The truck, not the road.
Ladies, this is car talk, but don't skip over it. You'll see why farther down!
Last fall, I sold my Ford F150 truck and enclosed car trailer. I just wasn't using the trailer enough to justify keeping it around, and the truck got too poor gas mileage to use as a daily driver. I should have kept it. It was paid for, in good shape, fairly low mileage.
I regretted it almost immediately. I got a little open trailer I can haul stuff in, but it folds up, and it's a pain to get it out. So I started looking around, and discovered I liked the looks, etc., of an El Camino. For our non-US friends, this is a car called a "Ute" in Australia. It's a car with a pickup bed. Chevrolet made them from 1959-1987, with a couple of years of non-production in there.
Well, there's an "El Camino community." They're kind of quirky vehicles, and that almost always attracts collectors. There is a "National El Camino Owner's Association," which I joined.
I have a 1986 El Camino. Not a bad little vehicle. It gets about 18 mpg on the highway, has a decent ride, can pull a light trailer, and I can go buy hardware and stuff and now worry about it.
This past weekend, we had a "First Annual North Texas Grudge Race" at the Dallas Dragway in Crandall, TX. This is a neat little dragstrip with good facilities. Saturday evening, they ran a packed race program with everything from bone-stock cars to sportsman dragsters that do 1000 feet (instead of a full quarter mile) in less than 5 seconds and 170 mph.
We had about 10 El Caminos there, ranging from my essentially stock vehicle to one full-race El Camino. I took over my T, too.
My El Camino did the quarter mile in 17.5 seconds at about 75 mph. That's almost exactly what they did when they were brand new.
We did two time trials, then ran eliminations on the bracket system. In bracket racing, you can put any two cars side by side and have a race. Each car puts a "dial-in time" on his windows. That is the fastest time the driver thinks he can make a quarter mile in. In my case, I had 17.70 on my windows, because in the time trials, my fastest time was 17.78 seconds. When two cars come up to the starting line the dial-in is posted for each car. The difference between the two is the delay between the starting lights for each car. If I came up against a 14.5 second car, I would get a green light 3.2 seconds before him. Ideally, if we both ran our bracket time, we would cross the finish line at exactly the same time.
I did the first time trial myself, but I wanted to make a run in the T bucket, so I had one of the other ladies, whose El Camino was out of commission, run the El Camino. By the luck of the draw, we were up against each other at the starting line! I felt like John Force, owning both cars at the starting line in a drag race (look him up, if you don't know the name)!
Here's a video of the time trial. Terry (the lady driving my car), talks to herself. The engine you hear through the race in not the El Camino, it's the T bucket next to her. The actual race starts after about 5 minutes into the video. The video starts with the slam of the El Camino's door after I turned on the camera.
To explain what you're seeing: The cars line up in the staging lanes, waiting for their turn to race. When the two cars ahead of you pull up to the starting line, you pull your car into the "water box." You spin the tires in the water to clean them and warm them up. After the two previous cars are gone, you pull up to the starting line, which is actually two light beams. When you pull up to the first beam, the top yellow light comes on, and you are "pre-staged." When you pull up a few inches more, you break the second beam, and you are "staged." When both cars are staged, the "Christmas tree" counts down three yellow lights, then a green. If you leave before the green, you have "red-lighted," and in actual racing, you'd be the loser. You go down the track, past the big lit-up signs, where the finish line is. There is a slow-down area, then you turn and go back down the return lane, where you receive your time slip that give you a lot of information about both your run and the car next to you. Then, you go back to the pits.
Now, you may wonder why the much faster, lighter T didn't win by more. Here's another video of the same race.
http://s234.photobucket.com/albums/...rBlanchevsTexaselcaminoinbothofMikesrides.mp4
You will notice I did my "1969 Don Garlits" impression, spinning the tires almost all the way to the finish line!
By the way, when we started the actual racing, I went out in the first round, because I "broke out." That means I went faster than my dial-in time. I won the race, but was eliminated. This is to keep people from dialing-in a slower time that their car can go.
