Well, I think we got to Global West right at noon at Friday and was about the last car to show up. Before we know it it was time to depart and we had just got our burgers. They were pretty good though.
I would have liked to taken the tour inside Global West, but there just wasn't enough time. A big thanks to GW for hosting the gathering!

I don't know about you guys, but my trans tepm went up to 230 climbing the first of the long grades in the Desert. That made me pretty nervous, but it was that LONG sucker before state line that got me up to 260 degrees (trans temp) before I pulled over to let things cool for about twenty minutes. We were almost at the 4700 ft. summit when I decided to stop, so things went pretty well after that.

Once we got to the track, I was totally shocked that they made us go down the track before unloading the cars.  I ran an 11.45 @ 117 with all of my tools, spares, and junk still in the trunk with 25 psi in the rear tires.
The bad thing was that my ignition switch had just crapped out (four cars away from the water box) and I had to unstrap and jump out to hit the remote starter button under the hood.
We got into the pits and just found the first empty spot we could find. I removed the switch and was able to clean (scrape) the contacts inside. I had modified and repaired the switch about ten years ago, so I was able to take it apart and reassemble it with no trouble. We go the car ready for an "all or nothing" nitrous pass and headed to the lanes. After almost an hour wait and now only about five cars away from the water box, the car won't crank. The battery had no sauce left to turn the engine.
As it turns out, my alternator had also died (I believe just a coincidence) and the battery had taken me as far as it could.
One of my buddies ran back over to the pits and grabbed the jump box and I was able to make a motor only pass against my freind Mike who was driving my blue '05 GTO.
With no charging system and a practically dead battery, the best I could muster was another 11.45 pass.
It took the booster box hooked up to the battery during the drive to get the car back to the hotel at 1:30 that morning.
We picked up a new alternator the next morning at Auto Zone to fix the problem but it turns out that it was defective and wouldn't  charge either. Some group diagnosis and another trip to the parts store for a second alternator did the trick. Now we were in business at 13.5 volts!
I did have to run back over and pick up a battery charger at the store because my deep cycle Exide was so depleted that it would have taken forever for the car to charge it back up. I just brought the battery up to our room and charged it in the bathoom while I took my afternoon nap!

All was well, so we headed out for a drive at around 7:30 pm Saturday night. About five blocks North of the MGM my second rear air bag failure of the weekend had stranded us right past the Treasure Island casino. the body had come down on the tires and was rubbing real bad. Furtunately we were able to pull off into a valet driveway and off of the street. I had to call the 24 hour Auto Zone and have Mike go pick up a pair of air shocks to get the car up off of the tires. We made it back to out hotel right at 11:00pm that evening. I had the wife and kids out on the curb for two and a half hours while we scavenged parts and put them in place.
Talk about a bunch of WIERD people walking around that town!    

The best part of our trip was the drive back to the coast. The car ran great and got between 12-13 mpg. It was way more relaxing than the drive out to Vegas, and it sure is good to be home!
We logged 860 miles total for the trip, and the wife even said that she would go again! She's a pretty good sport about this kind of thing.

I really wanted to hang out with you guys more on the trip. I barely got to talk to Douglass and Jeff at Global West, and didn't even see many of you at all the rest of the weekend.
I would like to say thank you to my buddies (Bill, Chad, Miladen, Mike, and Scott) who helped me out this weekend. I couldn't have done it without you guys.
Thanks to Car Craft for having the event to begin with!
Maybee next year we can stay out of the desert eh Glad?  

Sorry Douglas, too many s's in your name posted above.
Couldn't find the edit button.

Brian  

As I've said before, breaking down is part of the adventure     I'd like to hear more stories if anyone else has them.  Thanks for the Post Goat Racer.  

Well, I spent an hour typing our experiences, the pre-trip thrash, reason for musical engines, the track break-down, the help from Rowdy (thanks again everything Rowdy), the roadside repair, and what not.  It disappeared into cyberland, I'm too tired to re-type it.

We had a great time and would like to thank everyone who put it together. After reading his articles for years, I finally met Jeff Smith, and thought it was pretty neat to hear some of his stories first hand...

Here are the pics. Sorry we didn't take more of the other cars... we arrived to GW late, and broke at the track and scrambled to get the car running again.

http://www.picturetrail.com/gallery/view?p=999&gid=16277675&uid=649897&members=1

http://www.picturetrail.com/gallery/view?p=999&gid=7883567&uid=649897&members=1

http://www.picturetrail.com/gallery/view?p=999&gid=12432617&uid=649897&members=1  

The trick on this forum for a longer post is to click the "preview" tab every few minutes to check your work so the site doesn't time you out.

Glad to hear that you made it home in one piece!  

