I'll be 48 this year and watching the progression of my older friends along with this disgusting economy has changed my outlook. The cost of batteries/tires/etc. required to keep my small fleet of Mopars in service has become a life-altering negative investments vs. a hobby I can support with side jobs and selling some parts.
The financial aspect of the hobby has changed everything. As an example, I should be excited about getting the GTS back out for some 1/4 mile therapy yet I find myself dreading the call to order a drum or two of 110 Sunoco. I try not to think about it but it's difficult to ignore with the price of....everything.
Another for instance is my 67 D600 beater dump truck. It has been sitting for a few seasons and I need to haul some rock from the neighbor's old rock pit for road maintenance. I cringe at the thought of resurrecting it not because of the labor but the potential cost inolved. I'm not sure how many more $200 group 24 batteries I can handle buying just based on principle alone.
My 66 Coronet just had a PowerMaster 95A alternator die. It has about 8 hours of runtime and maybe 500 miles on it. I'm so distusted (out of 1 year warranty Made in USA) that I'll letifsit for a few months. Again,the principle of spending an additional $164 irks me for than the pleasure of driving the car.
It's an uphill battle at this point. I'm hopeful for better things to come in the future.
In the meantime,the rich will get richer and I'll be brown bagging PB&J for lunch trying to save up for some race gas.
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I was told last Friday (I have not yet verified this keep that in mind) that the bill banning leaded fuel at any track in Oregon with a population of over 500k passed and is now law.
That means that after all these years, decades of drag racing at PIR is essentially over. That will kill 90% of the cars that still happen to run there.
I spent most of my late teens through my 30’s fighting the city to live up to its own laws regarding parks and their use. I went to countless meetings, spent hours on the phone and I even spent my own money on a couple of lawyers to look over the exact laws governing the park to make sure I was correct. And it didn’t matter.
It started with two lying promoters. I’ll name them because I do not care. The first one I never dealt with. That’s Bill Donor. The second, Jim Rockstadt I dealt with many many times.
Both were liars and I proved it. They made claims that were complete fabrications and the city knew it and still knows it.
In 1986 I met Mike Dunn at PIR. That was the last of the fuel cars to go down the track. I spent two days hanging with him and his skeleton crew watching and learning. He is a very cool cat. At the end of the show he said this track is the best track west of the Rockies by far. It’s a crying shame it’s going down. I could only agree.
Fast forward to 1998 and Woodburn was making a killing on the Pro Stock Invitational and had been for several years.
The Pro Stock cars traveling from Sonoma to Seattle on the Western swing would stop in and test at Woodburn. When we caught wind of that, we all went down to watch. A half dozen of us. We were surprised when we showed up at the number of people there, doing the same thing! And that became the Pro Stock Invitational.
The cars could make as many runs as they wanted on Tuesday and Wednesday was the show. A Chicago Style Shootout. It was incredible what I learned down there and how open the guys were to answer questions.
Anyway, Pete was running the drag race program at PIR and maybe he still is and he wanted a piece of that pie. So he got a “noise variance” (what a joke and lie that is) and brought in four Pro Stock Trucks for a match race.
My fat happy *** was off work at 1400 and I was at the track by 1425. Sadly, some shenanigans were going on down south and only two of the four PST’s showed up. Bart Price in a Chevy and David Nickens in a Dodge. I was pissed off that two of the trucks didn’t show but I found out later why they didn’t. Drag racing is a dirty business and I’m not going to say more things than I already am due to blow back.
Anyway, I went over and started talking to Nickens. Another great guy and genius builder and tuner. I got to spend the entire show with him, hanging in his pit, watching and learning.
He was there about an hour and he asked me why this track took a back seat to another track down south and bit. I told him city politics and gutless racers.
I told him I checked the weather and when the sun went down we’d get Disneyland conditions and he kind of smirked like I was full of crap. He didn’t know at that point how right I was.
He and Price go up to make their first pass and I’m fright on the starting line. Nickens drops the hammer and drives right through the clutch. He actually killed the clutch. I watched him throw the entire clutch in the scrap bin he went through it so hard.
So I just causally mentioned to him about how the track was deceptive and that it had the best bite around. He looked at me kind of funny so I let it go.
Round two and the sun was almost down. It sets at the west end of the track and the sun is right in your eyes. Nickens made it to second gear before he drove through the clutch. Again.
When he got back to the trailer he was clearly pissed off. He trashed one clutch and beat up a second one. He looked at me and said WTF? Is this track always like this? And I said yes, when the city spends the money to prep it correctly.
Then he tells me that at a certain other track, he was informed that PIR was a **** track, it had no bite and it was a garbage dumped. Then he said I think I was lied to. I agreed.
For his final hit he put his National Event tune up in the truck and on that pass he was .15 off the National Record. He later told me had he known that the track was that good from the first pass he could run under the National Record at PIR.
He was clearly pissed off.
But, the stunning thing was right after the last pass, a guy named Larry Morgan shows up. And I’m thinking unless they tell me to leave I’m not going anywhere. I kept my mouth shut and my ear wide open.
That’s when I learned the full pop about what went on down Interstate 5 a bit earlier. I’ll keep that to myself but you can fill in the blanks and figure it out. He dug the first clutch out of the crap can and showed Morgan. Then he says to Larry that the National Event should be held and PIR and not SIR which is now Pacific Raceways again.
Then the bomb dropped. For 1999, Nickens and Morgan would be running the Pro Stock car program and the Johnsons were OUT. I was stunned the Chrysler shat all over the Johnson family like that. But it was all true.
I told some close friends the story and they thought I was bullshitting. It was all true and proved out in 1999.
I went to the PSI at Woodburn in 1999 and hung with Nickens for a bit. He was buried in work, fight in that junk skirted block Chrysler forced on him. And Roy Johnson was there.
I met Roy and Allen at SIR in 1996 when they were qualifying 14-18ish but working on the engine to make it competitive. Great people. I still have the shirt Allen gave me. In 1996 the Johnsons didn’t have a contract with NHRA auto sell their merchandise at the track so Allen gave me a big swag bag of cool stuff. I just had to keep it to myself and not show the stuff off at the track.
Roy was at the PSI in Woodburn in 1999. I’m not going to publicly say what he told me but his frustration level was incredibly high.
Eventually Chrysler gave the program back to Roy and he gave Chrysler TWO legit Pro Stock Championships. Classy family.
Anyway, that’s one of many PIR a stories I have and it’s terribly sad and frustrating to watch the city and now the state kill the park that was established to do the very thing it was supposed to do, and that was to keep drag racing off the streets of Portland.
It won’t be long and drag racing will be gone. Then you’ll have bicycle racing on Tuesday nights, nothing on Wednesday nights, Thursday nights will be motocross until the drag racing is gone then the city/state will go after that.
The weekends will be for the wine and cheese crowd. What a sad shame it is.
