Once upon a time...

For those who have not been following the rebirth of our 1971 Corvette, let me tell you that we began planning our trip to Bowling Green with the Corvette 50th Anniversary Caravan nearly two years prior to the actual event.  Our big-block Vette had been stuffed into the corner of our race shop waiting for the day that we could devote our efforts to a complete rebuild.  Little did we know just how much work it would take to bring the car back to life.

In 2001, Dave became acquainted with Nikki McDonald, another teacher at the school where he taught.  Her husband, Chris, had already started a similar rebuild on his 1969 convertible, Killer, and offered to help us with our project.  Chris told us about the 2003 Corvette 50th anniversary celebration.  It seemed a long way off.  Two years should be plenty of time.  We thought it would be a lot of fun for the four of us to join the Florida caravan for the celebration and I thought it would be much more relaxing than our racing adventures.  Silly me.

Time went quickly.  Chris finished his rebuild on Killer.  Our Vette was to be the mirror image, only as a coupe…big flares, big block, big side-pipes, black and mean.  The car was in far worse shape than we thought.  You can see the pictures on our rebuild page.  Our motor was delivered 2 months later than we expected and then our engine builder took longer than we had anticipated also.  Long story short, the very first time we drove the car, after cutting it up into little pieces and gluing it back together, was Fathers’ Day, June 15th.  It was an exciting day, but it had a cooling problem and still needed painting.  The next week was spent sanding and painting the car.  We added a second electric fan and drove it a few more miles.  It still ran hot and Dave was not happy with the brakes.  Were we going to get it fixed in time?  Dave worked long hours and I tried to keep my spirits up.  The day of reckoning, June 24th, was fast approaching.

06/21/03 – Saturday (3 days & counting)

The 3rd Saturday of each month, from 5-9, is the cruise-in at the local K-Mart.  We had been attending these for the past year and this was to be the “coming out” for our car.  The plan was for Killer and Bruiser (Chris’ name for our Vette) to arrive together with the side-pipes roaring.  Dave spent the day replacing the two electric fans with an engine cooling fan and fabricating an aluminum shroud to cool the big block.  He arrived home around 5:00pm and I washed the car while he showered and then we rushed up to meet Chris and Nikki.  The cooling problem seemed to be gone, but the brakes were still mushy and the motor was running rich.  We had a great time at the cruise-in anyway and attracted a lot of attention.  The four of us discussed our plans for the caravan.  Chris and Nikki were going to drive their motorhome and trailer Killer.  That way we could take tools and some spares.  There isn’t much storage room in a C3.  We went home tired, but happy.  The water temperature had dropped 40 degrees.  Maybe we’ll make it.

The car went back up on jack-stands.  Dave worked most of the day on the carb.  He changed spark plugs and we bled brakes.  At the end of the day, it was decided that the car needed to go back to the engine builder for some carb work.  Time is slipping away. 

Only one more day to get ready.  Dave drove Bruiser back up to the engine builder and had the power valves on the carb changed.  On the way back he stopped by Chris’ house to make some adjustments to the electric headlight motors.  There, he discovered the valve for the evacuator hose on the header had failed and the hose had split.  Optimistically, I loaded up my car with some stuff to put in the motorhome and headed up to Chris’ house.  At 4:00pm the new hoses were ready at Napa, so we went over and picked them up.  After the car was repaired, we drove the 13 miles home, loaded up the truck with the spare tire, gas can and parts, and drove back up to put these on the trailer.  It was around 10:00 pm by the time we got back home.  Dave was still worrying about the brakes and now the evacuator system was on his mind also.  We only had 198 miles on the odometer.  A sleepless night followed.

