Never the Same #55 Hard Work and Fun Work

Ka-BOOM! The damage done; Kirk would never be the same.

 

            Kirk continued on with his day job work and stock car building work unabated despite the economy going Tango Uniform, that is, it was bad. The oil embargo had ended but gas prices remained high with supplies being scarce before full production. Growing up on dirt cheap gas, it affected everyone in different ways when the price triples. Prices rose on everything driven by the increase in food prices because of food shortages around the world. It didn’t deter Kirk at all, he just pressed on.

            Well. Spending a day with John a near life-time rock handler didn’t reveal much different or new than Kirk had picked up with him previously in the course of a half an hour preview which Kirk based his decision on. Overall, Kirk’s forethought remained from his first impression that the job would be boring. Maybe time would prove him wrong. A week and half went by, John had retired and Kirk assumed the job as Rock Handler. From what he had gathered from old John not much goes wrong, but if it did, Kirk had a phone that he could call over to the production line and get help. Even though the job seemed rather straightforward, solo position, Kirk remained nervous and anxious.

            The double-long dump trucks started running the same time as the main plant where Kirk worked and of course the mines. He didn’t know where exactly the mines were or how long it took to load the trucks and get to where Kirk was, but he recalled from his one day with John it was somewhere about thirty to forty minutes after punching in. That suited Kirk fine giving him time to suck back some coffee before the first truck, but he knew not to let his guard down. As John had said, the main objective of a rock handler was to “Keep the rocks moving, but to remember not to be down at the hopper when they dump the load of rocks.”  Kirk wouldn’t forget that because the noise was loud enough all the way up by the shack a good thirty yards away.

            The nice thing about working as a rock handler, Kirk could think about the work that he needed to do on his stock car which was progressing along nicely thank you very much. Other than when the rock handling equipment was running “moving the rocks” Kirk could just daydream about other things. The truckloads of rocks came all day long at about hour intervals. As a habit already early on, Kirk would stroll down to the bottom of the incline to the hopper, and he would clean up the spill which always occurred as the hopper emptied out. When the hopper emptied out and he shut down the equipment, he could hear the trucks backing up to dump the load of rocks giving Kirk plenty of time to get up the incline away from the hopper. Not a big deal, so it seemed.

            Early one day after the first truck had dumped, Kirk went down there as usual to clean up the spill. He had already gotten in the habit to not wear his hearing protection because the only noise was the whirling of the many rollers the belt rode on and a bit of rock sliding down the sides as the hopper emptied. With no other warning other than an odd rock or two clunk on the side of the metal hopper there came a sudden KA-BOOM!

            The horrendous, earth-shattering explosion of noise almost drove Kirk to his knees. Kirk’s body, his lungs and head felt compressed from the abrupt expanding pressure and noise of the metal hopper when the load of rocks fell into the hopper. His ears rang; he couldn’t hear a thing; he felt numb all over. He stumbled up about twenty feet or more from the hopper, but it was already too late because by then all there was, was the noise of the cascade of rocks as the truck finished emptying which wasn’t nearly half as bad as the that initial boom. The damage was done; Kirk would never be the same.

            After a few minutes, Kirk decided he might live after the horrendous noise abuse, though his ears rang so loud, he couldn’t hear the equipment run. By then, of course, he had his hearing protection on. So day in and day out it was pretty much the same not too hard, not very stressful though he had learned his lesson about wearing his ear muffs. Nice with his solo isolated position, he started riding his trusty motorcycle to work and parking it right next to the shack. It didn’t get dusty and no one told him he couldn’t park it there. With plenty of snacks and a hefty thermos of coffee, he could spend his whole shift there and never see another soul. Kirk felt pretty all right on the job and it seemed like he might be there for the long haul. Did that bother him? Not in the slightest.

**

            There remained only a month and a couple days until stock car racing season practice weekend that preceded the regular scheduled racing season.  Kirk felt the pressure mount on him, and he would’ve taken some time off from work (if they’d let him) if he didn’t desperately need the money for the car. He used to scoff at Mike for working all day at the dealership and then working on car renovations in the evenings. Well, Kirk no longer worked at the dealership, but he worked just the same all day every day, then came home and worked on the car until midnight. With so much to do on the car, he wondered if any other racer remained so far behind with so much to do on a car so late in the “off” season. He assumed a new “ground up” car build would be farther ahead than him, but of course, he worried a lot and put extra pressure on himself. No one knew how much work he had to do on the car. No one expected him to be ready for the racing season, not his family, not his so-called gearhead ex-friends, not his plant coworkers, not even Sarah.

