Chris Titus car stories
9/11/04, 09:53 PM
#1
Bow Chica Bow Wow
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Please God, let me wake up! - by Christopher Titus
After planning for a year to go to an event with my buddy Marshall (a non-Goodguys event, sorry, won't happen again.) I book an all-night flight. Redeye flights always seem like a good idea "Hey I'll get some sleep and be bright eyed and fired up when we land." Except the ticket people don't let you know that the entire flight you'll be sitting behind a screaming two-year-old who is getting his molars in. Sleep tight. In a little under ten minutes my ears are bleeding and sleep is something I will be putting off for 20 more hours. At the connection in Cleveland the plane gets loaded and then the co-pilot comes on and says "Sorry folks, everything seems to be in order except we can't find the pilot." CAN'T FIND THE PILOT!? I've lost bolts, even a spare tire but the pilot? We get into Chicago 40 minutes late.
My insane buddy Marshall picks me up in his Acura NSX. Traffic is stopped but Marshall isn't. It's amazing how the shoulder of the freeway smoothes out once you hit 80. We pull up to Marshall's beautiful home and he says with a zen like gleam in his eye, "We can still make registration." We load up his big-block-powered '36 Ford humpback phantom convertible and he cranks her to life...nothing...he cranks her to life...*&%$# ! NOTHING! No lights, no power, no NOTHING! The battery cables are hot so we pull them and check the battery, it's fine. After tracing the cables all the way up to the starter we notice it's hot but nothing looks weird. We decide to change the starter instead of doing more diagnosis, calmly he says, "we'll make registration." After pulling the starter and noticing the case is cracked we get a new one under warranty from NAPA Auto (THANKS GUYS), shim it, put it in and hit the road. We have to catch our other pal Greg who has actually left on schedule (freak). This is where 8th grad math comes in, two rodders are traveling to an event, one has left 2 hours earlier than the second. How fast will the second rodder have to travel to make registration. Well, with X being equal, our calculations say we have to HAUL hiney!
At over 100 in a convertible you notice that when it starts to rain the water shoots over the car and you don't even get wet. You also notice the looks of terror from other drivers when a bright purple rod grows huge in their rear view mirror and then blows by at triple digit speeds on a rain soaked highway. I've done some goofy things in my life and this is definitely one of them. Marshall is one of the most sane/insane people I know so I don't worry. The speedo says 105, my buddy looks over at me, his hair blowin' crazily, and says, "we're gonna make registration." Then the typhoon hit.
The rain didn't just increase, it went from a gentle sprinkle to hurricane Medusa in a span of about a quarter mile. The top is down, we can't even see the end of the hood so we aim for a freeway over pass for some shelter. I think the Rod Gods must have been a little ticked at us. We drive under the over pass, Marshall pulls between a couple orange barrels on the side of the freeway and his beautiful '36 drops the passenger side (see, ME!) off a twenty inch cliff! The highway department had been widening the freeway. Highway workers...actually WORKING?
Marshall lets out a very un-zen like "WHAT THE #$%&?!" Now the driver's side wheels of the car are in the air and the passenger side wheels are buried in two inches of a heavy oil-based tar surfacer. Since the car is now high centered at a 45-degree angel, I easily jump over the door...directly into the tar. It's still raining! The "overpass" we have driven under is just girders. The car is teeter-tottering on the oil pan and rear end housing and we are getting drenched. We spring into action, except now the convertible top won't go up! Marsh takes the back seat out, jiggles a wire or two and the top goes up covering all the stuff in the car, which is already soaked. Then the rain stops! Standing in the tar, dripping wet, high centered and having no sleep is just about enough to put a guy over the edge. The only solace I have is "It's not my car and I wasn't driving, WHEW!" Marshalll says, "Let's get it back on the road." My brain thinks it would be funny to ask "Think we'll make registration?" but my body doesn't want to end up face down in the tar, covered in numerous fist marks.
