything unchecked what-so-ever and I'm glad I listened. We found that the SW electric fuel pump was making noise but not pumping. It was making the mechanical pump on the engine work harder to pull fuel through it. I bought 2 new AC electric fuel pumps and removed the one from the engine. We took the distributor to Dick Weinle and he put it on his Sun machine and, as we suspected, was compromised. He gave it a whole new tune (and it made a difference you could feel!). I also put a set of 6-cylinder torsion bars on the car to try to make the front end react faster along with 90/10 shocks. The car looked like a catfish even with the torsion bar anchor bolts turned all the way up and it worked like stink. We put the stock bars back on it and left the 90/10s. We made a few test passes up on the 52 "track" and the car was very impressive indeed. I didn't borrow the big AFB carbs but we did tune the stock ones with stiffer metering rod springs and richer metering rods. After a run, the plugs had perfect light brown color with excellent fuel distribution cylinder-to-cylinder. We loaded up on the ramp truck and headed for Lexington at the appointed time with our "Is" dotted and our "Ts" crossed. I'm out of available time now to go on but this is a good place to stop for now. Trust me, it gets a lot better!
Pat