            Kirk didn’t spend a whole lot of time with Sarah Elizabeth those days because when he wasn’t working at the plant he worked on his stock car. Every once in a weekend they’d see each other, and he’d try to relax around her, but every second away from work on the stock car nagged at him.

            Well, he had his rebuilt short block sitting there in a plastic bag which drove Kirk a bit insane that he didn’t have enough money for the parts to put it together. He had ordered his cheap camshaft from California and got his cylinder head back from the local machine shop. He knew that if he spent some time, a whole lot of time, grinding out the valve ports he could glean a couple more horsepower out of his racing engine, but he knew that he could not spend that kind of time on that time consuming task. Maybe next year. So he reassembled the heads with the valves the shop ground with three angles; Kirk had been adamant about them doing it correctly seeing he knew how to do it himself but didn’t have the equipment. Anyway, he put it all together with valves, springs, retainers, and new seals. It bothered him a bit that perhaps the stock valve setup would be overwhelmed with the more powerful rebuilt engine but time and reality drove him on. What he could afford and had to have he ordered. A brand-new carburetor with adapter and a box of mandrel pipe bends that he specified various configurations. He had doubts that he’d have time to piece and weld them together, but he felt he had to do it to fulfill his “vision” of a renewed car, completely different from the previous year. More on this as we go on, and he pressed on.

            Recall that the previous season he raced the car that was then entirely silver metalflake. He didn’t think it was an appropriate paint color for a stock car and a paint job you don’t want to dent or scrape because you can’t fix it as his brother-in-law Mike had demonstrated when he crashed and slid sideways down over on the track. Kirk couldn’t exactly say he detested the silver, but he had already stripped that offensive paint and the multiple coats of clear coat off into dust. What color would he paint it now that he had full decision-making power on the issue. His Firebird was Kelly Green, a classic color, his van was Panther Pink, and his motorcycle was Burgundy. Kirk’s favorite color was blue or maybe yellow?  Well, that doesn’t help the guessing game of choosing a color, does it? There’s much to be done before that decision has to be made because at this particular time Kirk didn’t know what color he favored either.

            Nevertheless, the car appeared quite horrid with splotches of primer, bare metal and Bondo that notorious body filler.  Kirk had stood back from the car and let the possibilities percolate in his mind, but first he knew that finishing the roof where Mike had drilled for the detestable faux vinyl top. Kirk had taken all those screws out, dented in the holes and smeared a rough coat of filler in the holes. That was when it was cold, during the winter, but now he needed to work on the car’s body with gusto. He stepped up on the nerf bar with a grinder and knocked off the rough Bondo. He smeared on another Bondo coat. He had ideas about streamlining the car even though on a stock car short track aerodynamics never really came into play. Enclosing the side steering arm with a couple of bowed pieces of light sheet metal that he welded in place and finished it off with Bondo.

            Jon, Kirk’s other brother-in-law, must have been bored or feeling sorry for Kirk’s solo endeavor on the car, would drop in as Kirk worked evenings. Jon had extensive metal working expertise from the Air Force and then GM. A word about Jon not to be confused with John from the plant. During Kirk’s formative years, Jon was in the US Air Force and stationed in Key West with Kirk’s sister. This meant they didn’t see much of Jon and the sister back on the farm for four years. During that period, years ago, Kirk, his parents and little sister went to Key West to visit the couple. Jon spoke very little about being in the air force, but he did wear his uniform on days he worked as an airframe specialist during the visit. Kirk remained unimpressed with the whole idea of the military taking orders, wearing a uniform, marching around and stuff so didn’t care much about it all. Anyway, Kirk didn’t have many interactions with Jon up to this point when he volunteered to help Kirk here and there.

            Kirk told Jon his idea about building a spoiler on the back of the car. Spoilers and air dams were all the rage on street cars among the true wannabes, so Kirk wanted one despite it having no functionality on the track. Jon became a regular visitor to Kirk’s makeshift garage in the big red barn, and he set to work on building said spoiler. Meanwhile, Kirk’s father couldn’t care less of what his son was working on, and Kirk preferred it to remain that way.