SO who actually had the owest ET of the night? My buddy Bill thought that Rowdy's Chevelle (mid tens I believe) was part of out group, but it sounds like he was a local.

Post your ET and MPH with your weekendsurvival story.  

when it logs you out and asks you for your name and password, just fill it out and hit log in.  Then hit the back button a couple of times and it will take you back to your post.  You can then post it with no problems.  

Thanks for the tips. I tried to go back to retrieve,but it was long gone.  Rowdy was a local, but he coordinated a lot of the guys from Team Chevelle to get us there. His car went 10.69, but was very streetable.  We followed him give or take 15 miles back to his place after we got the car running again.  IIRC, he is only running a 3.55 gear.

BTW GoatRacer, I think we left Global West behind you guys. We followed a Yellow and black Z/28, which was behind a later model GTO, and a Viper.  We ended up slowing down, because we were revving too high trying to keep up.  Wes  

Wes, the Z28, viper, and new GTO were part of our group allright. I was just ahead of them.
I guess we were rollin pretty good once we got out on the highway!

Hey, who know how Glad's rambler fared? Did he even get to race?  

If ya would have bought that alternator at Napa, I bet you wouldnt have had that problem?  

Hey B. Glad to hear you had no probs heading home. We drove pretty slow hoping you would catch up. Jeff Smith split off at the 138 west to head to the I-405.

Doug couldn't run because his upper radiator hose swelled to the size of a elephant leg. Everyone kept touching it despite him telling them not to.

I ran twice. I think I have the slowest run of the tour. 16.01 at 80 mph in the first run. The car bogged and nosed over when I shifted into third. It being still heatsoaked from the drive from LA didn't help, but I think the second pv was too much for my little motor. I changed jets from 82/84 to 84/88 and plugging the second pv. The second run I improved on every point. I ran a 15.35 at 88 with a .321 rt (.727 first run) and 2.17 60 ft (2.45 first run). It's still way slow. Maybe my motor is just getting tired.

I did however have high mph on I-15, I think, 110 mph. I had to slow down due to traffic.

Saturday, I headed back to LVMS, but the PSCA boys had already finished for the day. So I headed over to the super speedway. I was planning on sneaking out onto the track for a couple of laps, but the Andretti/Gordon Race School were there. So I got some good photos of my car in front of the Neon Garage.




 

Scott, we were probably ahead of you on I15 as we were just about to get on going North as I called you back. You said that you guys were leaving right then, so we just went over the freeway and headed South instead.
We were cruising 70-75 so I'm sure that we probably stayed a bit out in front.
Our route involved jumping onto highway 58 in Barstow and then taking the 223 to the 166, and back to Santa Maria.

Cool photos! That was a great idea.

B  

The mighty low buck Malibu got me back to Colrado without a hitch.  A noisy front wheel bearing made me a little nervous the last 100 miles but the closer I got to home, the less I noticed!  2300 miles, a lot of fuel, but no oil in used in my old cop car.  I had a great time but I hope to meet more fellow drivers on the trip next time.  We felt like we were all alone out on the I-15.  We had a blast at the drags running high 13's with no tuning for the altitude.  Strange track policy with no real tech inspection or helmets!  I guess everything is a little looser in Vegas.  

I wished they'd fix that stupid problem. Why do we have to scroll inside the screen? why cant it just be full screen?  

We made it!  The old Galaxie treated us pretty good on the road coming down from Northern California to GW and over to Vegas. She would not make the 1/2 shift at the Strip due to mechanical linkage issues. I put the Gear Vendor in at the last minute and did not check the linkage, then got rained off the track at Redding before I could get a run on it.  Still ran a 13.40 in Drive and got a chance to run at Vegas, what an awsome track .  I hope for 11s this summer after I sort out some of the changes we made for the road trip.

 The trip home was interesting in that we started having charging problems at Tonopaugh and continued to diagnose and fiddle with it until Fallon.   Turns out it was the aluminum pulley partially spinning on the steel alternator shaft at high RPM and high electric loads.  The intermittant thermal shut down made the whole problem two layer and drove us nuts.  We made it on home to Oroville CA after a most helpful service rep at Auto Zone helped us diagnose the problem.

We enjoyed ourselves very much!  Thanks go out to Global West, Car Craft, and all of the participants.  Gearheads seems to be a pretty nice bunch of folks.

The top speed award may be mine?   When I left my credit card at the counter in the Baker CA gas station and realized the nearest turn around was 18 miles UP the grade we hit triple digits DOWN the grade and then back UP the grade in an effort to catch up or at least be on time for the drag strip.  The speedo goes nuts at 100 and it stayed nuts for a loooonnnng time, my friend Larry never said a word but I could see him leaning back to see the speedo and giving me that questioning look.  Probably realizing he didn't know me quite as well as he thought.

What a blast!