Been kicking back, but time now to move ahead again..

Once we got back from Indy, we went back down to West Virginia, and picked up the truck that broke on out way home. We had rented a car there, drove back to Ohio, rented a truck and drove the truck and rented car back down to West Virginia. West Virginia doesnt' allow rent here, drop there, across state lines.. So the car went back down to following the truck. We loaded up the trailer with car in it. Returned the rental car, and came back in the truck. But that left our broken truck in the parking lot of a hotel in Charleston, West Virginia. A short talk with the hotel manager and a few bucks across his palm, and all was well. They even had a security guard covering the lot. So when we got back, the aluminum tool box was still there, and although unlocked, all was still in it.

A borrowed open trailer, thanks to Bill Rosenberg, and the old man and I were all set to get it done, when Mandie suddently became available. So we left the old man at the shop to chill out, do paperwork, and make phone calls while Mandie and I went and got the truck. A full day of driving and towing, but we got it done, and are back now.

Now back in our shop, the truck engine has good oil pressure, but a definite noise, and diminished power. So we bought a replacement engine, only this time a 360 instead of the stock 318... We had the 360 bored .30 over and now we are waiting for the block, and the crank from it that we had polished.

On the Drag Pak side, we pulled the engine to find very few surprises. We did have a bent cam pin that is more than a bit curious. But after pulling it all apart for complete inspection, crank, rods and pistons went back in yesterday. We are still waiting for the new pins in our cams. The previous motor that blew up had also bent the cam pin on that cam. So we have two cams at the shop being refitted with new pins. We do have the stock drag pak cam as a backup, but that is different enough to change our tunes, and we would rather run the tunes we have. But it is a last chance backup plan in case somethis else bad happens.

Hopefully, we will pick them up today, or tomorrow morning at the latest and finish the Drag Pak engine assembly tomorrow. Then the engine goes back in the car on Thursday.

We are shooting for Norwalk this weekend. Pop had thought it was next weekend, so he wan't panicked about the delay in the cams, and getting the truck back together, but May 21, 22 is the makeup race at Indy, so now he is pushing hard again.

Don't know what we will do if our truck isn't finished by Friday though. We can't take the time to work on the truck and the Drag pak too. In addition, to not having time to do it, we don't have all of the rebuild parts for the 360 yet either...

So it looks like we might have to try to borrow, or worst case, rent a truck with a hitch and light set up for the weekend. I dont want to rent from Enterprise anymore as they gave us keys on the cheapest bent wire keyring you can image and the lock fob kept falling off of it throughout our trip west. Then in Indy, it finally got lost. And now enterprise thinks we should pay for it, but they can't figure how much. So they send a letter to the old man telling to take care of it, and he calls and asks how much , and they dont know. Somehow Enterprise doesn't seem like a good choice. And besides it was a Ford Diesel F250, and it really seems like we ought to be driving a big honking Dodge truck anyhow.

But first things first. Get the Drag Pak back together, and ready to run. Then we will figure out how to get it up to Norwalk. It is important to us that we do Norwalk since it is right in our back yard, and we want to get the car sorted out before going back to Indy.

Remember planning for something bad is not being overly cautious. Because in life, and especially in racing, the question isn't what do you do , IF somethings bad happens. The question is what do you do WHEN something bad happens. We are so far beyond Plan "B", you can't even imagine it. But we keep moving forward, because we keep planning around problems..