            In the back of his mind, the absence of a car hauling trailer would resurface and concern Kirk to no end. He had thought of flat towing the car at the end of last season, but he never actually had to which is good because flat towing puts extra wear and tear on a car’s drivetrain and tires. Besides that, he knew one of his also-ran competitors, back-of-the-pack racers who flat towed and changed all four tires before and after racing their cars. Ridiculous, but the lack of trailer troubled Kirk every single day and that made him feel ridiculous. Kirk continued to work on his car every single night.

            One night when Jon came over, Kirk decided that between the two of them they could mount the rebuilt short block in the frame. Kirk worried about everything and putting the partial engine is subject to the dust of body work, but the need to get the engine set into place overrode his worry. Seeing the two of them pulled the engine out, they just reversed the process and with a little jiggling around they got the bolts tightened up with the back of the engine sitting on a jack stand. Kirk needed to buy a new pressure plate and clutch before hooking up the transmission. Steps. Everything gets done in steps.

            He did more body work, which overall, wasn’t that bad except for hole repair in the roof and the modifications he wanted to get done. He worried about the new rebuilt engine in the bodywork dust environment despite the plastic cover so he installed the cylinder head to relieve some of his worry. Never far from his mind, he continued to deliberate the car color: yellow? Blue? Green? He couldn’t come to a conclusion, yet, but he wanted something distinctive not a color you would normally see on the track, but definitely not silver!

            His new camshaft got delivered which seemed pretty fast, so he carefully installed it knowing he had to buy new valve lifters. It was always something. Because he had that continuous oil leak last year that couldn’t be remedied, he ensured all seals and gaskets were new and installed perfectly correct. Utilizing Jon’s metal/welding expertise, Kirk set him to work on building a custom oil pan. Turning left constantly on the track meant that the oil in the engine sloshed to the right hence part of the leak problem last year. He told Jon he wanted a shorter pan, so it wouldn’t bottom out with low clearance, but at the same time build a pocket/box on the righthand side. Kirk’s theory, his own, was if the oil pump pickup sat in that pocket, and the engine ran low on oil for some reason, the pickup would suck the last oil available in the engine, not to mention allow for more capacity. At least, Kirk thought he was a genius, but it probably was a well-used modification by many racers. Anyway, it made him happy. Watch out Kirk, you might get a big head and if that happens something bad will happen.

            Well, not everything goes according to plan. Actually, not much goes according to plan. Jon did a beautiful job on cutting and modifying the pan and then welding it all up. For some reason, the metal the pan didn’t like to be welded, and it caused many spiderweb like cracks which leaked when checked with water. After a few more tries, it didn’t get better much to Jon’s frustration, they started with another pan. This time Jon brazed the seams instead of welding which required less heat and it ended up flawless and leakless. After a heavy coat of orange paint, Kirk was more than happy to put the oil pan on the engine and close it up. Of course before that he had to modify the oil pump pickup tube a little to make sure it fit right into the modified oil pan box. Nice step completed. Kirk sighed a small breath of relief.

            After days of work and extensive bodywork, Kirk’s expensive carburetor and his mandrel bends arrived. He had to admire the racing carburetor in all its newness and shininess for a few minutes. Moving on, Kirk wasn’t the best welder like Jon, but he was up to a challenge he had laid out for himself. Mandrel bends are pre-bent exhaust pipes in short pieces bent in 45, 60, and 90 degree turns. Kirk hadn’t exactly planned what he needed in purchasing the bends to accomplish his vision so this project was more or less a shot in the dark with an unknown success rate.

            That vision of his was to hand-build exhaust headers with each tube originating from an exhaust port all the way back to a collector that did just that, collected the tubes together into a larger outlet. This was a feat Kirk had no experience with, but to the end he had envisioned the larger exhaust outport piercing the body two feet back and three feet up from the ground.

            With plenty of acetylene and oxygen and welding rod, Kirk set to work. For days and days, he worked along with plenty of burnt fingers, sparks down his shirt while wearing tinted goggles to save his eyes. With a couple redoes that is cuts and rewelds and steps back, he finally got them welded to the collector. Eyeballing the exit point through the metal body, he drilled a couple guide holes and cut the holes with a saber saw while maneuvering through the interior bars of the roll cage. A precarious location. After a couple retries, he got the holes lined up with the collectors and slid the pipes through the body and secured them. He had to step back and admire the pipes sticking outside the body with the ends slash cut parallel to the body which he knew would look cool when flames shot out while racing hard on the track leading the pack. (HA!)  It was a proud visionary step for the self-doubting Kirk.  Don’t get a big head, Kirk!   

            About to make some big decisions, Kirk felt hyped.