Captainkirk's Duster project

Well, I wasn't really finished with this chapter, but you guys are making me feel bad, so I'll give you what I've got.....enjoy!

……I’'ve got a Hot Rod Heart //Got a one way ticket to the open road, c’'mon //Got a redline engine and I’'m rarin'’ to go, put the pedal to the metal, if you wanna ride, if you wanna ride, let'’s go!
John Fogerty, “Hot Rod Heart”


Two things happened that really piqued my interest. First, two guys moved in across the street with built machines; one a Chevy II with a built 327 and a tunnel ram. This got my attention, like, immediately. The other was a Mach 1 Mustang. I think it was a 351 Cleveland, but I’'m sorta foggy on the details. The second, and biggest eye-opener was my cousin (well, I'’ll call him that; he was a relative on my dad'’s side and called Dad “Uncle”) coming to town, unannounced and just showing up on our doorstep, like stray dog. None of us knew him from Adam, but we all took an instant liking to him; he was a likable kind of guy. He had just moved to town to be the manager of a tire store and had found us in the phone book…. Our last name was not exactly “Smith” and it didn'’t take a rocket scientist to make the connection…….
Anyway, Steve had this car……. It was a ’68 or ’69 AMX, 390 four speed, painted pink of all things with a huge mural of the Pink Panther on both sides and “Pink Panther” graphics, …all hand-painted by some incredible auto-artist; very professional looking, and to me, very cool.
Steve, in addition to being a nice guy, was also a drag racing fanatic. Being both, he offered to take me and my little brother along up to the Lake Geneva drag strip. You didn'’t need to ask me twice! Here it was that I got my first whiff of nitro-fuel, got to walk with Steve in and around the pit area, and feel the Heavy Metal Thunder of Pro Street motors rattle and buzz my teeth and rock me to the very depths of my soul. I was in absolute awe of these machines, being 14 and not yet driving. We sat in the stands and watched Steve race; in total awe of this 11-second AMX we had just driven up here in (!!!), with little more changes than throwing on a pair of slicks and a few tweaks of the Holley perched atop the manifold. I was instantly smitten with the little pink vixen and became an instant muscle car nut and AMC fanatic. (Think about this the next time you have the opportunity to reach out to a kid with your own car) Here were two people; Steve and cousin David, who had let me ride the little Honda around the machine shed, who had no idea the profound impact their simple acts of generosity would have on a kid.
We probably went with Steve to the strip 3 or four times in all, each trip indelibly etching my mind with unforgettable sights and sounds and smells and vibes. After those trips, I would lay awake in bed at night, tossing and turning, replaying the races under the hot summer sun in my mind’s eye and hearing once again the rumble of cast iron thunder; smelling the bleach and rubber and hot asphalt and feeling that excited squirm in my guts as the adrenaline began to flow when the pink missile would launch, clenching my fists and yelling “"Go, Go, GOOO!”" at the Pink Panther and beaming with pride when he'’d win the heat. (“Hey, that’s my cousin!”) I would restlessly toss and turn under the sheets, unable to sleep, with my senses in full swing as the day would unfold over and over in my head; like a song you just can’t ditch, burned deep in your brain’'s CD drive on a permanent loop.
It was still all magic to me; this motor stuff. I watched intently and listened with my full attention to Steve and the other guys talk; I learned to discern the mild rumble of a street machine from the lumpy loping idle of a hi-lift roller cam; the crackle and pop of a nitro-fueled rail spitting two-foot blue rooster tails from open headers from the throaty roar of a Z/28 with dual Thrush’es, and the asthmatic, wheezing whine of a blown, nitro-fueled motor from the moaning whoooosh of a Rat motor sucking open the secondaries on a Q-Jet. I hungered for the knowledge, the expertise of these guys; to know what made these awe-inspiring Goliaths tick; and what made one tick better than the next. And somewhere, during one of those sleepless, tossing-and-turning nights, I decided that I would have to find out. It called to me, beckoned me…..a muscle motor Siren’'s song.
A trip to the library fixed me up in short order…..several books about cars and opened some mental doors that had been previously shut. Slowly, the mechanics of the automobile began to reveal themselves…...with the exception of the “black magic” of the motor. This was beyond my grasping of the Simple Contexts. But as summer waned to fall, and a new era began, (that of High School), I was bound and determined to crack the code.

There was This “Thing” in high school, called “"prerequisite"...translation; you can'’t take that until you take this”. And so it was for auto shop. You had to be a junior and have taken (and passed) Industrial Arts. OK; where do I sign up?
Industrial Arts started off innocently enough with “Drafting”. Drafting was interesting, but not very exciting. The next course to come down the road was “Woods”. This was more like it. Using sharp, dangerous and potentially deadly power tools was most definitely OK in my book…..I learned what a lot of the big stuff in Dad’s shop could really do, like routers and table saws, and put it to use, building a gun cabinet and other useful gadgets. Then came “Metals”. Suddenly I was getting close to the Holy Grail. I was using lathes, mills, and then gas and arc welding. Next came “Power Mechanics”. I had no idea what this was supposed to be-…perhaps electricity? (power?)

The first day of power mechanics found us in a small classroom full of…..could it be…...Briggs and Strattons?!!!!!!!! Row upon row of used and abused thumpers begging to be disassembled! I took notes and listened attentively to the lectures like a P.I. on a murder case, while most of the other students napped or spaced out. (You have to understand, spacing out was a frequent occurrence during the seventies.) It was like, Week Two, after covering cylinders and pistons, moving on to camshafts and cam timing, that the light finally came on and the Great Shroud Of Mystery was lifted. It was like a miracle healing. Suddenly, I understood! What was once black magic, Mumbo Jumbo, and Jibber Jabber suddenly clicked and made sense. We were given these pitiful Briggs motors to dissect and reassemble like so many biology frogs. The other three guys in my group could care less, frankly; it was interfering in their nap time, so I wrested control of the Briggs away from them and disassembled it by myself in minute detail, then slowly reassembled it like Michaelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I couldn'’t wait to hear it run!