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What do you get when you take a nutty Fishwrench.comer, add a racing desire, and a 305 Chevy Impala motor? Only one thing - an enduro car racer. Gene Gruber, the official auto-body man of Fishwrench.com, recently tried his hand at the July 4th enduro race held at Raceway Park in Shakopee, MN. The results were less than perfect, but the fun was in getting there.
What is an enduro race you may be wondering? 80 to 100 cars are aligned three wide on a 1/4-mile track set to race a grueling 250 laps in tight driving conditions with little room for error. At roughly 75 lap intervals, drivers are required to take a pit stop. This gives the drivers time to take in a quick breather while their bloody-knuckle dragging pit-crew goes to work on the car, cooling the radiator, changing tires, and refilling the five gallon metal gas can mounted in the car.
The enduro car is usually a 1978 or older GM product - Impalas and Monte Carlos seem to be the cars preferred by most. Motors vary in size, from 305 to 350s, but all must be stock. No modifications are allowed to the engine what so ever, with the exception of air conditioning and heater core removal, and a slight rearrangement of the battery. A little tinkering goes on with the exterior of the car as well. All trim work is removed, along with the side and rear windows. The only glass remaining intact is the windshield. Anything that isn't sheet metal is stripped from the car, the hood latch is removed with hood pins put in its place, and the trunk springs are detached and discarded. Inside the trunk is where you find the new gas tank, a five to eight gallon metal tank, usually taken from an old outboard motor. Inside the car, anything that isn't metal is disposed of, and all holes that show daylight through them, other than the window voids, are covered with heavy gauge tin. Gauges and heat vents are removed from the dash, luxuries like radios are cast aside, and what once comfortably held five people is downsized to a single seat. The driver's side seat can stay, but it is usually replaced by an aluminum-racing seat, or at a minimum a bucket seat, mounted firmly in place against a shiny new roll cage. Stripped of what made it a luxury car of the 70's, is now nothing more than a big motor surrounded by layers of sheet metal in search of a racetrack.
Gene's project car was a late-70's Chevy Impala. Its paint was chipped and bubbly, some of the body was more see-through than a Britney Spears dance costume, and the motor was missing a carburetor and distributor, but we knew she would run. Even though confident in our ability to get a beater up and running, we were worried about the amount of time we had to do it in. Gene didn't come across the car until about two weeks before July 4th. Between then and race day were trips to the cabin and other prior engagements that limited our ability to work on the car. To make matters worse, the car was buried deep in farm country, and record rain had just poured in the area. There was no way to get to it. Four days were lost just waiting for the ground to dry enough to support the weight of the F-250 that would be dragging the car to its new home. After some beer-drinking arithmetic, it dawned on us that we had but 8 days to make this car run and get it ready for the upcoming enduro race.
Day one was nothing more than a pre-meeting. If you work in an office, you know exactly what I'm talking about. A small gaggle of rednecks gathered and started talking cars. We didn't do anything with the car we were leaning against - we just talked about it. Strolling around the Impala, we kicked the tires at every turn. We picked at pockets of rust, and even grabbed onto parts already falling off and gave them a final yank to break them free. With the hood open, four men stood above the engine and in unison let out a lengthy drawn, "yup". Perhaps Gene and the others knew what they were looking at, but I could only "yup" along. To me, once you've seen and engine...you've seen an engine. Apparently, a bunch of other stuff was missing from inside this concoction of spinning metal parts, cables, and belts. This is stuff I've never seen or heard of. Talk to me about gutting the inside of an Abu Garcia bait casting reel and I'm right there with you...bass biology - I could talk your ear off, but engines? Geez, I could get more mileage out of a conversation about all of Michael Waltrip's combined Winston Cup wins than I could a talk about engines, but none the less I went along for the ride..."yup."
