Birth of the Blue Missile


The rest of the trip was fairly without incident until we got to New York. We stopped only once and crashed at a rest stop about half way there. We continued the next day taking turns driving. I also remember there was a very slow oil leak at the back of the intake manifold, and we had to find some oil in Virginia. Back then I was running Castrol R, which is a castor bean based oil, it was far superior to petrol based oils. At the time, synthetic oils were not invented yet, or at least not available to the public, so I was running the best available. Since it was bad mojo to mix Castrol R with conventional oils I had to find an actual distribution warehouse and then, they would only sell me a full case. Well at least finding oil for a while wouldn’t be a problem.

When we got to New York and were about to get on one of the freeways I was asleep in the passenger’s seat. All of a sudden I awoke and the world was spinning at a freighting rate of speed. OH ****! IT WAS THE CAR! Glen had come over the hill at the full legal speed and traffic was stopped about fifty yards in front of him. All he could do was put the car in a spin and try to absorb the forward motion that way. By the grace of God we did not hit anyone and he managed to drive it out and come to a safe stop at the back of the line. We hung out with Bill for about a week and returned to Miami without any further incident.

I continued to work at the CB shop and took a part time job at a restaurant a couple of the CBrs also worked at. It was News Year Eve at the end of that year. A young lady and I had just gotten off shift at the restaurant; we hopped in the Duster and were on our way to a party of CBrs of course. While driving through a small residential neighborhood, I entered an intersection where I had no stop sign, but cross traffic did. We got hit broadside by an obviously drunk black couple who ran their stop sign. Before the car had stopped spinning RHL (her handle was red headed lady) had grabbed the mic and was on the radio with the REACT monitor calling the police. When the police got there the other couple was still in their car and both of us were on the street looking at the damage. My car was totaled, this time the frame really was toast, and I was in tears. Keep in mind that we both were stone cold sober; we were on the way to the party. After all the paper work was done and they were issued the ticket I had the car towed to the CB shop.

There was an empty slab at the end of a small driveway behind the shop. I put it there and started to dismantle the car. I pulled the engine/tranny and pulled all the electronics out. I boxed up anything I could get off the car; I also pulled the rear end with the leaf springs attached. While the engine was out I contacted Crane Cams, which is in Ft Lauderdale and asked them about porting and flow benching the heads. They dissuaded me from that by telling me, that just by gasket matching the pieces I could accomplish 90% of what they would accomplish, for very little money. I did drive up there and purchase a set of crane high performance hydraulic lifters. I borrowed a Dremel tool from Tommy and proceeded with the gasket matching process on the heads and the intake manifold. I also did a lapping type valve job on the heads.

About this time the CB thing wasn’t making enough money and I got a job in a general motor shop in down town Miami. A friend and I transferred all the pieces to the shop so I could rebuild the car.
I was still insured so I contacted them and got a settlement of $750 for totaling out my car. I was blown away, the car was only a few years old, I could never get a good looking replacement car for that. I ended up settling for a ’72 duster with a slant six. Schumacher was not around so I dropped the 340 into that body and had to fabricate the engine mounts. This was an effort that in retrospect was not fully successful. The engine sat hard against the firewall at the tranny tunnel, and at a slight downward angle. I still had the headers so they were installed. But from the collector back I ran flexible exhaust pipe without mufflers. This was just to get the exhaust out from under the car. Boy was it loud. The car ran but I knew I would have to do something about the way the engine was sitting. I installed one of those dual level AAR prostock hood scoops but put it on facing the rear. I cut out the leading edge of the base and fabricated a vertical piece to fill the void, and installed the oil pressure and temp gauge so they were visible from the cockpit. One more thing, during the time the wreck was on the slab someone stole the two bucket seats, so I was without proper seats in the new body. I was using a couple of orange crates for temporary seating. When I took the car for tuning rides down the alley next to the shop I was also shifting the tranny with my fingers through a hole in the floor board,

More later
Andrew