For the Adventure – Steve McDermott and An Interesting Rocky Mountain Race Week Roadside Fix
Officer: "Are you aware you are on federal property?"
Me and pretty much everyone: "What do you mean?"
Officer: -points at sign-
Me: "I have a spare with me. It will take me about a half hour."
One of the other racers: "Dude this is the second worst place to be in this situation outside of California"
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This week’s “For the Adventure – Stories from the Road” comes from Steve McDermott, who highlights an interesting repair stop on his Rocky Mountain Race Week 2.0 from 2023 at the United States Department of Commerce:
My 2001 Dodge Dakota truck runs hot. It's a filled block/wet heads, Powerglide, and around 6000 pounds with trailer. The entire cooling system holds 2 gallons, and I have two massive trans coolers with fan under the bed. I built it as bare minimum for drag-and-drive, and mostly for local eighth-mile bracket racing.
So, coming down into Boulder and again into Littleton, I was having ALL the issues. I'd run the water temperature up, shut off and coast, get the brakes hot, start the engine, engine brake, run the temperature up, shut off, coast...over and over. I run an OE 14-inch front rotor with 2 large pistons and Wildwood 11/12-inch rear rotor with 4 pistons.
Every intersection we hit, I'm shutting it off.
Twice we had to stop because you could smell the transmission (we thought.....). The transmission temperature needle was buried north of 240, both in the pan and in the cooler line. Twice we stopped and I used the weed sprayer to spray the transmission case and coolers after doing the radiator.
So we're going down 93/Broadway just past Baseline Road, and the truck stumbles and shuts off. No warning. Try to crank and it's not trying to fire. I get out and listen to the fuel pump and it sounds upset.
Luckily I made it to the "shoulder," actually a bus stop. Two others come by and I give the thumbs down. Traffic everywhere, all we see is a driveway. The three of us ramshackle a tow rope out of ratchet straps and they try to pull me up the hill. Apparently, I'm heavy and things don't get far.
So I try to fire it again and it's barely running after the pump cooled down. So we make it up to the driveway. Didn't even care or look at the signs. We pull into the parking lot - a race car with trailer, my race truck and trailer, and a truck with 16 foot flatbed and just pull in a line against the curb as mine shuts off on its own again.
And then as we all get out, we get approached by an officer. The conversation goes something like this:
Officer: "Can I help y’all?"
Me: "My fuel pump died and I need to swap it out."
Officer: "Are you aware you are on federal property?"
Me and pretty much everyone: "What do you mean?"
Officer: -points at sign-
Me: "I have a spare with me. It will take me about a half hour."
One of the other racers: "Dude this is the second worst place to be in this situation outside of California."
Officer: "I can make some calls, but no promises."
Me: "Do what you can and let us know."
So the officer goes into the guard shack and I grab my "Oh shit" box. It has two things: A spare Magnafuel 7303 and a spare custom power steering pump. Grab a pair of crescent wrenches, close my fuel shutoff valve (I KNEW I DID THAT FOR A REASON!) and remove the suction and pressure lines. The whole pre-filter/pump/post-filter assembly is held on by two bolts. I pull those loose and have the assembly on the ground - already used a drain pan to catch the fuel as the lines were unhooked.
The officer comes back. "I talked to my supervisor. You have 30 minutes and not much more. We have a tour coming in soon and you need to be gone by the time they get here." I reply with "I'm already halfway done," and he has these bugeyes and a "that was fast but I didn't give you permission to start" expression.
Opened both fuel filters for a quick inspection, threw them on the new pump. Changed electrical connections and hung the assembly back up. Reconnected lines, primed and verified fuel pressure. Seal up the drain pan and put tools away.
The officer couldn't believe how quick it was, and was grateful for it. We got back on our way to Bandimere.
Oh, and when we took the transmission apart, zero signs of heat inside despite being over 240 for over 2 hours. What we smelled was pretty much any piece of plastic hose or loom touching the transmission case or engine, and the #00 ground cable for the starter.
We also found out that I had zero compression on two holes due to burned intake valve seats and guides. I went 12.57 and 12.61 at Bandimere on 6 cylinders, and 145-150 kpa of boost at 4500 pounds. In Kearny I went 12.01 first thing "off the trailer" at 138ish kpa.
It's all going back together now and I'm genuinely curious what it will do having that power back.
My plan soon is to get a set of 4.88 gears to swap in place of the 4.10's and use a set of 29.5-inch tall x 9-inch width factory stock tires (I got from Aaron Stanfield) in place of my 28-inch tall x 10-inch width to see how deep I can get into the 6's in the eighth-mile. My quickest so far is a 7.32 as-is. I ordered the Fab9 from Strange Engineering with their road racing full float hubs, so I can do 30 minute gear changes. Leaf spring = nothing in the way.
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