That was Tuesday, and Wednesday I wasn't available to work on the car. We, as a collective bunch of redneck wannabees, wouldn't get to the car until Thursday. And when Thursday came, we put on our destruction hats, which also fill the role of fishing hats, drinking hats, auto-body hats, and gambling hats. Every screw that could be unscrewed was removed; everything that didn't look like a racecar was torn off, and every hole that shouldn't be there was tinned over. With some progress made, we wrapped up day two of Gene's car building. Day three Gene would be working with only one other, but the person he was working with was a welder, and that was like working with gold.
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were spent up in North Country preparing a cabin for permanent residence by the in-laws. Boxes and furniture were being moved about, while shufflings of items going from this house to that house were bounced through the air. Little was being done on the car. So, when Monday rolled around, we were primed and ready to go, however still disappointed that our car had not been running as of yet. But today Gene had all the parts, and was getting them all crammed in the engine. The distributor wouldn't quite set right, but that was nothing a couple of phone calls to Gene's father couldn't help - he's the best shade tree mechanic I know, and I'm privileged for knowing him, let alone being related to him through marriage. Just four more days to get this heap ready for the track; we're feeling the pressure of a racing clock.
I don't know what the hell happened on Tuesday when I was gone, but on Wednesday, the car still looked much the same. Maybe there was some ingenious engine work going on, or maybe subtle changes occurred that aren't quite visible to the naked eye, but to me the damn car looked the same as it did two days ago. Ah, but there was a difference. If you flip a switch and press a button the car rumbles to life, finally sounding the way a racecar should sound - rumble, rumble, rumble, backfire, and rumble... We slapped the chains around the bumpers and doors, and smacked on some 1/4" thick steel doorplates, to protect the buffoon that dare climbs into one of these death traps. All that was needed was a coat of paint.
Gene Gruber, official auto-body man of Fishwrench.com, elected to spray-paint his wheeled tin can. That's right, our professional painter was going to spray-paint his car, and best of all, he was going to let me choose the colors. That's like letting your four-year old pick the color of your new house - "ah, Barney purple is sort of nice". Of course, it's not my car, so I went for loud and obnoxious, not unlike me on the fishing boat, or a 3:00am drunkard dispensing alcohol-laden advice. Lime green and blaze orange - that was my color combination. We soon ran into problems though when we noticed the paint was covering like watered-down salad dressing. It ran off the car faster than we could put it on, and ten cans into the project, we still had a quarter panel or two that needed paint. I reached for the gold and silver cans, and saw that it provided much better coverage. A quick change of plans - with cans in hand, I changed most of the green/orange anti-lucidity with a new metallic mate. An ugly car was just made a little less ugly...it didn't look good, but it looked like a racecar. The night was old, and I was killing brain cells by the hundreds under the heavy fume of cheap spray-paint. It was time to go home.
Thursday...race day. Ah, crap! We still don't have the Fishwrench logos or numbers on the car! I scurry to Home Depot, proud sponsor of media bully Tony Stewart, and scramble to find anything that looks like it might make a number or letter. White and black duct tape - duct tape cures all. Doing some fancy taping work with just minutes to spare, I cranked out a drop-shadowed "FISH - WRENCH" across the blazon hood of that mighty machine. A "73" soon appeared on each side, and "HOPKINS AUTO BODY" made its way across the trunk lid. Finite - sponsored and numbered, this car was ready for the track.
The only challenge lying before us was the lack of a trailer. These cars once stripped are no longer street legal, so they have to be trailered to the track. One problem - we were in Wayzata and the trailer was in Hopkins, twenty miles away. Thirty miles away from Wayzata is Shakopee, the location of today's race. Into my truck, I hopped, making my way south to gather a trailer. Hooked-up, the trailer dragged behind the speeding Chevy 1500 as I pointed back north. Car loaded, and we were on our way back south to Raceway Park for pre-race inspection. It may not sound like much, but 70 miles of driving were done in just under an hour...seems like a long way to go to get a car a mere 30 miles.
Pre-race inspection was anything but a hurdle to race entry. Other than a couple of minor changes, the car passed inspection without flaw. The car was rolled out onto the track in about the 70th starting position. 85 cars would take the green flag in all.