The Jacksonville caravan was leaving town at 2:00pm.  Our plans were to meet the McDonalds at a rest stop on I-10 west of town at 1:30pm and let the caravan catch us.  Dave spent the morning changing the brake pads.  I tried to clean the greasy prints off the car and waited, not so patiently, for the car to be set back on the floor so I could attempt to stuff our belongings into the small space behind the seats.  The cubby-holes in the back were crammed full of all the tools we could fit in them.  The flashlight and fire extinguisher shared the space with our bags.  Three days worth of clothes for a week meant I’d need to do laundry.  Oh, well.  After showers and last minute preparations, Dave’s parents came over to take pictures and then…nervous, but excited…we were off!

We arrived at the rest stop at 1:30pm on the dot.  Chris and Nikki were waiting for us along with his Dad, who planned on attending the BBQ that night in Jasper.  We chatted a moment and determined that we would lead the way, so Chris could watch our car for any problems.  At 3:00pm, after an uneventful trip, we pulled into the Days Inn at Lake City.  The Jacksonville caravan never passed us and the caravan from south Florida was not there yet either.  Shortly after our arrival the Vettes started pouring in.  The Florida caravan, with Andy Pilgrim in the lead, was the biggest in the nation with 535 cars.

Bruce Glueck Chevrolet was sponsoring the BBQ at his residence, Gator Island, in Jasper.  The McDonalds were friends of Bruce and they were going to sleep in their motorhome at his place. It was about a 30 minute drive so they headed on up the road.  We unpacked and I cleaned the road grime off of Bruiser.  We joined several other Vettes for the drive to the BBQ.  There were Vettes everywhere!  We parked in a field across the road as the area around the BBQ was filled.  The weather was great.  The food was great.  The people were great.  The music was great.  We signed the Florida caravan banner and Andy Pilgrim signed our 2001 Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona picture and book.  (We raced in the same race as Andy and Dale Earnhardt, Sr.)  Everything was great and we enjoyed a nice ride back to the hotel.  Or so I thought!

Back at the hotel, Dave discovered that the evacuator valve and hose had burned out again.  The heat from the header was too much for even the silicone hose.  Now what do we do?  How can we fix it?  Our caravan was scheduled to leave Lake City at 6:00 in the morning.  Do we have to give up and go back home?  Another sleepless night.

At 6:00am we were in the parking lot of Lowe’s Home Improvement.  Dave purchased a short length of pipe and some fittings. In the parking lot he used these to move the evacuator valve away from the header and replaced the valve again.  We went back to the hotel and packed up.  It was 8:00am when we left Lake City.  The caravan had already left and we couldn’t reach Chris and Nikki on the FRS radios or the cell phone.  Finally, we managed to get Nikki on the cell phone.  They were ahead of us near the Jasper exit. It took a while to catch up with them and then we continued our oddessy to AMS.  We were due in at noon and made it right on time.  It seems the evacuator problem was fixed!

The paddock area of AMS was a traffic jam of Corvettes.  We were scheduled to run our five hot laps on the road course at 1:20pm, so we rushed the car to tech to get it inspected.  (Now this was beginning to feel like a race weekend!)  The inspectors looked for leaks, loose parts, checked the brakes, steering, seatbelts and gave the car a general overall.  Once we had the green window sticker of approval, Dave and I went looking for the Drivers’ meeting scheduled for 12:30pm.

At the Drivers’ meeting, they explained the Rules of the Road.  Many of these people had never driven on a race track before.  The road course was about one mile and would not include any of the oval course.  There would be about five cars on track each session for a warm-up lap, five hot laps, and a cool down lap.  The only restrictions on speed were your own ability and no passing.  This was going to be fun!

We finished the Drivers’ meeting just in time to grid for our turn on track.  Some people were not comfortable driving their car at speed so Andy Pilgrim volunteered to drive for them, while they rode along.  As we pulled up, Andy was just going on track in a pretty, yellow C5.  He beat the snot out of that car!  That owner got the ride of their life.

Our group was next.  We were second on track following another yellow C5.  Two other  cars followed us out.  This was the first test for Bruiser.  Even though Dave declared that the set-up was “way loose” and the brakes were…shall we just say…lacking, the ride was a blast!  I could feel the car sliding in the corners and the power in the straights was awesome.  Everyone watching seemed to enjoy the action and the sound of the side pipes roaring.  Actually, I liked the sounds of the down-shifting too.  That’s cool, feeling the car hunt, take a set and GO!  I want to do it again!