The bridge construction guys are nowhere to be seen. Either they left when the rain hit or they are behind the crane laughing their butts off. I start grabbing wood and 2x4s and stack them by the skewed '36 while Marshall jacks the car out of the muck. We get the car up about 10 inches...and the screw jack folds in half! I'm living in a 1998 Hot Rod Three Stooges movie! We are now in the middle of nowhere, off the road, in tar, stuck, with no jack! AHHHHH!
The good news is that the '36 doesn't have a scratch on it! The nose is only 3 inches off the ground and we didn't even hit it, the oil pan is fine. The only thing wrong until now is the right side has tar splatter and the paint on the cross-member is scratched.
We revert back to our cavemen heritage and start using basic tools to get the car back out of the muck, 2x4s and a twenty-foot 2x12 for a lever are our only implements. I balance on the 2x12 raising the car four inches, Marshall puts some 2x4s under the car. We reset the lever, jack it up four more inches and put some more 2x4s under the car. We repeat this until the car is almost level with the freeway. We continue raising the rod, proud of our brilliance and forgetting the '36 wasn't put into park after the "incident". The second the frame comes off the ground the car starts to roll. I yell for Marshall to move and time stops as the car rolls off the precariously stacked wood and crushes its beautifully painted running board. Definitely a low point. I instantly head over to get more wood because I can't bear to watch Marshall throwing up. Once of the construction workers has come back to the site and brought his camera! How nice! Great! These aren't pictures, they're evidence. A lesser human would have committed Hari-Kari with the radio antenna but Marshall handled it pretty well considering.
This time using 2x12s and some wooden boxes, we get the car back on the road! Victory is ours! Our shoes are tar covered clumps, our clothing is tar covered clumps, I keep waiting for Uncle Remus to show up. Instead of just cutting our losses, getting in the car and driving on, Marshall says, "You're not getting in my car like that." We both change clothes on the shoulder of highway 65 during rush hour traffic! (I'd like to thank the lady in the Ford Taurus for throwing me that dollar.) Twenty miles down the road we walk into a shoe outlet store, two burned out zombies in socks. So the upside is I got new shoes.
After the above nightmare, Marshall still figured if we could have maintained 374 miles per hour the rest of the way, we could have made registration.
After planning for a year to go to an event with my buddy Marshall (a non-Goodguys event, sorry, won't happen again.) I book an all-night flight. Redeye flights always seem like a good idea "Hey I'll get some sleep and be bright eyed and fired up when we land." Except the ticket people don't let you know that the entire flight you'll be sitting behind a screaming two-year-old who is getting his molars in. Sleep tight. In a little under ten minutes my ears are bleeding and sleep is something I will be putting off for 20 more hours. At the connection in Cleveland the plane gets loaded and then the co-pilot comes on and says "Sorry folks, everything seems to be in order except we can't find the pilot." CAN'T FIND THE PILOT!? I've lost bolts, even a spare tire but the pilot? We get into Chicago 40 minutes late.
My insane buddy Marshall picks me up in his Acura NSX. Traffic is stopped but Marshall isn't. It's amazing how the shoulder of the freeway smoothes out once you hit 80. We pull up to Marshall's beautiful home and he says with a zen like gleam in his eye, "We can still make registration." We load up his big-block-powered '36 Ford humpback phantom convertible and he cranks her to life...nothing...he cranks her to life...*&%$# ! NOTHING! No lights, no power, no NOTHING! The battery cables are hot so we pull them and check the battery, it's fine. After tracing the cables all the way up to the starter we notice it's hot but nothing looks weird. We decide to change the starter instead of doing more diagnosis, calmly he says, "we'll make registration." After pulling the starter and noticing the case is cracked we get a new one under warranty from NAPA Auto (THANKS GUYS), shim it, put it in and hit the road. We have to catch our other pal Greg who has actually left on schedule (freak). This is where 8th grad math comes in, two rodders are traveling to an event, one has left 2 hours earlier than the second. How fast will the second rodder have to travel to make registration. Well, with X being equal, our calculations say we have to HAUL hiney!
