My My how time flies! Three months have already flown by since Nile Graphics took over the Roddin’ & Racin’ production of the newspaper. The crew at Nile have made some really nice changes and additions. One important addition is the website RoddinAZ.com. With lots of new content, including the Rod Loveless photos that don’t make it into the paper. Another great addition is social media, where again they are promoting the advertisers and content from the paper. The electronic media side is a big reason we sold the publication to Jeff and Lucy. I’m simply not motivated or good at that electronics stuff, except maybe searching on Craigslist for another vehicle that I don’t need.
Several months back I was calling myself a Car Nut Ball and dang, that is not a lie. As l sit hear banging away on this key board, we have two daily driver cars, which seems totally normal, but, right this minute there are 7 other vehicles in my fleet, not including the camper in the bed of the Ford F-350 pickup and not including an open car trailer. I mentioned searching on Craigslist, which is something l do almost every morning while drinking my coffee. Four of the cars are 100% related to my Bracket Drag Racing hobby. About two years ago l bought a ‘65 Chevy Nova wagon. It had a nice running small block Chevy V-8 and Turbo 350 transmission. That car was going to become my street legal Street/Strip racer. I started doing modifications to make it better for my intended use, until one morning when l came across a way cool ‘56 Chevy Gasser looking car, yep on Craigslist. It took almost two weeks to put the deal together, but the Chevy came home with me last summer and it was then destined to become my Street/Strip car. I pulled off some of the upgrades I had done to the ‘65 Nova and put them into the ‘56. I really like the ‘56 and had a nice little 400 horse power 355cid small block engine built for it. The ‘56 was moved into my carport for more updates. After a few weeks of seeing the car there, l started to realize that this car is way to valuable to turn into a Bracket racer. I did actually race it one time and on those 4-5 runs the engine never saw more than about 3700 RPM, not kidding and yet it still did the quarter mile in the low 13’s. I decided right then not to use that car for racing, or the ‘65 Nova, so l found a ratty little ‘63 Nova 4 door car that was already set up as a bracket racer. It had a nasty small block V-8 that required race gas and was a lot faster than l wanted to go, so it got a nice peppy 327 small block and runs in the mid 12’s and it’s also street legal. I raced it a few times and really liked it.
Here’s another place where the Car Nut Ball me has taken over my brain once again. At the July race at Wild Horse Pass, the ‘63 Nova’s engine would not stay running unless l kept flipping the gas pedal. I raced it that way and even won a few rounds, but I’m not a mechanic and that probably simple problem made me decide to stop playing with these older engined carbureted cars and join my two racing buddies that both race C5 Corvettes with the LS1 engine and automatic transmission. When they race, they simply take off the traction control, put it in drive and mash the gas when it’s time to leave the starting line. Steve Watkins was the 2019 Tucson Dragway Sportsman class champion and Jordan Hart was the 2020 Wild Horse Pass Sportsman class champion. So, I now own a 2013 Chevy Caprice PPV former cop car. It has a 6.0 liter LS V-8 with 355HP, power windows and 4 wheel disc brakes, 6 speed automatic trans. stereo, cold A/C and a bunch of heavy duty extras built-in as a cop car. This car is now my daily driver, but l haven’t sold my 2006 Toyota Avalon that it replaces. I’m seriously dedicated to getting this Car Nut Ball situation under control. I’m pretty sure that owning 9 vehicles at one time is DUMB, unless you have money, so in my case, it’s just DUMB!!