The car behind us spun out, but didn’t hurt anything.  Our brakes were cooked so, after our laps we parked the car to let it cool off.  Other than the fact that the key wouldn’t come out of the ignition and some tire wear, Bruiser seemed to pass the test in good form.

After the brakes cooled and the key problem was fixed, we lined up to do five parade laps on the oval.  About 40 cars were in this group.  This wasn’t as much fun as the road course, but we did get up to about 100mph in the corners and it was neat to be up on the banking, next to the wall.  Riding along on both tracks gave me an idea of what Dave experiences when he races.

Our next challenge was the drive from AMS on the south side of Atlanta, to our hotel in Kennesaw on the NW side.  This was to be our departure point for Bowling Green in the morning.  Rush hour had started and an accident had three lanes of I-75 blocked.  It was a nightmare…one huge parking lot for miles.  Chris and Nikki were sipping cool drinks and eating snacks in the motorhome, while Dave was fighting with the clutch in our car.  The clutch was hot, but the engine stayed cool and the A/C worked great.  Dave struggled with the clutch and I nervously watched the gas gauge, as we inched our way for hours.  Just one exit before our intended exit, we gave in to my building panic and worked our way from the far left lane, across five lanes of traffic to exit for gas.  We really didn’t know how accurately our gas gauge was reading.  We put 13 gallons in what we figure is a 15 gallon (usable) tank.  That’s close enough for me.

At 6:00am we said a sad goodbye to Chris and Nikki.  We wanted to get a head start on the caravan because we were running slower than the pace they set.  We figured if we started out ahead of them, eventually they would pass us and we would end up  at the back of the pack by the time we arrived in Bowling Green.  The caravan leader and about 10 cars passed us shortly after we started, but even with the extra gas stops our big motor requires, the rest of the pack never caught up.  We found out later, that they had problems of their own.  Bruiser ran flawlessly.  The day was overcast with low-hanging clouds.  Our trip through the mountains and up to Monteagle was wonderful.  The big block pulled us up the steep incline effortlessly.  We made it through Nashville without any delays and pulled into the parking lot at the National Corvette Museum around 10:30am CST.  We made it!

It was great.  There wasn’t any traffic problem and we parked right under the museum sign.  The first item on my agenda was to pick up our free caravan t-shirts.  We did this without waiting in line at all.  It seems we beat the California caravan of 1000 cars also.  For once things were looking good for us.  We shopped a little, signed the “Caravan Ends Here” banner and checked out the displays

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One vendor was Classic Car Collages, who would take digital pictures of the car inside and out, and create a collage.  To commemorate our trip, we signed Bruiser up for a photo-shoot.  We had only ½ hour to get all the road grime off the car.  I also had to get all the “stuff” out of the interior (or hidden).  Bruiser attracted a lot of attention as we made our way through the parking lot to the designated area.  Once there, the photographer had trouble getting his  pictures due to all the people checking out our car.  The finished collage really turned out great.

Around 3:00pm we decided it was time to find our hotel.  We had accomplished everything important on our list for the Museum. I had booked our hotel a year earlier sight-unseen.  All the usual hotels were booked full, so I decided to try a “Mom & Pop” place.  Bad idea.  No way were we staying there!  We made a few phone calls to other hotels without any luck so we decided to get in the car and go looking.  Our second stop was the Holiday Inn on Scottsdale.  They didn’t have any rooms, but the desk person got on the phone, called around the city and found us a room at the Best Western.  It was a Jacuzzi suite, but I could suffer through that!  We quickly made our way over to the BW and booked the room.  Then we had to go back and collect our stuff from the previous place.  Out a little $$ and paying more for the suite, we had Hardees for dinner and settled in.  We spoke with Nikki on the phone and they were safely back home.  Bruiser was comfortably parked where we could watch him from our 3rd story window…a beautiful sight.  (The Jacuzzi was nice too.)

