Your Most Embarrasing Street Moment.

[X-TECH MAN]

I remember Danny Lattimore (Olds racer) doing a wheel stand in his dads driveway a long time ago with his stick shift 455 powered SS/J Olds Cutlass coupe. Any way the front tires came down at the beginning of the garage floor and those skinny front tires slid on the slick concret floor of the garage and it slid right thru the back wall of his dads garage. I wonder if he will admit it if he reads this.....lol.

[Jeff Lee]

Originally Posted by X-TECH MAN

I remember Danny Lattimore (Olds racer) doing a wheel stand in his dads driveway a long time ago with his stick shift 455 powered SS/J Olds Cutlass coupe. Any way the front tires came down at the beginning of the garage floor and those skinny front tires slid on the slick concret floor of the garage and it slid right thru the back wall of his dads garage. I wonder if he will admit it if he reads this.....lol.

I had a S/ST AMX with a 440 Mopar. First "real" race car. Before I even took it to the track had it at my friends AAMCO on the lift; a drive on lift. With slippery trans fluid all over. No neutral safety switch. Six foot up in the air. Started in gear and hitting the brake pedal didn't help as the tires just slid on the oil. One custom fiberglass hood and one AMX grill cracked up. Man did I feel stupid!

[rick lester]

the year was 1987, about 5 or 6 friends and me skipped school and went to....well we'll leave names out of this one...new house. his fathers racecar in the garage, he gets the bright idea to do a few dry hops out of the garage and into the driveway. after the first one, i look back and see these two long wide black marks. the right thing to do was stop him, but noooooooooo, i started to laugh. hes thinking im getting a huge kick out of what he was doing. after a bout 6 or 7 dry hops, he parks the car in the driveway, gets out, and just about s#^t his pants. "o my god, dads going to kill me. rick, help me. what do i do?" my answer? he's still waiting for it, alls i could do was roll around laughing. been a while, but i think i even peed a little. thank god, for him, for clear coated concrete, or he would of never got the rubber off the floor. i haven't seen my buddy since 89 or so, seen his dad about 4 years ago. no, i still don't think he knows and i'm not about to tell.

the year was 1985, dad just bought a 1940 ford business man coupe, 60 hp flathead, 3 speed, black, beautiful. just beautiful. my brother and i got home from school way before mom or dad, so we would take that car cruising. always had fast cars in the yard, big block chevelles, 302 dz z/28, corvettes, mach 1's, gto's, all bad *** fast cars. so why the flathead ford? i guess cuz dad loved that thing, plus we thought it was so cool. drive around all week, sometimes two, before the old man would announce he's taking the ford out this weekend. now we start to panic, he always kept all the cars full of gas. we didn't want to get busted, but we knew we couldn't just use to gas in the gas cans, then he would know. 3 wheelers, 4 wheelers, go carts, and lawn mowers don't use that much gas, and we didn't want to use our money for gas, so we came up with the brightest idea, at least to a 15 and a 13 year old...garden hose! yes, the garden hose. we fill it up and make sure the gas gauge showed the same as when we first started. the old man would go out and get in the car and go. about 10 minutes later here he comes, on foot. he would tow it back empty and clean the tank, blow out the lines, rebuild the carb, fill it with fresh gas, then let it sit. and we would go it again, and a again, and again. after about a year, he sold it, so frustred with it water in the gas tank. still doesn't know about it.

i have more, even stupid stuff at the track, but thats for another day.

[Geerhead55]

Back in 73', a buddy of mine had met this cute lil' blonde and was taking her to a Doobie Bros. concert in Seattle (about an hour away) and wanted to borrow my 69 Z/28 since I had 3:73s and would be better on the freeway than his 66' L-79 non SS Chevy II which had 4:11s. We swapped for the night as it was a work night for me and I was going to the mall to get some work shirts. Well, this was the night my girlfriend decided to tell me it was all over and after I dropped her off, and not being in the best state of mind, I pulled that Nova out onto the street and gave it hell. When I grabbed second gear, the driveshaft broke in two and busted the yoke also. Going down hill I was able to coast almost half a mile before I parked it and locked it up,,,he had an 8 track afterall. It was about a mile walk home,and I had to borrow the ol' mans pickup to go to the guys' house to tell him what I'd done, and that I'd fix everything. My tail was deffinately between my legs that night. I still don't think I've ever had more emotion behind a power shift since.
Danny Durham

[Paul Ceasrine]

Not me, but my friend and neighbor Mike.
He spent the whole summer re-doing a 1967 Barracuda 273 Hi-Po,
4-speed fastback. Painted it just like the Mopar Missle, with Cragars.
Looked beautiful. re-did the engine himself, including putting in a
Crane 'Fireball' camshaft, headers, etc.
First day of school, he drives it in. everyone OOHs! and AHHS!.
On the way home from school, I'm riding in the school bus, and who comes up behind us, Mike in his Killer Cuda.
It's a 2-lane road, and he's waiting to pass, finally he gets his chance, and pulls out alongside the bus, and he guns it, but the car doesn't pull,
he's now side-by-side with a 'Wayne Bus' full of high-school kids.
The bus driver floors hit, as everyone is yelling 'Don't let him pass' maybe we were going 50 MPH, and we start pulling away from the Cuda. He couldn't pass us, and he backed off. The kids on the bus were roaring, and cheering on the bus driver!
That Cuda was 'cool no more'.

