Hot Rod Power tour 2019

I spotted a hearse in traffic leaving the Coliseum and wondered if that might be your car.  

Weather SUCKED today. 53F, 20-30mph winds, and raining makes for quick exits out of venues.  Oh well.  Tomorrow looks pretty nice. 

In reply to wawazat :

Probably us, I didn't see any other hearses, plenty of wagons though.  Weather sucked, but I could be just leaving work right now...

Zeitgeist said:

Indy-Guy said:

In reply to TheRX7Project :

Cool. I'll try to hook up with you there. I'll be bringing my Black Jag XJR. Not sure how interesting it is though.

Link to build thread.

Crap I walked right by you today.  I'll look for it at ft wayne

Sorry. Single day event for me.

Too bad we missed each other. What type of car were you making a drag pass with?

Pics from the Indy Stop:

I had not committed since I had a few question marks in my schedule but those have seemed to worked themselves out.  I now expect to make it up to Norwalk (20 minutes from my house) at about 1:00.  

Had a great time with my son and a friend of his.  Also, my son Tyler said “best day ever”

Here are a few pictures from Norwalk. 

In reply to Indy-Guy :

Crap, I walked right past you too!

Well here's a short video I made of the whole thing, from credential pick-up to when I left.
 

I did leave a little early (5-ish) but I was also there pretty early. They did a great job of making the whole process smooth and quick.

More Indianapolis pics:

This is only HALF the show! I couldn't get a good pic of the other half.

My kid loved seeing the Tred Wear Scraptona "just like in the car book".

SVO-powered '39 Ford? Yes.

This guy rear-ended someone in a rainstorm the week before the Tour, brought it anyway and had people signing his hood for future garage art. He said his favorite was that someone drew his car on his hood:

I love '57 Fords... especially wagons... and for only $16,000 this one could be mine.

The Roadkill rotary was there, now with boost.

The Hot Rod crew was staying at my hotel, so I must not have made a bad choice. These guys were up and at 'em pretty early. I just barely caught a pic of the bus on the way out.

There were 2 guys with orange Hellcats that I hung out with for a while. This one has a 5.4 Whipple on it and is making around 1000hp on pump gas. The owner says it has just over 10,000 miles on it and he's already gone through 3 sets of rear tires.

Overall a great time. The drive there and back was tiresome without cruise control or A/C, but the old girl made it no problem. After talking to the Hellcat guys I realized I made a mistake- I should've stayed with the Tour for the cruise the next day. A lot of fun happens on the cruise- they were sharing stories about cops asking them to do burnouts and other fun stuff. When I do it again, it will surely be for at least a 2-day. I'd like to do the Long Haul eventually, but I'd need something much more comfortable for that.

In reply to TheRX7Project :

Thanks for the back story on the blue mustang, we saw him on the way in but didn't see it at the show, glad to hear it didn't happen on the trip.

Berk you advertisement, I wanted to upload my picture, not visit your website.

We got out to Norwalk around 11.  Plan was to go to the West side of of the city and watch them roll in.

Turns out they were already there.  They wouldn't open spectator parking till noon so rt 18 became the parking lot.

About 20 minutes later the cops came thru and said they were ticketing anyone parked on the side of the road.  We still had 40 minutes until they opened the lot so we drove down to the rt 20/rt 18 overpass and parked there with some mustang guys.  All for the better since the cars were at least moving down there.  I'd much rather see them cruise by than sitting in a parking lot.

This thing was sweet.  I don't seem to have gotten a better picture of it but the paint had TONS of metal flake in it.  Anyone who runs the power tour in a gasser has my respect, I can't imagine bouncing down the highway in a windy rain storm in this thing.

This also kicked off our lesson about the sound of a blower vs a turbo.  

"If you're building a gasser it better have blower whine"

"What if the engine makes enough power without the blower?"

"I don't care if you vent the blower to atmosphere and it costs you power, it has to have that glorious noise"

This guy started the talk about the heavy Chevys.

"I mean the car looks heavy, but it doesn't seem like something you'd want to advertise"

This bus was turbo diesel swapped.  It had a bunch of captain seats in the back but noone was in them.  This started the business discussion about renting out seats for a power tour ride along.

1.  Buy old bus or limo

2.  Fix up

3.  Post ad "ride along on the power tour in vintage bus/limo.  We may or may not make it the whole way"

4.  Realize you didn't even break even on fuel costs.

5.  Give zero Berks because you got to do the power tour in a sweet ass bus

SWMBO suggested a newer shuttle bus may be more reliable, but that's not nearly as cool.

So many comments on the trip it's hard to organize my thoughts.  We had a BLAST!  Great hanging out with my dad for the week and seeing, hearing, and smelling (rubber, unburned hydrocarbons) so many cool cars for DAYS AND DAYS!  

We spoke to the owner of the green/silver '55 Chevy gasser in Fort Wayne.  He is FL based and did the whole tour.  Car was only recently completed after 3 years of build.  He said he needed a retirement project.  Hand built, long tube, fenderwell exit headers to side pipe exhaust, blown SBC, interior matched the exterior (bass boat silver metal flake steering wheel).  

We spotted the center punched Mustang at a number of events and while on the road.  Didn't know the story.

Pulled in to a church parking lot somewhere in IN and watched cars for an hour one day.  Many burnouts ensued as the parked group grew.

Some hotels were pretty nice, some were sketchy.  We booked through the tour group Hot Rod was contracted with.  I'd avoid the Quality Inn in Scottsburg, IN.  

If you do the tour and they offer pace car laps or drag racing or autocross, and you're not driving your Plan B Yukon, do the events!  It was cool watching a sliver '32 Ford coupe on the track at Martinsville, and drag racing at Lucas.  It was fun watching a bunch of people and cars that have never tried autocross do it for the first time.  

We met some great people on the tour and are loking forward to next year! 

A little over 2200 miles for the week (Friday morning through following Friday evening).  20.0mpg average and 42mph average in my '17 Yukon Denali XL 6.2.  The route was mainly back roads and we had a lot of fun blasting through curving roads in the NC and VA mountains.  Pulling up to a gas station with 50 hot rods never failed to make us smile.  People were all laid back and having fun.  Only saw a few road casualties and minimal parking lot work sessions.  We loved that people were driving their cars not trailering them to car shows and then home.