Our sleep was interrupted at 6:15am by a phone call from Chris.  They were going to drive Killer up to Bowling Green.  WooHoo!  Killer was coming to the party.  Once again, our day started early.

While the car was still damp with dew, we gave it a quick wipe-down.  It was never done very quickly as we were constantly, but pleasantly, interrupted by interested passer-bys.  This was one of the most fun things about the whole trip…talking with other Vette owners.  We knew that the parking passes for the Nashville Coliseum were being handed out at the museum from 8-10, but we also knew that it would be a major traffic jam…and heard later, it was.  Around 9:00, we decided to see if things had calmed down a bit and headed over to the museum and joined the line of Corvettes on I-65 waiting to get into the museum grounds.  We were told the parking passes were all gone, which wasn’t a surprise, but it was a disappointment.  After parking the car, we took a tour of the museum.  Dave liked the racecars that were on display.  The C3VR Forum group was going to meet at 1:00 across the street, do a road tour of the area and top it off with dinner, so we headed back to the hotel to freshen up.

It was a given that before we went anywhere, we gassed up Bruiser.  Of course, this delayed us once again as Dave proudly showed someone at the gas station what was under the hood.  Finally, about 1:30pm we pulled into Jerry’s Restaurant.  It was fun to meet other people involved with the C3VR forum.  Not all of the people at Jerry’s were registered, but all shared our enthusiasm for Vettes.  Jim Olson, aka Norsky, had orchestrated the gathering.  I think it was Steve White, who “created” the road tour and it was great!  Norsky distributed maps and instructions to each of us.  Our pack of 10 cars left the museum and in short order, were cruising through the twisty, hilly, country roads of Kentucky.  Nolin River Dam offered an excellent opportunity for a photo shoot.  The view was spectacular.  The highlight of the tour was the Green River Ferry, where 3 cars at a time where transported across the river on a ferry tethered to cables.  The pleasant afternoon drive was a welcomed change to the interstate driving of the past 3 days.  Our road tour ended at the Santa Fe Cattle Company steakhouse on Scottsville road and several more C3VR members joined us for dinner.  The combination of the early morning, the road tour, good food and company left us exhausted and ready to return to the hotel.  Did I mention our room had a Jacuzzi?  Chris and Nikki left a message that they had reached Nashville and would spend the night there.  Meeting up with them again in the morning would be fun.

06/28/03 – Saturday (Mammoth Cave)

Dave was in the parking lot attending to Bruiser when Chris & Nikki pulled in.  It was great to be reunited and we looked forward to the rest of the weekend with great anticipation.  Killer and Bruiser would rule the streets.  We gave up on the Nashville Cruiz passes and decided to drive up to Mammoth Cave and do one of the walking tours.

The McDonalds opted for the four-hour tour, but we figured two hours were enough for us, so we planned on meeting back at the hotel and parted ways.  The cave was cool enough for a sweatshirt and took us over the Bottomless Pit, through Fat Man’s misery, and at one point, we climbed 138 steps.  Enough walking, we ate a sandwich at the snack shop and headed back to the hotel.

We passed the museum on I-65 at exit 28 and were approaching our exit 22 when, we were approached by the “Green Slime” Mallett Corvette driven by Chuck Mallett.  After a brief discussion (or two) we went our separate ways with a mutual respect for each other.  By this time we were approaching exit 6 and exited (yep), for more gas and headed back up the road to our hotel.

Chris and Nikki returned from Mammoth Cave and the four of us went back to the Santa Fe Restaurant to meet up with the C3VR gang again.  After dinner, Dave relaxed while I caught up on the laundry.  We were both looking forward to going back to the museum with both cars on Sunday.