At over 100 in a convertible you notice that when it starts to rain the water shoots over the car and you don't even get wet. You also notice the looks of terror from other drivers when a bright purple rod grows huge in their rear view mirror and then blows by at triple digit speeds on a rain soaked highway. I've done some goofy things in my life and this is definitely one of them. Marshall is one of the most sane/insane people I know so I don't worry. The speedo says 105, my buddy looks over at me, his hair blowin' crazily, and says, "we're gonna make registration." Then the typhoon hit.
The rain didn't just increase, it went from a gentle sprinkle to hurricane Medusa in a span of about a quarter mile. The top is down, we can't even see the end of the hood so we aim for a freeway over pass for some shelter. I think the Rod Gods must have been a little ticked at us. We drive under the over pass, Marshall pulls between a couple orange barrels on the side of the freeway and his beautiful '36 drops the passenger side (see, ME!) off a twenty inch cliff! The highway department had been widening the freeway. Highway workers...actually WORKING?
Marshall lets out a very un-zen like "WHAT THE #$%&?!" Now the driver's side wheels of the car are in the air and the passenger side wheels are buried in two inches of a heavy oil-based tar surfacer. Since the car is now high centered at a 45-degree angel, I easily jump over the door...directly into the tar. It's still raining! The "overpass" we have driven under is just girders. The car is teeter-tottering on the oil pan and rear end housing and we are getting drenched. We spring into action, except now the convertible top won't go up! Marsh takes the back seat out, jiggles a wire or two and the top goes up covering all the stuff in the car, which is already soaked. Then the rain stops! Standing in the tar, dripping wet, high centered and having no sleep is just about enough to put a guy over the edge. The only solace I have is "It's not my car and I wasn't driving, WHEW!" Marshalll says, "Let's get it back on the road." My brain thinks it would be funny to ask "Think we'll make registration?" but my body doesn't want to end up face down in the tar, covered in numerous fist marks.
The bridge construction guys are nowhere to be seen. Either they left when the rain hit or they are behind the crane laughing their butts off. I start grabbing wood and 2x4s and stack them by the skewed '36 while Marshall jacks the car out of the muck. We get the car up about 10 inches...and the screw jack folds in half! I'm living in a 1998 Hot Rod Three Stooges movie! We are now in the middle of nowhere, off the road, in tar, stuck, with no jack! AHHHHH!
The good news is that the '36 doesn't have a scratch on it! The nose is only 3 inches off the ground and we didn't even hit it, the oil pan is fine. The only thing wrong until now is the right side has tar splatter and the paint on the cross-member is scratched.
We revert back to our cavemen heritage and start using basic tools to get the car back out of the muck, 2x4s and a twenty-foot 2x12 for a lever are our only implements. I balance on the 2x12 raising the car four inches, Marshall puts some 2x4s under the car. We reset the lever, jack it up four more inches and put some more 2x4s under the car. We repeat this until the car is almost level with the freeway. We continue raising the rod, proud of our brilliance and forgetting the '36 wasn't put into park after the "incident". The second the frame comes off the ground the car starts to roll. I yell for Marshall to move and time stops as the car rolls off the precariously stacked wood and crushes its beautifully painted running board. Definitely a low point. I instantly head over to get more wood because I can't bear to watch Marshall throwing up. Once of the construction workers has come back to the site and brought his camera! How nice! Great! These aren't pictures, they're evidence. A lesser human would have committed Hari-Kari with the radio antenna but Marshall handled it pretty well considering.
This time using 2x12s and some wooden boxes, we get the car back on the road! Victory is ours! Our shoes are tar covered clumps, our clothing is tar covered clumps, I keep waiting for Uncle Remus to show up. Instead of just cutting our losses, getting in the car and driving on, Marshall says, "You're not getting in my car like that." We both change clothes on the shoulder of highway 65 during rush hour traffic! (I'd like to thank the lady in the Ford Taurus for throwing me that dollar.) Twenty miles down the road we walk into a shoe outlet store, two burned out zombies in socks. So the upside is I got new shoes.
After the above nightmare, Marshall still figured if we could have maintained 374 miles per hour the rest of the way, we could have made registration.
I think we've all had 'fun' experiences like that at some point.....makes it memorable. 
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