[Paul Merolla]

1989, I was 17 and the big street race scene in Omaha was Abbott Drive. Friday and Saturday nights, there would be hundreds of spectators lined up on the curb...a couple guys with scanners to monitor the cops...a few trailered race cars / bikes. My '68 Camaro (same one I have today) was pretty tame - original 327/210 but with an old Weiand intake and a 600 Holley, Powerglide, and 2.73 one-legger out back. My first night out there with that car, I pulled into the water box...mashed the brakes, mashed the gas, and....it wouldn't even turn the tire!! To make matters worse, I made the rookie mistake of letting off the gas but not the brake....killed it! I don't even remember the race, I was so embarrassed.

[k.pascoe]

1982 I was in the Army stationed at Ft. Campbell, KY. I lived off post in Clarksville, TN. I was late for morning formation. Driving my '76 Torino 4 door that I had transplanted a 429 SCJ from a buddy's '71 Mustang (He wanted a 460 installed, So I got the engine for labor to install, plus we exchanged my 2.73 3rd member for his 4.30.) Anyway, I had also pulled my flat hood, for a '72 scooped Gran Torino Sport hood. Well, it fit correctly at the cowl, but not at the header, so I removed the header and used a (you guessed it) rope to secure the hood. Well, back to me being late to formation. I'm rocking those 4.30s on Hwy 41A just about ready to cross a Cumberland river bridge, when to my right I notice a friendly sheriff. Just then my hood did one little shutter and then WHAM!!! I 'm staring at nothing but hood a 85 mph. Well, the sheriff turns on his lights as I'm trying not to crash into anything, I get slowed down and off to the side of the rode with the friendly law officer behind me as I get out and survey the damage. He comes up to me and hands me a ticket for 60 mph in a 45, he can hardly contain himself as I'm the big joke of the morning though all of Clarksville police dept.. He said he'd had followed me for about a mile and was going to bust me pretty hard, but the hood flying open made him feel sorry for me.

[NewHemi]

In 1965, I had a 56 chevy hardtop with a monster 283; 327/350 heads, Jahns pistons, Isky E3 cam ()the lift was so high, I had eyebrow the pistons even more than they were), dual quads off a 1963 corvette but couldnt afford a stick changeover so I ran the stock powerglide.

First the good news, once down the track or highway with a hard start and this baby would eat anything I ran up against.

Bad news; you got half of the second hard start and the low range band was toast.

I had learned this early and had a spare tranny with a replaced low range band ready to go. So once I ran it out once hard, I drove it easy until I could get the tranny changed over. THe front fenders came off with 6 bolts, so I just had to disconnect radiator, and a few wires, pop off thefront end, back up to the car with a tractor that had a lift on it, pull the engine, swap trannies and be back on the road in 40 minutes.

But how I learned about the problem is what was most embarrassing. Right after I got the car together, we went racing.

We had a section of route 224 in the Akron area, actually in Norton Ohio, that was not yet completed although it ran for about 2 1/2 miles. It sat that way for about 18 months, so we used it for racing. Every once in a while the police would shoo us off of it, but mostly it was good clean safe fun, and we had our match races there.

So I am lined up against a 273 barracuda. First run, I smoked the tires and outran him on the high end. All was right in the world.

Next run, I am against a GTO. We line up, get the start signal, and I jump out like a jackrabbit at less than full throttle, so as not to smoke em as bad. Then I hammered it. And there was a pause, then the car shifted in to second and I was off and again ran him down as he passed me during the pause. I went to turn around and start back, and I had no low gear.

So with everyone watching and wondering what the heck I was doing, I had to back up down all of the road to the starting line.

Needles to say, my racing day was done. I had some buddies push me to the top of the ramp which then gave me a down hill run down the road to home. And once I got up to speed, the car shifted into second, and I nursed it home never getting below about 25 mph.

But backing down that road, beleiveing that everyone was laughing at me (they probably were...) was real blow to my young ego. So I did pick up a second tranny and got ready to swap it out.

Young, broke and stupid; the recipe for experiences you never forget.


David
The New Hemi Guy