Ladies, this is car talk, but don't skip over it. You'll see why farther down!
Last fall, I sold my Ford F150 truck and enclosed car trailer. I just wasn't using the trailer enough to justify keeping it around, and the truck got too poor gas mileage to use as a daily driver. I should have kept it. It was paid for, in good shape, fairly low mileage.
I regretted it almost immediately. I got a little open trailer I can haul stuff in, but it folds up, and it's a pain to get it out. So I started looking around, and discovered I liked the looks, etc., of an El Camino. For our non-US friends, this is a car called a "Ute" in Australia. It's a car with a pickup bed. Chevrolet made them from 1959-1987, with a couple of years of non-production in there.
Well, there's an "El Camino community." They're kind of quirky vehicles, and that almost always attracts collectors. There is a "National El Camino Owner's Association," which I joined.
I have a 1986 El Camino. Not a bad little vehicle. It gets about 18 mpg on the highway, has a decent ride, can pull a light trailer, and I can go buy hardware and stuff and now worry about it.
This past weekend, we had a "First Annual North Texas Grudge Race" at the Dallas Dragway in Crandall, TX. This is a neat little dragstrip with good facilities. Saturday evening, they ran a packed race program with everything from bone-stock cars to sportsman dragsters that do 1000 feet (instead of a full quarter mile) in less than 5 seconds and 170 mph.
We had about 10 El Caminos there, ranging from my essentially stock vehicle to one full-race El Camino. I took over my T, too.
My El Camino did the quarter mile in 17.5 seconds at about 75 mph. That's almost exactly what they did when they were brand new.
We did two time trials, then ran eliminations on the bracket system. In bracket racing, you can put any two cars side by side and have a race. Each car puts a "dial-in time" on his windows. That is the fastest time the driver thinks he can make a quarter mile in. In my case, I had 17.70 on my windows, because in the time trials, my fastest time was 17.78 seconds. When two cars come up to the starting line the dial-in is posted for each car. The difference between the two is the delay between the starting lights for each car. If I came up against a 14.5 second car, I would get a green light 3.2 seconds before him. Ideally, if we both ran our bracket time, we would cross the finish line at exactly the same time.
I did the first time trial myself, but I wanted to make a run in the T bucket, so I had one of the other ladies, whose El Camino was out of commission, run the El Camino. By the luck of the draw, we were up against each other at the starting line! I felt like John Force, owning both cars at the starting line in a drag race (look him up, if you don't know the name)!
Here's a video of the time trial. Terry (the lady driving my car), talks to herself. The engine you hear through the race in not the El Camino, it's the T bucket next to her. The actual race starts after about 5 minutes into the video. The video starts with the slam of the El Camino's door after I turned on the camera.
To explain what you're seeing: The cars line up in the staging lanes, waiting for their turn to race. When the two cars ahead of you pull up to the starting line, you pull your car into the "water box." You spin the tires in the water to clean them and warm them up. After the two previous cars are gone, you pull up to the starting line, which is actually two light beams. When you pull up to the first beam, the top yellow light comes on, and you are "pre-staged." When you pull up a few inches more, you break the second beam, and you are "staged." When both cars are staged, the "Christmas tree" counts down three yellow lights, then a green. If you leave before the green, you have "red-lighted," and in actual racing, you'd be the loser. You go down the track, past the big lit-up signs, where the finish line is. There is a slow-down area, then you turn and go back down the return lane, where you receive your time slip that give you a lot of information about both your run and the car next to you. Then, you go back to the pits.
Now, you may wonder why the much faster, lighter T didn't win by more. Here's another video of the same race.
http://s234.photobucket.com/albums/...rBlanchevsTexaselcaminoinbothofMikesrides.mp4
You will notice I did my "1969 Don Garlits" impression, spinning the tires almost all the way to the finish line!
By the way, when we started the actual racing, I went out in the first round, because I "broke out." That means I went faster than my dial-in time. I won the race, but was eliminated. This is to keep people from dialing-in a slower time that their car can go.
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