Drivers' meeting, scorers' meeting, National Anthem, "Gentlemen, start your engines!" - the race was on. Three by three, cars passed the start/finish line of the hardly-banked oval. "Jam trucks", old beat-up Suburbans used to push declapitated vehicles off the track led the field around turn three and out of turn four. Engines revved, oil spewed, cars blew up, but 80 remaining beaters sailed past the waving green flag to officially start the July 4th, 2002 enduro race.
For one lap a spectator can easily identify the leader of the race, but he is soon buried, even before getting into turn three, in globs of lap traffic. Bumps, bangs, and bruises, sheet metal crumples under the weight and bashing of other heavy-metal cars. No brakes? No problem. A car in the outside groove can be used a buffer between making a smooth turn and finding the wall. For 30-40 laps the insanity continues as cars drop out and rejoin the race pausing to duct tape their cars back together in the pits.
A turn three crash caused Gene to rear-end a car checking up. For no apparent reason, the slight bump caused his car to stall, and he became the next customer of the jam truck. After a push into the pits, Driver Gene realized his kill switch fell to the off position; he was soon fired-up and back on the track, but already four laps down to the leader, whoever that might have been.
Finally, the yellow flew for the first of three mandatory stops, and it didn't come too soon for Gene. He was near out of gas. More laps surely would have drained his supply, dropping him even more laps down. Once in the pits, his crew chief for the day, driver of the #73 Fishwrench.com hobby stock, Tim Lewis barked out tire changing commands to Josh and Joey, two brutes looking to be part of the action. A four-tire change, gas, and Gene was back in line to enter the track. During the mandatory stops, cars are shuffled out of position, so there's not a good feel for where your car is starting. You might be in 40th place, but you could be starting 60th - it's anyone's guess.
The second session lasted for just a handful of laps for Gene. The one piece of advice I have him before the race was to stay out of the third groove of the track. Why? Because the track has no third groove, but mostly because even if he could run up there, someone will take him out. When cars crash or spin in the first or second groove, centrifugal force pushes them high on the track and into any traffic that might be running in groove number three.
Gene looked even faster in the second session than he did the first. If not for the unfortunate kill switch incident, he probably could have kept his car near the front. That car was on a rail, and he was picking his track positions as he picked-off the competition one by one, until his last run around turn two. With his car high in the third groove, right where he was told not to run, a car slid up into his left rear-quarter. Spun around and heading toward the infield, Gene tried to right the car, but that just put him headlong toward the wall. The only thing keeping him from sure destruction and injury, which would have been way-cool to see, was a competitor turning him around for another 180-degree ride. In the mayhem, cars checked-up while others didn't. Bam...bam...bambambambambam...bam. In all, near 20 cars had piled into the chain-reaction crash caused by Gruber. This was, in Talladega or Daytona terms, "the big one", and our guy caused it. Go Fishwrench!
My head hung low, I handed my scoring sheet to the officials. Not only was Gene's day done, but also so was mine. There was no longer a need for me to score for the #73. Gene was all right, void of any injury, but his car was doubled-over like it just took a kick to the nuts. The front tire could easily be seen from the driver window, a shape no car should be in. Frame bent, radiator blown, and steering column broke, the Impala couldn't even be loaded onto a trailer for the long trip home. Instead, in the days to come, a tow truck would have to make it out to the track, and the big bucks would be shelled out for the delivery to the body shop. Several people reviewed the damage to the car, and surprisingly it could be fixed. It would take the work of two different body shops, six guys, and a lot of Bud beer, but it would still find a way back to the track. What seemed like a pile of scrap, could be turned into the racing machine it had been before the crash. The Impala wasn't done after all.
Next race? September 2nd, 2002. The car will be ready to go. I however, will not be following this team, as I'll be in a car of my own. Fishwrench vs. Fishwrench - movies are made of this stuff.
For more information about enduro races at Raceway Park, be sure to visit their website at www.gowacewaypark.com.
Fisherman turning to racing,