06/29/03 – Sunday (National Corvette Museum)

Dave and I slept in while Chris and Nikki went to breakfast with friends.  Mid-morning we joined the line of cars on I-65 going to the museum.  We saw some parking spaces under the museum sign so I jumped out of the car and held up the orange tape as Bruiser and Killer slipped in.  It was a great spot to watch the cars coming in.  We spent most of the afternoon sitting in the shade of the sign and talking with people about our cars.

Jim Olson rejoined us on the lawn and after Chris and Nikki headed back for the hotel, Dave bought the book, Corvette - 50 Years, and had it autographed by the author, Randy Leffingwell and GM Corvette engineer, Dave McLellan.  

We ate our hotdogs and apple pie and had seen plenty of Chevrolet.  This was our last night at Bowling Green.  The 2nd half of our odessy would begin in the morning…the long trip home.

06/30/03 – Monday (The long haul home)

Our plans were to get an early start and drive the entire distance in one day.  Early ended up being about 8:30am after we spent some time in the parking lot discussing cars again.  It was just south of Nashville that I decided that the trip had gone pretty well and that the car was doing fine and I could relax a bit.  Wrong.

Only a minute after I shut my eyes, Dave said one of “those” words.  The voltmeter gauge was pegged on the 18 mark.  We radioed Chris & Nikki, who were following in Killer and pulled off to take a look under the hood.  There was nothing we could do by the side of the road so we turned on the headlights and A/C to drain as much voltage as we could and continued down the road.  The voltage dropped to 16 so we drove on a few more miles to the next gas station.

Rain from a tropical storm was in the forecast and wouldn’t you know…that’s where it started.  The alternator was toast and the 50 amp fuse was blown.  Dave and Chris pulled it out and Nikki and I waited with Bruiser while they drove Killer to Manchester, TN in search of a new one.  It took about 2 hours to get the new alternator and install it.  That done, the car still wouldn’t start.  Maybe the battery was drained.  So we push started the car and headed on our way.  At least the voltage was looking good again.

The next gas stop, no dice, the starter didn’t work again.  Dave found a loose ground wire.  Maybe that was the problem.  Again, we push started the car.  Actually, it doesn’t push too hard. (grin)

In Atlanta, Cordelle, and Valdosta we were still push starting the car.  Only in Valdosta, the car was flooded and I swear we did laps around that gas station parking lot!  By this time it was about 9:30pm and Dave hadn’t eaten all day.  The rest of us had grabbed bits of food at the gas stops.  Once the car started we drove it a block to Shoney’s, where Dave bravely shut it off and we went in to replenish the crews’ energy.  Another push start and we were on our way again.

The intersection of I-10 and Chaffee Road was our last planned gas stop.  It was after midnight and I was tired so Dave kept the car running, Chris pumped the gas and I paid.  A few miles down the road, Chris and Nikki headed for their house and we continued home.  Our oddessy was completed around 1:30am EST after 16 hours of driving (and pushing)!

THE END

Summary

We drove 1,632 miles, spent $282.67 on 181 gallons of gas.  That’s about 9mpg…not bad.  The A/C was wonderful. The motor ran great and used no oil!  We have a “fix-it” list: replace the starter, the leaf spring is delaminating, the clutch needs adjusting, the rear-end seal leaks, and a few other small things.  Our arms are tired from waving (and pushing) and our ears are ringing from the noise of the big block, but we had a BLAST!!  We packed a month of fun into this week.

We spoke with people from Finland, Australia, Germany, Nova Scotia, Sweden, England, and from all over the U.S.  There were thumbs-up from road crews, people standing on corners, mowing lawns, driving in their pickup trucks and blasts on the horn from semi-trucks.  I think Bruiser had his hood up more than closed…and that’s not counting the repair time.  Lots of pictures were taken of our car and we took lots of pictures of other cars.  Did I mention we had a blast?

I hope that my accounting will give those of you not able to make the trip a feel for the highs and lows, the excitement of an undertaking such as ours.  This was more than a party it was a challenge met and exceeded.  Bruiser DID Bowling Green!