The 400 Mile Weekend ... Galt & Woodland Car Shows ... Jun 10-11/06

I like the small shows in the valley, and I like going to these shows with my good friend, Cliff Heitman (Chopper Cliff choppercliff@yahoo.com). Cliff and I first met at a Goodguys show in Merced back in '93 and have been friends every since. Anyway, this was the weekend I would "depend" on Black Widow 2's engineering to get me to and from two shows this weekend -- a total of 400 miles.

The plan was to pick up Cliff in Lodi both Saturday and Sunday, go to the shows (Galt on Sat and Woodland on Sun) then take Cliff back to Lodi and myself back to Pleasant Hill. Add up the miles and you get 400 miles of backroad and freeway driving.

I left P/H at 6am Sat heading East on Hiway 4 towards the delta and Lodi. Needing some coffee and a pee break, I stopped at the Jack outside of Antioch. That's when I heard the scraping. "What the heck was that?" I thought. I got out and saw the problem: something broke in the panhard bar area. When you use a coil-over system, the panhard bar centers the rear suspension. When broken, the frame flops to one side or the order, and that is what happened. It was time to call a tow truck.

Back home, I jack up The Widow and saw the problem. The upper bolt connecting the panhard plate to the rearend broke inside the housing. Why? Because I screwed up. In my haste to build BW2 in 8 months, I falied to double check all the safety issues. I used grade 3 bolts when I should have used grade 8. You ALWAYS use greade 8 bolts in suspension components.

I drilled the broken bolt then used an easy-out to back out the broken piece. I then replaced both the bolts with grade 8 and once again hit the road for Lodi. I arrived at Cliff's by 11am and we were in Galt at noon ... the start of the show! No time was wasted.

Cliff and I had a great weekend in Galt and in Woodland. Black Widow 2 ran great both days for 400 miles getting 18 mpg and won a Best in Show in Galt and a 1st place in Woodland. It just don't get any better than that. NOTE: I forgot my camera on Sunday so there are no Woodland photos. Sorry!

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