May of 2006, I don't know what motivated me more, the idea of having the car done for our wedding, or my brother Chad telling me that I would never make it.
This first picture is around noon on the day before the wedding. Wiring was pretty much done except power to the fans. I worked on plumbing the fuel system, and Dad, Chad, Carl, and Joe worked on fitting sheet metal, hanging bumpers, and putting the interior back in it. I still hadn't heard it run yet. It was still up on stands when we went to rehearsal. After the rehearsal dinner, I made some coffee and got back to work. Between the caffeine, nerves, excitement, and stress, I was throwing up outside the door of the shop shortly before I test fired it. About 1am, I heard it run for the first time.
The morning of the wedding, we hung exhaust, did a quick string-line alignment and hit the road with only about 30 seconds of run-time on it... About half way to the church, the temp gauge spiked. When I painted the engine I removed the temp sensor from the head and installed a temporary plastic plug just to keep the threads from getting paint on them. When I put the new sender in, I used a different port and forgot about the plastic one, so it dumped the coolant when it warmed up. We towed it to the church the rest of the way behind Joe's Firebird.
My groomsmen fixed the car while I was in for pictures, (and then took a nap on the floor of the church) and another friend took the car to his house and washed it. He reported that the temp gauge still read pretty high, so a temporary fix was made to make the fans run... Jumper leads alligator clipped to the battery.
When we were leaving the church after the wedding, the temporary fan wiring lasted about 10 seconds before it caught fire. That was ripped off, no damage done, and away we went to our reception and all 80s hard-rock wedding dance with my awesome wife Jenna.
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04-11-2025, 01:41 PM
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