Hot Rod Power Tour, Day 7: Making it to the End.

"80CobraKid" (80cobrakid)
06/15/2015 at 13:31 • Filed to: Hot Rod Power Tour, Road Trips

7 Cities, 7 Days. We made it.

After a few days of problems with either car and rainy weather, apparently breakdowns on both cars and rainy weather the entie day was what was in store for us on the last day.

After a calm and peaceful start to the day in Gulfport, cruising along the coast with more hot rods in tow, a loose connection on my dad’s fan relay decided it was time to be a problem, causing a 45 minute stop after noticing the temps fly up.

We were back on the road...into a massive Gulf storm. On my dad’s Nitto NT05 tires, slow speeds are a must in the rain, because with virtually no rain channels hydroplaning occurs quickly. Not fun. But luckily after about 45 minutes of driving along the route, the storm cleared out.

After following the official route for a decent amount of time, it takes us to the interstate for a brief period. Apparently My coil and/or Ignition box decided to call it quits at around 75 Mph and the car died while driving. After butt puckering, I finally got it onto the shoulder safely. A few minutes later a group of guys (all family, one father, two young boys, and a grandfather that you could barely interpret his english) stopped to see if they could help out. Turns out they run a restoration shop in the area and work mostly on Fords. Perfect! Some quick troubleshooting determined something in the ignition system was bad. The guys knew there was a NAPA that they use that would for sure have the box and coil that we needed.

Riding with them on the way there has got to be one of the most entertaining things I’ve heard. the two boys were probably a year or two in age difference, and around 6-7. one likes chevys, the other Fords. hearing them go back and forth couldn’t represent the Chevy vs Ford rivalry any better. The grandfather was hilarious, and knew everything about my car. It was about an hour round trip because of the the route to the NAPA was the same route the Power Tour follows, so lots of traffic.

After returning to my dad and our two cars parked on the side of I-59, plopping in the new coil and box was one of the easiest things your could do on the car, and it was back up and running in 5 minutes.

After this second delay, we decided to take the fastest route to Baton Rouge, stop for a couple hours, then head home to College Station, TX.

When we arrived in Baton Rouge, my dad and I looked at each other, and all I could say was “We made it,” giving a big hi-five. The show was pretty small, it seemed that rain had passed through not long before we got there, and all the vendor booths were set up in a grassy area, so it was really wet and muddy. I walked around and took some pictures, but there was hardly anyone there. I’d say probably 250-300 cars that I could see. Maybe there was more but I didn’t see them.

All and all, it was a fun trip. Even though breakdowns kept us off the official route most of the time, meeting all the helpful and nice people along the way was the best part. Old cars really bring out the best in people, and that was really evidenced by everyone who helped us along the way, especially Action Towing in Alabama, the Ford guys in Louisiana (didn’t catch the name of their shop), and the guys at Holley EFI’s booth. Being with my dad was sometimes frustrating and annoying, but this has been a dream for us for around 10 years, and finally doing it was very satisfying. I will probably try to go next year, maybe with my girlfriend and some guys from the Texas A&M Sports Car Club. But that’s about 6 months out for planning.

Thanks for everyone who has followed my series of posts! I’m sorry they weren’t regularly timed, but that all depended when we got to the hotels and how much energy I still had left.

If you want to catch up on any posts you missed, here they all are:

!!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!